The end of the year

The kids have watched all 6 of the Star Wars movies in order over the past few weeks.  Caeden has been pretty much obsessing for about the past year, and has talked of little else for the past few months.

Jeremy chose 4 movie passes for his select-a-gift from work this year, and Tuesday was the night...

We all really enjoyed the movie!

 Wednesday, the girls made these beautiful snowflakes from computer paper.  They hung them in our living room windows.

We spent New Year's Eve at home together, just the 5 of us.  We went back and forth about whether or not we would stay up until midnight.  We blew up balloons, but the kids didn't want to pop them.

We watched It's a Wonderful Life, and it ended around 11:30.  Caeden was the only one who wanted to stay up, but we all went to bed.  I think C was still awake at midnight, but the rest of us were too groggy to celebrate any more at that point.  

I am really thankful for 2015.  Life seems to get more difficult all the time, but I'm thankful that Jesus continues to walk with us.

Today is the third day in a row it has rained constantly.  This is common, but never good, in central Illinois, because everything here used to be swampland, and it is flat and floods easily.  And that's what we have today...flooding.  

This morning, the temperature dropped and the rain froze on everything.  Then the ice  fell off things in chunks.

The ice also weighed down branches and lots of them broke off.

Then the water started coming inside, as it does when the ground can absorb no more.  I tried for hours to get ahold of Jeremy, but he was in meetings.  As I've done before, I cried and whined while dragging out the heavy trash pump and hoses in the freezing rain, and tried to remember how to hook things up.  As usual, I couldn't remember how the hoses hooked onto the pump to get it started.  Jeremy had to come home and start it up.  The flooding cleared out in about 15 minutes, and we just let the pump run on low the rest of the day and night so we could take showers and run the dishwasher.  We also picked up the frozen branches out of the driveway before they froze there.  Not a fun time, but a lot of others in our area are dealing with the same thing, and many without power.

Things we watched

We aren't big tv watchers around here.  We haven't ever had cable or satellite since we've been married, but I guess that is becoming more common.  We don't have Netflix, but we do have Amazon Prime Instant Video.  This year, Jeremy and I watched all of these 2 series.

And, of course, we also watched a lot of our FRIENDS dvd's again too...always a favorite.

Friends and falling over

After church today, the kids and I went to lunch at Steak 'n' Shake with the O fam! It was pretty fun!

Sylvia cracked me up this afternoon when she decided to play with the box her beanbag chair refill beans came in.  Caeden helped her get in and stand up...

Then she decided to get out and draw a mermaid tail on the box...Then she fell over!

Just keeping it real over here!  We are enjoying Christmas break!

Day after Christmas stuff

More light saber wielding...

Annah starts driver's training when she goes back to school.  Jeremy took her out driving for the first time today.  He said she did well, and the biggest struggle was turning.  (It's not quite like Mario Kart, which is pretty much her only driving experience up to now.)

We went to PoC|Saturday church tonight for the first time!  Jeremy has a wrestling tournament tomorrow, and I've been wanting to go to PoC|Saturday...so all 5 of us went.  

This weekend we are doing the Wesley Covenant Service, which I always enjoy.

Christmas Day

It was about 2am this morning when I finally got to bed.  I got up around 7am or so, and saw this...

"I've been waiting an hour and a half already!"  Sorry, Buddy, try to get some more rest and let everyone else sleep some more.

I went downstairs and turned on all the Christmas lights.

I turned the oven up to 325 to get the 19 pound smoked ham Jeremy's dad gave us [that had been defrosting at 175 since 1:30am] good and cooked.  I puttered around and did some other things, and Caeden came downstairs after a while.  Finally everyone else did too.  We didn't hurry things though. I think it was around 10am when we assembled in the living room to hear Jeremy read the Christmas story in Luke 2.

Per tradition, stockings are first at our house...

The first gift was for the kids--a reminder to be thankful, and also a bit of a joke based on this Vine they are always quoting.

This year the "biggest and best" presents the kids received were to/from each other.  They put a lot of thought and heart into them, and were so excited to watch each other open them.

We enjoyed that amazing ham (and will for at least 6 more meals), along with cheddar garlic sour cream smashed potatoes, fresh green beans, Beef House rolls and strawberry jam, and wassail.

We enjoyed the afternoon and evening together relaxing in our living room near the Christmas tree.

We watched several movies, all of which were presents opened today.

We Skyped with Krampa and Gram in Arizona in the evening.

It was a quiet, sweet day together, and we were so happy for it.

A merry, merry, Christmas.

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve at church.  The kids and I ate a quick bowl of soup, then our way to town, we took a meal to a friend who had surgery a couple days ago.  I was planning to drop the girls off at church for their 7:00 rehearsal and go shopping, until Jeremy pointed out to me that the stores close early on Christmas Eve.  He ran to the store for me and picked up lightbulbs and a few other random items of which we were in dire need, then met us at church.  We decided just to stay and watch the drama and Pivot youth band rehearse, since there was really no place to go.    

Caeden and Sammy discussed all things Star Wars.  

Pastor Todd wrote the drama, and the scenes fit right in with the songs the Pivot band sang.

Samuel made his drumming debut!

They rehearsed the whole service through 3 times.  I have to say, it is pretty awesome to see these kids (most of whom we've known since birth!) worshiping together and presenting a beautiful gift to their church family on Christmas Eve!  

The girls alternated between singing silly Christmas songs and Annah and Sylvia playing carols on their violin and cello as people arrived for the 11pm service.

Some kids came in their jammies, and everyone was happy to be here, together, celebrating the birth of our Savior!

It was awesome to welcome "old" friends we hadn't seen in a while, as well as new guests, and family members.

We even had 2 baptisms!

Since we were there for hours of rehearsal, I was able to get up in the kids' faces and record some video of them.  It makes a long video, but has a bit of most of the songs they did...

It was a wonderful service, and so good for us all to worship together and celebrate Jesus' birth!