A good picture

is difficult to come by in this house. That's not all together true. It's just nearly impossible to get all the kids to look (in the same direction) and smile (while not making faces or funny poses) long enough to get a picture. Even taking individual pictures can be a challenge. Yesterday, we didn't even try to get all 4 in one picture (already had that fun getting a picture for our Christmas card but that's another story) we just went for the 2 little ones.....

Okay one of them is cooperating but not the other....

Then Landon had enough of waiting on Casey.....


So we went to individual shot...Which worked fine for Casey but Landon was done with the smiling thing....

Drew and Shelby

Do you see a pattern with the guys and smiling yesterday?

Panther's Game

Last night, Steve, Drew, Lance and Will had to opportunity to go to the Panther's game. It was so cold!!! I'm so glad that I got to go once while we lived there and I am equally happy that it was not COLD when I went. Despite the cold, everyone had fun. The best part was seeing the boys when they got home. Coffee at Waffle House must have been working for the dads because the boys were sooooooo tired--I think they were sleeping despite the fact that they were standing in my kitchen.

Happy Birthday Uncle Jack!!

Okay, everyone wish Uncle Jack a happy birthday. His birthday was yesterday and while I did call and leave him a message, I never even got on the computer so no blog birthday on his birthday!!!

We love you Jack and hope you have a great weekend.

Focusing on the important

Okay, I'm not done shopping yet and that's hard for me to deal with but am I stressed?

NOPE!!!

Why not? Because that's not the important part.

We are WAY behind in school--sorta, we have almost 100 days under our belts but are no nearly as far along with some of our curriculum as I would like to be. Why? Because we have been going down rabbit trails all year. We keep getting sidetracked with other topics and studies--we'll call it self directed learning!!

This month we are covering the important in school and it's not math, science, writing or language arts. Do you know what it is? It's HIStory. This past week we have been covering the symbols of Christmas. Drew and Shelby are really enjoying this. I have been wanting to do this study with them but never seemed to find the time. Well this year, we are putting aside our regular studies to focus on Christ birth and how it is celebrated. We are taking our language arts straight from the Bible and copying passages about the birth of Christ and the prophecies of his birth, life and death. We'll see who learns the most!!!

Also as I was having my daily parent/teacher conference (most people call this talking to themselves), God gave me a plan. See, I've been stressing over finding the "right" devotional for Drew and Shelby but God showed me today a plan. We are not going to use a devotional because I want God's word in their heads and not that someone else. We are going to read each day for 30 minutes (15 minutes from the OT and 15 minutes from the NT), then they are going to mark on a blank calender what they read and in their notebooks, they will copy the verse that "impressed" them the most from each section of their reading. I am not going to tell them what they must read but just that they must read. We are also going to read the Bible in one year. I have a kids Bible that is made just for this.

If you see anything good out there for us to use this month, let me know. Thanks to Dyan, I have some great, fun "worksheets" and we are doing a project board on the symbols of Christmas. Then I'm not sure what we will do next week--other than we will stay with our mission of the keeping the important things in order and not letting the urgent take over!!!

I'll try to do better....

with keeping the blog up to date!!! I added some new post today from the past week. Here is what we did last night.....
No this is not in our yard, but the kids would love it if we did put all of this in our yard.
They had some really neat light displays and we got to stay in the car to enjoy them. Lots of them were motion displays and they had Christmas music playing.

A night on the town....

Steve and I can't thank Mimi and Kokopat enough for staying with the kids this weekend. We got to go to Charlotte to Steve's district Christmas party and spend the night. It was a great evening. However, Steve and I must be getting older because it didn't take long for both of us to have our fill of a LOUD, VERY CROWDED bar!! We did have a wonderful time and we couldn't have gone with out Mimi and Kokopat being willing to come and take such good care of the kids. It was just what we needed.