Tuesday, December 30, 2008

A picture through our kitchen window

After we had our roof shoveled this morning I took this picture of Savannah along with Vader our newest addition. They are up on the snow out front my kitchen window. You know that's alot of snow when it is up to our windows and they're looking right at you. I am thankful that the kids can make their own hills to sled on instead of taking them all to Cherry Hill where it's a bit to busy and I get too nervous worrying someone will run them over.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Our visit with Mom and Dad and snow.....

We have been having quite the Stormy Winter so far this season. It has been very surprising on how much and how often we are getting storms. My parents put off their trip from W. WA a few days, hoping for a break in the weather. They arrived this last Saturday and we had a great visit with them. Gifts galore!!!! The kids were very grateful and happy to see them. We just seen them off, they are leaving bright and early Tuesday morning. And going by the property in Eastern WA. While they were here we had snow fall after snow fall. Trinity was teaching Grandma how to Crochet, that was pretty fun to watch. My Mom doesn't have the best of patients and all but she did pretty well, Trinity kept reassuring that she did the same thing when learning too and has faith that she will get it down.....LOL The girls sang their song with the Karaoke machine. It was a great visit and I loved seeing them and the kids of course loved seeing them too. Thanks for coming and seeing us Mom and Dad, we love you!!!!



Grandma and Papa with the Grand kids and Bandit too!!

A beautiful view out our front door today.
This picture is out our backdoor and we got that snow on the latter within a couple of hours.






Thursday, December 25, 2008

Like Father Like Son

Boys will be boys.... After Tristian opened and assembled his new Nerf Gun, Dad had to try it out. Then when Zachie saw what Daddy was doing he had to get his new gun too. The funniest part about them playing like this in the living room was when Zachie ran out of bullets to throw he then threw his gun at him too. We all laughed so hard. Now I know what to get Dave.....LOL


Christmas Morning

We actually got to sleep in this morning....7:30am WOW!!! It was nice after staying up so late because like always I let a good amount of presents unwrapped. So late night wrapping and eating some cookies that was my night. Since we have so many pictures of all the kids opening presents I just picked one of each of them to share with you all. They made out like bandits like always. So today we are just going to relax, watch movies and cook.


Zachie with his first remote control car that's perfect for his age.


Sierra holding her first digital camera, now she can take all the pictures of herself she wants to.


Savannah holding one of her computers that she got. Anything that she can learn from gets her vote.



Trinity with her Karaoke Machine.

And here is Tristian getting his Automatic Nerf Machine Gun to go with the rest of his collection of Nerf guns.




All before they woke up. I asked my sister if she was thankful for only having one kiddo.....lol



Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas with Cookies and Milk...

First of all Merry Christmas to everyone!!! So this year like every other year we did our cookies and milk for Santa. Although this year we did the really lazy way of making cookies...the all ready decorated and precut sugar cookies. So here is the out come. And at the bottom you'll see pictures of Zachie very upset because he got in trouble of all things....spitting on the cookies....gross I know but leave it up to him. Also there is a video that I am going to have on here at the end that is a play that Savannah directed or should I say tried to direct. I hope you all enjoy!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!




We still love you Zachie its ok...just don't spit.




























Taking a break....

Here is Tristian taking a break from shoveling snow this morning. He made a chair out of the snow and a little hill to sled down in the front yard. He is so tired of all the snow now, but I'm sure he won't complain once he gets paid.....LOL





Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Christmas gifts....

I have gotten almost every one's Christmas gifts done. This year they are all handmade gifts. I can't share them with you all quite yet because my family looks at my blog. But the kids have had fun making the gifts as have I. I will post the pics as soon as I can. My parents are going to try this weekend to head over so then I'll be able to share what we've made.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Merry Christmas from our family to yours...and pets too!!

While waiting for our great Pancake dinner (which is the new fav in the house that the kids make for us). I decided to do a impromptu photo shoot with the kids and all the pets. They are all holding their own pet except for Zachary he is holding Max....mommas dog. Hope you like.





Friday, December 19, 2008

Eagle Watching

While we were out driving around today to see how bad the roads were and to do some business in town Dave drove us out to watch for Eagles. They come every Dec and Jan to the lake. And last year when they came we really couldn't get any good shots but today was another story. There were three Eagles this trip and there are probably a hundred that come through here so I just decided to post these two pictures. They are so beautiful and you should see them catch their fish in Lake Coeur d'Alene, it's amazing to watch. We are very blessed to live here in Northern Idaho.
















Thursday, December 18, 2008

Please take a moment to read this.

Please read, it is an absolutely beautiful story…..In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket.Their father was gone.The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared.Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries.Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either.If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress, loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job.The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town.No luck.The kids stayed crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince who ever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.Still no luck.The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel.An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids.She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning.She paid 65 cents an hour, and I could start that night.I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.That night when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money-- fully half of what I averaged every night.As the weeks went by, heating bills added a strain to my meager wage.The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home.One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires!There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires.Had angels taken up residence in Indiana ? I wondered.I made a deal with the local service station.In exchange f or his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough.Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids.I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning.Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. There were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine.The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, to my amazement, my old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.I quickly opened the driver's side door, crawled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10!I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans.Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes.There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes.There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour.There was whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items.And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude.And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December.And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

THE POWER OF PRAYER.
I believe that God only gives three answers to prayer:
1. 'Yes!'
2. 'Not yet.'
3. 'I have something better in mind.'

God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar.

You maybe going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that you cannot imagine.My instructions were to pick four people that I wanted God to bless, and I picked you.Please pass this to at least four people you want to be blessed and a copy back to me.This prayer is powerful, and prayer is one of the best gifts we receive.There is no cost but a lot of rewards.Let's continue to pray for one another.

Here is the prayer:Father, I ask You to bless my friends, relatives and email buddies reading this right now. Show them a new revelation of Your love and power. Amen.

Why would they even try it?????

While I was outside alittle while ago to watch Dave clean off the vehicles AGAIN a car thought they could get down our street. Well they were sadly mistaken....Thank goodness we have our Suburban...(Dave's baby). She's never let us down. And I decided to throw in a pic of our flag by the front door .


Cleaned off enough to get out of the driveway.

The little car that thought they were a SUV.

Push it girl..go...go...go

Your free at last!!



























Kids at play

Here's a few pics of the kids out playing in the snow in the backyard. They are amazed at how much snow we have gotten in just one day.
Trinity trying to help Zachie up.
He did alot better this year then he did last year.

Tristian being a boy.

Sierra waving at us from the backyard.

Savannah did a face plant.


All 5 out there along with 2 dogs...having fun making tunnels.











Just some more snow pics

I know you might be tired of seeing our snow pictures but I can't help but to show you all what we have been dealing with. Neither my sister Lavetta or Dave could make it in today. We have about 4 feet of snow in our yard and the state patrol has said no vehicles are to be on the road except emergency vehicles. We all have never seen it dump this much in one storm plus we are suppose to have another storm hit us around Saturday and Sunday. And since the kids are out of school today I will be taking lots of pictures and post those too. Enjoy!!

This is our yard to the right of our front door.

Our roof outside of a up stair window.

This is our backyard and my garden too.


Backyard



Neighbors snow blowing sidewalks, driveways and streets. This is all so unbelievable......




Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Some fun pictures out in the snow

I wonder if we're going to get mail tomorrow????



From the driveway...brrr

A car for sale..wanna go for a test drive????

And then theres our little Max trying to climb out of 16 inches of snow.









Snow Snow and More Snow........

Today around here it is all about the snow. They are saying for the next 10 days that only Saturday and Tuesday next week are the only days that it is not suppose to snow. We have tons inches now and they say another 5 inches tonight. So it's alot of board games and reading for the little kids.

The view out our living room window.

Tristian being silly catching flakes.


Trinity and Savannah coming home from school.

and again on our walkway....they dont cancel school around here or even delay it.