Christmas Photo

This year I decided to send a picture of

the kids for our Christmas cards.

This one is the one I decided to use.

This is just one of the other poses we did.

The kids have all grow up to fast!

Decorations 2006

Well I thought I'd share some of what we put out for Christmas.
To start is our Tree.
It is decorated with the kids' ornaments. Each year the kids get a
new ornament with the year on it & sometimes with their name.
There are also a few that have been made by one of us. This year
Elizabeth has added her first ornament made at school.
Under the tree is our skirt, that Lynda, my MIL made for us to
match our colors. She did a beautiful job on it! We love it!


The is my manger scene. I've had it for years. We put white cotton ball-like stuff
for a snow effect and some cinnamon scented pinecones. On the edge is the socking holders
that we just hang little stockings from.


This is our Christmas candy corner. A little Gingerbread house that holds candy canes
a Christmas tree to hold M&M's and the last is a nut bowl, but this year we are using
it for soft peppermint candies.


This is our fireplace decorations. I love this Santa! He is pooped and rests nicely
on the lip of the fireplace frame, right next to the Christmas tree.
Elizabeth hung the little stocking here because it plays music when you push the button.


Along with these decorations, we also have icicle lights hung through the living room.
It's very pretty in the evening with all the lights lit.

"Snow" much Fun!!

Well you are covered in snow and you can't go anywhere what do you do??
You PLAY in the Snow!!!
With the snow and the extremely cold air, comes ice. Under the snow on the roads is frozen solid ice. Perfect for sledding on hills and slidding on feet! Here I am at one of my many slides! This was alot of fun and I tried teaching Elizabeth how to do it too.
Here we are together. I'm trying to push-slide her down the road. She was having so much fun. (even when she fell, she jumped up saying, "I'm OK!" )
Whats snow without a snowball fight??Apparently someone has gotten it into her head that you have to have a snowball fight when it has snowed!!! Here she is getting Daddy in the back while chasing him around the car.
She chased me in circles around the yard. I finally got some snow to defend myself. 'The stand-off' Luckily she missed me this time, but I got her!
I love this shot! You can see the huge 'snowball' just leaving Elizabeth's hand on its way to me. While at the same time I'm trying to get enough snow to make my snowball to throw at her.

Afterwards we were cold and it was time to go inside and get some yummy Hot Chocolate!
What a fun snow day!!

Comparison Snow Days

I thought I'd show a little comparison of our days of snow. The first one will be the snow from Monday morning, the second picture is the snow on Tuesday morning.
Heres a little table we have on our deck, Monday. On this picture you can see the toy helicopter .
Heres the same table Tuesday morning.You can barely see the top of the toy helicopter.

The front of the house. A nice little blanket, but not staying on the road much. And, notice that nasty dark sky!

The front of the house today, with the girls. Lots more snow! However, this time it is on the roads and everywhere. Along with the snow, hiding under the snow is a sheet of ice! It got into the single digits last night and everything froze! Making today a SNOW DAY!!!

The first Snow of the season! 2006

Well we almost made it out of Nov. with no snow! At least we made it past Thanksgiving!

This is our actual first day of snow. We woke up to a light blanketing of the white stuff! What a surprise! This was yesterday, Nov. 26.

This is the snow-fall from last night, this early morning. Elizabeth got Daddy outside to play in the snow and she's throwing a snowball at him here!

Here she is with her Snowman they were able to make.

These next two are just before lunch-time. It snowed most the morning. (with just a couple little stops) This is out the back. The same place that just, not even a month ago, was flooded.

Here's our driveway and car. Gives a little better/closer look at how much snow we have.

It's all very pretty, but it's very cold, and the wet freezes at night making it very dangerous to drive in!! (remember I have a teenage driver!!!)

BTW, it's 2:00pm and guess what. IT'S SNOWING AGAIN!!! hee hee hee

Thanksgiving 2006

We went to Mom & Dad's for Thanksgiving dinner and Carrie and Jeff and their boys were there too. It was pretty quiet with lots of food!!

A puzzle kept some occupied, as well as the football games on TV.

(on the couchleft to right, Marshall, Elizabeth, Douglas, Kayla; chair on left Jeff)

Heres Mom and Jacquie & Carrie, before the feast was ready!

(mom standing, Jacquie left, Carrie right in the chair)


Elizabeth and I here finishing up my pumpkin pie.

Donnie had to work all day so he missed all the fun. But I made sure he got a plate full of all the fixins!!

Everything turned out good, but I sure am missing leftovers!!

Random fun shots!

Marshall came over for a few hours Wed. and while here he and Elizabeth

took a few pictures. These are the best of the batch. Marshall wanted a picture with Jacquie too. So I took this

one. Look how TALL he has gotten! (and he's 2yrs younger then her!)

I even have to look up to see his face!

Book Project Fair

This is Jacquie's Book Project she had to do and set up.

She had to do a display about the book she read.

She chose the book 'Chocolat' and decided for her display

she would make some chocolate things (that may have been sold

in the shop in the story) for everyone to taste while looking around.

She made Italian Truffles, Chocolate Caramels, and Hot Chocolate.

Everything turned out good and was a big success!

She was given an A for her project grade!

Recent Scrapbook Pages

Here are my recent layouts I've done up to today.

This one I did as a challenge for a group I used to be on. The challenge was to Digitally Alter a photo and make a layout with it. It may be hard to see here, but I did a watercolor effect on this photo before I printed it. It really turned out looking awesome! Jacquie loves it too!!

This is another layout I did for a challenge on that same group I used to be on. This challenge was to Play with Proportion. We had to print our picture so it was a large portion of the whole page. Thinking a picture larger then 5x7. I chose this picture because I knew I wanted the page to be all about it! I printed the picture 8x10 then trimmed excess sides off. Then I saw this sketch that had elements that circled the photo and knew that was how I wanted to 'show' the photo! I decided to add my journalling around the outside, so not to take away from the great picture and to be able to read while having the visual with it.

These next three were just done using a new kit I got from SO. I love the colors and they were great for fall photos! These photos were from last year (2005) at the Pumpkin Patch.

This is the hay maze that was fun to do and at the end there were two slides that were alot of fun!!

Another thing they had was this wagon ride. (not meant for adults!) It took the kids through a haunted corn stalk/house made just for kids. (not to scary but enough for them to have fun) They all had a blast!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!!

Well, we've been raining ALL day today and I think I can go back to yesterday!
It's let up a couple of times and we may have had one short time that it actually stopped. Unfortunately not long enough to undo all the flooding its creating!!
These are pictures from our back deck. They are building back there and that area has been for many years known as 'wetlands'. But the were permitted to build still.
This house is still being built and right beside it is the cement foundation for another house.
The space of the foundation is filled pretty much all the way with water.

This is to the right side. The tan and grey houses are the other two brand new houses they just put in. All the shine you see is water! That white house sitting almost center, is pretty much encircled with water. It's just stopped feet from the walls of the house.

This is in the same direction as the first picture above, but more straight out. Again, all the shine you see is water!! If you look close you can see a black strip runing the length, from left to right. Just behind that is a creek. However right now it's all part of the yards around it.


As of right now, it is still raining, good and strong! I am anxious to see how bad it will be in the morning! We've got roads blocked off already. I'm sure there'll be more closed tomorrow!

It's awfull to see! I just glad we are up on th hill.

My Recent layouts

Here are my recents from the last month. They were done from challenges given from a group I was part of.



This Christmas I did for a prize that I sent to a friend.

The boy page above I used a sketch that was meant for a 2pager,
that I combined into one page.

Halloween Costumes 2006

Donnie and Elizabeth! This is the last and final decision out of 3 of the day! She wanted to be everything and we had to explain to her that she could only be what we had. So she ended up a football player. Donnie just likes to dress up to try and scare the kids. But usually they just stare at him like he's a fruitcake and some even laugh!

Well here is Douglas and Kayla! They decided last minute to 'dress up'. I have no idea what they are or what their look means! Douglas doesn't even know. But they did look good, and they ended up going trick-or-treating.

Here is Jacquie and her friend Ashley. They weren't going to do anything either. But decided at last minute, after Elizabeth got back from trick-or-treating, to get 'dressed up' too.
They too just made their own costume idea up. But I think they had a kinda name for theirs.
Devil-Cat Clown
Yes, they went out trick-or-treating too!!

Everyone looked great this year!!
(no I didn't do anything. I helped everyone get done & took Elizabeth trick-or-treating)