Happy New Year!

I will try and get as much as I can in this blog, but boy do I have a lot of pictures! There may need to be two blogs! This is our new neice Sorina, she is CJ and Teresa new little bundle of joy, I thought I would start out the blog with her because you can't help but smile when you see a smiling baby, admit it, you are smiling right now ;o)

During this past month we have had our share of excitement. School ended for me back on the 14th and ended for the kids on the 22nd. I ended up with 4 A's and 1 B. I was not expecting the B since the teacher told me she was going to give me an A- but I guess at the last minute she changed her mind. I can't complain too loudly though since I missed a fair amount of her class due to the fact that it was a class I had already taken in Colorado that they would not transfer. (Went to the Dean twice on that but ultimately the Professor had final say and she said nay) Also it was the only class I had on Wednesdays and she was notorious for letting us go "a little early" so essentially I would have been driving a total of 4 hours for a 1 hour class and that class was creative arts (we literally made puppets and sang I'm a little tea pot). So when I weighed the $40 in fuel and the four hour drive against having an A or a B it was not really that hard of a choice. I will have to let you know what the kids ended up getting in their classes, I'm not worried though.

We also had the kid's Christmas program. This year Kendra got to play with the band and let's just say they all tried very hard...they all gave it their best...it was a good learning experience :o) No actually they did fine considering they only get band for 20 minutes once a week. For this year's program Kendra was cast as a mouse so she had to wear something grey, I don't usually buy gray things for my children, too depressing, so we had to buy her something especially for the play. The other problem is, I'm cheap! I can't see spending $20 on a shirt that she will probably never wear again so instead I hit the clearance racks at Wal-Mart and found one for $3, smart huh? Except this particular shirt was a tad bit shall we say mature for our young Miss Kendra to be wearing, or at least that was what her daddy thought. He kept saying throughout the performance "pull it up", "Why wont she pull it up?" unfortunately she couldn't hear him so daddy just had to sit and suffer. Brad was with me when I had bought the shirt and I had made mention that with Junior sizing you have to be careful that it is big enough to fit her in the waist but not so big that it falls off her in the chest, I think he now knows what I was talking about :o)

There was also gingerbread house building, tree decorating, family visits and house additions. Mom, Heather and Rob arrived here on the 27th for a short but great visit! Brad and I (though mostly Brad I do admit) were working on the tiling job in the new bathroom up until their actual arrival. Brad did a very nice job even though he thinks it looks awful, but as I told him he knows where the flaws are so he looks right at them, no one else does. For his first time, he did great! Jayla just finished with her very first bath in the new tub, she some how got to be the first kid in, I think maybe because she was the most persistent of all of them. Jake is currently in taking his turn :)

I thought I would add a few house pictures now that it is pretty much done.

While mom, Heather and Rob were here we went bowling and had a pretty good time. Rob is naturally competitive and I am naturally a smart aleck so if you put us together there is going to be some ribbing going on, and who doesn't like a little ribbing? Sadly for Rob bowling is not his best sport so after a while Jake told him he was his new coach and that he would help him, Jake then went to giving Rob "Pep talks" where he would explain to Rob what he needed to do being as Jake was winning (with the help of bumpers),it was very comical.

As you can see Santa was very good to us this year. The kids got plenty of toys and stuff. Although this year Santa really screwed up, first off he brought Jake too small of a cowboy hat and then he walked off and didn't eat any of our cookies! Now I ask all of you, has Santa ever forgotten to eat your cookies? He must be slipping in his old age ;o)