Show Us Your Life: My Single Sister

I have never done a blog link-up before and never planned on doing one. However, when Kelly posted a few weeks ago that her first Show Us Your Life-Singles Edition ended up with 2 couples getting engaged and at least one more seriously dating, I started mulling things over and decided I would give this a shot. Of course this is NOT for me. This is all about my single sister, Christie.

Christie is 23 years old and a senior at Liberty University.

The number one thing she is looking for in a guy is that he love God with all his being. A sense of humor and the ability to get along in our big family is just a plus.

Our parents, Christie, and our youngest brother Jesse

Christie is going to school to be a Christian Counselor. She is a talented musician with the disgusting ability to play piano, guitar, and drums.

She currently is living in Lynchburg, Virginia, but our parents live in the Indianapolis area. And I'm in the Dallas area, so if you're lucky, she might be willing to arrange a meet-up in one of those cities. ;)

Her name above is linked to her personal blog (which she rarely updates), but it would give you more of an idea of who she is. Feel free to leave me a comment if you might want to get in touch with Christie. Crazy people need not apply....

Lately

• Cooper has been saying more and more words lately. He also has been doing some funny things. On Monday we went to lunch with a friend and while we were eating, Cooper pointed his straw at each of us and said "Pow". It's pretty obvious that he has an older brother.
• Tonight, Keith chose to read "Love You Forever" to the boys for their bedtime story. I wanted to strangle him by the time he was done. That book is emotional, especially when you have sons. Garrett asked me if I come into his room and rock him and sing to him when he's asleep (this is what takes place in the book, in case you haven't read it.) Keith actually got choked up at the end when the son sings to his mom. The sweet part of the story is that the book he was reading from was dated Christmas of '89 with a very sweet note inside from Keith's mom to Keith. That would have been the year he turned 13. I'm sure he wasn't thrilled to get that book back then, but it's pretty neat to have that as a part of our kids' library now.
• About a month ago, Keith ripped out the shower in our master bathroom. The fiberglass pan in the bottom of it had cracked and it was going to cause a lot of mold issues if we didn't replace it. We've always had problems with the corners leaking anyway, so he has completely ripped out all the tile, sheetrock, floor pan and even chiseled up some concrete in the foundation because the drain pipe was installed crooked causing more leaking. It's kind of been a mess, but it looks like we're on our way to getting it back to normal. He's bought some special stuff that will help to seal up the shower extra tight so we won't have any more problems with leaking and mold. Some of the sheetrock and even 2x4's had mold on it, so it's good we're doing this. It's just not so fun having 4 people sharing 1 shower (not at the same time!) Stepping over tub toys is always a fun experience when you're showering.
• Since we're about 7 months away from Garrett starting kindergarten, I've started telling him different things that he will need to know once he gets there. I'm afraid I'm making the principal out to be a monster, but I want him to know that he doesn't ever want to be sent to the principal's office. So when he does stuff that he shouldn't be doing here at home, I tell him that if he were to do that in kindergarten, he would be sent to the principal's office. I'm not sure if I should be doing this, but at the same time, I want to be sure he knows what will be acceptable and what won't be. Manners will be acceptable, loud burps and farting will not.
• I spoke with our insurance company today. We have our house and vehicles insured at the same place. Somehow we were able to save $500 a year AND increase our coverage. If you haven't spoken with your insurance company in the past few years, you may try calling them and just ask for a new quote to see what you would get. You never know!
• I'm back at my attempts to eat healthy and exercise like I started last year. I lost 25 pounds last year, so I'm hopeful I'll be able to atleast do that much this year. I went to weigh on Monday to see if I lost anything last week and the batteries on my scale are dead. Of course Walmart didn't have the replacement kind, so I have no idea if I've lost anything yet this year, but I'm trying. I didn't exercise tonight because I have felt exhausted all day. I hope I'm not getting sick because my throat is a little sore too. But I took some extra vitamin C this evening, so I'm in hopes that I'll feel better tomorrow if I get a good night's sleep tonight.
• I've never been big on taking vitamins though I've always made sure the boys take theirs every morning. When I went for a check-up last fall, my doctor specifically told me some vitamins that she would encourage me to take. I've actually never had a doctor tell me that before. Keith has always been big into taking vitamins, so I decided to buy what my doctor recommended and I've been taking them for a couple of months now. I honestly haven't noticed any changes, but I "think" I'm healthier, so I guess that counts, right?
• Just in case you care, I've been taking the following on my doctor's advice: Omega 3 Fish Oil (She said this is just an all-around good vitamin to take and it does a lot of good for the body, including helping brain function.), a multi-vitamin-specifically one with D3 not just plain old D (D3 is supposed to be a better form of vitamin D. I accidentally bought a multi-vitamin for women over 50, so if I start getting more wrinkles and gray hair, I'm going to kick myself.), CoQ10 (This is supposed to be good for your heart.), Cayenne Fruit (this is supposed to help lower cholesterol and up metabolism), and during cold and flu season I'm taking an additional vitamin C.
• On Wednesdays for the next 8 weeks or so, I'm teaching a class on Claymation to our 4th-6th graders at church. It's been awhile since I taught that back in my teaching days, so it's been fun pulling out some old materials and brushing up on classroom management. I've also already discovered different ways of doing things than when I taught this years ago. It really is true that with age, comes wisdom. I have about 20 kids in my class, so I'm hopeful that 8 weeks from now, we'll have a few really great Bible Stories turned into awesome Claymation movies. If I can figure out how to, I'll post some on here once they're finished. As of last Wednesday, the Bible stories that will be turned into movies are: Jonah, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago, the birth of Jesus, and one more that I'm drawing a blank on. It should be really fun to walk them through this process.

Heaven is For Real

I recently read the book "Heaven is for Real" by Todd Burpo and I've had a hard time getting it out of my mind, so I wanted to jot down a few things about it, but I'll try not to giveaway any important information for those of you who may want to read it later.

The book is a true story written by a pastor who's son has emergency surgery at the age of 3. They find out months after the surgery that while surgery was taking place, the boy went to heaven. He tells them some incredible things. Things no 3 year old would ever dream up from their own imagination. Things most 3 year olds could never remember from a Sunday School lesson (if there is even a Sunday School teacher for 3 year olds who covers heaven and details from the book of Revelation...)

I'm typically a big skeptic about stuff like this, but even I am leaning more towards this being legitimate. Has anyone else read this book? If not, maybe you'll read it now that you know about it and then we can discuss it. I'm itching to discuss this book with someone and I highly recommend reading it. It's a short, easy read, less than 150 pages.

Uncle Mike

My Uncle Mike passed away on Christmas morning at 12:25am. I mentioned him back in my post about cancer. He fought lymphoma for several years. Over the course of his fight, he was always positive and uplifting, but also ready and prepared to go home. I was lucky enough to be able to make a quick trip to Colorado for his funeral and I won't forget it.

My mom has told me many times that God gives us grace when we need it. To try and fathom how we would handle losing a loved one is pretty hard to do until you're walking that road with God. But there has never been a family who has displayed more grace during this journey than Mike's family.

All 4 of his kids spoke at the funeral and did a fantastic job. Not only of maintaining composure, but also sharing an encouraging and uplifting word. Aunt Debbie was the quintessential pastor's wife after the funeral. Shaking hands, hugging necks, and inquiring as to how other's were doing. Right in the middle of her own grief. If you hadn't known we were at a funeral, you would have assumed she was greeting parishioners after a Sunday morning church service.

God's grace in action. Humbling and awe-inspiring.

We miss you and love you Uncle Mike.

Christmas 2010

Christmas this year was a lot of fun. The older the boys get, the more fun the holiday is. And my husband is very generous and great with gift giving, so Christmas was pretty great for me too.

On Christmas Eve we did Christmas with Keith's family. The adults in his family draw names, so Keith's brother in law had my name and I had Keith's name (Keith drew his mom's name.) I got 2 seasons of Friends and an iTunes gift card. I'm only 1 season short of owning the entire series, so I'm really excited about that. I bought Keith a polisher that he's been wanting so I think he was happy with that.

The boys of course scored big with their gifts. We got home about 9pm that night, the boys took a quick bath, went bed and then "Santa" got busy assembling toys and stuffing stockings and bringing out wrapped presents.

Under normal circumstances, I put wrapped presents under the tree as I get them done. But with a toddler in the house I didn't even attempt it this year. Thankfully Santa only had one major gift to assemble this year, so we weren't up until midnight like I know we were last year. Since the boys went to bed a little later than normal, they actually slept until about 8am on Christmas morning. That's always nice!

Santa had respectfully hidden his gifts, so the only things the boys saw when they came out in the living room were the stuffed stockings (laying with care by the fireplace. Don't know how Santa hangs stuffed stockings by the chimney with care, unless he nails them into the bricks or something. I've yet to get a stuffed stocking to stay hanging on my stocking hangers on the mantel...) and the wrapped presents under the tree.

The night before I had made a pan of cinnamon rolls, so I quickly iced them, we ate breakfast and then the present-palooza began. I figured it would make for a less cranky present time if the boys had eaten rather than waiting until after the fact. Santa brought Cooper the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn house and Garrett got Monster Truck Lightning McQueen, Monster Truck Mater and a kid-friendly real digital camera. They were both really excited with their gifts, though they had to each take a moment and play with the other's present before we moved on to stockings.

Thankfully this year, Cooper understood the unwrapping concept, but he was very meticulous with it and took much longer to open than Garrett preferred. Plus, he occasionally got annoyed with himself for the amount of time he was taking, but other than that he had a lot of fun.

I just want to share a couple of thoughts I have on gifts at Christmas time. While I know of many families who espouse to the "each child gets 3 gifts for Christmas because that's how many gifts Jesus got" belief. I do not. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's just not our preference. But lest I sound like someone who is breaking the bank for Christmas however, I have to share that I begin Christmas shopping in the early fall (I would start even earlier, but with my boys at their current ages, it's too hard to do much shopping for them that far in advance. Their sizes change quickly, their preferences change quickly.) But in starting my shopping as early as I do, I keep a very close eye on specific items that I already have in mind, so that I can snatch them up at a discount. This worked really well for me this year. I did roughly 95% of my shopping online and paid very, very little in shipping (and what I did pay in shipping were for hard to find items.) Toys R Us had a huge sale over Halloween weekend and I bought the majority of the boys' Christmas then. We have a set amount of money we spend per child and when that's spent, we're done. I try to do my best to wrap things in a way so that they have roughly the same number of toys to open under the tree. Thankfully they're young enough not to realize that Cooper just opened 2 Veggie Tale movies in one gift versus 1 Scooby Doo movie in Garrett's box.

I managed to surprise Keith with one of his gifts this year. Each Christmas, we both give each other a list of ideas for gifts. Even though we live together and have known each other for 12 years, it's not always easy coming up with gift ideas so the lists go a long way to insuring that we have a general idea of what the other one is wanting/needing. Over the past several years, Keith has mentioned at different points how he couldn't wait for the boys to be old enough to buy them a remote control helicopter. He had never played with one before and just knew they would be a lot of fun. So I started researching them to get an idea of what would be a good one and came across an amazing deal. I figured a smaller helicopter that could be flown indoors would probably be the best choice, so I found one on Amazon, read reviews on it, crossed my fingers and ordered it. As it turns out, he has loved that thing and "plays" with it almost every day. Of course it wasn't on his list, so I was able to surprise him with it which makes it even better.

Once Christmas is over, I'm ready to take down the tree and move on with the year, but Keith called me a scrooge this year when I attempted to do this the day after Christmas. So we compromised and I took down all decorations except the tree then, and took it down on New Years.

Update

We've been pretty busy over the past 6 weeks, so I'll give a brief recap to catch you up to speed.

The week of Thanksgiving we drove to Indiana to visit my family. We hadn't been up there since last Thanksgiving (though we had seen my family over the summer when they came down here.) It's a 14 hour drive to get there and we always have a debate over whether to try and do it in 1 day or break it up into 2, but we almost always end up doing it in 1 to get it over with. Last year we did the whole "let's just sleep and leave whenever we get up" thing which put us arriving at my parents around 11:30pm. That wasn't great, so this year we left our house at 4am. There are definite pros and cons to either option. The con to leaving so early in the morning is kids. Cooper is a terrible sleeper lately

. So of course he woke up when we carried him from his crib to the car (even though we did everything possible to avoid that, kept the lights low, stayed quiet, didn't stop to change his clothes or diaper. Just picked him up and carried him straight out there.) He then proceeded to STAY AWAKE until sometime after LUNCH! While he really didn't behave badly, it's stressful when your 17 month old is awake for that amount of time. You always assume he's on the verge of a tantrum of catastrophic proportions so you feel a bit on edge.

Ultimately he only slept for about 1 hour out of 14 on the road. Fun times. The rest of the time he alternated between whining, playing (limited amounts of this), watching movies and eating.

Garrett of course did great. 5 is a great age for traveling. They get what you're doing and are excited to see the people you're going to visit and they're just happy to have unlimited amounts of time spent watching movies. And it's even better when

the movie watching takes place on the laptop since little brother is watching "baby" movies on the portable DVD player.

Our visit was lots of fun. We took my parents and the 5 grandkids to have professional pictures taken of all of them. We celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my birthday. Keith and I got to go see 2 different movies. Grown-up, non-animated movies. And we suffered through Cooper's bad sleeping habits. He wakes up at the drop of a pin, so imagine how well he slept in a pack n play (that he's on the verge of outgrowing) at the foot of the bed where his parents slept. The first few nights were a nightmare. Then Keith and I took turns sleeping with Garrett on the air mattress in the family room while the other had to suffer through a bad night with the monster. Most people would prefer an actual bed to an air mattress, but not when the bed comes along with a screaming roommate.

Since our trip, I feel like we've been in a whirlwind of Christmas. Christmas parties, Christmas presents, Christmas decorations, etc. Keith's work has a party, my work has a party, the boys' school has a party, our SS class has a party (which we missed because it was the weekend before my birthday which was the only chance we had to celebrate it.)

I actually think I'm done with my Christmas shopping. I don't want to say that too loud for fear my mind will start conjuring up more people to add to the list. Yesterday on our weekly Walmart trip, I finished out the last of our list, mostly people at the boys' school along with our angel tree gifts. Now I get to wrap them all. I used to love wrapping presents, but now it's just one more thing to add into mix.

Before I end this to get back to my mile long to-do list, I had to quickly share about our experience at Keith's work Christmas party. In the past, these parties have usually been held at the Dallas Arboretum or the Dallas Aquarium. They always have a luncheon rather than a formal dinner and we eat lunch, play a few random games for door prizes and then spend the rest of the time walking around the venue. This year they changed things up and booked the party at a movie theater. At first I was very skeptical. While I'm always on board with going to the movies without my children, that seemed like such an odd thing to do for a Christmas party. And I guess it's still a little different, but it really ended up being a lot of fun.

The theater where they held the party was Gold Class Cinema in Allen (just in case any of the locals are curious.) When we walked in, they had this huge lou

nge area. Very different from the typical theater. There are couches and chairs and tables all over the place. On one end of the lounge is the "concession stand" which really was more of a bar than anything else. Keith and his coworkers had voted on what movie they wanted to see, so there were 2 screens open with 2 different movie options. Keith and I had already seen "The Next 3 Days" on Thanksgiving, so we chose "Morning Glory". When you walk into the theater itself, all you see are a bunch of huge recliners. There are half the number of seats in this theater as the typical one because of the size of these recliners. When you sit down, there is a fluffy blanket rolled up at your seat and the recliner lays almost flat at the push of a button. One of the armrests opens up to store your jacket and/or purse and in between 2 seats is a small table with a call button.

At each table was a menu with 6 or 7 lunch options on it. We circled what we wanted for lunch and the menus were collected. Then our drink orders were taken and we munched on the (fancy) bowl of popcorn sitting at our table while we waiting on the food. Drinks were served (in real glasses) and about 20 minutes into the movie, our food was delivered. Anytime we needed a refill, we just pushed the call button and someone would come to your seat quietly and refill your glass. With about 30 minutes left in the movie, a plate of cookies and brownies were brought to each table for dessert. It was so fun and a really neat experience! If you happen to live close to one of these theaters you should check them out. I looked up their website and they are very few and far between (only 2 in Texas!) And they definitely aren't cheap. $25 just for the ticket. But it really is an experience, not just a movie. I certainly wouldn't go there on a regular basis, but for a special occasion it would be fun, especia

lly if you're a big fan of the movies like we are.

I always have millions of blog posts running around in my head but haven't been taking the time to sit down and write them. But hopefully I'll have time to blog about getting a year older and maybe about the fun that is involved when you're the only girl in a house of boys. But until then, Merry Christmas blog friends!

Halloween and some things

This was the year of the candy.

In the past, we haven't participated in our library's story hour. I remember observing a few minutes of it several years ago and thought "There's no way Garrett would ever sit still long enough for this!" But this year, a friend's mom contacted me and asked if we would come to Story Hour. All of her son's Story Hour friends had moved up to kindergarten so he didn't really know anyone attending and she thought we might want to attend, so I decided to try it. Garrett is of course old enough to cooperate now. Cooper is a different story, but since Garrett seems to like it, we've been going a few times a month.

This past Wednesday was the Halloween party at Story Hour and we were there with our Batman and lion suits ready. Our Story Hour has the kids trick or treat to the moms so we got PLENTY of candy. And I didn't even have Cooper participate. He just stood with me to "help" pass out candy. Or to screw up a library computer while I passed out candy. Whatever. Then we had pizza and desserts galore. It was a fun party.

On Thursday, the boys' school had their Halloween parties as well. Their school's tradition includes trick or treating to businesses around the square in our town (our church is only a block or two off of the square, so we just walked it.) That was lots of fun and, again, PLENTY of candy. They had PB&J, cupcakes, cookies, etc for the party too. Then on Sunday, our church had Fall Festival. Cooper stayed home with Keith while Garrett and I attended. We didn't need a repeat performance of lunch on Sunday (I'll get there in a minute.) And again, lots of candy, fun, and games was had. Garrett played every single game in our church's Fellowship Hall, plus a Darts game set up outside that was new to Fall Festival this year. (He popped 2 out of 3 balloons! I was impressed.)

We had just enough time to get home, sort through the candy, and prep for trick or treaters. We had WAY too much candy to even consider going trick or treating ourselves and I knew the boys would enjoy getting to see all the kids coming by our house in their costumes. So we handed out all of the candy that I had culled from our stash. Yes, we regifted our Halloween candy, but don't worry, I sorted through all of it to make sure everything was properly wrapped and nothing looked suspicious.

We had a very well behaved group of kids show up over the course of the trick or treating. Aside from the incessant doorbell ringing that some kids enjoyed doing, they were all polite and never complained about what I was giving them (lots of suckers. Sorry kids!) One group of kids showed up and I was hurriedly handing out the candy when I came to one of the last kids in the group. A little boy dressed up as a very cute clown (no makeup or mask). With Down Syndrome. Can I just say that had he not been with a group of friends, I would have emptied out every piece of candy I had into his bucket and given him a big hug? Instead, I just gently patted his arm and told him I really liked his costume. He smiled real big at me and ran off to be with his friends. I have to confess to getting a little choked up after I closed the door.

Backing up a bit, Sunday morning was a special Sunday at our church. We are in the process of building a new campus because we have outgrown our current one. The new one is just a few blocks away from the old one and the youth building is close to being halfway done. We have just started a new fundraising effort in order to start building a children's building. So, instead of our typical Sunday morning of 4 (yes 4!) services at our current building, we combined all 4 services into one big one on our new property next to the youth building in progress. We had hundreds of folding chairs set up under a tent with a makeshift stage for the band and pastor. It was awesome.

One of the services that we have on Sunday mornings is a service for hispanics that's done entirely in Spanish. Some of the people who lead their music, joined with the band who leads the English speaking service's music and they lead the music in a bilingual bit of awesomeness. We sang songs like "I Am Free". Which has an echoing part in the chorus where one group sings "I am free to run" and then another group repeats it. Well, on Sunday, the Spanish speaking group sang it in Spanish and the English speaking group repeated the line in English. I got goosebumps just listening to it.

After the service, all of the Sunday school classes congregated to eat a picnic lunch together. Our class has many children among us, so we chose to go the easy route and order pizza. Everyone brought their own drinks and lawnchairs and we set up in a corner of what will be a parking lot and enjoyed lunch together. Cooper was awful. First off, he was wearing overalls for the first time since he was a newborn. He kept sticking his hands inside them for some reason and at one point, he tripped and fell flat on his face because his hands weren't out to catch himself. He wanted Garrett's juice. He wanted our soda. He did not want his water. And he let everyone know about this. He also wanted to join all the big kids playing football. So it was fun trying to keep him out from underfoot, out of everyone's stuff and off the ground when throwing his (many) tantrums. He was the youngest in the group at this lunch, so he didn't quite know what to do with himself.

But on the other side, I got to watch Garrett playing with other boys his age. His current close friends are all girls, which has its pluses and minuses. He rarely does anything physical with them (aside from fending off some attempts for kisses. He's not a fan yet, thank goodness.) But he also gets caught up in crazy girl drama (it's interesting considering that they're only 5, but it does happen.) So I got to watch him (attempt) to play football with 2 other boys his age. He actually got in there and mixed it up! Tried to steal the ball a few times, jumped in the middle of tackles, etc. I must admit that I was impressed. Up until this point, he's never really shown me that he would be willing to go to lengths like this. And he also is a bit big into crying when things don't go his way and very competitive. But surprisingly no crying took place and he seemed to have a lot of fun. Especially for a boy who had never even picked up a football before (we have none, but I will remedy this at Christmas.) Thankfully (I guess...), Cooper kept me busy enough that I couldn't have micromanaged, explaining to him how to play, why he should stop whatever, etc. I know he has to figure out stuff like that, so I'm glad I wasn't able to get involved. It's a big challenge for me to keep my mouth shut in areas like this! It's also why I will never coach any team that he plays on. It would not end well.

I apologize for yet another lengthy post with no pictures. If we're friends on Facebook, I promise I have posted many recent pictures there, so be sure to check them out if you're so inclined.