January 2017

Every year for my birthday, Ben gives me a "day off" to go do whatever I want.  This year, we did it on January 1st since he had the day off of work.  My first stop was to go to Ikea... They had a sale on storage boxes. :)

Stinking weatherman predicted 3-6 inches of snow.  We got NOTHING!  (Except a few snowflakes that stayed on the grass for a couple hours and a little ice hanging from the trees.)  That didn't stop the kids from going out to play.  They came in a muddy muddy mess!

Cuties at church...

Abby's birthday!  Usually Ben takes the birthday kid out to breakfast, but Abby requested that MOMMY take her out. 😍  We sat by the fire at Panera Bread and had muffins ad hot chocolate... a good start to being 5 years old!  We played at home the rest of the day, then opened presents when Daddy got home (she got a Calico Critters living room set, a fishing game, and some clothes from us, and some little ponies from her brothers)... and then that evening, we had people over for cake and ice cream.  (The Buchers, Ziebers, Hanfords, Jettes, Arnold with Josh and Jenai, and the Birgbauers.)  I didn't get a picture of the party, but Abby did such a good job actually letting everyone sing to her this year!  (You could tell she was a little "shell shocked" when everyone was looking at her, but she made it through. :))  She had a princess cake from Harris Teeter.

Look at the little puffs on Jenai! :)

Doing self-portraits like Rembrandt at CC...

Making friends at the library...

A picture just because she let me put in TWO "woo woos", and I think she looks so cute with ponytails. :)

I let her help me mix up the meatloaf... she liked it. :)

Karl and Lindsey went to a conference in California, so we kept Maddox for a week.  It was actually really, really great!  They all played so well!

   

Our little buddy Caedmon getting into the Tupperware cupboard:

We did a science experiment to test if our rainwater had an acid in it.  It involved boiling a purple cabbage leaves.  Abby did not approve of the smell of the cabbage... or the vinegar. :)

All in all, January was a good month.  We had some great prayer times with the church leaders and feel like 2017 has a "fresh wind" in it.  

December 2016

December started out with a bang! We went to Ohio for a week to fix up our Limestone house.  Renters moved out November 30, the same day we drove to Wes and Joyce's.  We left the kids with Wes and Joyce  - I can't imagine if we had had to keep them with us! - and drove to Springfield early the morning of December 1st... and then started tearing out the living room ceiling within minutes after getting to the house.  It was a dirty, miserable job!  We realized there was more work to be done on the house than we could get done in a week, so we hired some guys to do all the outside work (trimming trees, cleaning gutters, hauling trash, etc.) plus some patch work inside.  We still had trouble trying to get them to do everything they said they would do, but we eventually got almost everything done we really needed to!  We originally had planned to fix it up to put it on the market to sell, but every realtor we talked to said it be better to wait a few years since the market was just now recovering.  And then since we had to put almost $7,000 into the property (replacing a furnace that died and fixing up lots of things that needed done), we thought it might be a good idea to rent it out again to recover some of the money we lost.  And THEN when an old friend contacted us out of the blue to ask if she might be able to rent something from us, it seemed like a "God thing" to not sell it yet.  We also had some renters move out in our Northern Ave. property a week before this, but the Lord provided really awesome renters to move in there the next day... so we didn't miss a beat with that house!

This was my second mask...

That's not poor photo quality... that is all the dust in the air from tearing the ceiling down.  My poor camera couldn't even figure out where to focus because there was so much floating around.

A WONDERFUL reprieve in the week was that we got to go to church Sunday morning and then to Wes Haney's wedding that afternoon.  Ben's parents brought us the kids Saturday afternoon and then picked them up straight from the wedding Sunday.  Thanks to the wedding, we got to see and talk to so many people that we haven't seen in so long and would have never been able to see that week.  It was really, really great!

Handsome dude:

This picture is horrible quality, but this little girl followed Caleb around all evening, and told her Mom that she was going to marry "that boy"...

My kids think weddings are THE BEST!  They get to dress up, and be total goofballs on the dance floor. :)  It was a little too dark for these videos, but you can still get the idea of how much fun they were having.  Caleb especially breaks out the moves. 

One of the songs the boys recognized from Back to the Future, so they played the air guitar just like Marty does on the movie.

Back to work!  We stayed at Mani and Denise's house, but we left by about 8 am, and got back around 9 every evening.  We usually stopped at Tim Horton's for breakfast each morning.

Some of the finished result.... new carpet in the bedrooms, freshly painted walls and trim...

New flooring and paint in the bathroom...

New paint in the kitchen.  It would have been nice if we had time to refinish the wood floors, but they weren't too bad, so... oh well!

Once we got all the drywall up in the living room ceiling, it took FOREVER to clean up enough to paint the living room.  At least the good news is that we had enough done by Tuesday evening that the prospective renter we had came to see it and said that she loved it!

We finished all the work on the house Thursday evening around 7, and drove up to Bellville that night.  It was SO NICE to wake up Friday morning knowing we could relax and that everything was taken care of on the houses!  The kids were happy to get some snow. :)

Every time our kids get together with the Buchers and Ziebers, they all want to watch a movie... which kind of drives us nuts because we're like, "You finally have friends to play with!  You don't need a movie!"  Finally Ben got out a water bottle to spray them with every time they asked to watch a movie... which lead to a very rowdy crowd of kids!  They were like zombies attacking him!

Making gingerbread houses with some new friends.  This is Annabelle whom Abby loves, and Caleb loves the twin 6 year old boys, "the other" Caleb and Elijah.

Christmas party with our CC group...

The class I teach (Micah's class) doing a white elephant exchange...

Caedmon with the presents we got him for his first birthday.  (A Panthers hat and a wooden bead toy.)

Abby and I went to see "The Nutcracker" ballet (or "balleray" as Abby calls it) while the boys went to the movie theater to see Rogue One (the new Star Wars movie.)  Abby loved it!  One of the girls from our homeschool co-op had a small role, and she gave Abby a little nutcracker ornament as a memento.  

For fun, Micah made a graph of his math scores.  What a nerd. :)

Christmas Eve... a fun party at the Y for those who weren't traveling!  We played lots of games (including Dutch Blitz) and hung out with people from church.  It was a really evening... (until the very end when a kid threw up everywhere because he had too much sugar.) :)

Reading the Christmas story Christmas morning!

The first thing they opened were envelopes in their stockings from Grandma Terri ($20 each!)

Abby was just a little excited about getting Snowball, the bunny from Secret Life of Pets. :)

My new vinyl words from Joyce.  (The other ones on my wall had lost their "stick" since I've moved them between 3 houses.)  Also, by pretty birthday roses from Ben...

That's most of December's happenings.  Wes and Joyce came from December 28-January 1st, so we spent a lot of time with them and the Ziebers too.

November 2016

Caleb and Abby cleaning the bathroom:

Since Grandma and Grandpa Kaufman were here the whole month of October, in November we had the "post-grandparent blues."  The kids took this picture to send to Grandma to say "We miss you!"

Snuggling with Dad before bed.  He has been reading a devotional with Caleb and Abby before bed every night and then hangs out in "Micah's room" (which is actually Abby's room) to talk for a while.  Such a good Dad!

Abby had some sort of cold/mild fever for a few days.  I knew she must not be feeling good when I found her like this at about 1:00 in the afternoon one day.  

Kids had eye appointments and had to have their eyes dilated for the first time.  (Which they now dread because it involves EYE DROPS - the worst torture weapon ever!)  Micah said Caleb looked like a baby deer with his pupils so huge for so long. :)

My friend has a Usborne book party, and Micah requested this book... the Illustrated Dictionary of Math.  That way he could "look ahead."  He just wants to do Algebra so badly!  (Whose kid IS this??)  I found him reading this is bed.    

And here he is the next morning trying to figure out the steps to solve a simple equation. :)

We were at the Thompson's one evening for Jason's birthday.  Everyone wanted a turn holding baby Abraham. I told Ben I'm keeping this picture for Caleb and Zuri's wedding day someday. :)

We went with some friends from CC to the "Compassion Experience"... a free traveling exhibit put on by Compassion International.  You walk through a replicated house, market, school, etc. from a certain country (i.e. Costa Rica) and use these iphones to listen to the story of a kid growing up there.  We did two of them - one about a little boy from the Dominican Republic, and one from a little girl in the Philippines.   It was really good!  The kids loved it.

We got a suit for Micah to wear at the wedding when go to Ohio.  $8 for the suit at Once Upon a Child, and $10 for he shirt and tie at Walmart!   ($3 for the shoes at Goodwill.)  Not bad! :)

And here's another good-looking kid, wearing the suit that Micah wore a few years ago in a wedding...

I knew our membership to the Children's Museum was getting close to expiring, so we took a trip there the week before Thanksgiving.  We happened to go when they were offering a storytime/craft.  Caleb and Abby loved making turkeys.

Cooking at the Children's Museum.

We went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving (the Lee's) with some other friends.  I tried to make apple pies, but they weren't nearly as good as my Mom's!

The leaves finally peaked toward the end of November.  The kids played outdoors more.

The picture doesn't do it justice, but the tree out our front door did look really pretty!

When we were at the Thompson's house, our friend Steve and Patty heard Caleb trying to pick out tunes on the piano, so they offered us their old keyboard for free.  

It was weird not being in Maryland over Thanksgiving, but still really nice hanging out with friends!  We had several people over at our house during the month of November, including having a big backyard party for some missionary friends of Mike and Sharon Jette's.  My friend Juanita also gifted me an hour-long massage since I watch Josh and Jenai for them sometimes.  A lot of November was also spent gearing up for our trip to Ohio the 1st of December to fix up our Limestone house (and communicating with new renters who were moving in to both of our properties, working out leases and details, etc.)  It was a pretty busy month!