Happy Holidays!

Our Holiday's were definantly happy, so we wanted to share a little of or Joy through some pictures of the things that made it special. We had our chruch Christmas party the week before Christmas, between a delicious ham dinner, white elephant gifts and some hillarious fun playing games, (in which we could laugh at other peoples expense), we went home over fed, over tired, with some extra needless things to figure out where to put in our clutter of christmas cheer. But overall very very blessed by some sweet fellowship. Here are some pictures of our beautifully decorated dinner tables. We had some very gifted people in charge of decorations.

We also decided as an educational experience this year we would observe the Jewish holiday Hannakah. The kids made a beautiful Manorah out of clay, then painted it and we lit candles over the eight day festival. For those of you who are not up on your Jewish traditions, Hannakah is a celebration in rememberance of the day that the Jews went into the temple after it had been taken back from Roman rule. The oil (that takes eight day to make) was all gone out of their sacred Manorah. This manorah was never to be put out, so they prayed for God to make the tiny bit of oil they did have, last 8 days until the process was complete to aquire more oil. Thus the 9 candle manorah. The middle one is used to light the others and the 8 others are to remind them of the provision of oil for 8 days.

As part of this celebration the Jews eat fried foods for 8 days to remind them of the miricle of the oil. Needless to say Isaiah and Tadd loved this part. So here is a picture of our donuts we made one night for dinner. Other than working with the hot oil. The kids pretty much did all the work. They were delicious!

The day after Christmas we drove up to Lynden to celebrate with Tadd's family. The kids had so much fun hanging out with all of their cousins. Unfortunatly though my kids are not used to it raining 24/7 so they went outside to play everyday anyway. They came in multiple time soaking wet but had lots of fun. And thanks to Grandma, who let us wash and dry multiple sets of clothing while we were there. After a couple days at Grandma's we drove to Charity's brother's house to celebrate New Years Eve. The picture of Isaiah and Elijah below could have been taken at anytime, during any day we were there, as their stationary position was in front of the WII. The boys definantly got spoiled with lots of game time. Tadd and the girls got in more games of pool in Uncle Chris's basement than a hustler in vegas. Chris also spoiled us with his delicious cooking of his latest kill. Tadd would make the 3 hour drive again just to have those venison steaks, wrapped in bacon, cooked over the open fire. Thanks so much Aunt Brandi and Uncle Chris.

The kids also wanted to thank Grandma Johnson for the sweet chicken shrits that she sent, they not only fit great, but looked pretty stylin too. Here is a picture of the chruch Christmas program on Christmas morning. Even though most of the kids had to wait to open their presents until after chruch, they did a great job singing their little hearts out for Mom and Dad.

Hope you all had a blessed day celebrating the birthday of the most amazing gift ever possesed by man. Have a great year and may you get blessed more than you can ask, think or imagine.

Holiays are here!

We have been trying to make time to enjoy the busy holidays. We decorated the house last week and the girls found an old Santa suit, Tadd used for his family party years ago. They stuffed it with pillows (and anything else they could find) to make them as jolly as possible. It's amazing how long you can play with a Santa suit, they tried it on everyone else and finally retired it after 2 hours.

It was Kenya's date with Mom day on Tuesday and she wanted to take her friend Tori (who she aspires to be when she grows up.) We went to the local museum where they host "The festival of trees" They have 12-15 trees, all decorated with different themes. We got hot chocolate and toured the trees, then Kenya wanted to go next door to the furniture store and look at the large tree they had decorated in their window. Of course when we got there, we had to try out all of the recliners and beds, as well as pick our our favorite dining sets and bedroom sets. It was so much fun, we left exhaused and hair standing on end, from all the static electicity we made going from one cushy surface to the next. I hope I always remember to take time for the fun stuff, especially when it's busy.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

We were so blessed this year to spend Thanksgiving day with our dear friends, The Wheeler. We have been friends with them for over 8 years now and they never stop blessing our socks off. Our kids are like siblings (sometimes that's not a good thing) and Billy and Danielle have been such great ministry partners for both Tadd and Charity, as well as great best friends. We can't say it enough. WE LOVE YOU WHEELERS!!!!!
It has become our thanksgiving tradition that the kids (with Billy narrating) act out the Pilgrims story, complete with Pilgrim hats and Indian head dresses, all made by the kids of course. Here are a couple pictures from out reinactment. We hope you all had a blessed holiday with your family and friends, with many more to come.

We had a fun Veteran's day, we got to the school for the Veteran's Day Assembly and the kids enjoy hearing the choir and seeing them honor the veteran's as they tell where and when they served. The boys got to walk in the parade with their Boyscout and Cubscout troops. It was very cold but they didn't mind because they provided cookies and hot cocoa for the parade participants before hand.

Kenya found the play doh we keep around the house for when younger kids come over and she started baking up a storm, (figurativly speaking of course) she made a cake for Dad's birthday in December, some donuts with paper sprinkles and some brownies with paper towel frosting. No cookies cutter shapes for this girl.

The kids have an art class at a local gallery and they make fun crafts like these masks, mom loves having them do something she is not in charge of, that way thier art peices always surprise her too.

Grub and Games

We had a fun harvest party at church on the 31st. Kenya dressed up as Cleopatra, Annecy went as Tina Turner and Elijah was Bo Bo Fet (the bounty hunter in Star Wars). We had a crock pot soup pot luck and lots of booths with games and plenty of candy. The kis had lots of fun and coming down off the sugar high the next day was not quite as fun but well worth it. Hope you had a great one as well.

Feildtrips and P.E. fun

We have a group we do fun games and sports with, one of the mom's set up a scavenger hunt through a corn maze at a local nursery. The kids found the money prizes as well as a couple bags of candy. Isaiah did not want to dress up, but Kenya came up with the idea to be a garbage bag. Elijah was a frog and Annecy was a chimney sweep.

We also got to go on an all day long feildtrip to an indian reservation that showed us all of the things their tribes did 100's of years ago and some of the people still practice today. Here are some pictures of some of the stations. Below is a picture of a man who skins animals and turns it into leather, then his wife makes it into indian dresses and chaps. He is scraping the fur off a deer hide.

Below is a picture of Elijah throwing an "Alilel". The indians figured out that you can throw a spear or arrow much farther and faster if you use an Alilel to flick the arrow off the end of a stick (alilel)

Below is a picture of the kids planting some plants native to the area the indians live in.

Below is a picture of the kids racing each other at their favorite station. (I am not sure what this had to do with indians but oh well) Solar Powered race cars.

Below is a picture of the indians doing some of their native dances that explain the area around where they live.

This is a picture of the kids in a hand carved canoe.

Hand made Tee Pee out of dried reeds.

Festivals, Family and Feildtrips

Charity got a chance to get together with all 6 of her sisters this last week. They all met in Seattle and spent the night, since all of them were flying in from different areas. The next day was spent at Pike's Place in Seattle, where they posed in front of the Famous Gum Wall. They spent the rest of the weekend staying in the farmhouse at the Lavender farms in Sequim. It was so much fun and so nice to do nothing but hang and catch up.

Before she left though she had to earn her mini vacation with 3 feildtrips packed into one week. First they went to the Fish Hatchery and watched how they kill the mature salmon to harvest their eggs and "fertilizer" Isaiah and Elijah's favorite part was when they hit the salmon over the head with the aluminum bat. :( The guys were so great there and really let the kids have a truly "hand on" experience. I had not picture my kids ever handling so many poped out eye balls, followed by handfuls of slippery salmon eggs. They all got to feed the babyfish and loved to watch them jump like crazy for their food. It was so much fun for the kids and they actually did learn a lot.

The next day we got to go to a beaver habitat that a college student was studying to write her thesis on. She was so great at letting the kids ask questions and bringing lots of props for them to play with. Below, Isaiah has a rubber replica of a beaver foot and he is trying to figure out why they have only one toenail on one foot that is purposly split down the middle. (it is so they can use it like a comb). Kenya is holding the skull of a beaver and learning why their 2 front teeth are orange colored. (cause they are an iron calcium mix, so they don't break as easily) Annecy is holding the outer layer of beaver fur (who knew they had 2 layers). The college student told the kids to look for clues that we were getting close to the beaver dam. The clues were; beaver tracks, beaver smells and chewed on wood. Elijah took this search very seriously and ended up collecting and saving all of the chewed on wood peices he found.

Lastly, the day after Charity got back from her Sisters weekend, we took on 4 more kids for the week as our friends "The Wheelers" were headed out of town. If Charity learned anything from her mom having 10 kids, its that the more worn out they are the less you notice they are there. So she did her best to wear them out over the weekend. Friday was quarter swim at the pool, so with 10 kids in tow, she went to swim lessons, followed by 2 more hours in the pool, home for dinner and some very tired kids to bed. The next morning was football and soccer games followed by a harvest party at a local company's farm. The kids got cupcakes at the cupcake walk followed by donuts at the "bobing for donuts" station and all wrapped up with a couple runs through the hay obstacle course. It almost seemed like having 8-10 kids at one time may not be such a challenge after all! JUST KIDDING! I think we may survive and be ready for another vacation by next week.