I *heart* you!

Ahh, Valentine's Day......
I have always liked Valentine's Day. ....Exchanging paper Valentines, eating candy, and cupcakes, classroom parties, heart crafts......it is just fun. As a kid I loved it, as a teacher I loved it, as an aunt I loved it and as a mom I love it!

Although oddly enough, Chad and I don't do anything special for Valentine's day. (Maybe it's b/c we show our love all year round <3 )

Anyways.....

Our homeschool group always has a HUGE Valentine Day party (like 60 to 75 kids plus adults! think, ultimate classroom party on steroids plus some then some more)
But we were also invited to a Valentine Tea party with some homeschool friends from church. Even though they were on different days, in my on going quest to not to be over scheduled, I decided we should just do ONE. I let Rose pick, and she picked the Tea party :)

I had already purchased the 100 Valentine bookmarks for the big party and we hole punched them and tied on ribbon to fancy them up a bit.
But now we needed 11, not 100. So we got to mail some out to some special friends and family members as well. (and just fyi, if you received one this year, you just may receive another next year! b/c we have lots left)
Rose got to sign the back. Some she did some cursive, some manuscript, some vertical, some messy, some neat, some with extra drawings. .... It was a lot of writing for a little girl.

I had cut out and stamped these cute milk carton thingees when we were visiting my crafting/sewing friend in Fargo. They were so cute. Rose helped assemble them, then we filled them with conversation heart candy.
Rose was pleased to hand them out at the party.

Here the girls are making Valentines.
Then they had snacks and tea and played downstairs and outside. It was a very fun Valentine Tea Party!

I mentioned earlier being at Sara's house doing some Valentine crafting and sewing.....well she is quite the seamstress and I learned SO MUCH! We made Valentine coasters......aren't they too cute?And a Valentine table runner! Oh my! She is an excellent teacher!

Thanks Sara!I miss you and your family, but not the blizzard! We are having 70 degree temps right now :)

btw, isn't Sara's sewing room just too cute!

Another Stone Mountain Day!

The last Saturday in January was 64 degrees. That weather just begs us to go out to Stone mountain!! And to make it even more fun, Elisabeth was able to come with us.
(Chad was the photographer so he is not in any of the photos)

We rode the sky tram up the mountain.....
Walked around....
felt like we were on top of the world......
climbed a tree.....
walked around some more.....

the girls wanted to take a rest, this looked like a good spot to sit......
but it wasn't!
Rose had hundreds of tiny thorns on her hands and bottom.
I tried picking them all out. But then there were still so many still embedded in her pants. It was so bad that we had to leave Stone Mtn, go to the near by WalMart and buy her a new pair of pants. We then resumed our day at Stone Mountain (thorn free!) ........

We went out to the island on the lake to hike around there.


The girls had to stop every so often to play in the water.

Another great day at Stone Mountain!!

Some days are more fun

Like last Friday......
We spent a few hours at TheraFun (an indoor play and therapy activity center with a climbing wall, zipline that lands into a ball pit, art room, bikes, swings, etc,... in other words...a very fun place!) with some of our homeschooling friends.
Then it was fun learning cake decorating skills at Keepers At Home Club, then Rose and Elizabeth played while I taught sewing class.
Fun!
Here is a video:

Snowed in for a week :)

When we got back to Atlanta, we spent a week being snowed/iced in.

And we loved it!

It was the first week of it being just the three of us since mid November. Although we loved all the holiday activities, house guests, and traveling......it was nice to be home and just be together!

GSU, as pretty much all of Atlanta, was shut down that week so no going to work for Chad, no running errands for me, and no extracurricular activities for Rose. It was fantastic!!!

As the rest of Atlanta was going stir crazy, we were savoring each moment.

Ahhh, it was nice.

Here is a little video of our snow week:

Okay, so I was wrong....

I said I was going to do all of Christmas in one post, but then I found some cute pictures that were hiding on my computer that did not make it into the original Christmas video. And I couldn't just leave them out :)

So here they are.....

Rose and her cousin, Tori worked together to make a gingerbread house....
And Grandpa Irvin taking them on ultimate sled rides....

Tori and Rose in plain ole silliness fun........

Rose and Grandma doing jigsaw puzzles (Rose got to do puzzles with both her Grandmas over Christmas!)......And making a snowman with daddy and cousin Tori......

Christmas 2010

I will do a summary of our Christmas all in one post.
I am even including a nice little video.
It includes a few of the Christmas activities such as

• making Rudolph puppets after attending the puppet show
• attending a little girls 'Christmas Tea'
• Christmas with family in Kentucky
• Christmas with family in North Dakota
• being snowed in at friends house in Fargo due to a blizzard (BTW, a thanks to the Sunderlins for let us stay extra time at their home during the blizzard!)
• Stopping in for breakfast with the Williams family in Lexington, KY before they went to church Sunday morning and us driving back to Atlanta, cutting our visit short to beat the snow before it hit Atlanta.
  

But what the video does not include is

• Me doing my moms and sisters Christmas shopping, then forgetting and leaving part of the presents in Georgia! ....So a lot of gifts handed out on Christmas Eve were "note cards" written on there what they will be receiving when I send the gifts up. ....But when I told mom, Jen, and Kris that I had left them in Georgia.....you know what? They did not complain. They were all very gracious and forgiving. They were kind and comforting with their words. I am very appreciative of their gentleness.
  

• Chad spending Christmas day driving from northern KY to Atlanta, GA and back again, by himself to pick up my passport. (yes that was the day we were suppose to be flying to ND from Cincinnati) Christmas Eve night I discovered my license was missing. After speaking with Delta for some time....the solution within our price range was to move our itinerary forward a day and pay the difference for flying out on the 26th instead of the 25th and for Chad to drive in the snow and some ice to ATL and back with my passport. Not having my license caused family in North Dakota to have to push their Christmas plans back a day, my husband spend his holiday on the road for 15 straight hours...and you know what, no one complained. Not once. How gracious is that?
  

I am very grateful to everyone responding to my mistakes with such love and kindness. It is such a blessing to me to experience such kindness. I have such a wonderful family that loves the Lord and shows His love through their lives. I am very blessed in many many ways.

Enjoy the video:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Rose gets baptized

Here is a video of Rose's baptism. She accepted Christ as her Savior back in April. We kind of put off her baptism. Then in the fall she was asking everyday....when will she get to be baptized.
We were thinking about our options, when she asked to be baptized at Grandma and Grandpa's church in Kentucky. How could I say no to that! It is the church I was baptized in...the church Chad and I were married in. We love the pastor there, besides it was too cold to put her in the river down here, anyways. So it worked out lovely. Plus when her cousin, 9 year old Timothy, heard about it, he decided to get baptized with her. He had been putting off his baptism due to a fear of water. It all worked out nicely.
At the end of the video is a fuzzy picture of my whole family after the church service.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

House Guests

The three weeks between Thanksgiving and coming back up to KY for Christmas, my sister, Jennifer and her three kids came to stay with us (Tyler - 15, Tori - 11, and Tim - 9). We had a lot of fun having them down.
Here are the kids (and Andrew and Lily) with their finds from our nature hunt/walk.

Tori got to join in our Keepers Club fun. The girls are making a peach cobbler.

Tori and Rose playing...

Tim and Rose reading...


We went to Christmas activities at Johnson ferry Baptist Church.
here is Rose at part of the live petting nativity...

In front of the live reindeer...

taking a reindeer sleigh ride...

Rose and Tim in the Nutcracker ballet room...

playing games...we also enjoyed a play, snacks and cocoa, crafts, caroling, hand bells, etc at the church.

We had a lot of fun these 3 weeks. Here is a video to show how much fun (Rose laughing while eating icing with Tori)
(Facebook people click HERE to view video)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Thanksgiving 2010

Well it is New Year's Eve and we are stuck in a blizzard in Fargo, ND. Thankfully we are staying with very gracious friends, as we are having to extend our visit with them. Sara and I are having fun stamping and making cards, Rose is having a blast playing with Isabelle (and occasionally with Max as well), and I often hear laughter from Chad as he and Marti are having fun playing video games, games with the kids, and billiards.

But you know me, I must blog in chronological order....so this post is about Thanksgiving! Who knows, maybe I will get my posts caught up during this blizzard.

Here is Rose with a fraction of her Thanksgiving crafts.

We were able to spend the week of Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Irvin's farm. They had a little bit of snow to play in!

Grandma had her Christmas decorations up (thanks to Tori, who did her decorating for her:) And Rose received her first porcelain doll from my doll collection. This was my first porcelain that started the collection.Here is a snapshot of Tyler being kind enough to join Tori and Rose in playing doll house.

Stone Mountain Christmas

The Davis family came down for our annual trip to Stone Mountain Christmas in November. We LOVE spending this day with them!
Enjoy the video.

(if you view this on facebook you need to click HERE to view the video, then click play)

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