A moment of quiet!

Shhh! Do you hear that? The quiet voices of a movie playing for Shiro and the soft coos of my Shandie. It’s a very rare and quiet moment right now for me. My little girlies are with my mom house sitting for my brother and my big guys are all at a movie with Duane. The house is very quiet right now, the thinking kind of quiet. The kind where I can actually form some thoughts in my mind other than; “Quiet wrestling with your brother!”, “Call me when your done and need wiped”, “Finish your school!”, “Clean up those toys!”. 

Since I have the quiet moment I figured I would do a quick update on life in Neyville these days.  We officially have started Christmas break here. Shaylah still has school until the 24th and then she will be home for two weeks. ::HAPPY DANCE:: Shelbie is on break from her tutoring job but still works at the preschool. She will have a few days off so it will be a wonderful treat to have all my kiddos here together.

This holiday season started off different from our norm and I was concerned with how the holidays would be, but Thanksgiving ended up being so much fun. We had 40+ people crammed in our little house. At one point a little boy ended up inside playing with the kids that no one knew! Turns out he was visiting one of our neighbors! Hehe

Here is a quick picture recap of our holiday season so far!    My beautiful girls on Thanksgiving

We started off the Christmas season with our annual trip up the hill to the Sonora Lights Parade.

  Decorating the tree

Every year we buy a new book to add to our Christmas collection. This year we purchased “Unwrapping the Greatest Gift”. This book is wonderful! It is a beautiful way to count down Advent with your kids, and to be honest, us big people get just as much out of it!

In addition to the Sonora parade we also went to our local parade. (Can you have too many parades??)   The girls all went and saw the Nutcracker. This tradition is so much fun. I’m a sucker for tradition! This year my mom joined us. This picture is special to me as it has four generations in it. What a sweet blessing! This picture really has nothing to do with our holidays season but this little guy is just too cute! He has wanted a robe like daddy for a while and we happened to find one at the Goodwill store the other day. Best 3 bucks I’ve ever spent!

Christmas is just around the corner. We are almost done with shopping and trying our best to focus on the reason for the season. Our family talked about how we could make this year different from the normal rush and we came up with a new Neyville tradition. We will not be doing any gift exchanging on Christmas. We are going to spend the day focusing on family and our Lord’s birthday. It’s His day anyway, right? We are all so excited about this. We still wanted to buy gifts for each other so we are making New Year’s Day our new gift exchange. It will be “Happy New Years gifts”! Jesus IS the reason for the season and we are trying hard to make that our focus!

Happy New Year!

Our Christmas cards turned New Year’s cards are finally ready. We wanted to wait for Shandie’s birth before we did our cards, but the little Miss decided to wait and join us two weeks late and only 3 days before Christmas. Our cards quickly turned into Happy New Year cards. Bend when the wind blows, right?? ;-)

 

Happy New Year!

Valentines Day

Many years ago Duane and I got tired of  battling the crowds on Valentines Day. Instead we opted to stay home with our favorite people in the world!  Duane declared this as one of his two dinner nights. (The other being Mother’s Day). This tradition is one that we all look forward to.

The night before I stayed up and hung up some decorations. When I woke the next morning someone or someone’s had been up in the wee hours decorating. Shadd, Poppet, and Lolly had woken up about two in the morning and hung up some sweet decorations and left valentine cards under all our pillows.

Duane made fajitas that we all voted were better than any restaurant! We lingered around the table talking after dinner was done.  We all enjoyed the evening and now have another memory to add to the book of memories we are creating.

I’m going to miss it when all my children are grown and off enjoying Valentine’s Day with their spouses. Maybe we’ll be lingering around the table with grandchildren instead.

Shylie patiently waiting for dinner  My Captain America making dinner Table for two, please!   Blessing does NOT like the flash. lol A tablefull of the best kind of love there is!  

Starbucks buy one get one

It’s that time again! Starbucks is kicking off the holiday season! Buy one holiday drink, get one of equal or lesser value for free at participating stores. November 15 – 18. 2 – 5 p.m. We really love our Shaybuck’s here, (Shaylah makes an amazing coffee!) but we may have to take advantage of this deal!

Father’s Day

Today was a very relaxing day. We spent most the day lounging around and swimming. Shyloh and Bodey both fell asleep and took naps. We all went down and visited Grandpa and Grandma for a while too.

I made dinner again. Wow, I’m on a roll this week! I made a blueberry crisp for dessert with some of the blueberries we picked the other day. It was really yummy! 

I’m so very blessed to be married to a man that loves the Lord and his family like he does! I’m grateful my children have an example to look up and see what it looks like to selflessly serve your family!

Happy Father’s Day Honey!

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s day is a big day around here. Shadd was awake at 3:30 in the morning working on decorating the dining room light and distributing his Valentine cards to everyone’s bed. He wanted to make sure that he was the first one to pass his out. (Isn’t this so sweet? Shadd's sweet decorations... see picture to the left!)

My little girls could hardly contain their excitement as they waited and asked every two minutes, “is it time to go to the party yet??” They had been invited to a Valentine Party at a sweet friends house and were beyond excited. (Thank you Rose Ann!! You’re wonderful!) They ate lots of yummy treats and did an adorable project. My friend Rose Ann is so crafty and clever!

When we came home my honey had donned an apron and was in the kitchen whipping up an amazing cake and working on his annual Valentine dinner for us. Many years ago he claimed this as his night to fix us dinner. Every year he asks me what I would like, this year I chose fajitas. (I try to make it something not to hard for him. lol I guess I should get him a more manly apron for his annual cooking night so he won’t have to wear the girl’s apron. )

My sweet inlaws came over for a while and brought the kids cards and chocolate. I should mention that by this time my girls were on a pretty good sugar high. These are the same little girls who don’t eat all to much sugar…This is going somewhere so stay posted.

Dinner was amazing and the cake was incredible. Layers of chocolate with cherry filling and homemade frosting…I had no idea my man could cook like this, of course it has taken 21 years to perfect this!

During dinner we listened to a playlist Shaylah created of love songs. After dinner we talked Shaylah into playing her guitar for us. Put an apron on Shannen and help out! Notice his awesome shirt?

Our table all prettied up!

So remember when I said stay posted? On the way home from the Valentine party a certain little girl was pounding away all her candy when I warned her she may want to go easy or she would end up feeling icky later……

This same little girl ended up with a terrible tummy ache and felt like she was going to throw up. After hanging her head over the toilet for a while she finally fell asleep…………………………………………………………

Like this!

A good day was had by all…I think!

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Happy Groundhog Day!

Our Christmas

I know Christmas was last week but with Duane being on vacation all last week blogging just had to take back seat to life.  I figure its better late than never to fill Papa and Nana in on our day.

We loved Christmas being on a Sunday this year. It just felt right.  We started the morning at church, what better start can we have when celebrating the birth of our Savior!  Jeff, Shyloh, and my brother all surprised us by coming to the early service. What a wonderful gift to look around and see almost all my family together!  We also brought a sweet lady, Miss Loraine,  from the retirement home with us.

After church was over we took Miss Loraine back to the home and stayed for a while. We sang some carols and visited with some of the people who had no where to go on Christmas. That was probably the very best part of our day! I’m quite sure we were more blessed by that than they were! Shylie didn’t want to leave and cried when we finally did.

The rest of the day was very relaxing and peaceful. Last year we had the kids draw names between each other.  They did again this year and loved it. I think they enjoyed buying for each other more than getting a gift! It’s such a blessing watching them hunt and look for just the right gift for their buddy.

Uncle Micah came over in the evening and had dinner with us and with his usual flair maintained his “Uncle Bomb” status.  He surprised Shaylah and the boys with b.b guns.  They were so excited! 

We bought the kids a Karaoke machine. I know that sounds crazy, like our house isn’t noisy enough already, but we figured it was worth the fun they would have and the memories to be made.

Uncle Micah and the boys. Showing off their new guns!

The girls all got new aprons. My very talented friend Heather made them!

I also have 3 new princesses in my house

Happy 2012

I’m excited to start a new year. I’m praying and asking the Lord for what goals He has for me. I don’t do the typical resolutions but I love to make a list of goals: spiritual, marriage, mothering, homeschooling, and personal. I pray and ask God what He wants for each of these areas.

I’m excited to see what the Lord has in store for each of these. I’m also going to be praying for the Lord to give me a verse for this new year. I want 2012 to count, really count! I don’t want to sleep walk my way thru it! I know God has amazing things planned for each of us and I’m excited and looking forward to seeing what those things are!

I pray that the Lord blesses each of you this new year, may His face shine upon you and may His grace abundantly flow on each of your lives!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas time is a time to reflect on the greatest gift of all, the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ! Through the birth and death of Christ we can have the gift of eternal life. It is a free gift and all we have to do is accept it! If you haven’t done so yet I urge you to do it now and have the greatest Christmas you’ve ever had!

Have a Blessed Christmas!