Mountain Man

It was -15 degrees this morning with the wind chill, and Ron was outside snowblowing the neighborhood.  He is such a tough mountain man!!  And boy do I love it, because it means I don't have to!!!

Early present

There was just a little bit of wrapping paper left on the roll, and Ron didn't want it to go to waste.  So he wrapped an early present for the family.

It's Wonderful

It's wonderful having Ron home.  He has two weeks off for the Holidays and it is pure HEAVEN!!  He still works on the house during the day, but has breakfast with us in the morning and stops working after dinner.  I have changed since this last deployment, I've gotten: harder, meaner, less patient, and over all grumpy.  Even when he came home it didn't go away, and now I know why.  I needed him HOME with me.  Having him in the house with us, and getting to spend time with him EVERYDAY makes a world of difference for me.  I am feeling calmer, happier, content, and much more patient.  Of course the patience thing might come from the fact that he is disciplining the kids more and I am letting him!!  When people say that you shouldn't need anyone or anything to make yourself complete, I say thats CRAP!!   I am proud to say I NEED my husband to help me feel whole, complete.  So even though he is still busy, I am in heaven just getting to see his face all day long!

Poseing

While we were waiting for Santa to arrive at our church Christmas party, Tess asked me to take her picture. Then she proceeded to make all those funny faces. The other day I also caught her making faces into a mirror. Its so fun to watch her discover all the things that she can do.

I'm so close!!

I noticed on my post summary that I have done 92 posts this year, 93 including this one.  So I decided it would be cool to do an even 100 for the year of 2009.  So I'm going to shoot for it.  There are still pictures to post from Christmas, and I may have to ramble a little bit, but I am going to do it!! 

So don't be anoyed with all my posts this week - I promise that most will be good. 

The Big Red Man

The Big Red Jolly Man came to our church Christmas Party.  The boys boycotted sitting on his lap this year - of their own choosing.  They don't believe in him anymore, so they won't indulge mom and sit on his lap for the yearly picture anymore.  So it was just the girls.  This might be Emma's last year of "believing" and I am so glad she made it this long.  Tess was completely enthrawled with Santa.  She kept trying to cut in line and sit on his lap again and again.  When he finally left, she came to me and said "Where did my Santa go?"  She was very sad that he left her.

I think Tess has such a cute angelic face here.  She never told Santa what she wanted, she just asked for "presents", which makes my job very easy!!

Gingerbread Houses

Making Gingerbread Houses is a Christmas tradition. No, I do not take the time to make my own gingerbread, and we don't use graham crackers. I love to support the comercialism of the holidays by buying a lovely Wilton Gingerbread kit. This year, I found their village collection; 5 little houses instead of one big one. I thought this was brilliant, since we have 4 kids, they could each do their own, and I could have one all to myself!! So you get to be bored by the pictures of everyone's house, and there are actually pictures of me - Ron grabbed the camera to document that I am actually a member of the family.  Don't I look so focused!!  All the good candy was gone by the time I got to do mine, but it was still fun.  And working on a tiny house is hard!!  You have to be really careful with the icing!

My finished product.   The kids voted that I had the prettiest walk way.  Yeah me!

Tess' house.  Of course I helped her, but she put the candies on and loved it!

Ron is the master architect.  He scrapes all the sides to make them fit "perfectly" together.

Zach's house.

Emma's house

Tyson's house

Our little village.  We didn't make the sleigh, that was a gift.  Don't they look great!!  It was definately a fun family evening.