Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! I pray that you know the love, grace, and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ whose birth we celebrate during this season. And if you do not know Him, take some time during this Christmas season to open His word and find out more about Him. And if you feel a tugging in your heart, just say a prayer wherever you may be and ask for His forgiveness and His cleansing mercies. And receive Him as Lord and Savior of your life. You will never be the same, and that is a good thing!

We like books!

I can't begin to tell you how happy this makes my mama heart! To see my little boy love books enough that he will sit down in front of the bookcase and pull out his books and page through them. He loves to have Ron or I read to him almost daily. And now we get Elise involved too. She likes her soft books that she can chew on. :)

One thing that I totally love is Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. It is a program that sends your child a free book each month from birth to age 5. So both Ronnie and Elise get a free book each month. Isn't that awesome?? If you have a child in this age range, you need to sign up! Check it out HERE.

The last week in photos

Ronnie had woke up during his nap, then when I didn't hear him anymore I went in and saw him like this. I love it!



Elise hanging out with Kitty Cat, she thought it was fun to grab Kitty's fur!


Ron's birthday. We had our friend DeVante over and had chili for dinner, then cake and ice cream for dessert.


The little cake came from Whole Foods, and the coconut milk ice cream is our favorite!!

Sweet gifts from neighbors

I.LOVE.THESE.HATS!!! Our sweet neighbor girl Zoe made these hats for Ronnie and Elise. She brought them over this afternoon. What a fun surprise!

It's looking a lot like Christmas around here!

The inside wreath, I have one on the outside of the door too.


The kids stockings. We got these at Old Navy for $2 each. I normally prefer to do traditional red and green, but they didn't have many in those colors, so I got a purple girlie one for Elise.


One of Ronnie's first ornaments. We need to get one for Elise this year.



Our Christmas tree.

Recent photos

Elise loves the jumperoo, she spends a lot of time in there!


Having a little goats milk snack, bottles are new to her. :)


Ronnie and I playing with Photo Booth in the iMac, he loves to see himself on there!


Baby girl in her new girlie bed!


I got her crib all set up with her pretty bedding, now to get the room painted! I've got some fun ideas, so we'll see what we actually end up doing. I'll post photos when we finish.

Ronnie's Flat Stanley is in Italy!!!

My high school friend Robin is in the Navy and currently stationed in Italy. We are connected on Facebook and I had mentioned in my status one day that I would like to do a Flat Stanley project for Ronnie, but he is too young to understand it. Robin commented on my status that she would love to take photos of Flat Stanley while she is in Italy and then I can save it all to share with Ronnie when he is older. So I took her up on the offer since she will only be there until May 2010. I sent Flat Stanley to Robin's husband who is also in the Navy but stationed here in the US, and he took it with him on the plane this week when he went to visit her in Italy. In the photo above, Flat Stanley is in Rome. Isn't that awesome?? As you can see, Ronnie colored it himself. :) She has more photos to come and I am looking forward to seeing them! I think I am about as excited as the kids who do the Flat Stanley projects! LOL!

My first granola bars!

I got my recipe from the Hillbilly Housewife. I made mine in two parts, first I made the granola, then the granola bars. Below are the recipes. Both originally called for margarine, but we don't use that stuff here. These were a huge hit in this house!



Honey granola

• 3 cups dry oatmeal
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup each nuts and dried fruit (optional)

First melt the butter in a 3-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the honey and salt. Honey is easiest to measure in a well oiled measuring cup. Otherwise, just scoop the last of it out of the cup with a clean finger or spoon. Heat the honey briefly with the margarine and then add the oatmeal. Stir it up nicely. It smells really good. Turn the mixture onto an ungreased cookie sheet, the kind with shallow sides; a large 9 by 13-inch pan works well too. Spread the granola out evenly and bake it at 375° for 10 minutes. It should be a toasty brown. Now remove it from the oven and allow it to cool and crisp up right there in the pan. Store it in a clean coffee can or sealed canister. Add the nuts and dried fruit, if you are using them, when the granola is cool. Serve it with milk like regular cereal, or if you are hankering for a divinely inspired treat, get a big bowl of plain yogurt, and sprinkle a large handful of granola on top of it. Mmmmmmmm, very tasty. Sliced bananas are good with this too.

Peanut butter granola bars

• 3 cups of homemade granola
• 3 tablespoons butter
  
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Optional: 1/2 cup raisins, or peanuts, or chocolate chips, or coconut, or sunflower seeds, or chopped apricots, or dates, or whatever strikes your fancy

You may use any recipe for granola that you like. If it already has peanuts and raisins added then you probably won’t want to add more, but you could if you wanted to. The end results wouldn’t be affected that much either way.

In a 2 quart sized saucepan melt the butter and peanut butter together. Make sure the heat is low and stir it a lot to melt it evenly. Meanwhile crack both eggs into a cereal bowl and beat them up with a fork. When the butter and peanut butter are completely melted together remove the pan from the heat. Whisk in the eggs. You have to do this quickly so the eggs won’t cook into scrambled eggs and peanut butter mess. The mixture will thicken and emulsify making a nice dough like texture. Beat in the vanilla. Stir in the prepared homemade granola. Add any optional ingredients to suit your taste. Turn the mixture into an oiled 8-inch square pan. Chill the bars in the fridge until hard. Cut into 16 squares. Serve with milk for a good snack, or pack in lunch boxes as a (relatively) healthy treat.

I added raisins and chopped walnuts to mine. YUM!!!!

Some of what I've been up to since my last post

Family trip to Trader Joe's. We LOVE to go there!!


Ron's cousin Jason and his girlfriend Kodi came to TN for a visit. We were able to get together a few times, and we had a blast! Ronnie sure liked Kodi! He likes the girls. :)


Ronnie and I played on Photo Booth on the iMac. He loves to see himself on there.


My junior high friend Jennifer came down for a visit. This is the first time we've seen each other in 21 years!! We had a great time catching up, and I had a Mary Kay party for her. We reconnected on Facebook, so that is what made this whole thing happen. Gotta love Facebook for things like that!

I have more to blog about, but it took me several days just to post this one! More to come though, including my first granola bars! :)

I finally learned to make a craft!!

I learned to make these rings with wire and beads. My neighbor Hannah taught me how to do it. They are so fun and easy to do! I have several more fun beads to use. I plan to make them for all the ladies in our family for Christmas this year, and for some friends too. If you would like one for yourself or as a gift for someone, let me know. I'm only going to charge $8 each.

Let me pause to brag on my husband for a minute

So I didn't get to blog at all yesterday, this cold has really taken its toll on me. Thankfully it is just a sinus cold with a little bit of a cough, but my head is so congested that its just hard to even think, let alone do all I have to do in a day. My wonderful, hardworking husband stayed up to clean the house so I could go to bed once the kids were down. How cool is that???

I thought it would be appropriate for me to talk about him a little bit. :) He works hard every day so I can stay home and raise our babies. I am very grateful for that, and I never want to take it for granted. Ron is a sales rep for a drum company (I'll let you figure out which one ;) and he travels one to two weeks a month to visit the dealers in his territory. He also sometimes leads drum clinics, where one of their endorsed artists comes to a store and plays and shows drumming tips. Last week Ron had a drum clinic in Richmond VA with Todd Sucherman (middle in the photo above), the drummer for Styx. The clinic started out with Ron talking about one of their newest products the Demon Drive drum pedal, then Todd played and talked to the audience. It went very well. Ron and Todd are hoping to do more clinics in the near future. Later this month, Ron will travel to Boston to do a clinic with Mike Mangini, the fastest drummer in the world.

I know some of you are probably thinking, "well that sounds like fun, easy work to me". Let me reassure you that it's not easy. He does enjoy himself, but he also is extremely busy when he travels and does clinics. There is very little down time as he goes from dealer to dealer and almost always a new hotel each night. Driving on roads he is not familiar with and often getting caught in rush hour traffic. Usually the only time we get to talk on the phone is when he has a long drive between dealer visits, or late at night when he is finally in his hotel room and finishing up some work on his laptop before going to bed. By the time he gets home from his trip, he is ready to crash. Then he does it all over again just a few weeks later.

This is just one of the MANY reasons I love and appreciate my hardworking husband and all he does to support us.

Hoping to be back tomorrow

Since it is the weekend, and Ron is home to help with the kids, I should be able to get some writing done for my blog, and maybe finish my story. I will return!

We interrupt this blog to bring you......

A cold virus. Rats!!! I was hoping I would be able to avoid it, but when you are a stay-at-home mommy with two sick children, it is almost impossible to not catch it yourself. Right now it is a sinus cold, and I pray that's all it is. I do intend to still try to post something on my blog everyday, I just won't be able to get back to my story quite yet. Maybe the suspense will keep you coming back! LOL! I don't even know if I still have an audience out there or not, so maybe I am just writing this for my own benefit. :)

Love Photo Booth!!

I hope to return to my Life lessons and experiences story in the next day or two. I have two sick baby's, so that is keeping me busy right now and not allowing me much time to sit and think and type out a nice post. So here is a photo from last night when Ronnie and I were playing with Photo Booth on the iMac. :)

Life lessons and experiences

Graduation day, a warm Michigan summer day in June, 1992. For my readers who do not know me in real life, I am the tall one. :) These were three of the girls I was close with throughout my high school career. And just the way it usually happens in life, this was one of the last times we would all be together for a photo. Some of us started college, some started jobs, and we just sort of parted ways. New friends came in our lives through work or school, new boyfriends, and new life experiences.

When I look at that 17 year old girl, I see a girl who was excited for what life held in store for her, for whatever endeavor was next now that high school was over. But she had no idea at that moment exactly how, or why, God would allow certain circumstances and people to come into her life that would ultimately lead her to Him, and on an amazing adventure 600 miles away.

Sometimes we wonder why certain things happen in our lives, or why certain people come into our lives for a time and then leave. At times we find out the answer to those questions, but other times, we often never have an answer for that. We are not going to have all the answers here in this life, only God knows why He allows certain things to happen. But as Christians, our hope and joy is in knowing that our Sovereign God is in control of all things, and that he working those things according to His will. If there is one thing I am learning in life, it is to let God work in me and through me how he chooses to do so. Because fighting it just frustrates me, and then it just takes longer for God to do what He is trying to do in my life.

More to come!

My neices!!

My brother Scott recently became a daddy to twin girls. So exciting! Here are a few photos of them. In the top photo, Alli is on the left, and Laci is on the right. As you can see, they are not identical. So neat! I look forward to holding them sometime, whenever we get up there again. Hopefully while they are still little! Congratulations little brother! I still can't believe you are a daddy! :)

P.S. I can't believe I did not mention my sister in law Crystal! Wow, that was rude of me! Crystal is the beautiful mommy holding her baby girls in the middle photo. :)

Dinner is ready!

Just pulled this out of the oven and going to dig in and eat it! Mmmm!!!

Family

This is Ron's uncle Gary and aunt Debi who own the chalet. Gary built it himself, what a lot of work! They are hoping to sell their house someday and move into the chalet. But for now, the chalet is a vacation rental. Thank you SO much Gary and Debit for letting us stay there!!!


Here we are with both of our parents. Ron and Carrie (Ron's parents) celebrated their 38th anniversary on Oct 9th, and Russ and Cheri (my parents) celebrated their 40th anniversary on Oct 10th. What a special blessing that both of our parents are celebrating milestone anniversary's! We are so thankful for that!


The three Ron's hanging out on the bed at Ron's parents house.


The guys hanging out.


Ron and the kids with his parents and his sister Jennifer and her family.

More photos of the chalet

This is up in the loft, the master bedroom suite. Gorgeous!!


I just love how they decorated it!




The kitchen is beautiful with the cherry cabinets and laminate flooring!

Hello blogger world!! Did you miss me?

Okay, so I realize there really are not many people who even follow my blog, but maybe someone noticed I had not blogged in a while and missed me? Anyone? Bueller?? LOL!!

We went up to Ohio for a week to visit my husband's family, and my parents come down from Michigan to stay a few days as well. It was the first time we have been together with both sets of parents since our wedding 9 years ago. So it was long overdue! We got to stay in Ron's uncle and aunt's chalet on a rock quarry, that was a huge blessing! It is such a beautiful place, and they let us stay in it for free for a whole week!! Still thanking them for that! Since I can only post a few photos at a time on here, I may use a few blog entries to post some. I took a lot of them, and I want to share several of them. So I'll see how I can work it out.