Christmas Activities & Pictures

But first, a few random pictures I found on my camera. We start with Sam. I don't know how a person goes about discovering he has a talent like this...

But he seems happy about it! James wanted to take a picture of Katie and me together because we matched so well in our happy Christmas green. :-) James couldn't help himself and bought Christmas shirts for all three kids this year. They were pretty excited about it. :-) Ah, yes. How could I forget about this?! James was given a true rarity the other day! Sister Grimes keep sorting through every nook and cranny of her house in search of things to donate to our family or the Clarksons. Her most recent donation to the Church history museum is (are you ready for this???) Fields of the Wood olive forks! HA! Could you die?! At least that's what she said they were used for. There are only three left out of the box of twelve, but three is enough to make James a very happy man. A piece of memorabilia he didn't even know existed!!! HA! Here's a picture of Charlie hanging out with Sam. This doesn't happen often. Usually if he's with Sam is a free-for-all with running and jumping and romping and biting and growling and pouncing. And Charlie gets wound up, too. ;-) Okay, here we go! Sunday morning James woke up sick, so the kids and I headed on to church without him. Brother Chris preached a good message on hope, then we hurried home to check on James. We found him still in bed... WITH THE DOG!!!! Yep, you heard right--he was in bed, cuddling with Charlie. The same Charlie who is "not allowed" to sleep with us at night. I love it. :-) The dog still sleeps with Katie at night, of course (and he's doing GREAT with that, by the way--settled right into that routine and sleeps with her all night with no problem), but I love it that James is so schnookered by this dog. He would declare he only did it because he was sick and it was easier than trying to keep an eye on him, but I know that's only a handy excuse for something he really enjoyed anyway. ;-) I worked on Christmas cards again that afternoon, but still didn't get done. Oh, well--I tried! James still wasn't feeling great that afternoon, but was doing well enough to go to church with us. He hadn't eaten all day and after service McAllister's is what sounded good, so we went there to grab a bite before heading home. Monday morning I got up bright and early to get to work cleaning up the house for the showing. That's right, we had a SHOWING!!! Wa-Hoo! We hadn't even heard Jason's voice for a month or more, so it was pretty exciting to have a little action. The lady said she loved it, it was the best house she'd seen in the three days she'd been looking, it was "adorable," etc. I don't know what her situation is, but we haven't heard any more since then. It's strange, really. I don't get my hopes up over anything anymore. But at the same time I don't want to be faithless and expect that this WON'T be "it," you know?! It's in God's hands, right? I'm trying to just leave it there. :-) We loaded up the family, including Charlie, and headed out at 10:30 (we had been told the showing would be between then and noon) to go to the dollar store out in Edgewood, ate lunch at the Chinese restaurant out there, then stopped to pick up a few things at Wal-Mart on the way home. I made some Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies that afternoon (wa-a-a-a-ay too addictive!), then lasagna for dinner. It was a great day for food around here. :-) I stayed up until 1:00 working on Christmas cards that night, but at least I finally got them finished. Wa-Hoo! I slept in a bit on Tuesday after my late night, then we had devotions, school--the usual. That afternoon we all went to the library, then to Hobby Lobby to get Dad's Christmas present (crazy, hu?!), then on to the Route 66 Diner. It's supposed to be pretty popular (been around since the 40's, I think), but in three years of living here we'd never been able to find it. I don't know how we missed it with all those neon lights and all. Ha! It was really neat and the food was fantastic. James, Mr. Adventure, had a vanilla malt. I went with the Pink Cadillac milk shake (strawberry ice cream with Oreos) because it seemed like the right thing to do, considering the setting. The only other option was the Elvis Presley (peanut butter and banana shake, of course), so... :-) We left the diner and headed down town to the River of Lights. Most of the displays were the same, but they did have some new things that were really neat. James especially liked the cactus. That's an owl on top, I just wasn't at the proper angel to be able to see it well. Joe had to have his picture with the lizard. Not very impressive to most minds, but to Joe... It's a lizard, you know?! Katie & Sam liked the t-rex. The lights were fun but better yet, the entertainment was fantastic this year! There was an all trombone band there playing Christmas carols and they were great! I always enjoy live music and it was so cool to have nothing but trombones (who ever heard of such a thing?!) playing a bunch of different parts like that. They did stray from Christmas every now and again and would play an oldies song, my favorite being Duke of Earl. Ha! It sounded fantastic, but since it's Christmas time I'll post this one.

A little farther on we came across a whole slew of cute little old men in Santa hats--an old guy's choir! I think they call themselves the New Mexichords or something like that. When we got there these four guys were singing something very barbershop quartet-ish. I love that stuff! :-) At the end of this corridor is where the trombone guys were playing. It was a great night and we had lots of fun.

Yesterday morning the shingles and roofing supplies were delivered to the house! While the guy was still unloading them Brother Chris and Brother Juan and the three Clarkson kids showed up. The men worked all day hauling the packs of shingles up to the roofs, working on the skylights, and totally re-roofing James' office. It looks great. :-) Here are the fellas hard at work.

James was gone all day long, but there was no such thing as loneliness around here with the six kids running wild all day! Ha! They were all really good for the most part and there were only a couple of times I when it got too chaotic and I had to put the kibosh on them. They had a blast together and I was so glad they had all day to just hang out--they never get to do that.

I decided to make potato soup for lunch, but didn't have all of the ingredients and had to improvise. That made me nervous, so I decided to make a big pot of chicken and noodles as a back up. Good thing I did! The soup turned out okay, but the noodles were scarfed down nearly completely--and there was a pretty good amount of soup gone, too. One wouldn't have been enough. It was great being able to "host" and feed my workers. That makes me so happy! :-)

When the crowd left that night (sometime after 6:00) James hauled in all the stuff he'd bought throughout the day--groceries, Christmas presents... and a little jacket for Charlie. HA! COULD YOU DIE?! James is killing me! With Hershey he was sooooo stingy. I think we bought two dog toys the entire 6 years we had him. We finally paid $1 for a sweater for him that last year. Charlie already has two beds (saw a cute one on sale for $6 last week) and a box, several toys, treats, etc. And then James comes home with a jacket AND another toy and some treats for the dog's stocking!!! HA! I love it. James declares he doesn't love the dog ("he's okay, I guess" is the most he'll admit to), but his actions prove otherwise. Hershey taught him that, like it or not, he's going to end up loving Charlie--so he's already started giving in to it. It makes me very happy. :-) Anyway, Charlie's jacket has a hood and James keeps picking him up and pulling his hood on, then just laughing and laughing. It IS funny. Ha! Here's Charlie trying to behave...

And showing his true feelings about the hood... I took this after he finally settled down and got used to the jacket. It CRACKS ME UP because the jacket fits snug around his little body, squishing his hair in... then he's got this huge poofy rump sticking out the end! Ha! This morning we woke up to SNOW!!! It's our first real snow of the year. We had some flurries and a skift on the ground a couple weeks ago, but this is the first REAL snow. And it's sooooo pretty! James built a fire for us so we could have devotions in there all nice and toasty. Sam's been keeping the fire going for us throughout the rest of the day. He's a good fire boy. The kids finished school so they could head out to play for a while. They had me dig the inner tube out of the shed but it's too flat--they'll have to wait for their Dad to air it up for them. Charlie wasn't quite sure what to think of the snow at first, but it didn't take him long to decide that it's a blast. A dog after my own heart. :-) Come on, now--all together, "Aaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwww!!! That's soooo cute, Charlie!" That's what Joe says at least 50 times a day. :-) It didn't show up well in any of the pictures, but the back of his jacket has a picture of a peppermint and says "sweet."

Okay, so that was a little bit of Charlie overload. Sorry--I've been trying to be better about that. Ha! Right now James is taking a nap, I'm blogging, the kids are playing games, and the dog is snoozing at my feet. ~Aaaahhhhh~ This is the life. I love snow days!!! My only concern is that it had to come on a Thursday. We have church tonight, but last I saw the snow was still coming down heavily--I don't know if we'll be able to make it in or not! I know we could make it to town, I just don't know if we could make it home afterwards once it gets colder and icier, especially if it keeps snowing. Time will tell! I hope we can make it, but if not we'll just have devotions here tonight I guess. And put a puzzle together or something. :-) And because I just can't help myself, here's some more Charlie. ;-)