Our Christmas on New Year's Eve

Since half of our family was in Mexico on Christmas, we decided to celebrate our Christmas together as a family on New Year's Eve.

We went so far as to decorate the Christmas tree, make a full on Christmas dinner, exchange gifts and the whole nine yards.  It was fun!  I thought I'd just share a few pictures of our day together.

I baked two cakes!  Jagermeister cake and Pinapple Cream cake.



Maddie and Hunter decorated this little tree for us.  I had initially thought I wouldn't have time to get the big tree up but in the end, I was able to.





Kaitlin sent packages to the whole family that were all hand made and hand decorated the packages as well.  They are all beautiful!  And I am so proud of her for doing this for everyone.



Maddie was my right hand woman yesterday, along with cousin Jennifer.  Maddie decorated our beautiful table and even found a fancy way of folding the napkins. Kudos to Maddie, a modern day homemaker in the making!



George the cat felt that he deserved a place at the head of the table and should be served his own portion of Prime Rib.



Just before dinner, we got the whole family together for a group photo. (these don't happen often for some reason so this is a really good thing!)  Love having a remote trigger!



This was our meal of Prime Rib Au Jus, Mom's Baked Potato casserole, Green Bean Casserole and Homemade yeast rolls.  Delicious!



After dinner, we all shared packages and then the kids opened their stockings!



While we all unwrapped packages, Kaitlin and Jon joined on via Skype online which was a real treat to be able to do. Thanks for all the hard work and beautiful ornaments Kitty!  It was very well recieved!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.  I'm hoping to get a tutorial up for making a paper bag journal tomorrow so keep an eye out for that!

Brother

I got to see my brother this summer for the first time in 11 years!  That is way way way to long.  I love him so much and it was such a pleasure to see him and his family.  Of course, I needed to make a layout.  There will be more to come, but this is a start.  I can't tell you how emotional I was making this.  The regret of so many lost years spending time together makes me a bit sick to my stomach.  How I wish we lived closer to one another.

I got to use some of the new Amy Tangerine line including the stamps, fabric paper and some layered stickers.  Love them all and they blend really well with other products too.  They were part of my last haul from my LSS which is closing.  I'll be posting some pics of that soon.

She's Married!!!

My girl has officially joined herself to the man of her dreams, Mr. Jonathan Oakland and will forevermore be known as Mrs. Oakland.  How weird is that????

Last Saturday, November 6, 2010 the two of them were joined forever.  What a blessing.  Bittersweet to watch her fly the nest, but with such a man!  They are made for one another, that much is certain.

The day was absolutely beautiful and more than one person whispered that it was the most beautiful wedding they'd ever attended.  I could scarcely contain myself, truly.  It was beautiful, elegant and filled with more smiles than I can count.

I don't actually have many pics because I left most of it to the photographer.  Yikes!  I know they did an awesome job but I can't wait to see them.

Can I be sad a moment?

I've been spending a bit of time visiting the blogs of other creative people recently and I am astounded at how many random, everyday photos people have of their families just being together.

My family just isn't quite like that.  We seem to have very few moments where people are interacting playfully.  Or at least I can't capture them on film.  Maybe that's all it is.  They are almost always at night, almost always inside in bad light.  We DO have them, but in this part of the world, you just don't spend that much time outside I guess. 

That and my kids aren't happy very often.  It makes me sad that they are happy so infrequently.  Wish I knew what to do about that.

If I had it to do over again, I'd live somewhere that was more outdoor friendly and I'd make it a point to find things to do together to have fun.  LOL, maybe I'd read someone else's blog to get an idea of what that might be.

Ok, done complaining.

I feel pretty!

I do, I really do feel pretty.  I think it's the first time I felt truly good about myself in quite a while. 

It's not that I've lost a ton of weight as of yet, but I know that I'm taking care of my body and that just makes me feel so good about myself. 

I am so thankful that God has helped me to get ahold of the mindset I needed.  I've often wondered why it is that sometimes I am in the 'right' frame of mind to start acting on what I know is true and other times I can't seem to get there to save my life.  I haven't got any answers yet on that front, but if any of you do, please feel free to share.

The last couple of days have gone pretty darn well.  Had dinner out last night with my family, well, part of my family.  Jeremy and Kaitlin and I went to dinner while Hunter and Maddie went to the Friday night youth fest at a local church that they really enjoy.  We had a nice time, split two dinners, an appetizer and even desert between us.  But we brought some of it home.  And most importantly, the portion that ended up on my plate, and ultimately down my gullet was very reasonable.  It tasted heavenly, I felt no guilt and afterward, we took a walk to use up a bit of that fuel.

I'm very proud of myself for doing that last bit.  I've been considering getting moving, but honestly, I've always HATED excercise.  I like activity when I'm interested in it, but exercise for the sake of exercise has never been my thing.  However, last night, I WANTED to walk. Yay!  Jeremy and I are going to try to schedule evening walks into our lives now. Should be very good.

I only post when there's drama

Well, at least some of the time that is true.  When I haven't been posting and I begin again to post, it's usually because of drama of some sort.

Today, you guessed it, there is drama.  I won't give you the details or even the particular situation, but suffice it to say that the end result is drama.

My emotions feel like part of a big drama.  Life feels like a big drama.  And I am really tired of drama.

I just don't feel like I can handle any more DRAMA!!!!

I would like to live in a nice suburban neighborhood, with a nice suburban imaginary
life where everything  is happy and everyone is happy and flowers bloom nonstop and there are no allergies.

I believe that is impossible, so for now.  I hope I am given some new level of patience and grace to endure the drama.

They Are Engaged!!!

It is official!

I would like to announce the engagement of my daughter, Kaitlin to Mr. Jonathan O. 

Aren't they the most adorable couple you've ever seen.  Seriously, they make me so happy just to watch them love each other.  I'm a lucky mom!

Oops!

See this, this is my dog Bean.  He's cute, he's cuddly and he loves me and everyone else in my house.  He loves us just the way we are.  And we love him too, even though he farts almost as often as I breath.  We still love him.  Why, cause he's just so loveable I guess, or maybe because we don't assume that he has any alterior motives or plans to harm us in any way. 

I, on the other hand have not been so loveable today.  I kinda blew it this morning with my kids.  Oh yes, you can be sure that they DID do something that was not appropriate, but I handled it really badly.

I just got done reading about shame on Christine's blog.  I had asked her a question and as always, she came through with some really helpful material.  However, she did remind me that I'd be likely to forget it all rather quickly and need to go back to it. (she's clairvoyant too I guess.)  She was totally and completely right.

I'm pretty confident that I poured a dirty, stinking bucket of shame sludge all over my poor children this morning.  I will be making this right later when I have the opportunity, but I sure do wish I hadn't done it this morning.  I sure wish I had reacted rightly to the situation.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I know what rightly would have been and therein lies the rub.  I get frustrated because something happens that makes me feel completely out of control and then I just lose it all together.  What SHOULD I have done?

My kids had been sneaking poptarts and when the child who hadn't had any went to get one, there were none left.  So I ask my children how this happened, but of course no one knows.  They lie and tell me it was the other child.  I get very angry.  I hate being lied to.  I hate that they won't just ask permission for such delicacies as pop tarts in the first place.  I tell them, fine, I won't be buying any more pop tarts since no one can be trusted to be honest with pop tarts in the house.  I make them feel that they've ruined it for everyone, which they have, but I could have handled it so much better.  At least I think I could have.

On my drive home from dropping them at school, I try to figure out why I flipped my lid on this little thing.  The only thing I can come up with is that it is a situation that makes me feel completely out of control and I DO NOT like that feeling at all.  I have 4 teenagers.  3 of them constantly sneak around behind my back. The other one keeps her nose pretty clean, though the others like to make allusions to the fact that even that is all an illusion.  (I try not to think much about that as if it is an illusion then she is REALLY good at and I just don't think I'm going to catch it.)  The grim reality is that with 3 sneaky teens, I AM out of control. There is not much I can do about what they do when I'm not standing over them watching their every move.

I'm gonna have to deal with this.  I'm gonna have to pray the Serenity prayer.  I'm gonna have to believe that it is OK to not be in control.  I'm gonna have to let go.

Pray for me.

Maddie makes a project

Madison had a mission for this weekend. Her classmates had put together a gift giveaway, but it had to be something handmade. Being the perfectionist that she is, it could not be simple. No, it needed to be elaborate.

You should have seen the first project she had in mind! She eventually settled on a card kit that I had purchased a few years ago and set to work making it unique with stamps, ink and cut paper shapes. (I was happy that she finally got to use my Quick Kutz, which have been collecting dust for years now!)

It ended up being a project that several of us got involved in, teaching Maddie to use pigment inks to add color and dimension as well as the addition of a variety of art stamps for texture. Lots of fun. Here is her project as it progressed. I think she was happy with the final result. I know that I was, looked like eye candy to me!

I didn't get the impression that the girl who received it was as excited about it as we were, but that's okay. It ended up being inspiring to Millie and to me and Maddie got to finish something with pride!

She Sings Sweetly

My Millie sang tonight. She's a lot like me, always doing something in front of people.

I think she does it better. It was such a pleasure to hear her angel voice singing "Mio Bel Foco", which is quite a difficult opera type piece (I know next to nothing about opera, but it was in Italian and was high!)


She showed up the rest of the choir quite badly. And no, I'm not just saying that because she's mine. It was like we were listening to a broken radio and suddenly we got to listen to a digitally mastered version. Sooooooo much better. Well, being on pitch was an unusual experience this evening for many of the performers. Poor kids, and then they had to watch her finish the thing. I suspect a love hate relationship, they love her, but must be jealous. Poor kids. :(


I like listening to her!

Creme Brulee, my first

Well, I can't take full credit, maybe 55% credit, 5% for finding the recipe and buying the ingredients and the other 50% for my part in making it. Millie and I made it together and we have a fabulous time, pretending we were professional French chefs!

We made them as an experiment.....sort of. But we were able to serve them for Hunter's 15th birthday!!!! Wowza! I can't believe he's 15! Seems like just yesterday a very angry little boy came to my home, 8 years angry, I mean old. Wow, he's really come a very long way in the last 6.5 years. Truly, he has.

I am thankful that it's not too late to make a difference. I'm thankful that consequences sometimes end up resulting in more opportunity for friendship, like it has with Millie and I. She can't go anywhere, so she gets to stay home and cook with Mom. We are having a blast!

And isn't the Creme Brulee a beauty. It was sooooo yummy!