Monday, January 19, 2009

Christmas Morning

Welcome to our Carolina Christmas


Here are some shots from Christmas Morning

Abigail opening her stocking items
Hannah
Sarah, Jonathan and Abigail

Jonathan looking at his Star Wars fandex.

Jonathan got Madden 09, this will save us lots at Blockbuster, he always wants to rent it!
Tyler and Hannah, opening a much needed gift.
Hannah and Abigail acting silly.
Sarah's big gift this year an American Girl Doll, Ruthie.
Jonathan's big gift this year, a bike.
Hannah's big gift, an electric guitar.

Abigail's big gift, a cell phone.
I think she was the last of her friends to get one.
Me getting my new coat! Yeah!!!

The After look!
:-(


Jonathan playing with his roller coaster set.
Well that is a wrap up of our morning.... hope you enjoyed it!
Till next time
Barb

Oh, Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree!

Our little Christmas tree in our dining room.
This was Tyler's Mom and Dad's tree.

The kids tree in the office.
This is the tree that all the kids homemade ornaments go on, and that they decorate all by themselves.

This is the family tree that Santa came to visit while we slept!

Another view of our tree!

The tree we forgot we bought last year.

We found this Christmas Eve, it was supposed to be the new kid's tree. We planned to put the 6ft tree (this years kids tree) in the dining room and this tree in the office for the kids since they are running out of room. This would also allow for some of our other ornaments to come off the main tree and give us more room for the ornaments we get every year. Maybe next year we will remember.

Christmas Eve

Well here are a few shots of the family on Christmas Eve... I hope to get up to date one of these days... I am almost there!
One of our family's traditions is to open pajamas on Christmas Eve before we go to Christmas Eve service at church. Here are the kids opening their pj's.
Enjoy!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Pictures with Santa at the Mall

We had our annual picture with Santa at the West Gate Mall. I have heard that the Santa at Haywood mall is really good, but as I have thought back to all of our Santa pictures I can truly say that the Santa at West Gate Mall is still better than the Santa's of our first visits in Connecticut.
So here is a walk through the years of the good, the bad and the ugly Santas, we have seen them all! (as you can tell it is not in this order)!
1994 - Abigail
Our first visit with Santa, wow at the time we thought he was good! This was supposed to be a "good" Santa, well for the area. We drove 30 minutes to see this Santa, this is at Meriden Square Mall in Meriden, Connecticut.
1995 - Abigail
This was also at Meriden Square Mall. Not so good, the next year we would pick another mall that was supposed to have a better (older looking) Santa.
1996 - Abigail and Hannah
This was done at West Farms Mall in West Hartford, CT.
Wow... these are bad
1997 - Abigail and Hannah
Can you tell we moved to the Atlanta Area. This was taken at the Gwinnett Place Mall in
Duluth, Georgia. He was a great Santa!
1998 - Abigail and Hannah
This was also taken at Gwinnett Place Mall. He was a good looking Santa also. Much more realistic than the Connecticut Santas.
1999 - Abigail ( in the pearls), Hannah and Jonathan
This was taken at the Mall of Georgia in Buford, Georgia.
On a side note, Jonathan and Hannah were getting over the chicken pox at this time.
They had a few scabs still on their faces.
2000 - Abigail, Hannah and Jonathan
This was taken at the Mall of Georgia also.
This is our picture, I am not sure what happened to the professional picture.
Not sure what Hannah was doing, or what Abigail was mad at, but Jonathan is happy go lucky as usual.
2001- Abigail, Hannah and Jonathan
This was taken at Discover Mills in Lawrenceville/Duluth, GA.
The story behind these outfits is that I won a $1,000.00 gift certificate to the mall on opening day, some time in October. We were so blessed since we had 3 small children and 1 (Sarah) on the way. We decided that we would buy all the presents for others and the kids from Discover Mills that year and that I would splurge on these outfits. I wanted to buy the kids outfits from the Strasburg Lace Children's store, since I would never normally pay this much for 4 outfits for the kids. I bought 4 outfits, one for the 3 kids and one for Sarah who was due in Feb. I bought all the outfits a little big so we could get 2 years out of them. I think we got many more since they were passed down each year.
2002 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
Here are the outfits again.
This was taken at Discover Mills in Duluth, Georgia.
2003 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
This was taken at Westgate Mall here in Spartanburg.
Our first Christmas in South Carolina.
Abigail still fits into the Strasburg dress.
2004 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
This was taken after we went on the Polar Express.
It is a wonderful train ride in North Carolina where the kids get to live out the book. They ride the train, sing songs, drink cocoa and have cookies on the way to the North Pole. I recommend it for anyone who has not done it. It is well worth it to go at least once. The kids loved it!
2005 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
This was taken at Westgate Mall in Spartanburg, SC.
2006 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
Westgate Mall
2007 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
This was taken at Westgate Mall in Spartanburg.
Tyler had been in China for most of December, so we went to visit Santa and sent him a picture on his phone. He came home on the 22nd of December I believe.
Finally to this year
2008 - Abigail, Hannah, Jonathan and Sarah
These are the professional shots.
I will also include my shots that I got this year.
Showing Santa their wish lists.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

All my blogging friends are doing this game of Photo Tag and it looked like fun!!
Here are the rules:
1. Go to your 4th picture folder
2. Use the 4th picture in the folder
3. Tell us about your picture!
4. Pass it on!

This is one of the many pictures that was taken during a trip to the Biltmore House to get the picture for our Christmas card.

Tag, your it!

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Update to Sarah can fall asleep anywhere

Sarah had a touch of pneumonia the last week of school in December and had to miss the last day, December 19th. We had to have her on breathing treatments every four hours to insure that it didn't get worse.
She was so tired obviously that she fell asleep while doing it!


Her poor little head kept falling to one side, but it never woke her.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Wow... I can't believe its 2009 already....!!

Well here goes... I hope you are ready....
November
I think I have to start back in November to catch everyone up. We spent our Thanksgiving this year at our house. Tyler's sister and Brother in law came down with their 2 children. We alternate every other year between my family and his family. This is the first year that it was his families year since his mom has passed away so we tried to change things up a bit and have them come down here. She has never been down to South Carolina so it was nice to have them visit. They arrived late Wednesday night/Thursday morning... We had the typical Thanksgiving food and ate way to much.
Friday morning Tyler's sister Angie and I decided that the sales were not good enough to drag us out of the bed too early, but by 9 we were out the door and on our way. We had a fun time of shopping and sisterly fellowship. That evening Tyler took his sister's family, Hannah, and Jonathan to the Dorman - Byrnes playoff game.... it was a really good game but unfortunately Dorman lost. Abigail, Sarah and I opted for going to Haywood Mall in Greenville to see if we could find any more deals. We found a few, but most of all we just enjoyed some "Girl" time.
On to December... wow we did a lot in December.

Our first big event in December was Hannah's Christmas Chorus Concert on December 9th. They did a great job, to bad this is the best picture I got of her. The battery to my camera died right after this picture, so we didn't get any of her after.

Thanks Hannah for a great night of music!
Our next event was our church children's ministry banquet on Friday December 12th. We had great fun and watched a great video of the kids.

Sarah is in the video behind a child that is being interviewed eating a lollipop and and acting silly!
The best part of the video is when one of my weekday preschool students says that I am his favorite teachers.
Interviewer: Who is your favorite Teacher
Student: Ms. Barbara
Interviewer: Why?
Student: cuz I love her!
Wow it melted my heart!

On December 13th we decided to go to Asheville to go to the Biltmore house to get our Christmas picture for our cards. We got some great pictures of all the kids. Here are some of them.

The next big event was Jonathan's play at church.
Bethlehem Gulch
Jonathan had a small part this year, but he loved it just the same. He loves to perform. Here are some shots of him from the night.
My next big event for the month was our 4K Christmas program at church. We worked so hard the last few months learning all our songs and it was wonderful... The kids did a great job.
I came in on a rehearsal one morning after they were already on stage and it gave me chill bumps to see them all on the stage in their costumes.
Here are some shots of Ms. Catherine and her girls and one of me and Ms. Catherine.
The next event for us was on December 17th, Sarah's Christmas program "Candy Cane Lane" and the gingerbread house craft after the program.
Sarah did a great job as an evergreen pine tree, hence the green table cloth around her.
After the program we went back to her class to make gingerbread houses and take some pictures. Tyler and I both took the day off so we could spend it with her in the morning and then finish up all our shopping for Christmas in the afternoon. Here are some shot of her with her Daddy and her with her class.

In case you were wondering why she looks different than all the kids, let me explain. They all had to wear red for their program because they were the red candy canes. Well as a teacher I know how frustrating it is to tell parents one thing and to have them not listen and do their own thing, and though it almost killed me to send her for a program in just a red shirt and a bow, I knew that at least after the program we could fix her up some. Well she wore the red shirt for the program, but when they went back to their room to make gingerbread houses I couldn't resist slipping her gingerbread dress/shirt over top of her red shirt. It was too perfect for her to build a gingerbread house with her gingerbread dress on!
The next day was a special day for Sarah also. Mrs. Sutton the music teacher at Westview asked me several weeks before if Sarah would help her to lead the sing along for the Kindergartners - second graders. Wow what an honor. She said since Sarah sang so well in class and that she was so spunky that she would do a great job if it was okay with me. Well of course it was. She loves to do stuff like that. Here are some shots of her during the sing along.
I will post Christmas day another day!
Thanks for sticking with me to the end.... You made it!
Till the next time
Barb