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Merry Christmas everyone! The gifts are opened, candy and chocolate have been nibbled on and I could use a nap!
We started out our morning with breakfast. I had made a 'make the night before' breakfast casserole so that I only had to put it into the oven this morning. Paul and I enjoyed it but the kids were way too excited to eat breakfast. We opened Oma and Opa's (that's my mom and dad) gifts while we talked to them on Skype. Then we finished the book "Bartholomew's Passage". We were given this book as a gift at Paul's work Christmas Party. It's an advent book, it has a chapter to read each day of advent and it finishes off on Christmas morning. It was a really exciting book. The kids would always beg me to read another chapter because each chapter ends with a cliff hanger. So this morning we finished the book and it was a really good ending. I was told it is one of a series of 3 books so we will have to find another one for next year.
Then we opened the rest of the presents. That's always a little chaotic! I think Matt's favorite gift is the remote control car from his cousin Caleb. He hasn't put it down yet. The kids are all in their new pj's too and Michelle's in her new slippers from her cousin Rachel. Josh is wearing his New Jersey Devil's hat from his cousin Kurt and Ben's been playing his handheld Battleship game from his cousin Maddy. I love my 'FAMILY' Picture frame that I got from Michelle. Last week while I was shopping with Michelle, I showed her a frame with different pictures of letters that spelled out the word 'FAMILY' that I liked. She went home into Paul's shop and started taking pictures of tools that looked like letters. Then she did some editing on the computer, put them into black and white and then framed them. I love it. Paul and I also got a similar gift from my sister Jen and her husband Geoff that spelled out 'JOY'. I love them both.
Anyway, there are too many gifts to mention but we love them all, especially the ones that were sent with love from Ontario!!
I hope you all have a great Christmas.
Andrea
Friday after school the kids and I planned to head to Moose Jaw to do some shopping, stay over night and then come back on Saturday. We were about 15 km's from Moose Jaw on the highway in complete fog when my van started to die. I pulled over to the side and it completely died. It seemed like the alternator quit. I called CAA, got the van towed to a local mechanic and took a cab with the kids to the hotel (I had already booked a hotel because we knew we were staying in town). Thankfully the mechanic could work on it Saturday morning and we had it back by 1:00. So we walked to the mall, did some shopping and then took a cab to pick up the van. It could have been a lot worse, it was only -5 and not -35 like last week.
Andrea
The other day the kids and I watched Extreme Home Makeover where they helped the Ward family. The Ward's, a mother and her two grown children who live in Erie Pennsylvania in a rough neighborhood, run a youth development centre out of their home. They feed, give gifts to and just help kids in the neighbourhood that need it. While we watched it, I cried (it doesn't take much to make me cry) and Michelle just looked at me like I was crazy. Well, today about an hour after Michelle came home from school, she called me down to her room. I couldn't come right away but when I finally went down, she was bawling. When she finally told me what was wrong, she said that she didn't want any presents for Christmas this year. She said since watching that show she felt like there were so many other people who don't have as much as we do so she didn't want any presents this year. Oh, I almost cried. I was proud to see that she cared so much. You don't always see that side of her. We talked about it a bit and decided we would think of how we could help others more this Christmas. Then we were listening to Adventures in Odyssey online and it was about a family whose dad was in prison and they didn't have very much money for gifts so Whit and the gang helped them out. So what is God trying to say here? I'm not sure what we will do, there aren't really people in our small town that would need help and we're an hour from Swift and 2 1/2 hours from Regina. Any ideas??
Andrea
Breakfast
cereal with milk
Lunch
chinese - mostly veggies and some beef and chicken
Snack
2 cookies (Josh baked brownie cookies and Ben and I made peanut butter kisses cookies)
Supper
1 pc pizza
small salad
This was one of the things I made for the auction at the school last night. I had seen something similar, just wine bottles with lights in them,
so I thought I'd give it a try and copy it but add a few things. I had to drill a hole in the back of each bottle to feed the lights through. Paul told me I needed a diamond drill bit for glass and it worked perfectly. This summer when we went back to Ontario for a visit, I just popped into a 'make your own wine' place and the guy there gave me a bunch of labels and seals for the top. The stand I made from two boxes I picked up at the dollar store, painted black and glued together. And the grapes I got at the dollar store too. It probably cost me $8 to make and it sold for $45.
The other thing I made I can't show you yet because I also sent one back to Ontario as a gift. So you'll have to wait until after Christmas.
Andrea
Good day today. Cleaned up the nativity display with Anne today. Boy it came down a lot faster than it went up! Tonight the kids have their Christmas program and auction at the school. So that's where we're heading.
Andrea
Breakfast
cereal with milk
Lunch
salad
yogurt
Snack
banana
spoonful of peanut butter
Supper
a few (too many) latkes with sour cream (Matt came home with the recipe, they're potatoe pancakes so we made them tonight)
**Oops, I forgot that I ate a fresh bun when the kids came home from school. Then a while after I had posted this I ate another bun.
The dinner theater went well last night. Dinner was great, a full turkey dinner. I had mostly salads and a bit of turkey and stuffing. Stuffing is my favorite so it was the last thing on my plate. Paul reached over with his fork and took half of it. But that was a good thing, I got to eat a bit and not have too much.
The play went pretty well. It's funny how you get to know people a lot better when you practice a play with them for weeks. You see them at church each week but don't really see what they are really like. Some things you learn aren't great, like major control issues but it was really nice to see the fun, silly, real side of some people. The cast ate their supper in a separate room and we just laughed the whole time. Katie, a 16 year old in the play, said that listening to the guys that night (ages 35 - 51) was like listening to the guys in her class at school. I'm sure she was right, they sounded like a bunch of teenage boys! One more night and we'll be done.
Andrea
I'm still here. I know I was going to get on here more, at least to keep track of what I'm eating but that hasn't happened. Things are still busy and won't get much slower until after this weekend. Our church is doing a dinner theater tonight and tomorrow night and almost the whole family is in it. I am the prompter behind the scenes, Paul is "Sal" the Salvation Army Kettle guy (the Salvation Army Church has been great lending us the kettle, bells and a vest for Paul to wear), and most of the kids have a singing part. So this week has been busy practicing for that.
I hadn't weighed myself in 2 weeks but I did weigh in on Wednesday this week and was the same as 2 weeks before. I was happy to see I wasn't up after taking a break from tracking my food. And I've been doing pretty good this week too. I just really need to work on exercising. I have a treadmill sitting in the rec room in front of the tv but I just avoid getting on it. And I know that if I just started walking on it everyday it would get my weight moving down. Something to work on.
Andrea
I have definitely taken a break from blogging. And I think I needed the break. Thanks to those who left encouraging comments. I really appreciate that you are thinking of me!
My eating hasn't been too bad this last week of not posting. I have still stuck to my cereal in the morning, my usual salad for lunch and whatever we are having for supper, just a smaller portion. That smaller portion for supper is something I need to work on. But for the most part I was doing ok. I'll try to post what I'm eating everyday again because I know that's a big help for me.Last night was the first night of "The Night Jesus Was Born". Anne and I were both amazed at the turn out. We had 63 people come through, about 50 of those were people from outside of our church. The evening had such a cozy feel to it. People could grab a cup of hot apple cider or hot chocolate and a treat and walk through looking at all the nativity scenes. We ended up with 154 nativities. Anne also made up a bit of a scavenger hunt, it was a list of about 30 nativities that people could look for while they walked around. It turned out that it was a nice ice breaker and got people talking and looking closer at some of the nativities. We had arranged some chairs into a few settings around the room so people could sit and visit too. At one point I had to go get out some more chairs because there were so many people in there at once. We are having it again today from 3:00 to 6:00 and hopefully it's as good a turn out as last night (those of you reading this that live in a big city might think 63 people wasn't a good turn out at all but when you live in a village of 170 people, plus people on surrounding farms, that's a good turn out). I forgot my camera last night but have it ready to go for today. I'll get lots of pictures to show you.
Andrea
