Quilt for Ella's Room

While my mom was here, she brought the quilt she had made for Ella. We are going to use it for Ella's bed spread once she's big enough for a "big girl" bed. It is done in all shades of pink fabrics and really turned out beautiful. It was done with a Sunbonnet Sue pattern. There are so many variations on this old pattern, but I just love Ella's. It's going to go perfect with all of the pink already in her room!!!

Christmas Day :)

Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and tell you we love you very much!!

On the First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

We have been busy with the grandparents making visits and getting ready for Christmas! Ella has been enjoying the time she has spent with the family for sure! I can't believe how much stuff she has..her little room is going to be jam packed! There is still a TON under the tree, too! One of her favorite gifts is her new guitar, or "tar" as she likes to call it. She wants to play and sing all day. It's so adorable we just sit there and laugh like crazy the whole time.

Thought you might enjoy her latest video:

We also had a great time Sunday night at our Small Group's Christmas Party..got a couple of new pics that night :)

and last, but not least...

Ella got new EARRINGS!! She finally got her ears pierced on Monday and they are so adorable! She points to them and says that they're earrings and then says, "pribby" aka "Pretty"..so cute!

Thanks Dolly for a great visit..We miss you already!!

Ho Ho Ho...Merry Christmas!!

Ella says she doesn't want Santa coming anywhere NEAR our house this year..lol!

Christmas with The Stricklands

I have been having the hardest time keeping a secret these past couple of weeks. About two weeks ago, Randy's mom Teresa called and said they were planning a trip this way. We decided to keep the trip a secret so that Randy and his brother Justin could be surprised! While I LOVE surprises, I hate keeping secrets! I wanted to blab it to Randy right away! Well, thankfully I had a few trustworthy people that I shared my excitement with and Randy was really surprised. They got in Monday night and left out this morning. Randy hadn't had a chance to see them since Ella's Birthday in July so it was a real treat. Ella had a lot of fun playing with them and eating all of the yummy cookies that Mimi brought. We also went ahead and opened Christmas presents while they were here..It was a great visit! We weren't able to spend a lot of time with family last year so we are just *so* happy that we are both getting the opportunity to see some of our family this year.

How cute is this???

Hazel took this picture the other day while we were at Wendys.. I can't believe how many little heads could peek out!!

Christmas Cookie Exchange

One of my favorite traditions for the ladies at Discovery, is our annual Christmas Party and Cookie Exchange. It's very fun and festive so it always gets me in the Christmas Spirit! I decided to try out a new recipe I had never made before for the swap this year. One of my favorite treats, are Buckeyes. The gift shop inside cracker barrel always sells little packages of the yummiest Buckeyes ever!! On our last few road trips, I have made a habit out of stopping to pick some up (and usually making myself sick from eating way too many!!). So this year I thought I'd give it a try. I finally feel like I have some time to try out new recipes and such..at least until June :) then I'm back to square one!!

Here is the recipe I decided to use:
(There are many variations, for example, some people like to use rice krispies in them to make them crunchy,)

*Buckeyes*

Ingredients:

* 1 1/2 cups peanut butter

*1 cup butter softened

*1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

*6 cups confectioners' sugar

*4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar. The dough will look dry. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet.

2. Press a toothpick into the top of each ball (to be used later as the handle for dipping) and chill in the freezer until firm, about 30 min.

3. Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until smooth.

4. Dip frozen peanut butter balls in chocolate holding onto the toothpick. Leave a small portion of peanut butter showing on top to make them look like Buckeyes. Put back on the cookie sheet and refrigerate until serving.

A few things I found after making them were:

*I doubled the recipe because I wanted to have a lot, but in the future I will do two separate batches. Getting the ingredients to blend becomes a little hard when you're dealing with 12 cups of powdered sugar!!
*I just melted my chocolate chips in a big bowl in the microwave. Every once in a while I would just pop it back in to soften it up some more.
*I also added a chunk of Paraffin wax to my chocolate chips while they were melting to help the chocolate form a nice shell. It worked great!!
*She's not lying when she says the dough will look "dry", it's kinda crumbly so you have to kneed it some in your hands to make a nice smooth ball.
Overall I thought it was a great recipe and mine came out really yummy. I think next time I might try to make them with milk chocolate chips instead because I like them a little better:)

They gave out some prizes for the cookies, and I actually got this adorable little platter!!

It was a super fun night with tons of yummy cookies and games! Can't wait until next year!!

Winter FUN!

Okay so I know some of you "facebookers" have already seen these pics, but I still have to post them for my family and all :)

Last Monday we finally made it out to get our tree. Randy was sick Saturday night into Sunday morning with food poisoning or something, so we had to reschedule or plans to get the tree Sunday.

So Monday we headed over to Wilson's Tree Farm on County Home Rd. We bought our tree there last year and loved how family friendly they are. Their prices are really great, too!! We found the perfect tree (which now that it's decorated, I think it's the best tree we've had so far!!) It really is beautiful! I will have to post some pictures of the decorated tree...I just need to take some!!Ella loved running through all of the isles and looking at the trees. It was weird to think that just last year she was there in the baby carrier!!

Anyways, it was alot of fun and we got some cute pics while there!

Enjoying this time of year!

Oh we have been so busy!!

I'm so happy that it's finally "Christmas Time". I look forward to the holidays every year. There is just something about them that makes you feel so good. I love the family time and the traditions. I've been flipping through a book Randy's mom Teresa gave me called Let's Make a Memory by Gloria Gaither and Shirley Dobson. It's full of poems, foods, songs, and activities that you can do with your family or use to start a tradition. Since Ella is still really small, we only have a few things that are traditions for now, but I can't wait!!

I put up a few new pictures and a little video for you to enjoy :)

The weekend after Thanksgiving, Randy and I decided to have our siblings over for what we called, "Chranksgiving". We had a traditional Thanksgiving meal (which I was really excited to cook all own my own this year!) , but we had the house all ready for Christmas. They came over in the afternoon and we had a casual lunch while the turkey baked. We played Monopoly and had a great time. Justin had to work in the afternoon so Randy took some of the dinner up to him, but Lynsey stayed and we ate. It was so yummy and so much fun. I'm so glad we were able to do it!

Here are some pictures of Ella's new Christmas apron set! They were sent to us from "Dolly" (my mom Kim) and she loves wearing them! They make me giggle :)

In this one she is pretending to call Dolly and say Thankyou. Cute!!


She also has a new trick where she will "Smile Pretty" for the camera and say, "Cheese!" Her face is so funny! I got a little video to show you..

Thanksgiving 2008

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! I think this is the most reflective Thanksgiving I've ever had. I'm sure like most of you, I have always had fond memories of Thanksgiving. It was always filled with family and tons of food. It was a life changing exprerience to spend it with children who literally have maybe a bag full of posessions, yet are the happiest kids you will ever meet. They are just enjoying life and could care less about material things. We had the opportunity to learn alot about their day to day lifes and how they live. Thankfully a majority of them live in an orphange that is funded by different supporters so they are recieving food and an education. One of the orphanages where 12 or so of the choir members are from, also recently purchased cows that they can milk to sell. They are hoping to start raising some chickens soon, too. I encourage anyone able to look into helping out in any way you can. They have a great web page to check out, too!

I have some more candid shots I wanted to share with you from yesterday..hope you enjoy them!!

Ella and Grace

The line of food..

Enjoying lunch..yum yum!

Randy and Ella having left overs that night at Ralph and Hazel's house

Me with Natalie and Ella

and here's one more video I took yesterday while they were singing and dancing for us..

Thanksgiving News Coverage

WNCT came by yesterday during lunch and did a little news coverage of the choir. If you want to check it out, click here . The lady that they interviewed was actually one of the host families from St. James, I think. If you look in the backround you can see a table of some of us eating. It was such a great day...I will be posting more pics later :)

Daraja Childrens Choir

Sorry for the delay in this post. We went to the concert Tuesday night and had a *great* time. The choir was amazing. They had the best energy and excitement about them, it was really contagious. The lighting was horrible for pictures, they all came out either dark or blurry. I still have some to post though..I also have been working on uploading videos to YouTube throughout the days, too. They are taking forever, but I'll post one on here for now and link you to the rest tonight or tomorrow.
Last night we had the privledge of spending some time with the choir members staying with Ralph and Hazel. The two little boys staying with them are so sweet. They are also housing Abbu and Grace. Abbu is the choir director that narates the video I posted last week. He and his wife Grace have an 18 month old daughter Natalie or "Ta-lee" as Ella like to call her. It was really neat to ask them some things about the children and the choir. You can tell that they are all having a great time, although I must admit I left seeing them almost sad. I just feel really bad that they ave a couple really exciting months and then they go back to being orphans in Kenya. Grace was telling Hazel it's very sad for the kids when they have to leave and that just breaks my heart...wish I could keep them all!!!! maybe one day :)

Hope you enjoy this video! It was my favorite song that they performed. You could see that each kid really meant it with their whole heart.

"Here I am To Worship"

We love you all and are very Thankful for all you do for us...Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Things I'm looking forward to...

Just thought I'd list some stuff coming up that I'm excited about :)

*Tonight: singing with Randy at Shannon's Birthday party..
*Hanging out at the ball filed tomorrow while Randy and Johnny's team play..they have an early game and if they win, they play a Championship game! Cool that they made it this far!
*Going to church on Sunday and having a nice day of rest with the family :)
*Tuesday, we're going to watch the Daraja Childrens Choir..I'm EXCITED about this!!


I encourage you to watch this video. Towars the end the kids talk about what they loved most about America, the food and places they saw, ect. It's really a wake up call at how much we take for granted like our beds!!


*I am looking forward to Thanksgiving the most this week because my small group will be spending the day with the children from the Daraja Choir and feeding them their first traditional Thanksgiving meal. I can hardly wait!


*And after Thanksgiving, I am going into full Christmas mode...and that's a whole new list!!
but..


*one of the things I am really looking forward to...is all of the wonderful advice and tips I'm going to get on here about getting lipstick out of clothes....

Yes, she really did already!!

This picture really lets her off easy to because it doesn't show much..She had it all over her clothes and in her hair, ears, everywhere!!

It's been awhile..

Sorry for the delay between posts..

Everything has just been pretty routine so there hasn't been much "blogging material" lol

Things are good though!

I have been keeping busy and battling morning sickness, but I'm starting to get used to the feeling lol (and how cute is our little baby looking on the widget?!? Finally out of the tadpole stage!!)

Ella's been doing great. She's Miss Busy and doesn't really stop unless she's napping. (and thank goodness for naps!) She's been having fun playing with a friend's baby that I have been watching in the mornings. This morning the first thing she said when she woke up was, "Bay- Beeee!!" I hope this is a sign that she will really like our baby, too!

and for Randy...he's doing great. Still up to the same ol' stuff.....

Our friend's, The Wallace's Yard celebrating the end of the election...

Does this bring back memories of the last election, Karey??

Here are some picks of the little one..

Relaxing in the baby chair that's back out during the day when I babysit...

and loving to play dress up! This is how she walked around for most of the morning!

Got Hair??

Thank you so much to everyone for all of your hugs and congrats on the new baby ;)

We are really excited!

Everyone always talks about how you forget what childbirth is like and then you get excited to have another baby..well I think the same is true with morning sickness! I had it so bad with Ella, but my memory of it had become pretty vague. Well..lets just say it came back so quickly when I felt my stomach starting to turn these past couple 4 weeks! People have a million different remedies for it, but I think it comes down to being sick whether you like it or not. I just try to smile and think of why my body is feeling yucky..and I must say all the sickness is worth it.

Here are a couple funny pics of Ella trying out some new hair! Hey- if her own hair isn't going to grow, she's decided to try out plan B!