Christmastime 2009

My family's Christmas this year was great! My Grandparents who live up near D.C. came down for the weekend, and on Christmas day my Grandparents who live nearby came and stayed the whole day with us. We read the Christmas story of Jesus's birth, opened gifts, hung out for the day, and had a yummy Christas dinner! The night before we went to the Christmas Eve candlelight service which was very good. Here are some pictures from our day (and the days around Christmas).

My new ESV study Bible!

Parties!

Hello again, even though I am on break from school I have still been kept very busy, but at least it is fun stuff : ). I have been to lots of parties this month; here is some description of them.


The first party was the care group Christmas party! It was a lot of fun; every one was supposed to dress "funky formal" i.e. "formal with a twist." We had lots of good food, and we did a white elephant gift exchange. I didn't take many pictures, but here are a few...

Our fabulous group leader Eric

Jimmy

Eric and Rebekah (Rebekah showing off the lovely brown rain boots that make her outfit "funky" :)

Chara and I

A bit later in the month was the annual Access Christmas Banquet/benefit. Most of the money (that not spent on the party itself) is sent to Covenant Mercies. Everyone dressed up formally, and came for a great night of yummy food and fabulous entertainment by some talented people in our church. Sadly, I did not bring my camera :(

Two other events for which I did not have my camera was Kaitlin's birthday party cookie exchange, and Chara and Jimmy's Christmas caroling party. Both of these events were a lot of fun!

Well I suppose my next post will have to do with Christmas day itself! Merry Christmas everyone!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well here finally is a quick update (I wonder how many people actually read this anyway? :) )

As you can see from the title I have been pretty busy lately with school, church stuff, etc. School is ALMOST OVER though, and then hopefully I can blog a bit more during my break! I have 3 finals left to take this week and then I will be free! I have already registered for next semester and I am planning on taking: A course on teaching Elem. Science, Intro to Econ, Child Development, Adv. Composition, and a math class called Number Systems and Discrete Mathematics (not sure what it is, but its a requirement for my major)!

I can hardly believe that Thanksgiving is already past and Christmas is almost here! December will still be busy, but a fun kind of busy. One of the things I am looking forward to is the Access Christmas Banquet/Benefit. Another Christmas party - my care group's - has already occured. I will post on that soon!

Joel is getting soooo big! He can already sit up on his own, and my mom will soon be giving him his first taste of real food: bannanas! It is hard to believe that he will be 6 mos old in January! I will try to post some new pictures of him ASAP.

I end this post with a question for you! What is one of your favorite Christmas traditions? Leave a comment and let me know!

New Year and Beyond

On New Year's Eve, my grandparents (the ones that live in town) came over for a night of food, watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and staying up till midnight to watch the ball drop in Times Square. It was fun, but I was sooooo tired and ended up falling asleep during the movie and waking up when the movie was over. On New Year's day, I took Moriah to the mall to do some shopping for a couple of her friends (they have birthday parties this month). Then we came home, and my mom made a yummy ham dinner.

I have been enjoying my time off from school. Last Friday, I slept over at a friend's house because she invited me to come over when her sister was having a party (her sister is one of the girls who Moriah was buying gifts for). Yesterday was community groups for Access. This month, they just said for everyone to meet at the church for volleyball and games. Not many showed up (at least relative to a corporate Access meeting), but it was still a fun time.

School starts one week from today for me. I have one of my books already, two more are on their way, and the last, well I ordered it, but it may be the wrong book! It wouldn't be my fault though (ordered it through the school) and my professor is checking on it today so I should have it all figured out soon.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year's!

Christmas at Our House

We all had a wonderful day on Christmas this year. My Grandparents came in town and the Grandparents that live in town came to the Christmas Eve service with us and came over and spent all of Christmas day with us. I got up about 9 am on Christmas morning. We all gathered in the living room and my Dad read the story of the 1st Christmas from Luke. Then the opening of gifts began! With a family the size of ours, there is a mountain of gifts to open! It took us over two hours! We like to open them one at a time so we can see what each other gets and see the person's reaction to the gifts we gave them. This year, I got 3 Cds by Fernando Ortega, an Itunes giftcard, a couple of books (yay for books that arn't textbooks!), and several other smaller gifts including chocolate and a 2009 calender. The biggest gift was my parents gave our family a Wii!

That afternoon we all spent a lot of time taking turns on the Wii. It is so much fun both to play and to watch others playing. Then we sat down to a yummy dinner that included ham, mashed potatoes, salad, and more! Then we cleaned up, played more wii, visited, and had dessert (cheesecake and pumpkin pie). Eventually we all went to bed.

The time since Christmas has been fun as well. The day after, my Grandma and I went to lunch at Baker's Crust with a gift card that I won at the single's Christmas party. I got the Sa,nta Fe salad witch was very yummy. Today, my Grandma, Alexandra, and I went to Barnes and Nobles; when we got back we and Simeon went for a walk since the weather was nice.

Anyway, here are some pictures. They are not in order and some were taken before Christmas. Enjoy!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!

My Favorite Christmas Song

"What Child is this, who laid to rest,On Mary's lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?
This, this is Christ the King, Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud, the Babe, the Son of Mary.

Why lies He in such mean estate.
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear: for sinners here,The silent Word is pleading.

This, this is Christ the King Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Nails, spear, shall pierce Him through,The Cross be borne, for me, for you:
Hail, hail, the Word made flesh,The Babe, the Son of Mary!
This, this is Christ the King Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,The Babe, the Son of Mary.

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh;Come peasant, king to own Him.
The King of Kings salvation brings;Let loving hearts enthrone Him.
This, this is Christ the King Whom shepherds guard and angels sing.
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,The Babe, the Son of Mary.

Raise, raise, the song on high,The Virgin sings her lullaby:Joy joy for Christ is born,The Babe, the Son of Mary!
This, this is Christ the KingWhom shepherds guard and angels sing.Haste, haste to bring Him laud,The Babe, the Son of Mary."

Words from http://www.lyricsondemand.com/miscellaneouslyrics/christmassongslyrics/whatchildisthislyrics.html

Christmas

"...that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins"!

Matthew 1:20-21

Some Pics From the Single's Christmas Party

Wow, it has been a long time since I last updated

Well school is officially done for the semester. YAY! I am sooo glad; it is nice to have a break for a little while. Next semester I am taking Asian History, Political Science (U.S. Politics), Geography, Statistics, and Technology in the Classroom (an education course). As of now, I am majoring in elementary ed.

Tonight (or rather last night at it is now 12) I went to a single's christmas party/benefit at church. It was great! The food was yummy and the performances were wonderful. I will try to post some pics later.

HaPpY ThAnKsGiViNg EvErYoNe!

first saw this on Girltalk blog

Independance Day Party

Yesterday my parents had their care group over for a 4th of July cookout. It was a lot of fun. There was lots of eating and visiting. The kids even had a water balloon fight! I didn't join in in the fight, but I still tried to sneak in a few water balloons on the kids. They did, however, manage to sneak a few on me as well :)



Later in the afternoon, we cleaned up, most of the people left, and my family and a few other people left to go see fireworks. We went to the same spot where we have been going for the past few years. It is an area on the Elizabeth river and people come and sit near the water, in the median, and on the other side of the river. We like to get there early enough to get this nice big spot right on the water (we have gotten it every time we have gone). We arrived and spent the time relaxing, eating snacks, giving out glow-sticks for the kids, and waiting for it to get dark. At this place they eventually close off the road to cars and my brothers and sisters like to ride scooters and skateboards. Then we began to see lightning. It got worse so we decided to leave; we had a stop to make on the way back and by the time we got home it was pouring! I am glad we didn't have to walk back to the van in that! We found out today that the fireworks had been canceled because of the bad weather. Despite not seeing fireworks, I still had a wonderful 4th of July.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to the world's best Mom-Mine! I love you Mom. You do such a great job taking care of all of us and loving us. thanks!

Free Time

I actually have a weekend without any homework due on Monday! I have some longer assignments that I may work on, but I have nothing that I have to do! This turned out especially nice because I have a busy weekend! I
have a b-day party/sleepover tonight, church tomorow morning, a baby shower for someone in my care group tomorrow afternoon, and Community Groups tomorrow night! Whew. I am sooo glad I don't have a ton of homework on top of all this. I will try to post some pictures of some of these events, but it may be a little while.

To catch up here are some pictures of Easter Sunday and also of the day we celebrated Simeon's and my Uncle's bithdays. The picture above is of my Uncle. Sorry these are all mixed up between Easter and the b-day party.

The book that my Mom & Dad gave me for Easter!

This is a video of Simeon getting his b-day gift from Mom and Dad

Happy Pi Day (No I didn't misspell it)

Hi everyone, did you know that today is pi day? It is for the mathematical pi which the rounded number is 3.14 (Get it...March 14th?) You can find out more about pi day here. I did not know about this holiday until today....and I found out because my Mom made a pie and told me it was "for pie day" and to let her know when I figured it out so I looked it up and found the website above.

My Mom made some delicious pies. I have posted some pictures of them below. They are some kind of apple pie with a topping that includes nuts, caramel ice cream topping and more! Mmmmm