Lexi WON!

I forgot to post that Alexis won her bid for treasurer. She found out on Monday. I know I'm a little late. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. She's very excited and I hope this will help her self esteem and social life.

I've created a MONSTER of a tradition!

So when Alexis was in 2nd grade and Merrit was in kindergarten I started making their classes treats at Christmas and cupcakes for their birthdays. Ever since then they expect to have these things at these times. Well the treats I made were white chocolate covered pretzel rods that look like snowmen. It was fine when I only had to make them for 2 classes, but this year I had the great pleasure of doing them for 4 classes! I took about 5 1/2 hours yesterday and made 100 snowmen. I feel it's quite an accomplishment and am glad that Lexi will be going into middle school so I won't have to make for her any more. Here is what they look like:
I couldn't find any pretzel rods so I had to use pretzel logs instead. They aren't as cute when they are this short, but what are you going to do? I only had a couple with their scarfs on when I took the pictures. But eventually all had scarfs too. The kids got to pass them out today. They were so excited.

Here's one for Les!!!!!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1457935458

I wanted to join in!

I hope you enjoy this little show!
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1445995481

Finals

So for the next 4 days my life is going to continue to be unfun and stressful. I'm not looking forward to taking my finals, but I can't wait to have them over and finished! I will be taking 2 on Monday and 1 on both Tuesday and Wednesday. So please pray for me because I am worried about a couple of them and I just really want to do well. I will be seeing you all very soon! :)

Hillary and Kristi I loved the dancing elves that you posted. Thank you so much for doing that because it gave me a great, much needed, hearty laugh.

I did one for us too, except for Les :(

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1441950589

O.K., I felt left out too

We didn't have an eighth person, so I just added a happy face to look at.
http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1439028703

Alexis felt left out of the last clip

http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1438905786

Check out this fun Christmas dance from the kids

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1438646604

Our Christmas Day

We celebrated Christmas today as a family. It was fun because we didn't tell the kids we were going to do that. Charlie and I got all the presents wrapped lastnight and put them out so when the kids got up they could see them. They were so surprised and excited. We only got a few presents per child this year because we decided to invest in a Wii. The kids were pretty excited about that. For the most part, they loved their gifts. Only a few of the gifts we got them had low reviews from them. It was fun to be able to have our own little Christmas as a family before we head back to Michigan to have Christmas with the rest of our family. Can't wait to see everyone.

Student council debate

Alexis will be debating tomorrow, at her school, to be elected as treasurer of the school's student council. She is up against two other kids, all fifth graders. She's really excited about it and we all hope she wins. I plan on going to the debate tomorrow to give her some family support. She won't find out if she wins until Monday. We hope you can keep your thoughts with her.

I am not coming home for Christmas

Last night the fuel pump when out in my car. And Les and I where hoping to have money for me to come up at less after Christmas but it will not happen now. SO i am sorry to everyone. I wanted to see you all. I just want to say Hillary and Kristi WOW your kids are growing so big. I will call you the day you have the party so we can all talk. I love you Jocelyn

We put an offer on the house this afternoon. Now we just wait to see how the sellers respond. I'll let you know. Keep you fingers crossed for us.

After we saw the first one, we found this one

This was pretty funny too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghs0nNF1YZ4

My sister, Jana, posted this to the Hutchinson blog

My kids thought this was hilarious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

Snow Day!

We had an ice storm come through last night. It was bad enough to cancel school for the day. They didn't call it until late though so Charlie had already gone in to work. He didn't mind though. It allowed him to get some grades put into the computer. He has a doctor's appointment tomorrow and will have a sub for the day. Going in this morning helped him prepare for that too. It looks like he has a broken finger. It happened at wrestling practice. He went to a family doctor who has sent him to an orthopedic doctor. That is the appointment tomorrow. He is suppose to be able to confirm if it's actually broken. He's had the injury for about 3 weeks now. He thought it was just dislocated, but it hasn't gotten any better, in fact it's still pretty swollen and painful. We have decided to make an offer on that house today. I haven't called out realtor to make the appointment yet though. We had tentatively set it up for 6 pm but now that we don't have school, we might be able to do it earlier. I'll let you know how it goes. I've also posted some pictures from our second significant snow storm. It happened last week. If you can tell from the pictures, the snow was up to Jaxson's mid-thigh. It was pretty deep, but they didn't call off school. I have a feeling it takes a huge storm for them to school around here.

The newest house on our list

http://public.mlswis.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?20071207043635923222000000&id=2
Check out the house we saw today. Follow this link and it's the very first house in the list. We really like it and are seriously thinking of making an offer on it. Let me know what you think.

Even more snow!

Well we got about 3 more inches last night. I swear I have never lived in this much snow before. I asked a guy from our ward lastnight if this is typical for this area. He said no, not really. I was so relieved because I'm not sure I could survive several years of living through winters like this one. I only hope that the whole winter isn't like this past week has been.

I dumped our realtor a couple days ago. A lady from church hooked us up with an old family friend who is a realtor. He is showing us a house tomorrow. I'm not overly impressed with his service yet, so we'll see how tomorrow goes. I'm kind of excited to see this house. It is literally just up the road from Charlie's school. You can see it from the front porch and it has a quarter of an ache of land with 3, potentially 4, bedrooms. I just hope it's in good condition.

I also sent a letter to the realty agency who I am fighting with to get that money back from. In the letter, I informed them that I have three other witnesses besides myself who saw that the water had not been turned on by the plumber. I told them if they didn't refund my money that I would go to the Better Business Bureau, file a formal complaint with the realtor's association they belong to and take legal action. I gave them until Tuesday next week to respond. I hope they just refund the money without my having to do anything else. This is really just annoying to me. I can't believe that $175 is such a big deal to them, it is to me, but why would it be for a business who deals with thousands of dollars a day?

Lexi has been facing some bullying issues at school. It's been going on for about a month now. She's trying to be a real trooper about it, but I can tell it's starting to wear on her. I'm going to have Charlie give her a father's blessing, but if you guys could send some prayers her way I think it would help. At first there were only a couple kids making fun of her having a big foreheard. However, this week, someone wrote some bad things about her on the stalls in a bathroom. They called her a B.... and a Mother F..... She doesn't understand why and feels bad. The principal is involved, but they don't know who did it so really don't have anyone they can punish. They spoke with Lexi's class as a whole, hoping that whoever it is is in the class, and told them how inappropriate it was. But that's about all they can do. I will probably try to meet with the principal if any more happens. I don't want Lexi to start dreading going to school, and I don't want her to start to withdraw into herself. I'm going to try to get her, and all the kids, in a different, better school district next year. They are a neighboring district and have open enrollment. I'd have to transport the kids there, but that's not new to me. They only have limited space though so I'm hoping they have room for my kids, at least Lexi at the very least.

On the Farm Home Front

Everyone of you know that Dad only had a job for 3 weeks but it was better than nothing. I feel very blessed that we didn't buy a house there. I am now trying to hold down two part time jobs, nineteen hours at MSU Extension office and some at LCC. I really don't know when I will know my official hours at LCC, hopefully soon. I am doing as much as I can and Dad is doing a wonderful job at being Grandpama again. During his spare time he is keep up with the house work, and job hunting.

Sabrina has found an apartment just north of Grand Rapids and moved over this past weekend. So hopefully she can get the sleep she needs now. And she will not have that long drive on snowy roads everyday.

I just completed my last year of being the Howell Ward Nativity coordinator. It was a wonderful year. I had more help setting up and taking down than I did in any of my other previous years. The weather was yucky so it made attendance down but the display was just beautiful. I am truly amazed on how the Lord was always giving me ideas on how to set up the display to keep it beautiful, interesting, and different. I'm not creative when it comes to decorating but I can do it without any problems when I work at the nativity display. Thank you Heavenly Father.

JT was home with us for three days at Thanksgiving and things went fine. He will be home with us for about five day at Christmas time. He just made level 3 this week so let's hope he can hold on to it this time. He has came a long way but there is still a ways to go.

That's our life in a nut shell and I don't have much more to say except I am getting excited about having everyone home for Christmas.

Oh Christmas Tree!!!!

Today we finally put up our Christmas Tree. The boys and I set it up this afternoon and when Les got home, at 7:40pm, we decorated it. Les is taking a professional development class, that is why he was sooooooooo late.

They were such great helpers. Logan kept looking at Bradyn when I was trying to get a picture, he was just so excited.
Finally we got him to look our way. They had so much fun putting everything up. Their excitement really set a nice tone in our home tonight. I couldn't help but feel very happy.

Late Thanksgiving Pictures!!!

This year for Thanksgiving, it was just us. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Actually, it was quite nice and relaxing. We had our Thanksgiving at lunch time and then in the afternoon we went to the movies and saw the Bee Movie.



Parker took this picture of us, isn't he just the great little photographer. I thought that I looked pretty good :)

More Snow!

We are in the middle of our second significant snow fall right now. It started at about 4 pm and now it's about 7 pm. Alexis was suppose to have an Activity Day activity tonight but on my way to take her there I slid a couple of times, one slide was pretty scary so I turned around and went home, much to her chagrin. The first snow fall was a slippery one too. The snow just seems to be pretty wet and heavy. Not what I was used to in Michigan. I just hope that not all snow falls here are like this. The streets are pretty slippery even with just about an inch or so of snow on them. I won't want to go anywhere whenever it snows. That won't be a good thing for me. I can't deny though, that it would be fun for school to be canceled tomorrow. It'd be nice to have Charlie home.

I dropped our realtor today. After much discussion, Charlie and I decided that we should try to use a realtor who is from Racine instead of the guy we were using who is based from the city just south of Racine. I don't like telling people bad news so it wasn't fun for me to tell him we were letting him go, especially because he is a really nice guy. Thank goodness he didn't try to talk me out of it or try to make me feel bad. He was pretty nice about it. Which kind of made it a little more sad for me. I'm glad I did it though and I look forward to working with our new realtor. He is a long time family friend of a family in our ward. The wife told me that she threatened him that he needs to get us a really good deal. I hope that pans out.

So I'm actually reading a book right now. I know, I know, it sounds weird, but it's true. It's a book that a good friend of mine recommended several years ago and I just now was able to put my hands on a copy of it. It's called The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but I highly recommend it to one and all, especially those who are married. But you AND your spouse really should read it. Even if you don't think you need help in your marriage, it's still fun to read and try to figure out which love languages you and your spouse speak. I'm really enjoying it. I've discovered that I speak several different love languages, but Charlie primarily speaks the love language of physical touch with some dialects of quality time thrown in too. It would be cool if we all could read it and then we could talk about it. I just checked it out of the library. You should too.

My dad was released

Just thought I'd pass along that the Westland Stake has a new stake presidency and it doesn't include my dad. He's been anticipating his release for a little while now and I think he has some relief now that it has happened. Now he can finish his schooling without that added distraction. I don't know who the new people are except for the new 1st councelor was previously the 2nd councelor. His name is Bro. Christenson and I knew him from before the Plymouth and Northville wards split. The other two members of the presidency are also from the Plymouth ward. I thought that was kind of interesting.

It's December

I don't have anything important to say, I just wanted to be the first to post something in December. So it has snowed most of the day, and I am so excited for the snow. Jamie, Kristen, and I finally set up our Christmas tree this evening while listening to Christams music and watching the snow fall outside. I am ready for this semester to be over and Christams to be here so that I can see all of you again. I love you all and I will see you in a few more weeks!!!!!