Saturday, December 29, 2012

Dolls, Unicorns, and boxes

Leading up to this Christmas was quite a bit of excitement. Every day Jenna asked how many days until Christmas since she was hoping for an American Girl doll. Christmas is magic to a 7 1/2 and 5 year old (note: Matthew wandered off in the middle of opening presents so he wasn't up for it). Prior to Christmas, Sarah's preschool put on a Christmas play. Sarah had a speaking part as a sheep. She told Joseph and Mary "welcome to my home". We practiced her line quite a bit before the performance and she did great!
Sarah's Christmas program at preschool. She was a sheep
 This year Jenna's school had a "holiday party". Last year they did not have a holiday party but rather had "multicultural day".

Lame

I'm glad they didn't do that again. Instead they had a normal holiday party including a race - boys against girls to see who could put their puzzle together the fastest. It was a nail biter but the girls won!
Jenna's class
Christmas Eve I received a treat. I was supposed to work in the nursery and my friend Tricia filled in for me. So I was able to attend the Christmas Eve service.

On Christmas morning we were treated to a nice warm fire and smiles as the kids opened their gifts. Jenna did receive her American Girl doll and was ecstatic. Since the doll was so expensive it was her only present besides stocking stuffers but she didn't seem to mind. She loves the doll and named her Rose. Sarah got several presents but her favorite appears to be a barbie with a unicorn. Matthew didn't care about any of his presents and spent more time playing with boxes.
Christmas morning!

The beloved American Girl doll

Barbie and unicorn

a box
After Christmas we went to my parents house for a huge Christmas dinner. It was nice to see all my family and celebrate Christmas with them. We left the kids with them for two and a half days and took a mini-vacation ourselves! We saw the Hobbit at the Movie Tavern. I LOVE the Movie Tavern. The food is really good especially the ultimate cookie we got for dessert. It is 3 warm chocolate chip cookies with a toasted marshmallow in the center of each. Yum!

87 points on Quiddler today with a 10 point bonus!

Monday, December 17, 2012

The newest Cooper

Jenna and Sarah finished up their gymnastics classes for the year. They really enjoyed it and I took some pictures at the last class. During one class Matthew pulled the fire alarm and a police officer had to come and talk to us. It was hilarious since he talked to Matthew so seriously "now you know son, you can't pull the fire alarm." Right. It was like deer in the headlights.
Sarah at gymnastics

Jenna at gymnastics
 From Dave and Becca for Christmas I got a salad spinner. Yipee! I'm so excited they knew exactly what I wanted :). Now we can have fresh, yummy salad from our lettuce in the garden!
Salad spinner! 
 Last weekend we went to see Grandma and Grandpa in West Virginia and came back with a new family member! We brought back Panda, their black and white cat to see if he would like it here. The kids are so ecstatic. They missed Scruffles so much and are so happy to have Panda. He is 16 years old and is fine with the kids smothering him.
Panda

The kids in their cute Christmas outfits
77 points on Quiddler today

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Sarah's unicorn party

On Saturday Sarah had a unicorn birthday party. They decorated cupcakes, did a craft, colored and played games. The kids had a great time. You can see Sarah and Matthew "cooking" with me before the party. They love getting messy.
Matthew and Sarah cooking
 Sarah's party was a hit and she was excited about her new toys. We played a fishing game where Erik sat under a card table and the kids took a fishing pole and "fished" for prizes. The fishing pole was a stick with a string and clothespin attached. They LOVED this game. Later Jenna gave it away that Daddy was under the table but it was still fun.
Sarah's 5th unicorn birthday party
 After the party we found someone eating all the leftover cupcakes!
After party sweets
 On Sunday our church had the annual Christmas smorgasboard. There were several tables of food and we all ate until we were stuffed. The kids performed a great Christmas program. You can see Jenna in the back but Sarah is hiding behind another little girl. The kids sang "Happy Birthday Jesus" and "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas". It was adorable! Here is a video of the kids. You can see Sarah bopping to the music towards the end. The older kids put on two plays. One was a family feud game and the other was the Christmas story. The whole program was really good.
Church Christmas program
In other news:

  1. I am taking Krav Maga. This is a type of martial arts at which I am exceedingly bad. I have taken 5 classes so far though so maybe I should not give up so soon.
  2. Our coo* book club is reading the final Mistborn novel. I really love this series and am excited we are reading the final book.
  3. I finished Silverthorn the 3rd book in the Riftwar Saga and am now on A Darkness at Sethanon. Each book gets better and I am enjoying this one.
  4. Jenna is on the third book in the Rose trilogy by Beverly Lewis. She has really enjoyed reading these books even though they are adult level. She amazes me at her reading ability!
  5. Erik bought some under armor clothes for his tough mudder run in April (cold!!) and went running today. He really likes the shirt he wore even though it was pricey.
  6. My semester is just finishing up this week. I'm loving my database class! Next session I'm teaching advanced C++. I've only taught this class online so I'm excited to teach it onsite.
63 points on quiddler online

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Dave and Scruff

In my previous collage I didn't have a picture of David and Scruffles. Since David was his savior I really wanted to include a picture. Here is a picture of David and Scruff from back in college when he just found him. Back then we called him OBOC = orange blob of catness
Dave and Scruff
I'm still having a rough time with this and crying too much. Especially when Jenna wants to pray for God to raise Scruffles from the dead.


Thursday, December 06, 2012

Goodbye Scruffles

Last night as we were reading stories to the girls we heard Scruffles meowing loudly. Erik went down to check on him because we thought he was stuck somewhere. He seemed fine. Then about 9pm I noticed he was walking funny like he couldn't use his back leg. Our vet was closed so we found Rascal Animal Hospital, a 24 hour hospital.  They were fantastic and we could tell they really cared about Scruff.
Scruff

Erik stayed there until 1 am while they did tests to see what was wrong. We were hoping it was a stroke since he could recover from that. The other possibility of cancer meant there was less of a chance he would recover. We left him overnight so they could watch him and determine if he was improving.

Early this morning the hospital called and said he was getting worse and that we should come soon or we wouldn't be able to say goodbye. We hurried to the hospital to say goodbye to Scruffles. We almost didn't make it - he lifted his head when he saw us but barely moved at all.

Scruff



Scruffles was approximately 16 years old. David found him at Hocking Hills eating out of a trash can in April 1998. He has been a member of our family since then and we loved him dearly. I've pretty much cried all day. It is hard to lose someone you love so much!

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Twenty facts

Since Joel posted 25 facts I thought I would do the same thing as Joel. Because basically, I'm a copy cat.


  1. I'm not short. I don't know why everyone thinks so.
  2. I do not know how to do makeup or my hair even though I'm well into my 30s.
  3. Gangsta music is fun and I really wish I could dance hip hop without looking like Elaine
  4. Most of the time I would rather live with a headache than take tylenol. I'm getting better though about taking medicine.
  5. If I have a lot of errands and am really busy I will still come back home and make myself a sandwich or take a pb sandwich with me. I tend to forget about fast food.
  6. For Christmas my Mom bought me fancy peanut butter. My day isn't complete if I don't eat some peanut butter.
  7. I like to sweat every day. Even if I just do a few exercises for 10 minutes.
  8. Since 1995 I've kept a prayer journal and have only missed writing in it probably a month's worth over the past 17 years.
  9. I'm not a fan of pop or french fries. I think this makes me un-American.
  10. My weird social anxiety is raising my hand in class. In my language arts class in high school I kept a log of every time I raised my hand since participation was part of the grade. I wanted to prove that I had participated. 
  11. I really hate looking or feeling stupid (see #10).
  12. I played saxophone from 5th - 12th grade and think the tenor saxophone has the most beautiful sound of any instrument.
  13. I worked at an ice cream shop after high school. Any mistakes in an order we were able to eat. Someone ordered a peanut butter shake and then changed their mind. I still remember my elation at that!
  14. Both Erik and I started at OSU as chemical engineering majors. I changed my major to mechanical engineering and am glad I chose this major - it was fun.
  15. In the 8th grade I found the science fiction section of the library and never looked back.
  16. In high school my friend Susan and I decided to be vegetarians. This lasted 3 years for me. She is still a vegetarian. 
  17. I am afraid of basements. 
  18. My first concert was Def Leppard.
  19. I am a cat person.
  20. I'm going to stop at 20 because I really can't think of anything else interesting about me.