Epic Week

This past week was all about Sarah and Jesus. Sarah celebrated her baptism and faith in Christ. Then we celebrated Sarah's birthday and Jesus' birthday. Both sides of the family were here for Sarah's birthday and baptism. On Dec. 20th Sarah was baptized. She read Isaiah 40:31 and everyone was there to celebrate! We also had her birthday dinner and caramel cake (since that is her favorite). Many of friends came too! The Masts, Mabrys, Dailys, and Hansons all came. I couldn't believe the support she had. It was beautiful!

Happy Birthday Sarah

Sarah reading Isaiah 40:31

Sarah's baptism

The evening of Sarah's baptism we went to see Star Wars with Dave, Joel, Megan, Grandma, Missy, and Dave M. We left the movie loving it but admitted we'd seen it before since it was very similar to A New Hope. It was thought to be too scary for Sarah, so Erik took Jenna to see Star Wars and I took Sarah and Matthew to see the Peanuts movie on Monday.

Sarah with her godparents - Joel and Amanda

It was nice to have the California Coopers and Minnesota Coopers here. We played board games pretty much the entire week. We also went to see the zoo lights, had Starbucks every day!, watched a movie, bounced at Buckeye Bounce, got takeout Thai Orchid, made sushi, ate a LOT of delicious food, went to the Christmas Eve service, opened presents, drove around looking at Christmas lights, and told many jokes about Joel's enormous head (seriously, look at the picture and tell me it's not enormous!)

Jenna and Charlotte making bread

the brothers

All of us

The Beautiful Christmas table

Making gingerbread houses

Our whole family

Spending time with the family was so much fun. It always goes by so quickly! The kids also played really well with Charlotte and she even slept in their room a few nights. It was great to see them get along so well.

Our book club is now reading Joel's book called Override. Hopefully he will become a famous author one day and not forget about the rest of us peons.

Christmastime is here!

Christmas time is the best and busiest time of year. Having kids in school with parties, teacher gifts, performances, spelling bees, caroling, GAH! has made it a busy time. I feel like every hour of the past two weeks has been scheduled. It's all good though. It's all parties and we all like parties. And food. Can't forget the awesome food. January is for diets though.

Decorating cookies

We decorate cookies every year and had a great time this year! All the kids are good at decorating now and I don't feel like I need to touch any up. They gave the cookies to all their teachers as gifts. Since Matthew has 6 teachers, Jenna has 6 and Sarah has 1 (plus music, gym, and art teachers) we had to make a LOT of cookies.

Christmas Caroling with 5th grade choir

 Jenna is in both choir and band this year. Her choir went Christmas caroling in the neighborhood around school. Luckily it has been so warm lately so no one really needed to be bundled up. Then Jenna had her spelling bee. Jenna did well in the spelling bee. She spelled sky, problem, and shoehorn correctly. She missed hubbub. Of course I wasn't exactly sure how to spell that either. I didn't get a pic of Jenna up at the podium. I was watching her rather than taking pics ;). I think I was more nervous for her than she was!

Jenna on the end

On Saturday Red Barrel Crafts had our third craft show. This one was actually profitable! I made $322! I know it doesn't sound like a lot for an all day event but it was a lot more than we made previously. We sold several coasters, Ohio signs, all my Say Grace signs (so they are not pictured), Jen sold some of her signs too. It was a great experience.

Red Barrel Crafts

Santa

Sunday evening our church had its annual Christmas Smorgasbord and Children's program. The kids did an excellent job singing. Sarah had a solo to "Happy Birthday Jesus". It brought tears to many people's eyes! She was spectacular. Matthew had an impromptu solo. He started singing Jingle Bells really loud during poor little Sophie's Bible reading. He needs to apologize to that poor little girl! Jenna's Club 456 sang and did dances as well. Jenna knew all the words to Carol of the Bells and sang so well!

Club 456 at the Christmas program

Kidmax

Erik made this beautiful wood Christmas tree!

This weekend will be even more exciting than last weekend! Sarah is getting baptized on Sunday. All the family will be here to see it and we will celebrate her birthday. Then we will see Star Wars. What an exciting weekend we have. And all our family will be here!

Houston and the Newsboys!

Erik and I have been DC Talk and Newsboys fans for a long, long time. So when the Newsboys came here for a concert we had to take our kids. The kids love concerts. We went to see Third day a few months ago and yesterday saw newsboys. The funniest thing about the concert was that the BEST song they sang was Jesus Freak. If DC Talk ever got back together and had a concert I would cry. Literally tears. I teared up hearing Michael Tait singing Jesus Freak. I can't imagine how exciting it would be to see DC Talk. Even so, we absolutely loved the concert. 

Hawk Nelson opened for them and we knew two of their songs (on our Christian radio station we listen to).

Michael Tait singing with the Newsboys

This past week I went to Houston, TX for an Android Training class. I liked the class and the opportunity to spend several hours focused on programming. It was also a small boost to my ego that I was in a room of men who had programmed in the field for years but I did all the labs faster and with less problems than everyone else. In fact, I always finished early so I did my own side projects. I created hangman in Android and sideloaded the app on to my phone. I also made a Euchre 4/6 flip app. This app will cheer when you go from 4 to 6 points in Euchre. I actually want to create a euchre scoring app. It is so much better than the low tech cards....

I rented a Chevy Cruz. It was nice to have a clean car even it if was only for a week.

My car

 One crazy thing happened to me on the trip. On the last day one of the guys from the class staying at the hotel was sitting with me at breakfast. I asked him if he enjoyed the class. He said it was the best he'd ever taken. Wow - that's high praise.

After breakfast, I went back to my room and packed up everything. I heard a knock on the door and it was this guy, Yuan. He asked to come in. Well I thought okay, whatever. He said he wanted to tell me about this android book that helped him create apps. When I let him in, he said the best thing about this class was me. It took me awhile to understand exactly what he said because he had such a thick Chinese accent. So I didn't reply, then he grabbed me and touched my breast and tried to kiss me. I pushed him away as hard as I could and said NO! Then opened the door and kicked him out. Luckily he left. It was so creepy though. I was ready to leave as soon as I could after that. So I busted through the labs in our class that day and left without saying good bye.

Sometimes I am naive to the world around me. I always think people are nice and not creeps. Apparently I'm wrong at times!

I got home at 1:30am Friday night. Saturday morning Jenna and I had to be at a church for the Peace of Cake Ministry. We made cupcakes for kids there. The free store offers a place for people to shop for Christmas presents for their kids for free! Jenna and her friend Addie helped the kids make cupcakes while the parents shopped. It was a great opportunity for them.

Jenna and Addie serving at Peace of Cake ministry

Hawk Nelson opening for the Newsboys

The kids bought glowsticks at the concert - Matthew LOVED it

 When I got back from Houston we decorated the Christmas pipe cleaner tree. Erik loves this skinny tree. I'm okay with it but I don't love it. This is the tree that we have though. I should probably stop complaining about the tree but bugging Erik is one of my favorite things to do.

We are so excited for the next two weeks when the kids will be in the Christmas program and Sarah will get baptized. Praise God that my girl is choosing to follow Christ. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We have much to be thankful for. 

Our family is happy and healthy. Truthfully all I need to be happy is chocolate, Jesus, and zumba.

Gaming

On Thursdays we have been playing board games as a family. Sometimes Matthew does not participate but we really try to get him to join us. Jenna made the comment that she prefers playing with adults since her two younger siblings can get a little crazy when we play games. I hear ya!

Jenna will be entering the spelling bee December 15. She is a good speller so I'm hoping she can win! She is playing saxophone (just like me) and I went to the districts for spelling so hopefully she can too. Mini me. That's what it's all about!

Panda our cat is on 6 medications (including two different eye drops). He has a hematoma, an ear infection, and his eye has an ulcer that is so bad it may need to be removed. He is old enough that he might not survive the surgery either. We are hoping he pulls through this. Erik is the cat whisperer and can get him to take any medication.

 On top of this we only have one of the three hamsters left. I guess dwarf hamsters don't live long and two have died already. We have had funeral services for them and they are buried in our backyard. Jenna seems to be okay understanding that they don't live too long.

Panda

Matthew loves magnet tiles. His speech therapist brings them every week and he just endures the lesson because he knows his reward is playing with magnet tiles. He is such a builder! I just had to snap a picture of him playing with them.

Matthew and his magnet tiles

Since I'm the girl scout leader for two troops (and a little crazy) I took Jenna's 5th grade troop on an overnight to cosi. Surprisingly I got a lot of sleep. This was a fantastic sleepover. The girls got to roam around cosi and we were able to visit the planetarium. I loved it! I think they did too but those are the perks of being a leader - I got to hang around cosi ;)

December is a very exciting month for us! December 13th we are having the Christmas program at church. All three kids will be singing and Sarah will be singing a solo. We will have to get a video!

December 19 the Minnesota and California Coopers will be coming to visit us. We can't wait for their visit! December 20th Sarah will be getting baptized. Her godparents: Joel and Amanda should both be there. December 20th we are seeing Star Wars. That will be a pretty awesome day!  Then Christmas is right around the corner. It's coming soon.

In other news:

1. Our book club just finished Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. This book takes place several hundred years after the mistborn trilogy. Brandon left us with a cliffhanger at the end of this book. Now I'm reading Mistborn again. It's such a great book.
2. I'm almost done with Heartless the fourth book in the Parasol Protectorate. Now I need to find something else to read. 
3. We had Thanksgiving with Erik's parents on Monday and my family on Thursday. I love the holiday eating season. So much good food and seeing family. Now if radio stations would play Christmas music every third song instead of every song this time of year would be perfect!
4. This session teaching 5 classes has not been as difficult as I thought it would be. Creating that Excel macro to help me grade has shaved off some time. I might keep this up! 
5. Now that it has been a little colder, Erik is making fires in our hearth every day. I love it! I sit by the fire and drink my hot chocolate and read a book. Truly that is heaven! Today Erik carried so much wood that he hurt his back. Poor guy! 

Halloween 2015

Fall musings

Every day is a gift, that's why they call it the present. The previous sentence requires an "lol" afterward but I was reading about how only 35+ people write lol anymore. I guess the younger crowd uses emojis. Well I'm in the 35+ crowd so LOL!

At times I feel that life is flashing by my eyes so quickly I do need to stop and remember every day is a gift. The kids are growing so quickly. Jenna is a rock star on her saxophone. I KNOW I was not as good as she is in 5th grade. Of course she practices quite a bit. I worked hard to be first chair but I think it will come easily to her. 

The reckless abandon of childhood

play that funky music Jenna

 Matthew's favorite day of the week is Friday since he sees Mrs. Stevens. She plays a guitar and sings songs with the kids like spiderman and scooby doo. These are cool theme songs that even I know so I can sing with him. He loves her!

Mrs. Stevens at Halloween. Matthew is the green dinosaur

 For Halloween Jenna wanted to be a jellyfish. I had to use all my creative abilities to come up with a jellyfish costume. I bought a giant sombrero at Target. Then taped bubble wrap to it. The effect was somewhat jellyfish like. She was happy so I guess that is all that matters. Matthew was a dinosaur and Sarah was Hermione. She was wearing a plain witch costume but she insisted that she was Hermione. Since she finished the first Harry Potter book and had a party with her friends (watching the movie and drinking butterbeer), she has become a big fan as well. Now when we go to Harry Potter world next year she can  join us!

Jellyfish, dinosaur, witch

 I walked around with Sarah and Matthew for Halloween and Jenna walked with her gang of 5th grade girls. They got a lot of candy. Pounds and pounds of candy. Then the three girls stayed up until 6am!!! She was so tired the next day her eyes were red. I said no sleepovers for a month. GAH!

The trick or treating game

 Jen and I had our second craft show. This one was indoors but we still didn't sell much. We have one more craft show. Depending on how we do we might pack it in. Hopefully Red Barrel Crafts won't be a one hit wonder. Or maybe a no-hit wonder?

Our booth

 On Sunday our small group went to Faith Mission to serve. We brought 11 lasagnas and 3 giant pans of spaghetti and meatballs. Three bags of salad, two huge bags of rolls, over 100 cans of pop and tons and tons of cookies and brownies. We only had one lasagna left over and some cookies and a few rolls. Everything was eaten! These guys must be hungry. I can't wait until the kids are old enough to serve as well.

Faith Mission

 At the craft show I spent $30 on a sign for my front door. It is a buckeye wreath (maybe I should have taken a closer picture). I made $40 and spent $30. Not a good ratio!

The sign on our front door

In other news:
1. Our book club is reading Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson. I love anything he writes. It is witty, great dialogue, interesting magic, fast paced, and generally slave-hero storylines. I'm a big fan.
2. I've also read the first three books of the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare. This is teeny bopper fiction but it is a fun and mindless read. I'm now on the 4th book.
3. I'm also on the 4th book of the Soulless series by Gail Carriger. These are also just plain fun reads.
4. Our book club recently finished Dragonspell by Donita Paul. This book is written by a Christian author and was a fun read even if it was more of a juvenile book. I like that our book club branches out to different kinds of fiction (well, I guess it's all fantasy!).
5. My 5 classes are going more smoothly than I thought they would. I wrote a little Excel macro to help me with grading too. It's been going well!
6. Every day I eat cereal for breakfast (usually Life cereal) and I'm hungry by 10:30 every day! The past two days I ate 2 deviled eggs for breakfast and wasn't even hungry for lunch. Wow! What a difference protein makes!

Biztown

gaming with the family

I only have 2 more days left of my session off. Next session will be insane. The most online classes I've ever taught is 3. Now I'm teaching 5 and working on two developments. I'm getting paid extra for the extra classes (so Erik is happy) but I'll be busy :(. Erik suggested I give up some of my exercise classes but let's not be crazy here. I go to Bible study Monday morning, Tuesday yoga, Wednesday spinning, Thursday body blitz, and Friday zumba. I really can't give up any of that.

Magna-tiles

Matthew's favorite toy is magna-tiles. These are magnetic tiles that can be connected to build houses or any structure you want. His speech therapist brings them every week and he absolutely loves them. In more important news I prayed the sinner's prayer with Matthew. I hope he understood but it is hard to tell with 5 year olds. 

Sarah tested for her yellow belt with a stripe. She did a great job at her test. She really likes tae kwon do and is good at it.I'm glad she is following in my footsteps!

Sarah and her new belt

 We had a few cooler days so we sat by the fire, drank hot chocolate, and played uno. Uno is a great game because Matthew can play as well. I love our fireplace! So I don't mind winter too much since I can cozy up to the fire.

playing uno

Boo at the zoo - Frogwarts

 My Mom came down to visit and celebrate her birthday. The kids were very excited to see Nana. We celebrated her birthday by Erik and I going out on a date for sushi ;). Then she took the kids to school so I could volunteer for Jenna's Biztown. JA Biztown is a field trip the 5th graders take to act like adults for the day! They each have jobs, errands to run (they even have a fake kid to take to soccer practice), and they do shopping. Jenna was the editor for the newspaper which was the perfect job for her. She corrected everyone's grammar and had to read all the editorials and choose the best ones. She rated them all and the best editorial was put in the newspaper.

Happy Birthday Nana

JA Biztown - two of the businesses

 Jenna really loved being editor of JA Biztown.

Jenna as editor

Fall Hike

In other news:

• Our book club is finishing up Dragonspell by Donita Paul. This book is C.S. Lewis-like in its allegory to Christ. Maybe a little more obvious actually. It tackles questions about why there is suffering in the world and other such questions people struggle with. It's a great book. 
• Matthew's last football game is this Sunday. He likes it but doesn't love it. He and Sarah just started gymnastics at the Y. They both seem to like it quite a bit.
• Sarah and Jenna are now taking a cooking class at the Y. They both like cooking so this should be a fun class. 
• Jenna is taking tennis lessons with Grace. She is pretty good at tennis but is often hard on herself. She is doing really well on the saxophone. 
• 72 points on quiddler online

Fall Sales

Last Saturday Red Barrel Crafts had our first craft show. It was rainy, windy, and cold. And we didn't sell anything except two signs to Jen's neighbor. Because the weather was so bad not many people came to the craft show. In fact, as I was thinking about it there were probably only about 10 people who were not Jen's friends who stopped by our booth. So not a good turn out. Which is why we didn't sell and it turned into a craft fail :(. We are not giving up yet though. There is another craft show in December and we are hoping to do better than we did at this show!

Our booth

 On Friday the elementary school had its annual walk-a-thon. This was Jenna's last year - so I walked with her. I've walked with the kids every year and it is always fun! This year the weather was perfect.

Sarah's second grade class

Jenna and some of her friends on the walk-a-thon

 On the evening of the walk-a-thon Jenna's troop sold jewelry they made to donate money to Race for the Cure. Two girls in our troop lost their mothers to breast cancer. So the girls decided for their bronze award to create this jewelry to sell. They did a great job! We raised about $600!

My co-leader photo bombing

Carcassone - Matthew is playing too!

Some of my fall signs

 So I have a wonderful husband! I have been working on developing this new course that will use the raspberry pi for a semester long course project. I developed several projects using pygame, and a few with other applications but one that took a long time was getting my led to light up. I don't know why I had so many issues with this but my wonderful husband stayed up until 1am and figured out that the led light was put in backwards. There is an anode and cathode. Who knew?

it works!

Now I have 3 raspberry pis. Each one of them I've used for different applications. I have one I set up as a remote server for one of my onsite classes. My newest pi is the pi 2. It is awesome compared to the B model. I know you can put windows 10 on it but I didn't want to do it quite yet. So many possibilities!!

In other news:

1. Our book club is reading Dragonspell. This is a young adult book by a Christian author. Jenna already read it and loves that we are reading something she read before us.
2. Sarah is reading Harry Potter. I'm so proud of her! She is halfway through the book.She is doing really well in school too and making some good friends. 
3. Jenna quit playing viola and started choir instead. She didn't want to have to practice two instruments. So now she is just practicing saxophone. She is doing really well and has been practicing "Happy Birthday" to play for Nana.
4. Matthew's best friend at school is Ally Erdy. In fact, he said he will marry Ally Erdy, have 4 children, two girls and two boys, live in a 4 story house that will be bigger than his camper and be a "fixer" when he grows up. He wants to fix lights but I'm sure he will fix other things as well. He is hilarious and talks nonstop. I don't know why I was ever worried about him not talking enough.....
5. My session off is ending soon and next session will be insane. I'm teaching 4 classes next session plus developing two and doing two live lectures. I might possibly go insane. I may also have to travel to Houston - we will see.