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.