More Snow!!

February 5-February 16

= 3 snow storms

= @ 25 in. of snow (hard to tell with blowing snow & BIG drifts)

= 4 snow days (NO SCHOOL!!!!)

Christmas

These are a couple pictures of the girls from Christmas Eve- another one of those yearly traditions of mine. :)

Christmas morning: The next two pictures are of the girls opening their final gift from Jeff & I. A trip to Florida. Needless to say they were very surprised, VERY EXCITED, & couldn't believe that we were going the next day! We have been planning this trip since June for the girls as a one of their Christmas gifts. It was so much fun planning it, but got to be a little bit hard near the end to keep it a surprise. But we did!!!

Saturday, we traveled to Macon, GA, and stayed at the Ramada (very nice). Then we finished traveling to Clearwater, Florida, on Sunday. We stayed with my cousin, Aleda, & her husband, Dan. Her daughters & their families came over for dinner (delicious, homemade spaghetti) and I got to meet their children for the first time. My cousin Aleda & I are 2nd cousins, so you can figure from this picture that there are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, & 5th cousins in the picture below!!!! :)

Front row: Me, Kerri, Sharree, Cynthia, Aleda, Alexa, Austin, & Shawn. Second row: Derrick, Brenda, Alex, & Pam.

Monday, December 28th: Epcot

We were in Stuart, FL, Tues. - Thurs., with our friend, Jonathan. After we finally, woke up on Tuesday, we took the girls to see the Atlantic. It was the first time for Kerri to see the ocean, & a "first" for Sharree since she didn't remember it before we moved to Ohio (she was 2yrs.). It was beautiful, but chilly.

Blowing Rocks, Jupiter, FL.

Our host, Jonathan.

While at Jonathan's, we: went to two different beaches; went to two malls; went to my friend, Rachel's house for dinner with her family & sister; and toured Hobe Sound Bible College campus with the girls & Mrs. Judy Fay as our guide.

On Friday, we traveled to North Carolina, to be with my brother & his family. We haven't seen them for a couple of years and it was the first time for us to meet my nephew, Aiden. It was a short, but sweet visit, and we so enjoyed getting to know Aiden. He had no problems adjusting to any of us. :)

Needless to say, we had an awesome time on our trip! The girls ranked their top favorite things as: #1 seeing/meeting family & friends, #2 Epcot, #3 the ocean/beach, #4 eating at lots of different restaurants.

It was definately a memory maker!!

SNOW - finally :)

We finally have snow!!!!! :) It's not a lot but it sure was beautiful this morning!

Misc. Happenings

Since I haven't posted much lately, I have added a conglomerate of pictures from the last couple of months.

Some of the annual pictures of the girls in our backyard.

The girls' class did a BBQ chicken dinner & bake sale for their student convention in March. They raised between 1/3 - 1/2 of the money needed from this fundraiser (their 1st one so far). Below is a picture of some of us pricing bake sale items. We also received many compliments on the chicken-the chefs did a GREAT job!!!

Kerri waited patiently (well, kind of) for Thanksgiving to arrive, so she could use our outdoor pumpkin as a target. She, along with Jeff, did a great job of mutilating it. :)

"Angels" in our school's Christmas program.

The "mayor" & a "wiseman" killin' time until the program started.

This is a shot of our Christmas tree. Kerri was messing around with her camera & trying to get a unique special effects shot for student convention in the Spring. This was my favorite picture of the ones that she took.

If some of you have been faithful readers of my blog, you may remember the manger scene that I posted that Jeff had "accessorized" with some of the girls' packed away Barbie stuff & added a machine gun for our tree topper angel to hold.

Well........................Kerri is now following in her dad's footsteps. McDonald's is offering their holiday/custard pies again (the didn't have them last year) so Kerri had to save the box in honor of them selling them again. You should have heard her when we noticed that they were offering them this year. :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

To all of my family & friends:

October Happenings

My cousin, Aleda, made all of these hat & scarf sets which my students LOVED! The girls & I, each picked a set, but we didn't model for a picture. Thanks for making them, Aleda!

Kerri's 14th birthday!! Peanut-butter pie......yummy!!!

Fall Colors

Just thought I would share some of the beautiful fall colors around our house. The trees in our yard & along the side of our yard always supply us with beauty each fall. The girls get tired of it, but I always take their pictures outside during the autumn season since the trees are such a great backdrop of color. Even Zeus gets in on the shots now! :) As I tell them, I don't get many pictures of them anymore (especially since they are teenagers now) so they have to put up with some of my traditions. One is the annual fall photo session & the others are professional pictures for Christmas & Christmas Eve pictures. After all I won't have too many years left to take my traditional annual pictures, so that's my great bargaining chip or pathetic mom tactic!!! :) :)

*These are posted especially for my cousin, Aleda, who lives in Florida & misses out on the beautiful colors of Fall.