2009 in Review

Wow, lots of things have happened for us in 2009, we'd love to share some highs and lows.

Highs

K Got a new job

S began homeschooling

J turned 1

A started reading

Gr. Grams turned 80 we all went for a visit

K Lost 50 lbs

Grams retired...WOO HOO

Took out the wall between the kitchen and the living area and like it.

A completed her first year of Ballet and had a smashing recital

All S's siblings got together at Thanksgiving, it was fun.

Our small group multiplied and we are leading one of the groups.

NEW COUCHES (whoot whoot)

We did a serious purging of our closets. HA HA should i put this...

ALL OUR CHILDREN are OUT of OUR room!!!!! (Huge)

K-Made some awesome new friends at work.

Had a great Christmas with family.

Got to be in a blizzard and build snowmen for Christmas.

Celebrated NINE YRS of MARRIAGE!!

Found out we are expecting a baby.

S-got to spend more time with some other stay at home moms.

Girls went to Co-op.

K-ran first ever 5K and completed it without dying.

Made our little display shelf of gramas antique fiesta that you don't want to eat off of.

S-has books arranged by color in the living room.

Did Love and Respect series, ya'll should check it out.

Experienced more freedom in several areas.

Lows

Termite invasion

Ant invasion

An invasion from something I refuse to name

Plumbing issues (chuckle...not)

Said goodbye to our three chickens Lucy, Lexi and Lu Lu Leghorn

Accidentally ripped apart the garage door.

I'm sure there's more but who wants to dwell right?!! :-)

So...on to a new year, a new decade, and many other news I hope.

Happy New Year from this familyoffoxes to yours...

Good will to all...

Our family frequents the local re-sale store that is a nationwide retailer.  Can you tell I'm trying to not say their name.  We have no beefs with our local store, we love it, we go there often, as any store they do have issues with getting sizes in the right places and mens vs. womens clothing, at least from the mans point of view.

Anyway, we love to visit this store in other cities when we are visiting or passing through.  So since we're visiting my in-laws in the big big city, we thought we would check out a couple of theirs.  YACK, these are under a different management, and they have decided to organize their clothing by color, so instead of organizing by size, its by color.  So if i want a blue long sleeve shirt, i have to look through 37 different shirts to see if they have my size.  Not cool.  The other thing is they wanted 19.99 for a no name pair of black dress shoes.  What is up with the prices?  Ok, I used to sell mens shoes and womens shoes, this was years ago, but I'm pretty sure that most of the top brands are still up at the top.  I don't want to drop names on here, anyway...

Nonetheless I have to say that I was very frustrated and disappointed and just sharing.  So i appreciate our local hmm hmm "re-saler" should we call them...even more now, i guess i'll have to talk to the manager the next time we go in.

I did finally find a pair of shoes, not for 19.99, they were 6.99, and a brand that i sold at the high end department store i used to work at.  There is one more store I think we might give it a try, I'll just have to brace myself for the worst.

A funny thing that we noticed at one of the stores, in the housewares section they had 7 George Foreman grills sitting on the shelf, side by side, different sizes, shapes and colors, I almost took a picture to share, we thought it was so funny...

Merry Christmas!!!

Wow, we headed to my parents house and for the first time in 40 years there was a blizzard. Nice, so the girls had so much fun in the snow, it was awesome, cold... but awesome. Here are some pics to share.

So of course we didn't plan for snow, or in this case a blizzard, and had to run to walmart, in the blizzard I might add, and grab some "snow" gear, thank goodness for walmart, there goes this month's budget...

We did try the local Goodwill and found some boots for S, but she was the only one that benefited from that store.


I decided to shovel the driveway because we had to push the car to get it in and I wasn't sure when the snow was going to melt and I didn't want my parentals to have to face that by themselves...so at first we were just clearing, but when we came accross the 2inch thick slabs of ice I just couldn't cast them off, we had to do something with them.




 So it started as a small little igloo for one person maybe...then it expanded in to a princess ice castle, just about 4X8 ish.  Cousin C and Papa even got in on the building.  Anyway, it was fun and we got the driveway cleared which made for easy loading the next morning.





The thought did cross my mind that we could shape the snow on the outside of the walls to look like stones, and had it been at our house, I might have actually gone there, but it wasn't and we were leaving the next morning so...

Settting Up the Christmas Tree

Christmas is one of my FAVORITE TIMES of the year. We've had this tree since before we were married (we both worked at Dillards) so we got it for a real deal and the ornaments too. The ornaments you see are really glass and most have survived even with three children, they have a fun story.

One of our dearest friends had an adopted grandfather that gave her a bunch of his wifes glass ornaments that she had collected from over the years.  One Christmas, she re-gifted a bunch of them to us, they were mostly glass hearts with a few other things represented in the bunch. 

Then sometime later I found the same glass hearts at a garage sale, still wrapped up in the box, fun times, so we ended up with a bunch of hearts and we have just added to them over several years.  We have a family friend that sends us an ornament every year from Mikasa, Waterford or Lenox, it is usually a cross.  We love them, they are so beautiful, I tried to capture my favorite one up close. 

Then we decided it need some color, so the balls and icicles came.  I'm rethinking the icicles this year though.

We usually enjoy our Christmas Tree well in to the new year.