Friday morning I left with 3 very good friends for a wonderul overnight getaway!!! We had sooo much fun!!! I didn't get as many pictures as I had hoped but here are just a few. We went to Ikea and got some really great deals. We went out to eat, played Phase 10, sat in the hot tub and laughed until we hurt!!! I am so blessed to have such awesome friends!!!!

 

As some of you know we are leaving in about 1 1/2 weeks for a mission trip to Haiti!! I thought I would show you so far what we have to pack!!! Is this amazing! Lots of this has been donated. This is just what we have. There are 13 team members in all and some of them have been gathering other items as well.  

Here are some sweet girls and one VERY naughty little boy!!!

 

Last night we had some friends over preparing for the next Haiti trip. Not sure how much preparing went on but the kids sure had fun!! Here are a few pictures of our night. The kids had so much fun with dress up!!

Just look at these slackers!! Hee (I know Julie will kill me for this!! )






Are they not precious!!! 

We have a wonderful group of friends and once a month one of the couples gets to go out on a date and the other couples get together at one house with all the kids. It is a lot of fun. Last night it was Jeff and Michelles turn to go out and we had chicken Lickn! Yum!! Anyways we had 17 kids at our house. Here are just a few at the dinner table! It was cute because we kind of have our own United Nations. At this table we have Russians, Haitians, Guatemalans, Americans, Chinese, The oldest is 14 (smart boy was not there last night!! :) ) the youngest is 2 and all ages in between!! What fun!! We played 80's trivia until almost 11:00pm! What a blast!!!!

 

My friend Lydia is adopting two girls from Ukraine and she had these beautiful bracelets made. They are $90 a piece. She has 7 left and I would love to try to help her sell these.

You can get in touch with Lydia at jltarr6@insightbb.com If you have a problem getting in touch with her please let me know and I can put you through to her. tearsofjoy@highstream.net 

I am a great Aunt!!!!!!!!!

Last night around 6:00pm my great neice was born!!

Her name is London Bailey and I know I am partial but she is such a cutie!!!

Congrats to Brandon and Carrie!!! We cannot wait to meet her in a few weeks!!! 

We had such a nice New Years Eve. We had some good friends come over with their 3 children. We made homemade pizzas and the kids had a blast putting their own together.

 

I did not get many Christmas pictures. These are my girls and my 2 nieces at my moms. she got them all matching PJ's. They all looked so cute.



My two boys and my two Nephews. 

We will be gone a lot between now and Christmas day so I wanted to take this time to wish all my friends and family a wonderful Christmas!!!!!

May Christ always be the center of your life!!! 

These are a little dark but I could not resist posting them. They will hate me for this but it is worth it!!

Here is Jeff and Nate Racing on the Bungee bounce toy. It was pretty funny!!!!!!

 

Heather as she fell off the Velcro wall.

A huge Thank you to our good friend Jeff Janssen who braved this birthday party with us!!! We are very grateful to him!! :)
Here he is with Grace trying to throw her up on the Velcro wall.

 

Faith and Katie

I am bummed that the pictures on the slides turned out a little fuzzy. This was a cute on of Grace. What happened is just as I snapped the picture caleb came down the slide and the camera tried to focus on that motion instread of Grace lying there.

Here is Nikolas on the Velcro wall. Nate left him up there a while and we kept teasing him that we were going to leave for Ice cream and come back later. He was soooo stuck. 

Hannah stuck on the velcro wall. She wasn't so sure about being in that position.

Here is Katie on the Velcro wall. We did learn that if you have long hair you really need to keep it pulled up because it can get caught in your suit. Sorry Grace. We also decided that we needed on of these walls in our house for if the kids need a time out. You can but a suit on them and stick them up on the wall and there is no where they can go!!!

I actually have a movie of this and I know I will not get it to work but its a great one with Nate on the bungee toy. 

Yesterday my sweet little boy turned 10. 9 years ago this today (Dec 20th) a little 12 month old boy named Vasily was placed in our arms at the baby home. We were first time parents and had no idea what to do with this little person. 9 years later we still do not know what to do with him but we sure do love him!!!

For his birthday this year he wanted to go to crazy bounce. If I can get my pictures to work I should have some to share.

Mr. Janssen graciously came with us and I even got a few pictures of him on some of the bounce toys. I couldn't hardly get any on the slides as they were just moving to fast and the pictures would get blurred.

we went to Frankemuth This weekend for 1 night and had such a good time. We went to Bronner's which is the World's biggest Christmas store and believe it or not people come from all over the world to visit. Of course everyone of us forgot our cameras so Aunt Robin to the rescue with her camera phone.

First time Hannah has ever seen santa. Was she excited!!!

Katie's picture did not turn out very well and of course Caleb is petrified of anything that is in a costume.