New Couches!

One Sunday, not too long ago, some good friends of ours in a white SUV drove up pulling a trailer.. I actually was not home at the time as I was visiting a tiny new baby at the hospital, but I heard all about it. These wonderful people brought us 2 complete couch sets!! One has 5 pieces and the other two! They had recently moved and had gotten a old couch with the new house and had a old couch already and no room for either! They also had a old washer and dryer from the new house and they came and unloaded it all on to our outside floor! YAY!!! Papa and I measured and 'talked' and measured some more. Then we headed outside and brought one of the pieces in and placed it and then Papa brought a few more of the other pieces in and placed them! And we LOVE THEM!!! Now that we have the Christmas tree out we're trying to figure out how to 'redo' the living room and fit another piece or two in. Papa wants to keep his chair and so the spaces are limited! We can now actually seat more then 3 people comfortably in our living room!! Imagine THAT!! :)

 Thanks SO MUCH A&M!!! 

Decorations.

Christmas Decorations in the straw bale addition. The kids teddy bear ornaments hanging over the front window. 

Some of Papa's ornaments hanging over the milk sink window. The one on the right is the kids favorite.. you turn a thing in the back and it plays a tune! 

4 gingerbread men/women hang above the washer and dryer. These were all too heavy to hang on the tree and actually there were more with the stockings :) And I just looked and I have no pictures of them. Sorry. You can see some of them in the picture of J putting treats in the stockings.

My new Christmas Village.. or at least the start of one. I got some more pieces already. This top one is taken from outside with the lights on. I wanted it took look like a store window :) 

This one I turned the house around to get a good look. The little lamp posts light up too!! Now I have more people and a little bakery too! It's a bit crowded now.. but the window comes up farther on the other side and my kids are so short that they can't see over it :) SO we keep it where they can all see it! 

Meatloaf's New Trick

Meatloaf leans over one HOT fence into another HOT fence conversing with his Mother Maggie and possible half brother Bullseye. He was getting out regularly and now we know why!! Papa fixed the fence connections and he doesn't get out so much any more.. only once since then actually. 

Crafts At Grandma's House with Auntie A :)

Aunt A and C and L. We met up at Grandma's house and did some crafts together the week before Christmas. Great times and great fun!! Grandma and I worked on the baby blankets while A worked on some stuff she was making for her girls for Christmas and the kids played.

L working on getting it just right! 

E concentrating :) 

 M and J. 

R having a blast! 

The finished craft. They did 2 each! Different snowmen. 

Sneaky Little Giver :)

J wanted to give each of his siblings a candy he had bought for them at AWANA in their stockings for Christmas! So I sent all the kids in their  bedroom to play and he quickly, um tried to reach the stockings to put them in. I had to lower the curtain rod and he quickly put them in!! 

Chick-a-Dee's and Baby Smiles :)

This little Chick-a-Dee hit the window of the Travelall recently while we were spending a day at T's house. Mrs. T went out to see if it was injured and brought it in for a quick 'look see' for the kids. The boys were outside and got a look too. I saw it hit the window and watched it on the ground for a bit. One of their kittens walked RIGHT by it several times and the bird just lay very still and the cat never saw it! After the kids had all had a look she took it back out side and opened her hand it it was GONE!! :) Fully recovered! 

Here is Mrs. T explaining how to touch it and how very soft and frightened it was. 

While this was going on these two little smilers were playing on the floor in the living room. Baby T is on his tummy and Baby J on his back. Friends already! 

A Weekend Away From The Farm!!

Papa's bosses recently gave us a free night in a very nice hotel in the 'city' as a Christmas bonus. We'd gotten one last year as well but hadn't been able to use it so we lumped the two together and spent a weekend away from the farm! We had a AWESOME time!! Here are Papa and the kids, in PJ's,  watching 'How to Train Your Dragon!'  Even Baby J on the floor is watching! Thanks SO MUCH C and R!! 

The hotel room was almost bigger then our house!! It had the main room where the kids are watching the movie and this bedroom where Papa and I and Baby J stayed with a full bathroom! 

Here is a picture of the whole room! I packed in laundry baskets, much easier to pack and find stuff in. That's our swim stuff on the floor there. We went swimming and had a BLAST in the hotel pool. The door on the end wall went to a little balcony and over looked a quiet road! 

Here is the other half of our bedroom. Baby J slept in the crib! His 1st crib sleep! Mind you the 1st night he was more out of the crib then in! But the second night he slept 9 hours straight! He's does have a strange sleep pattern. The little black fan on the floor we brought from home. He's very used to white noise. The door by the mirror goes to the bathroom and the other one goes to the main room. 

The bathroom! There were 2 tubs so the boys had a bath in one and the girls in the other!! They love baths! 

The other half of the main room. 

Two sleepy little girls slept on the hide-a-bed!

Two excited little boys had a harder time sleeping on the bed in the other room! They are not used to sleeping away from each other and had to say 'goodnight' before they went to bed. 

Baby J asleep in the crib. Night 2. He kept hitting his head and hands on the metal bars so I rigged up a soft barrier.. He didn't need it though as he didn't move from this wrapped state for 9 hours! 

Papa and Baby J watched some TV together. Baby J looks like he'd rather be watching cartoons with his siblings! 

We had a great weekend. We watched several hotel movies and took the kids for a 3D movie. Papa, E, R, and I hadn't seen a 3D movie before and we LOVED it. We ate sushi and Mc D's, went out to Earls and had breakfast in the hotel restaurant! We met some friends and the 2 couples took our 9 children out for supper!  We swan, shopped (and we got pretty much ALL our Christmas shopping done!) and went driving down Candy Cane Lane to see the lights! The kids loved the pool and we're going to have to start our Sunday afternoon pool trips again now that winter is here! We didn't think about our farm 'to do' list at all and enjoyed not having to do chores morning and night. We were lazy and totally enjoyed ourselves!! B&B stayed at our place and did chores and kept the fire going! Thanks SO much you two for cow sitting for us!! :) 

The Immaculate Truck.

Papa was given this IHC truck a while ago and he was, as ever, stoked about it. He told me all KINDS of details. Very few which I actually remember! One thing I do recall is that it was, in his words, IMMACULATE!! Now to me that word means similar to PERFECT. So here I was picturing this beautiful paint job and rust free body with working windows and doors. You know a nice looking extended cab truck..something you wouldn't mind seeing everyday. Well it turns out my idea of immaculate and his are TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS!!! Here are some pictures of his new truck.. Papa got it towed to his place of work and is planning on putting some hours into it when he has some 'free' time. Ya RIGHT!! As you can see it's in pretty good shape..except the hood doesn't open or close, the passenger side door has a hole in it. The bed was VERY full of 'stuff' and there is rust on the bottom of several, if not all, the doors. Never mind the rust above the windshield and the 2 inches of dust inside. But I have to admit it looks a lot better in the pictures then in real life.. maybe because Papa insisted that it was immaculate and so my 1st look at it was rather jaded. I hopped out of the truck and burst out laughing... I teased Papa so badly about his so called 'immaculate' truck that he blushed!! LOL. Now that doesn't happen very often! Oh yeah and for ME an immaculate truck should run, you know START, idle, GO!! Drive!... umm  it has a ways go to before it lives up to Papa's dream for it.
Oh and Thanks to Giver a Yank Towing for saving me another long day dragging yet another truck out of the bush. I really truly appreciate not having to sit in that 2 inches of dust, leaning hard on a frozen steering wheel (which only have power steering when the truck is ACTUALLY RUNNING!!) wrenching my shoulder and back out of place so I don't hit a tree.. always waiting for that big nasty spider to fall down the back of my neck or that lonely mouse to scamper out from under the seat right when I'm concentrating on trying to get that one stuck tire (and there ALWAYS is one) to go the same direction as the rest of the truck. Oh the stories I could tell.... remind me sometime and maybe I'll tap a few out for you all out there but tonight I'm off to bed to snuggle with that IHC loving man who I love and who loves me. Oh the things we do for love :)

Baby J Loves His Jolly Jumper!!

Hanging out in our bedroom doorway. His playpen is on buckets so I don't have to hurt my back lifting him out of it :) Works great!

Papa has since put a hook up in the living room and Baby J LOVES it, spends hours in there jumping away!!

Note his wet shirt. He's a little Drool King! 5 kids and we got our 1st drooler! 

It's Christmas Time!! :)

Sorry these are blurry! Just a short note.. decorating a Christmas tree with 4 children is fun.. and VERY fast! I think it was TOTALLY done (even the little shifting of ornaments we had to do because R would put all hers on 2 branches!) in about 10 minutes!! It was amazing!! 

That pink thing on there we got this summer with a bag of clothes and the kids carefully put it away 'For the CHRISTMAS TREE Mom!' and remembered it and brought it out and placed it 'just so.' Not sure what the attraction is but they love it and it's their tree after all! We also searched high and low for hanging ornaments that were stars! And couldn't find any! We're going to keep looking though. We're looking for glass yellow or silver stars that hang on hooks so if you know of any please let us know! 

As you can see we got out tree up! The boys and Papa went out one Sunday after noon and walked through the lease until the found it. Mr. B and Mr. M put it in the stand for us one night while we were waiting for Papa and the kids and I decorated it reasonably soon after that. We decorated the whole house and I'm going to take pictures yet. It was a BLAST!! The kids loved the red bows and lights. I hung a lot of the heavier ornaments on tacks on the wooden window frames in the new addition. It gives it a feisty look and saves the tree the weight! I also took down all my curtains and hung stockings and ornaments and cards from them. My little Nativity that I painted years ago is on display as is the wall hanging behind the tree! The kids love the wind up musical violin Papa got as a child and also the wind up snow globe I found years ago with the Nativity in it! Papa has found me 3 bluegrass Christmas carols and we play them and just simply enjoy the season!