Masks

B made these Picasso inspired African masks for the 5th grade product market. I thought they turned out great!

This is the finished product after they were painted.









We used cardboard shirt boxes for the masks, as well as the nose and also a piece on the back to help them hold their rounded shape. He drew on the facial expressions, then used colored tissue paper to build up the facial features.

This is what they looked like after that step.









There is about 15 man hours involved in the making of them. He is going to sell them for $8 each and is hoping to make a big profit off of them!

I wish he would've had time to make one for me! I love them!!

Overnight Trip to Branson

A couple weekends ago, we headed out of town right after the kids got out of school on Friday and headed to spend the night in Branson.

First stop: We went straight to Silver Dollar City to see the lights!

We always get season passes to SDC, but the last time we made the trip to see the lights was when Gracie was 1. We were WAY overdue for a trip to see all the Christmas beauty!

Here's me and the kiddos. It was pretty cold (below 30 degrees), but we bundled up really well and we were all quite comfortable the whole night.

Waiting to see the Frosty show :)

Gracie rode the carousel.

On Saturday, we had a few hours to hang out in Branson before we had to head back towards home because we needed to be at church before 5pm.

We had a yummy room service breakfast and lounged around the room for a couple hours before checking out and heading to the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum.

Here's Rhett on a homemade flying contraption.

Braden, the undersea diver.

World's Tallest Man

World's Heaviest Man

Largest ball of twine

We really enjoyed Ripley's and stayed for about 2 hours. We had a couple hours left before we needed to head back home, so we opted to check out the Titanic museum as well.

We weren't allowed to take any pictures in the museum, but it was great! We all really enjoyed it! We spent 2 hours there and it was an environment where the kids needed to be very well behaved and quiet. I was so proud of them! After spending 4 straight hours walking around museums, they were absolutely wonderful. The Titanic museum was very educational and informative and it was a place that Jason and I could've probably spent all day in really looking at and reading every detail, but we needed to head out, so we enjoyed it as much as we could in the time that we had.

We were only away for about 25 hours, but it felt like we were gone much longer than that. We all needed a little getaway and came back refreshed and ready to get back into our normal routine.

Decorating for Christmas

We put up our Christmas decor the weekend after Thanksgiving. I LOVE to have the decor up and have the twinkly lights on all the time. Rhett took all of these pictures of us having fun and putting up our decorations.

Pippa's first Christmas :) She sure is a good girl, letting the kids tote her around all the time!

Work in progress!

I didn't take any photos of the "after", but you can look at last year's post because the main things look the same this year!

Did I mention how much I love Christmas?!

Little Rock Field Trip

At the end of November, I was able to be a chaperone on Braden's class field trip to Little Rock.

We went to the State Capitol and the Clinton Library.

I was so excited to go because I'd never been to either place!

Here's B in front of the Capitol... squinting in the bright sun!

 The Capitol is absolutely beautiful. Loved the rotunda.

 They were beginning to decorate for Christmas, which made it even better!

 Supreme Court

 Me and B on the front steps

 The Clinton Presidential Library

 B in front of President Clinton's Car

 My personal favorite was the exact replica of the Oval office. I wish I could've gone in and just sat and enjoyed it for a long while. It was gorgeous and I loved hearing about some of the more interesting items in the room.

This was B's favorite exhibit. It was a lego exhibit. The artist makes amazing art out of thousands and thousands of legos. It was incredible! This is just one of the many pieces.

The Clinton Library was wonderful. I enjoyed it so much. I could easily spend an entire day there looking over every single thing. I can't wait to go back again someday!

We had a great day! I carpooled down with 5 other moms, of which each of their sons are B's BFFs, so it was especially fun! I had a group of 4 boys to walk around with all day and we had fun. Braden loves to have me around and took care of me all day; making sure I was right there with him and keeping up with them. He even invited me to eat lunch with him and his buddies and gave me his spot on the picnic blanket and sat in the grass instead. What a wonderful young man, if I may say so myself :)

I can't believe this is his last year in Elementary School! I'm glad we are doing lots of fun stuff and enjoying it to the fullest!

Still catching up

Our little doggie Pippa is such a snuggler. Here she us snuggling on the couch with me.





This is her afternoon perch. She looks out the window for the kids every afternoon!





I've been doing a lot of catch up on my scrapbooking lately. I keep all my stuff in this armoire and it's easy to pull out when I want to work on them. Here's what it looks like when I'm working on my books. A mess! :)





Rolling pumpkins down the big hill at Uncle Guy and Aunt Cathy's house after Thanksgiving dinner.





I love the twinkling lights all over the living room!!





Oh, look! A soccer ball at his feet. What a surprise :) Yes, even in the house.





"no dogs were harmed in the making of this photo"





I came out of my baking hiatus temporarily to make these chocolate-caramel beauties for a party. I also made white cake with vanilla buttercream. 8 dozen in one night, whew! But they sure were yummy!

Tuesday Night Randomness

My laptop still isn't working and I still haven't been carving out time to update my blog. :(
Here's a few pics for another catch up attempt.

1. This was at Braden's Shakespeare performance. Poor Rhett, he had a hard time finding Shakespeare interesting enough to stay awake after the first 2 hours of performances.

2. Here he is taking a photo for his photography contest entry. He seriously rocked it out-- his picture was so awesome! And, yes, the cape does help the photographic quality :)

3. This was Gracie and Pippa after we picked her up from being boarded at the vet for the weekend. Gracie had missed her and wanted to hold her so bad, so I let her sit with her on the back seat. They are best pals!

16 Months

Today marks 16 months on the waitlist for our baby girl. 16 months is a LONG time to be waiting "in limbo" and not knowing when this part of the journey will come to an end. Two weeks ago, the average wait time for a referral had gone up from 16.5 months to 17 months, and the average time is expected to continue to grow due to the fact that they are not expecting referrals to begin to be ready any faster any time soon.
Just a couple weeks ago, I thought we were finally catching up to that average time and I was confident that we'd receive our referral before Christmas. Now, it appears that we will be waiting AT LEAST another month or two. Thank you for continuing to pray for our family...

Our family is enjoying this Christmas season very much. We are keeping busy, but we are also making memories and spending as much time together as we can. This month is filled with family and friend gatherings and, of course, remembering the reason we celebrate Christmas in the first place. CHRIST! Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. For in Him, we have abundant HOPE and JOY and PEACE!

I pray that all of us will focus less on the material aspect of this season and, instead, focus our hearts on Him... that we may realize and count EACH and EVERY ONE of the blessings that we have in our lives...from the big to the small... and that we may be ever thankful...and that we may REJOICE in God's goodness, mercy and grace in our lives.

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 2 Corinthians 9:15