Back to the Old Grind

Today was our first day back at school since before Thanksgiving. I would like to say it went smoothly, but it did not. Benjamin is having surgery this week, and we had pre-op stuff at 9am. I tried to make sure the kids knew exactly what they were supposed to do while I was gone, but apparently they didn't. Mikayla has forgotten how to subtract, but she did remember what a verb was. :-) Devin had way too much free time after he was done with his work. Me thinks I need to schedule more. Katie thought that doing everything but write a thank you note and read was acceptable. In her defense, she did ponder the lay-out of the thank-you note. Benjamin came home and declared he didn't have to do school because he went to the doctors. He did complete handwriting and two math pages. Atleast we made some progress, eh? I don't imagine we'll be back into the full swing of things until next week.
I've done much thinking about what I want 2008 to be like for us. I can honestly say, good riddance to 2007. Not that some wonderful things haven't happened to our family this year, I'm just glad it's done. It'll be nice to not have to say that it'll be next YEAR before my dh comes home again. :-) I want this to be the year of the Happy House. I remember my Grandmother telling me she loved the house my parents used to live in so much, because it was the "Happy House" to her. She said that was the only time all of her kids got along. Of course, if you ask my Dad, he says it's because they were all toddlers/babies when they lived there. heehee. Anyway, I want this to be the year of the "Happy House." I'm tired of fighting kids all.the.time. I'm tired of no one talking nicely to each other. I'm tired of the selfishness. I guess I'm just plain tired. So, in order to get the changes I want, I need to focus on Character Training. I'm including myself in this, because I can see where I definitely need some character training. This is the book I'm thinking of purchasing. I'm waiting for dh to check it out before I order it. Knowing him, he'll say, "It looks fine Babe." :-) One more thing I'm going to do is put a lot more focus on Bible work in our homeschool. I'm currently trying to design a Bible Notebook that'll work for us. Stay tuned on that. :-) Of course, I've got the ever popular "lose weight" goals too. Who wants to hear about those though. lol.
Knitting....I have started the heel on the second sock, finally. I will be spending about 6 hours at the hospital on Friday, so maybe I'll have a nearly finished or completely finished sock by then! I have a couple of larger items I would like to knit this year, but I'll save that for another post.

Hallelujah, it's over.

This may sound horrid, but after two Christmas celebrations, I'm glad it's over. It was fun while it lasted, but bring on 2008. :-) The kids had a fabulous day though. They enjoyed all of their gifts, loved hearing the Christmas story, decorated cookies, made gingerbread houses and all of that fun jazz. Speaking of gingerbread houses, we are finished with kits. We had such a hard time getting our houses to stay together this year. Next year, we're either doing graham cracker houses or a lincoln log house. :-) Liberty was so excited to finally get her Dora's Talking Kitchen. This morning, she was sitting on the couch watching TV and said, "Dora's Talking Kitchen here I come!" Silly little girl.
Mike has finally made it back to his FOB. He sat at Baghdad International Airport from Saturday until yesterday. Nice, eh? He's getting back into the swing of things. They already shipped him out to the out-post. He wouldn't have it any other way though. Sitting in his room would drive him crazy.
I'm anxious to start a new knitting project, but first I have to convince myself to turn the heel on the socks I've been working on. Also, in order to start the new project, I have to do a guage swatch. I loathe having to swatch. It'll be worth it though, as I totally LOVE the new project I'm going to start. :-)

Bring Him Home Santa

I'm not fit for human conversing right now, but here's a song that brought a tear to my eye. OK, it brought more than one tear. Go have a listen.

Merry Christmas?

Today was Christmas at our house! Dh is leaving on Thursday, so we celebrated Christ's birth early! We had a fabulous day. We played games with the kids, I made a yummy ham dinner, complete with the Pioneer Woman's squash, much to my children's dismay. However, Mikayla loves it, which is why I requested it. I figure if my 8 year old requests squash, I must oblige her, eh? :-) We have lots of ham left-overs, so I doubt I'll have to cook tomorrow.

We let Devin sweat a bit. We're horribly mean. His gift cost over $200. With 5 kids, our Christmas budget has to be kept under control. So, we couldn't afford to spend anymore $$ on him. The other kids had opened a few gifts each, and he was starting to get fidgety. He said, "I wonder if I have any gifts under there?" HA! Finally, we gave it to him. He was in total awe that he got a Sony PSP. He didn't think there was any way he was getting one. It's nice to give Devin gifts...he wears his emotions in his shirt sleeve, so you always know how he's feeling. He is often emotional over gifts, which is nice...makes you feel like he really appreciates them. Some of my other kids are non-responsive about gifts. Namely Benjamin and Katie. You can never tell if they liked what they got or not. lol. Anyway, the bad thing about celebrating Christmas early? I am itching to take the tree down like nobody's business. But, I can't. The kids are opening gifts from family members on the 25th, so I have to keep it up until atleast then. I'm guessing I will be ripping it out of the living room on the 26th.

I have been knitting. I finally bound off the sock I started when I went to see the Yarn Harlot, and cast on for the match. I'm nearly ready to start the heel. Something tells me I'll be knitting lots by the end of the week.

Welcome Home!!!!!

So, as most of you know, my dh is home. He's sitting on the couch watching football, America's favorite past-time. :-) We picked him up at the airport last Saturday. His flight landed around 6:45am, we finally saw him around 7:45. Thankfully, I didn't get to the airport until 7:30ish, so we didn't wait long. I made sure to tell the kids just because they say someone in ACUs, they shouldn't assume it was Daddy. I was afraid one of the kids would go nuts and have it be a complete stranger. HA! Mike doesn't like to draw attention to himself, so as soon as we saw him, he wanted to get the heck out of dodge. I was able to snap a couple of cute pics though.

After we left the air-port, we headed to Cracker Barrel. We were all starving. Imagine our surprise when we went to pay our bill, and someone had already taken care of it! :-) After breakfast, we drove another 2 hours north to Greenville. It was Mike's Step-Mom's 60th Birthday. It was a pretty big deal. Lori flew in from Vegas, the boys drove up from Atlanta, etc. So, how could we miss it? Many thought we were crazy, including myself, but we went anyway. lol.

This week has been great. It's been so nice to talk to Mike in real life, not on the Yahoo IM. I'm so thankful we are able to have internet communications while he's gone, but the real thing is much better. :-) So far, he's taught a certain 3 year old to ride her bike, he's hung Christmas lights, he's played Army Men and we've went to the Zoo. He's also done a boat load of laundry, but that's no fun, so you'll see no pictures of that. Oh, I forgot we celebrated a birthday too! My baby boy is six now!

So, there's our week in pictures. That picture of dh with his feet sticking out of the window cracks me up. He didn't end up hanging any lights up there, as we had no idea how the heck I would get them down once he left. But, I had to snap this picture. It reminds me of the Pooh-bear episode where Pooh gets stuck climbing out of the hole and they have to push him out. HA! Tomorrow, we're taking a little trip. I can't wait. I had better pack something, eh?