Sarah's Pre-K Christmas Show

Sarah was a toy soldier in her Pre-K show. It was really cute! It was a toy shop theme. There were toymakers and they kept getting the toys and winding them up. My favorite part of the show was when they sang Jingle Bells in sign language. Sarah had been singing it at home, but I loved hearing the whole class sing it.

Here is Sarah with her friend, Sawyer. He's such a handsome young man!!

Mommy and Sarah:Sarah with Nea and Ed:

The Christmas County S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G Bee!

This year, I actually helped out with the kids Christmas musical. I had NO idea how much work went into these productions. It was fun, but there are so many little details.

This was a year of firsts. This was Sarah 's first year to be in the musical and Ethan's first year to have a part. Ethan only had a few lines, but I thought one of them was so important. He got to say "This year, if you have asked Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, the Bible says he's written your name on the palm of His mighty hand!"

Ethan said he didn't want to do the musical next year, but I told him he wouldn't feel like that next year. The kids are just worn out by the time it's over. The songs will be branded in my mind forever. It was fun, though!

Putting up the Christmas Tree

We always put the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving at my house (when I was growing up). I don't really remember black friday? Did we always have it? Anyways, we got it put up today. It just doesn't feel right if we wait any later. I love listening to Christmas music while we are decorating the tree and the house. We had a good time.


Tonight, Elf is coming on, so we'll feel even more in the spirit. It's a new favorite at our house.

Speaking of elves, we have a new elf at our house. My mom gave the kids The Elf on the shelf. It's an elf that watches the kids to see if they are good or bad, then flies to let Santa know. When he comes back, he will be in a different location each morning. The kids will get up and try to find him. When named him Buddy. Ha ha!

Giving Thanks

I wish I had more time to keep my blog updated. I mainly update it when a big event happens.

Anyways, I've been very emotional this week as we have been doing a family study called "Thanksgiving Treasures". It's the same story we always hear about the pilgrims and the indians. My children have been learning it at school in the past week, so it is very fresh to them. It's been nice because they can relate. What they can't teach in public school, however, is that the pilgrims were Christians and that God led them to America, how they prayed about it, and how God answered their prayers. We have the opportunity each night to say what we are thankful for, related to the story. For example, tonight's story was on health and how some of the pilgrims became sick and died. So, we said what we were thankful for, health-wise.

We received a letter in the mail today that reminded us of what we are thankful for. I have been hesitant to share this story so publically, but felt compelled to today, after the letter and the bible study.

My husband (Scott) had an accident on October 17th of last year. He had just purchased a motorcycle a few weeks earlier, something that I and his parents were very worried about. He wanted to use it to commute back and forth to Atlanta, with the gas prices being so high. I was teaching when I got a call from him. He was frantic, the paramedics were there and they made him hang up the phone. I didn't even know where he was or what hospital he was taken to. My mom called around and found out that he had been airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center. Although this was a very emotional time for us, we are very lucky that Scott was not hurt worse. He had some head and neck injuries, several cuts and scrapes on his arms, and the pedal tore his leg up. He had to have internal staples and 30-40 stitches. Thank GOD, that was it.

Scott was in alot of pain for months. Honestly, he was extremely bitter at the man who had pulled out in front of him. The man and his wife called a few times and Scott was very short with them.

Then came the bills. The first bill we received from the hospital was over $32,000. We quickly found out that the man had the minimum insurance, $25,000 liability. We were panicked, so we asked a lawyer to represent us. Several months later, we sat down with our attorney, who told us that the other man's attorney wrote a letter stating that he was a retired, 76-year-old minister, with no assets, other than his house. This really hit me. 76 years old and worked all his life. Scott's dad is 76. I kept thinking of his parents. I would even ask Scott "what if this happened to your dad?"

We let our attorney know that we did not want to keep pressing. On August 24th, our attorney called and told us he had settled. He had asked for the man to give a certain amount, in addition to the insurance. Scott said that was fine and that we were just ready to get it over with.

The next morning, on the way to church, I told Scott that I had something on my mind. I asked him to take me seriously. Scott was still bitter and I was worried he would be upset with what I was about to say. I told him that God had layed it on my heart that we could not accept this man's money. It was his money. I asked Scott to please pray about it and not to answer me right away. I also told Scott that God didn't want us to mail the money back. He wanted us to go to the man's house and take it back. Scott said "you're not going to believe this". I asked him what. He said "not even 2 minutes after I hung up with the attorney, I had this feeling that we shouldn't keep the money". I was shocked. Really shocked.

Our preacher was doing a walk through the bible at this time and the sermon was on Philemon. Jeff specifically talked about branding with your tongue or your thoughts and about setting people free. Scott and I just couldn't believe it, we were like "OK GOD".

As soon as we received our portion of the check from the attorney, Scott called Raleigh, the man who hit him. He asked if we could come over. Raleigh was so nice and said he couldn't wait to see us. It was an amazing night when we went over. Before we even mentioned the money, Raleigh apologized profusely and his wife told us about how they had prayed for Scott for all of these months. The most amazing part was not when we gave them the check, but when Scott told Raleigh that he was the one was sorry, sorry for branding him as a bad person. It was very freeing for all of us. We stayed for awhile. They gave us a tour of their house, which had been handed down for 5 generations. It was a really neat evening.

So, back to the letter. We received a Thanksgiving card from Raleigh and his wife, Sybil, today. There was a letter inside. Here is what the letter said:

"Hi, Happy Thanksgiving! We've got so much to be thanful for. One of the many things to be thankful for is the generosity you have shown to us. We thank God for young Christian people like you. We have shared our story with so many people. They just can't believe it. Thank you so much. May God bless you and restore Scott to his best of health is our prayer. We always remember you and your family in our prayers and will continue to. You have renewed our faith in humanity. There are still alot of good Christian people out there, but we don't want to meet them in the same way we met you. Thank God it was no worse than it was. Raleigh was so upset. All of us were. We give God the praise for everything. We hope you have a wonderful thanksgiving filled with many blessings. Come to see us when you can. Thanks again, again, and again. You don't know how thankful we are. God Bless You! Sybil and Raleigh".

What amazing people. Who would have ever thought that an accident would have led to such a blessing in our lives.

God is awesome!! Happy Thanksgiving!

Birthday Girl

I am feeling really behind. Sarah's birthday party was on October 4th and I am just now posting. Thanks, mom, for reminding me to catch up!! We broke down and had her party at a jumping place (Shenanigan's Jump Zone in Peachtree City). My favorite part was that I didn't have to clean up. Sarah and her friends had a great time. She even got to bring Freddy, her classroom frog. He had a great time. Here's Sarah, taking him down the slide...

Then, Freddy decided he wanted to ride the John Deere.

Ross and Devon are never too old to have fun. Here is Ross doing backflips off one of the slides. Sorry, Ross, for making you do this 20 times, until I could get a good picture. You're a super trooper.

Who needs a car when you have a turtle?

Joint fun!!

If you know me well, you know I love making cupcakes. To begin with, I was going to make ALL butterfly cupcakes. That's what Sarah picked out. However, it took about 20 minutes just to get one made. I was trying to have a low maintenance party, so I decided to do polka dots on the rest and Sarah got the butterfly.

We decided to do a book swap this year, instead of having presents. It was fun because every child got to open and take home a book. They really seemed to enjoy it. Don't worry, Sarah still got presents from her family (and my Amy, of course).

I can't believe my baby girl is 5. What an amazing blessing she has been. I can't imagine having a child more loving and full of personality. Look how sweet she was at the beach 3 years ago!! We are thankful every day for our baby girl, Sarah.

Baby Coop!

Have you ever seen anything cuter?? This is Cooper when we first got him. We've had him since he was around 3 months old. Scott's sister, Amy, and her husband, Terry are the parents of the parents. Cooper was just a beautiful puppy!!

Our new "baby"

Since we aren't having anymore actual "babies", I guess we are making up with dogs. Ha! Scott has always wanted a BIG dog. Reagan is a Great Dane. I guess you could call her big. She is almost 6 months old. I don't know if I have ever introduced Cooper, but here they are together. Cooper is our loving Shih Tzu. We have had him for over a year. We have had Reagan, the Dane, for a few weeks now. She is great. Of course, she is chewing and being silly. I forget that she is a puppy sometimes, because of her size, but her puppy ways remind me. Here she is relaxing on our rug. Once she's in this mode, she's done for the night.
Sarah absolutely loves her. They hit it off right away. The first night that we had Reagan, she whimpered when we put Sarah in bed and shut her door.
Obviously, Reagan has no idea how big she is. She sits in Sarah's lap like she is a tiny dog. Too cute!!

Soccer Girl

Here is our sweet ( and sassy) girl. This is the first year she has played soccer. She had fun. That's all that counts right?Already looking like a pro!
Somehow, Sarah and Jack got on the same team. I'm sure it's because they are soulmates. Ha!! They had fun, as always. Jack scored 2 goals!! Sarah kept wanting to be the goalie.
This was her favoirte part (except for the snack).

Ricky and Hunner

My nephews recently visited for the weekend. It was Ricky's birthday, so we had a mini-party for him. The funniest part was the kids eating their cupcakes.

We thought we would wear the cupcakes!! This is Ricky, the birthday boy. He is named after my daddy.

I like the way the cupcake matches Sarah's shirt. Hunner (below) refused to participate in the messiness.

First Day of School

Yes.....it has really taken me this long to sit down and post about their first day of school. Ethan really loves his teacher, Mrs. Cheatham. She is a team leader and is great!! Sarah is at Discovery Point, which is where she has been for the past 3 years for daycare, so she is very comfortable. All of her friends are there. Her teacher is very nice. Sarah and Ethan have always been competetive. Now, there is a competition every night at dinner for who had the best day and learned the most. Sarah has learned to sing the good morning song is English AND Spanish, with sign language. She is hilarious! They have also been on 2 field trips already. Last week was safety week, so we all had to practice the "stop, drop and roll" technique.

This is a picture of Ethan from his first day of LAST year. I just like to see how much he has grown.

Summer Projects

I certainly can't say we wasted the summer, or that we just played. We had several projects going on at the same time. My brother-in-law's brother was in town around July 4th. He's a painter and we had been wanting him to quote painting just our trim and shutters. It turned out to be alot less expensive than we thought, so we went ahead and had it done. We love the difference it has made. The previous color was a teal. I love the house but can't say I loved the teal. Here's the before............

And the after....................

We also decided to lay laminate flooring on our own. We knew it would be a challenge, but it wasn't that bad once we got going. Here is our living room before we pulled the carpet up...

Here's my man working on the hardest part, which was pulling up a small area of hardwood that was in the entry. It was glued down and very difficult to pull up.

And here are some after pictures. We still aren't quite done, but we feel almost done, anyways.

I don't have pictures of our biggest project, yet, but we also screened in the back porch. We have a triple deck in the back and I had a fear of one of the kids falling over. We had a metal roof put on, then did most of the other work ourselves. My mom's husband, Ed, helped us install electricity on the porch.

Well, I do have a few pictures of some baby birds enjoying the new porch. Their parents made a nest while we were building it. We decided to wait to put the door on until the babies hatched and flew away. This is the day the babies first flew out. It didn't take them anytime to learn to fly.

We enjoy sitting out on the porch in the rain!!