A new type of reindeer....

Hello Everyone,

I thought I would include this silly picture of Quinn pretending he has antlers with pine branches. This was taken on Saturday after we got our tree. I don't know where he got the idea. He always makes me laugh. Tonight I was folding clothes upstairs and he saw Illinois playing basketball on TV and he noticed that they were playing "MD" (the little score box) but he didn't know who that was... "Who is Illinois playing Mom?... Middlebury?" Don't worry, I didn't laugh at him, I just gave him the correct answer... Maryland... and then laughed inside!

Tony put the blue and white icicle lights up on the house last night and they look really nice. The blue Christmas lights are a "family thing" I guess... Don & Isy have always decorated an outside tree with blue lights at Christmas time in honor of Don Jr. We are supposed to get really cold weather by the end of the week so it is good to get this done. We decorated our Christmas cookies last evening. I think I'll freeze some of them for Christmas get togethers... boy are they ever good though! Yum!

That's all for now. Not much goin' on and that's fine with me! : )

Love to all, Leah

Annual Christmas tree hunt

Hello Everyone,

I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. We had an AWESOME weekend! It was so much fun. We crammed as much as we could into 4 days. Mom and I went shopping on Friday, on Saturday we went on our annual Christmas tree hunt and cut down our tree and then made Christmas cookies. Today we got the tree decorated. It was such a beautiful weather weekend... near 60 or so. We went on walks, I took a nap, the kids played outside and just had a great weekend. Dad fixed some of the kitchen chairs that had spindles loose so that feels good too. Tony worked outside and got caught up with the yard work.

Tonight we are enjoying the Christmas tree and the kids are enjoying their weekly movie night with Star Trek VI by the light of the tree. (They don't exactly go together do they?).

Only one month until Christmas! Can you believe it? I'm looking forward to more vacation time. I hope you all have a good week.

Love to all, Leah

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

What a great day to celebrate the many blessings God has given us in life! We've enjoyed having my mom and dad here today. We enjoyed a feast and have enough food left over for several more meals! The turkey breast turned out really well although Madison sat for quite a while before finally giving in to eat her one bite of turkey! "How come whenever there is a food that is good for me... you MAKE ME try it???" hmmmmmm.... She finally gave in when we announced we were going on a walk right after lunch, before we cleaned up. She'll do anything to get outside! Usually she is not a picky eater, at all... but for whatever reason today she had her mind made up that she didn't care for turkey and didn't want even a bite. Enough of that...

Tomorrow is "black Friday" ... Mom and I have taken a look at the ads and will probably be out there with the rest of the masses but we decided there wasn't anything that needed to get us out of bed before sunrise. We'll get there when we get there!

We enjoyed playing a game today, Tony played football outside with M, Q and Nate (do any of you think that we secretly have another son?), watched football, went on a walk, ate and just enjoyed being home together. Grandpa even worked on some of our rickety kitchen chairs... putting his carpentry skills to work. I hope you had as nice of a day as we had. We couldn't beat the 55 degree weather. It was perfect... that only thing that would have made it better is if YOU would have been here too!

Love to all, Leah

Turkey plans...

Hi to my family and friends,

Is your turkey thawing? My mom and dad are coming to our house for Thanksgiving this year so I actually have a turkey to thaw out. I'm excited to do the hosting. I've got quite the menu planned. I remember growing up with Thanksgiving dinners at my Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's house, eating off of her fancy red dishes. I'm privileged to have those red dishes now. May be I'll pull those out for this special occasion. Madison made placecards for each of us... all 6 of us. : ) We are a small but mighty group. : )

The kids had their Christmas program practice tonight which they tell me was "so boring!"... Kids think they have to be "entertained" all the time I guess. That drives me crazy.

I "survived" the dentist today. That's it though.

During the kid's rehearsal I ran around trying to get digital prints printed out. After going to Wal-mart and Meijer I gave up. There is no such thing as a "simple thing" any more. Everything has to be a big production. I've decided to forget the Goshen "resources" and send them to Winkflash. The Internet is too handy and driving from store to store is a waste of my time.

Here's a joke from Quinn tonight... "Where does Batman take a bath?"... In the bat-room!
Well... until next time... Love to all, Leah

A thanksgiving joke for you...

Hello Everyone,
Hope your week has started off well. I had a really fun weekend. Isy and I went to her church and scrapbooked on Friday evening and then I went shopping all day on Saturday with my small group ladies from church. What a fun time! I'm nearly done with my shopping... pretty much just need to buy gifts for my immediate family. Tonight Madison and I even did some wrapping! I think that's got to be a record. Yesterday was the all-church Thanksgiving meal. It was awesome! So you can see that I was out galavanting around and not at home to update my blog. I'm sure you can understand my "situation". : )

Tonight Katie, Nathan and Nate were over for awhile. The kids had fun playing hide and seek and drinking hot cocoa. Tony left for Indy. He has a meeting tomorrow but will come back tomorrow night. Don & Isy dropped in for 10 minutes. It was a busy but fun evening.

Tomorrow morning I have a dentist appointment (you should hear Darth Vader music right now). It is something I DREAD but has to be done!! I'll just get it over with. I can think of a whole lot of other places I'd rather be at 8am tomorrow! ... like WORK for one (yes, I'm serious).

Well, that's all for tonight. Here's a Thanksgiving joke for ya... "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?" .... Answer... pilgrims!

Love to all, Leah

White-fish cake

Hello Family and Friends,

We enjoyed supper last night at Don & Isy's house. John & Evelyn and Johnny & Cindy were also there. We especially enjoyed a new cake brought by Evelyn. We called it the white-fish cake because that is what we thought it was... a white fish... and she even threw in a secret ingredient. Family, it will be worth your phone call to her to hear this story in person! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. Friends, I'll tell you about it when I see you next! We didn't get to stay as long as we would have liked, the kids had their Christmas program practice to get to.

Tonight Madison had indoor soccer practice. When I went back to pick her up she was the last one there and asking what took me so long! Apparently her practice ended early when her coach (possibly) blew his knee out. It's not often that Madison has seen a grown man cry so it sounds like it must be pretty serious. That's really too bad. She said the whole practice field got totally silent. I hope it's not as bad as it sounds.

Nate was over for about 1 1/2 hours to play. They enjoyed hot cocoawith marshmellows on a rainy cold day and played indoor baseball around our "circle".

Tony is still at work, it's currently 8:45pm. He has a bunch of things to get done and tomorrow morning I have to leave for work (a meeting) by 6:30am so he can't really go into work early. He is more of a night owl anyway but it's no fun to be at work for 14 hours out of your day.

Well, that's all for tonight. I need to go tuck the kids into bed. Take care!
Love to all, Leah

"Chores"

Hi!

Tonight Madison trimmed 4 bushes outside, washed the base boards of the upstairs and main level and also swept the kitchen floor. Quinn performed the 2nd-grader version of washing the kitchen cupboard doors and he picked up the trash. They are still asking for "chores". It's great! Of course I'm going to be broke by the end of the week but it's worth it! : ) Quinn agreed to 50 cents for picking up the trash but when he realized that meant cleaning out the litter box, he raised his price to $1. : ) The kids also had homework to do and so after the chores, homework and some play time, the evening was pretty much over. Tony is putting Quinn to bed and Madison is working at her 20minutes of independent reading. I really miss reading out loud to her this year. That's a bummer I guess. She has to do the reading herself... she can read out loud to me but she is much slower this way so it works better for her to just read to herself. Yes, I know I could still read outloud for awhile myself but we don't have much time for 40-45 minutes of reading at each bedtime. We are reading "A League of Their Own" together when we have the extra minutes.

Aren't you glad to be reading about something else other than soccer games??? However, Madison did have soccer in her top three things on her Thankful list this past Sunday during Aunt Amy's children's church time. #1 God, #2 parents, #3 soccer.

Tomorrow night we are going to Beppe and Pakka's for coffee and then supper at 5pm and then on to church for the Christmas program practice. So far the week has gone pretty fast. Hope it's going well for each of you!

Love to all, Leah

Kids for hire...

Hello Everyone!

The kids are both really into earning extra money for their "projects" at school. They are now happily asking to do chores around the house and want even MORE chores!! : )Quinn's project is to raise money for toiletry type items for Greencroft residents for Christmas. Madison has started saving for a big overnight field trip that the whole 4th grade takes to Indy in May. Social Studies for this whole 4th grade year is focused on Indiana history. Something I should be learning about too I guess! She is hoping that Tony and I will both get to go with her because "this could be my once in a lifetime chance to go on a trip with just you and Dad." We'll see. Tonight she vacuumed the basement and the steps, folded laundry and vacuumed out the van. She was delighted to find a $10 bill on the van floor. We don't know who it belonged to but it's in the Indy bank now!

Hope you all had a good Monday today. We decided at work today that while it was a busy Monday it was not nearly as WILD as the last several Mondays so that is good news! I only wrote 2 discharge-from-our-practice letters today. : )

Well, I'll let you all go. Thanks for reading.

Love to all, Leah

"Thank you God for a really, really nice mom who gave me her Iowa ticket"

The title is from Quinn's prayer tonight (so sweet). So yep, he got my ticket and even though Iowa lost (again) he had a great time. Grandma gave him $5 to spend at the game (on food) and he came home with an Iowa jersey... after Dad threw in some (a lot of) money too! See what happened with $5 burning a hole in his pocket? I had a great day shopping at Iowa's 2nd largest mall with Mom and Amy and 4 young girls! I'm amazed at how well Mikayla is getting around with her broken leg and cast. She just zips around with that walker like it's nothing. What a trooper! (OK, Amy is probably even more of a trooper to keep her sanity with that whole story... did I write about that in my blog? 5yr old Mikayla broke her tibia after falling off the monkey bars at school.) I found a few deals and am prepped for Christmas shopping with my friends next weekend. So, it was a really fun weekend although very short. We got to Iowa at mid-night on Friday and got home tonight at 8pm. Quinn is trying to earn some extra money to purchase supplies for nursing home residents (a school project) so he already has my first load of laundry in the dryer for me. He said that all of his work tonight was probably worth at least $2 but he would let me off for just $1. What a bargain! : )

OK, need to go. Hope you all have a good week!

Love to all, Leah

Heading to Iowa...

Hi Everyone,
We are headed to Iowa tonight for a short weekend. We're going to the Iowa vs WI football game. Because we will drive all the way there, we will probably lose. Quinn is trying to talk me out of my ticket and I think I just might give in this time. Shopping with my mom and sister just might persuade me. : )

We've had beautiful weather this week but that looks like it's going to change. Cold and wet is on the way. Nothing else new to report.

Have a good weekend!
Love to all, Leah

Lia Sophia

Did that title interest anyone? That is the name of the jewelry party that Madison and I went to tonight. I haven't been to a home party in YEARS and Eliza hosted this party tonight so I thought I would go. Lia Sophia is the name of the company and they have very nice jewelry... a little pricey but nice stuff! Anyway, it was nice to do something just "for girls" tonight. : )
www.liasophia.com

Work and the party pretty much took the whole day today. Really nothing else too exciting.

Love to all, Leah

A better day...

Happy Tuesday!

Hope you all had a good day today. Mine was much better than yesterday so that was good! Never a dull moment though. This morning I read this Bible verse, which I wished I would have read yesterday... Romans 15:1, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak" .. God knows that not all people are easy to deal with but asks us to "bear with" them! Anyway, I don't have much to share tonight so I thought I'd share that verse that made my day better today. It just seemed so appropriate for working with some of the patients that I work with each day. I also had a patient bring in a big beautiful plant with a nice card about what an asset our office is to our community etc... See how much better of a day I had?

Tonight we enjoyed a relaxing evening at home. It was great. Nothing fancy. I really don't have anything exciting to say today.... send me an email to say hi. I always love to hear from you.

Love to all, Leah

Scrapbook heaven...

Hello,
The scrapbooking weekend was a lot of fun and I got 41 pages done! WOW! I think I need a weekend like this a couple of times this year. It makes me want to work on my albums at home more but that probably won't happen... at least on a regular basis anyway.

Tony, Madison and Quinn had a good time in Iowa even though our pathetic Hawkeyes let us down yet again. Tony and Quinn went to the game and had a good time in spite of the game. However, Quinn told me on the phone, "We drove all this way for nothing!" Madison and her cousins went to a movie instead... t'was a good choice for them.

Today was a typical Monday at work. I tell ya, what happens over the weekends that make some people totally act like fools on Mondays? I'm convinced there must a full moon every single Monday. I think I better start taking vacation days each Monday. It's pathetic. There are too many stories to even tell you about here. Surely in heaven there won't be any Mondays! ...One more thing to look forward too... the hope of no more Mondays!

Tonight Corinne took Madison out for her birthday. She got to chose from all the restaurants in existence and she chose.... Taco Bell!... and even took her free-tacos-for-good-grades coupon with her. I told Corinne that she got off pretty easy tonight. : ) They had a good time together.

Quinn and I stayed home and played Yahtzee, Guess Who?, and Scrabble Junior. I love the cooler weather... we get to play more games. Tony did some yard work and then left to work on a home-improvement-but-not-our-home project tonight.

Well, I hear Quinn's foot pounding on the tub's floor upstairs... that must be the hoof sign for "I need a towel"... Have a good week everyone.

Love to all, Leah

Weekend plans...

Hello!

We had snow today... it accumulated just enough for Madison to build a "small snowball" and bean Nater in the forehead. I had to MAKE Madison take a jacket to school today. She just thinks she can run around without one... even at 29 degrees while waiting for the bus!

Last night the kids started practicing for the Christmas program at church. It's hard to believe that Christmas is around the corner... hearing Away in a Manager brings the realization that Christmas is only 7 weeks away!

Tonight after work I spoke to the cancer support group about pain (what else?). I didn't get home until after 6:30. Madison had indoor soccer practice for 1 hour at 6pm and Tony and Quinn went out for supper during her practice.

This weekend I'm going to a scrapbook retreat... a bunch of Silverwood ladies are going to Camp Amigo in MI. I had a dream last night that I didn't even get one page done all weekend!!... distractions kept getting in the way! Tony and the kids are going to Iowa. Tony and Quinn are going to the Iowa football game. It's going to be chillllly. I'm sure they'll have fun. I've had a sore throat and earache the last few days so I'm hoping I didn't catch Quinn's presumed strep throat. The antibiotics whipped him right into shape so I suppose I should just give in and get started on some too.

Well, we will all be gone over the weekend so I probably won't write again until Sunday night some time. I hope you have a good weekend! Stay safe!

Love to all, Leah