Christmas is about…

unconditional love…

  And boy do these guys have lots to teach me about unconditional love! 

This is our pooch that has been sick. Her ultrasound results are back.  Now our next step is a blood test to prove it is what it seems to be…Cushings Disease.  Athena has most of the symptoms and once we have the definitive, then comes the hard decisions.  I don’t want to even have to think of that yet. 

The most common symptoms  of Cushings include (Athena’s symptoms are underlined):
      • increased/excessive water consumption (polydipsia)
      • increased/excessive urination (polyuria)
      • urinary accidents in previously housetrained dogs
      • increased/excessive appetite (polyphagia)
      • appearance of food stealing/guarding, begging, trash dumping, etc.
     • sagging, bloated, pot-bellied appearance
      • weight gain or its appearance, due to fat redistribution
      • loss of muscle mass, giving the appearance of weight loss
      • bony, skull-like appearance of head
      • exercise intolerance, lethargy, general or hind-leg weakness
      • new reluctance to jump on furniture or people
     • excess panting, seeking cool surfaces to rest on
      • symmetrically thinning hair or baldness (alopecia) on torso
      • other coat changes like dullness, dryness
      • slow regrowth of hair after clipping
      • thin, wrinkled, fragile, and/or darkly pigmented skin
      • easily damaged/bruised skin that heals slowly
      • hard, calcified lumps in the skin (calcinosis cutis)
      • susceptibility to infections (especially skin and urinary)
      • diabetes, pancreatitis, seizures

symptoms taken from this article

Christmas is about…

time with friends….

 

Fun, Fun, Fun!!!

Nutcracker

We went to a reading of the Nutcracker recently.  They read the book and then dancers came out and danced different parts of the book.  

After the performance, we got to learn some of the dance moves.

We then got to meet the dancers. 

Ari is intrigued by the nutcracker!!    

       

We really enjoyed this!

Thanksgiving Party

This is a delayed post as I forgot my camera for this party.  My friend Beth hosted this fun party!  There were different stations that each parent setup with activities centered around Thanksgiving. 

 

Indian painting

 

Blessing Mix

Face painting

Indian Dance

 

Indian Game

Nature Walk

Sharing what we are thankful for

A yummy feast

A Thanksgiving Play of the First Thanksgiving (they are in the Mayflower)

Gingerbread Cookies

We made and decorated Gingerbread Cookies today with our dear friends. 

 

Skating on Ice

We went ice skating today for the first time.  Boy am I tired.  Today was the Homeschool Christmas Party at the Ice Skating Rink.  Chris took a half day and went with us.  I am glad he did because I don’t know how I would have done it alone!  I can barely skate on my own(note emphasis) .  I have to hold the wall to stay upright.  I thought we would go this first time and then next month, I could take the kids on my own.  Ha, Ha, Ha!  I now know how crazy that is!!!!  The kids did really well especially for their first time on ice!

    

The kids enjoyed the gift exchange at the rink.  Ryan got an art set and Ari got a tub of cotton candy and lollipop.  Look at that face.

Cooking

The best part about cooking is eating!!!

Arianna and I made snowmen pretzels together on Saturday.  We thought they turned out to look more like wise men:)  They were for our Grinch Party. 

Today we went to a cookie making party with some of our homeschool friends.  We made tons of cookies and had a great time hanging out with each other. 

 

Above Ari is helping make pretzels…below Ari is helping make Lemon Bars. 

 

Grinch Christmas Party

We had our Christmas Party last night.  We did a Grinch/White Elephant Theme.  We enjoyed dinner together.  Afterwards, the kids made up a play about Jesus and we enjoyed watching them perform:) 

We then exchanged gifts.  If you have never done a Grinch Christmas, it is fun!  First you bring a wrapped gift of something that you want to re-gift.  You draw numbers and the highest number goes first and picks a present from the pile and opens it. The second number can pick a present from the pile or take the first present (the first then can choose a new present).  The third number can pick either of the first two opened presents or pick a new one from the pile.

The kids also exchanged gifts. 

After all of the gift exchanges, we played Rock Band.  This was hilarious!  I think Jim was a Rock star in his former life!  It took quite a few tries for the band to not get booed off the stage but eventually they got a “You Rock” by finishing the song. 

 

Enjoying dinner with friends. 

The kids put together a play for us to watch.

Jim’s ready for the gift opening!

Esther has the much wanted gift of the evening.  It got taken the most. 

 

The laughter made my little comedian even goofier

Joe ended with the beautiful photo album:)

The kids opened their gifts. 

Joe singing to Rock Band

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night! 

Sing! Sing!

Arianna sang at church again on Sunday.  She loves it when she gets to get on stage and sing!  She loves rehearsal with Ms. Lynn.   I love getting to see my sweet little girl sing about Jesus! 

I am excited that she starts a choir/music class at Campbell University in January.  Hopefully she will love those rehearsals as much as she loves the ones at church. 

Why do dogs have to get old?

We have five dogs that were our kids before kids and now probably more like brothers and sisters to the kids than dogs.  But my pups are getting old…two are 9 years old and three are 8 years old.

Well today we had our first bought with what is to come.  And I can honestly say that I am not ready for it!

Athena has been having accidents in the house.  I took her to the vet today since she also seemed majorly bloated and has been excessively thirsty .  Usually when a potty trained dog begins to have accidents, it is a UTI.  But Athena’s urine test came back mostly normal.  Which meant more tests to figure out what is wrong.  She had blood work and an abdominal x-ray.  Her liver is grossly enlarged and her blood work shows some high numbers in relation to the liver and adrenal glands.  So now we have to have an ultrasound to determine if it is liver disease, Crohn’s disease or (huge sigh)…cancer-lymphoma.  We have her ultrasound next Wednesday to try to determine how to proceed.  I hope hope hope that it is not cancer…did I mention hope??   I pray that it ends up somehow being nothing at all and she is miraculously better come next Wednesday.  

This picture is Athena being fed at on the table when she was having tummy problems last month (due to dog food allergies).  She is eating steamed white rice.  

 

Thought I would include a picture taken yesterday of one of our other dogs wrapped up in our daughter’s favorite blanket. 

These are some spoiled pooches that live in this house!  I hope they will LIVE here much, much longer! 

I am a Droid (owner)

My husband surprised me today with a new phone…it uses the Android operating system by Google.  Thanks sweetie!!!!

Now for the rest of the story…(Chris did not know this when he bought the phone).  Remember that Gingerbread House Party?  Well since I forgot my camera, I was using my blackberry to take pictures.  (just remembered that oops, I should have posted some of those pics from the party).  My blackberry was sitting in the middle of the table and a knife of icky sticky dripping icing accidentally got laid on it.  Well now the keys are nice and stuck.  I tried cleaning it quickly but that icing went deep behind the keys and though I can’t see it, it has majorly hardened.  Now the keys don’t work very well.  I was so worried about how I was going to fix my phone and wow what a surprise…my husband hand a new phone for me when I got home! 

Ryan is excited because the light saber application can be used on this phone.  Chris put it on his phone but I am not so sure about loading it on mine…do I really want my 3 year to be swinging my phone around like a light saber so that he can hear the sound effects?

Thanks Nana and Dala

When Chris got home last night, he found a giant box was left at our garage…it was the kids’ Christmas gifts from Nana and Dala.  The kids were so excited!!

    

Ari loved her gown that was like Susan from Narnia.

Ryan loved his coat!-literally

Ari and Ryan got a really cool Narnia castle and lots of figures to go with it!

Ryan in his Peter costume.

My Knight in Shining Armor!

The kids loved playing in the giant box! 

They made a HUGE mess with these popcorn fillers:)  You have no idea what I mean! 

Thanks for all of the great gifts Nana and Dala!

Handwriting without Tears

Ari and Ryan playing with the wood pieces from Ryan’s Handwriting without Tears.

Celebrating this Season

We are having a great time getting ready for Jesus Birthday.  We have been busy decorating our house for the celebration. 

Ari and I made an advent wreath.  We light the candles each Sunday and discuss the meaning of the candle.  I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find purple candles…so we improvised. 

Each day the kids and I have been studying the lineage of Jesus.  We then make an ornament to remind us of the person that we study.  It is great to walk up the stairs and follow the history leading up to the birth of Jesus!

We are also learning about the origin of different things that our society uses to celebrate Christmas (eg:  Candy cane, Christmas tree, angels, Santa Claus, etc).  We usually do some sort of activity around this…below is a candy cane we made when discussed the Candy Cane.

We made angels from our feet and hands on the day that we discussed angels. 

Every day we open a day on our Lego advent calendar.  Arianna does odd days and Ryan does even days.  They LOVE legos!!!  They are so excited to see what each day’s surprise holds. 

 

 

We made a Christmas Tree out of Shrinky Dinks.  Ari and Ryan enjoyed coloring the ornaments and then watching them shrink in the oven.  Ari wanted to give this to Daddy to take to work so he has a Christmas Tree.

 

Ari colored a picture from our Color the Christmas Classics.       

We went to a Gingerbread House Party but guess what…you’re not going to believe this…I forgot my camera.  So all I have are the pictures from once we got home.  We had a great time decorating Gingerbread houses with some of our Homeschool friends.

 

Only 2 weeks to go…

Putting up our Christmas Tree

It is our tradition to put our Christmas Tree up when we return to town after Thanksgiving.  The kids were so excited! I love going through each ornament and telling the story behind it.   We purchase an ornament for each child every year which they will receive when they go off and start their own family.  We also buy a family ornament that reminds us of the year. Ari got a Three Musketeers Barbie Ornament and of course Ryan got a Star Wars ornament. He is obsessed with Star Wars! 

 

Ari decorated the “tree” (aka tree stand) while we were bringing the decorations down.

  

This is the first year that Arianna has helped with just about every part of putting the tree up. 

Ryan goofing off under the tree

Ryan goofing off in the tree box (can you tell what he did while we put the branches on??

Ari putting the top on the tree

Ryan goofing off while we are putting the ornaments on.  He sure does do a lot of goofing off of late:)  He is a clown!

How do you hang these on the tree?