An Early Visitor!

We're heading out for UT tomorrow!! and due to limited space in our suitcases, we let Santa know that he may need to make an early appearance at our house! So the kids wrote letters and asked for their things, and let him know we'd be in UT on Christmas Day. He wrote back and said that he was going to bring their "big" presents a little early so we didn't have to pack them home in our suitcases. So he came on Sat. morning, bright and early as promised. He even ate the cookies and milk we left and Rudolph snarfed up the carrots. We had a fun time, even if the kids were still a little confused at the small amount of presents they received, only 2 each. We kept having to say, you're getting some more in UT, not a lot more, but SOME more. . . I think it finally sunk in. Maci got an oversized Barbie doll, that she has dressed up several times already, and a new 2 wheeled scooter. Gavin got a remote control 4 wheeler and an Iron Man Big Wheel, so he doesn't have to use Maci's old Barbie one anymore ;-) They were both thrilled with their gifts and have played with them a lot already. I'm not sure why Maci looks drugged in all these pics, I think I need to NOT say, 1,2,3 cheese?! or something.

After the big wind up of Santa and the toys, it was apparent that Maci was NOT feeling well, she had said the night before that she was feeling sick and she had a pretty high fever that we were treating with Tylenol. So when it got up to 102.7 we decided we better take her in. There's an Urgent Care really close to here, I haven't set us up with a Pediatrician yet, stupid I know, so we went to the Urgent Care first. I get there and the lady at the front desk says, Oh, you have a child? the Dr. on call today doesn't "do" kids." I was like, WHAT?! I guess they really have a no pediatrics on the weekends policy, but if a pediatric Dr. is working, then sometimes he'll take kids. But I was flabergasted that there would be any urgent care that didn't take kids at all?!? very weird!! So I had to drive all the way into Springfield, and then when I got to the "Pediatric" urgent care, they take appointments, so the earliest I could get was 2 hours later. Do we wait? Do we drive home to stay for an hour and drive back? We chose the latter. . . but at least next time we'll know that we can call in advance, which is actually nice so you don't have to sit there waiting for 2 hours which we HAVE done at an IHC instacare. So anyway, she has strep, and I'm kinda glad because at least we can give her medicine that will actually help and make it go away. Gav, Maci and I all caught the stomach bug last week, it has not been a good health month! But she's feeling much better today and went to school for her last day before we leave. I'm hoping no one else gets it, but if they do at least we'll know what it is! So that's my first experience with the MO health services. The Dr. was actually really great and I'm considering signing up with him just because he was so nice. But we'll probably go with someone closer here in Nixa. Sorry to bore you with that story but I was just so frustrated that day!

So here's fun pics of the kids toys. See some of you SOON!!!

Ginberbread House

We took a crack at decorating a gingerbread house tonight for FHE. We had intentions of doing it this weekend so Chris could do it with us, but the weekend got filled up somehow! So we decided to do it tonight even though Chris was studying. Gavin had been feeling icky tonight, throwing up several times. Maci had this a couple nights ago. Well I thought he was feeling better, they were running around wrestling and stuff, so we decided to start in on the house. Well. . . he wasn't feeling better, and had several more bouts while we were decorating the house. You can see his progression as he starts to feel worse and worse, poor little guy. He made it through the night pretty well, and only was up twice, but it was still while Chris and I were up thank goodness. I think he's feeling much better this morning, hopefully we'll have a "clean" day! The house turned out cute though, thanks to Maci finishing it off for us!



Our Stake here does a BIG Nativity Celebration that's open to the public for two weeks on the weekends. It's a big deal here, and a great missionary opportunity. They have a live nativity outside for part of it, with sheep and horses and everything, and then they have a display of over 1000 nativities in the cultural hall. On all the evenings for about an hour they have one of the big Branson acts come and play. All of the 6 acts that played here are LDS members, there's a big group of them down there in Branson which is pretty cool I think. So I signed up to help with refreshments on Sunday, and then the kids and Chris joined me at 6 to here the group play from Branson. It was so fun! and really got me in the spirit of Christmas. The group was great, and played very appropriate Sabbath Day Christmas Songs, some with guitar and piano accompaniment and some just Accapella. Anyway, it was really great and they had the best turnout they've ever had. This is their 10th year. I think this last Sat. night they said they had over 800 people just at the performance part! So it's a great missionary experience and hopefully some of those people will be back to see what we're all about! I'm glad we got to experience it this year, and many more to come.

A couple weeks late

So I'm behind, I know! My friend says she's a bulimic blogger, I think that aptly describes me as well, at least lately. I have lots of great stories and intentions to write them, but then never actually sit down and do it, and then have to "purge" them all out at once. So here we are with 2 weeks to catch up on, with one major holiday among them! Here goes. . .

We had a great Thanksgiving. We invited our friends the Winter's over and had a great spread. It was actually fun and quite fulfilling to make some, even if not all, of a full Thanksgiving meal. I made the turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and green bean caserole. Janessa made the rolls, fruit salad, and dessert. We had enough food to feed about 20 people probably, but it fed the 7 of us just fine, with plenty of leftovers :) We talked for a while, let the kids play, just generally had a nice leisurely afternoon. Chris put up the Christmas lights earlier in the day and even mowed the lawn one last time. It was a balmy 60+ degrees, really nice weather.

We went and saw Bolt after dinner, the new Disney film out. It was REALLY funny, much better than I thought it would be. I hadn't heard much about it but I guess you don't have to publicize Disney movies much, if they make it, you will come. But go take your kids to this one if you haven't seen it yet, I thought it was better than Madagascar 2, and didn't have some of the "adult" jokes in it that M2 did.

So Turkey day was a success, even if I did really miss going out with Chris's family or eating around a huge table with 30 people with my family. But when in Rome. . . We hope for many more wonderful MO Thanksgivings.

This last week we've had our first bit of "snow". It was really cold, and now I can see why they get freezing rain here. The roads got suuuuper slick, and Chris saw loads of accidents on his way to work, even though it had only snowed about 1/2". It just freezes as soon as it hits the ground. So Gavin really wanted to make a snowman, so we got bundled up and attempted with what little snow we had. It did feel good to get our hands in some white stuff though.

The kids trying to scrape all the snow that had collected against the fence, into snowballs.

Frosty ain't got nuttin on this guy.

Maci was sick this week and missed 2 days of school. She had a stomach bug, and it has been going around, lots of friends have been sick as well. Luckily none of the rest of us picked it up, yet. Chris is winding down the semester and getting ready for finals starting the 15th. He's really excited to be finishing up his 1st semester of grad school! I decided to close down the booth in Branson, the fee was too high for how much I was selling, and the Etsy business is going pretty well so I think I'll focus on that and branch out a bit more. I might attempt a few craft fairs this next year as well. I had an open house today to get rid of some of the inventory, it went pretty well. I still have lots of tiles w/vinyl, so if any of you need a cheap Christmas present, let me know! If you're in UT I'll pack it in my suitcase for you ;)

Chris and I just went on an actual date tonight! It was very fun, we went out with our friends the Eckersley's and had a great time. We went to Panera, a really good bread and bagel store that sells sandwhiches too, kinda like Einstein's? We saw Quantum of Solace which we hadn't seen yet, it was very good, very James Bondish, I think I'll have to watch it twice more to get the full story behind all the action. But it felt good to go out and have fun, and get to know our friends a little better. So I think that catches us up for the week! Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.