Quick Update

Don't have much time, but wanted to write a quick update on us. We had a great Christmas...great time at my mom's with all my family.

We're headed to Kingsville today to be with Keith's dad. His mom is still in the hospital. They removed the tumor, and found it was malignant. But thankfully they were able to remove all of it, and they don't believe it has spread anywhere. So, now she will be taking about 6 weeks of chemotherapy.

So, we are going down there to help out Keith's dad, cook some dinners for him, and clean up, and hopefully be there when his mom gets out of the hospital.

Well, that's the quick update, and now I'm off to pack and get on the road.

Keith's Mom

Keith's mom, Ruby, is in the hospital right now. She went in Monday evening thinking an appendicitis. Well, they've ruled that out and have found a baseball size tumor on her ovary. They're thinking possible cancer. Please remember her when you talk to Him...she's having surgery on Friday to remove it and find out if it is malignant or not. We will update when we find out more. Thanks everyone.

Kingsville Christmas '07

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas with Keith's parents. There's not much to tell...just a relaxing evening opening gifts and eating ham. :) The kids liked everything they got, and I think Keith's parents were pleased to. Here's some pictures of our evening.

Couldn't get Caleb to look at the camera.

Don't know what's up with William's expression.

This weekend we'll be having Christmas at my parents' house. Both my brother and sister and their families will be there. First time in a long time. I can't wait!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

So here's the story: Nicole made some chocolate chip cookies all by herself the other day. From start to finish. I'm so proud of her. Well, she took them off the cookie sheet and put them on a platter on the table. So we went back to putting some more dough on the sheet. We turned back around to the table and this is what we saw:

Ah, 'Tis the Season to...

...gourge yourself on Christmas goodies! Thankfully, someone else will be gourging instead of us. Today we were cooking up a storm making all kinds of good sweets. Everyone, including Keith, helped. We're putting them in tins to give away as gifts.

We made chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, peanut brittle, snowballs (pecan cookies), and peppermint bark. Doesn't everything look good???

All dressed up and ready to go...

After the kids had sampled everything, they were literally bouncing off the walls!

Early Birthday Dinner

Yes, my (Jaime) birthday is coming up (the 15th). The dreaded 3-0. Not really. Does feel kind of weird though to know you'll no longer be in your 20's. Kind of a milestone, I think.

Anyway, Keith surprised me tonight by taking us all out for an early birthday dinner. It had been kind of a yucky day for me, so it was a really nice surprise. We all went to Pappasito's, and ate great fajitas. Ah, I'm gonna miss this good Tex-Mex food we have here. Better eat all I can now. :)

Christmas Decorating Day

When we arrived home on Monday, we went straight to decorating the house for Christmas. So, Keith and the kids put up the tree while I baked some sugar cookies (don't excited, it was store-bought dough. But really good!)
Then, the lights went up and then the ornaments.
Here's the finished product.
After all the decorating we ate the cookies, drank homemade (yes, homemade) hot chocolate, and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. I just love the Christmas season!

Thanksgiving Down, Christmas To Go

We're back! Yeah! We've been gone since last Wednesday, being at Keith's parents house for Thanksgiving. We had a great time, but now we're ready for the Christmas season.

We left Wednesday and went straight to Keith's parents house. We actually spent Thanksgiving day at Keith's brother's house. They built a new house (still a work in progress), and wanted everyone there. It's looking really nice. Turned out that all the brother's and their families were there. Here they are:

So, we ate lots of good food:

And then we celebrated a mini Christmas between the brothers and kids:

So we left on Saturday and went to Keith's aunt's house because we had some meetings in the area that we had to go to. She was gracious enough to let us stay there. The kids had a blast. They adopted his aunt as Grand-Mom #2. We had a really nice visit with her. Here's the kids enjoying the sleeper sofa:

And to end with, here's a random picture of Keith wrestling with the kids.

My Niece

My 5 yr. old niece, Madison, is in the hospital with a bad case of pneumonia. She's been in there since Monday. So far she has not been responding to the medicines they've been giving her. They are giving her a stronger antibiotic now, but if she's not responding by tomorrow then they will call in a specialist. Can we, please, remember her when we talk to Him?

UPDATE: She's doing much better now and is slowly recovering.

Thanksgiving Project

The kids have been working on a little Thanksgiving study. We had a couple of projects planned with it, and today we finished one. The kids made paper bag Indian vests. The had a lot of fun doing them. Our next project is to make a posterboard with facts and pictures on it about Thanksgiving. I'll post pictures of those when they're done. So, here are the kids in their Indian outfits.
And here's Caleb relaxing in his little rocking chair after a hard day of playing.

Daddy's New Guitar

Mommy's Little Helper

Caleb decided to help me do the dishes this morning. How sweet. Of course he kept trying to drink out of the dirty glasses and pull the knives and forks out. Actually, I don't know how much of a help he really was. But he's learning. :) And yes, he was standing on the dishwasher door.

Celebrating Thanksgiving

We are going to Keith's parents house this year for Thanksgiving. We'll actually be celebrating the day at Keith's oldest brother's house. But I'm gonna let Nicole explain it because I think she did it very well on her blog.

I'll post about Thanksgiving when it actually happens.

First Tooth

Josiah's growing up. He's soo excited because he has lost his first tooth. Nevermind that the permanent tooth is already growing behind it. Oh, well. Braces here we come! But he sure is cute with that hole!

Fall Crafts

We took the kids to Hobby Lobby today and bought them some fall wood decor things (?) that you paint. They worked hard on them for the rest of the afternoon.


They had a lot of fun, and we all thought they came out great.

Nicole's:


William's:


Josiah's:

Aquarium

We've been gone this past week in Kingsville/Corpus Christi/Cypress. Pretty busy. We left last Mon. to Kingsville. We dropped William off with my sister, so he could take his turn spending a few days at her house. He had a blast. She took him to one of their friend's house who has exotic animals, and he got to hold a chameleon and python. Cool!

So, while he was there, we just spent a few days at Keith's parents helping out while his mom had eye surgery. She did very well and is doing fine. PTL! Then it was off to my sister's to meet up with William, go to a meeting, and then to the state aquarium that Thurs. with my sister and a friend. That was really neat. The kids really enjoyed it. Here's a few pictures from that:


Oh, just ignore the dates on the pictures. It was my sister's camera and she didn't notice until the pictures were already on the computer. Oh well.

And The Cutest Baby Award Goes To...

CALEB DANIEL
WOMMACK!

What A Monkey!

Long Time, No Update

Sorry, guys...I didn't realize I hadn't updated in forever. We've just been so busy with traveling and meetings that I didn't have time.

We've just gotten back from Keith's parents house. We had a meeting in the valley, and then we'll be headed down there again this Monday. We have a meeting in Corpus Christi, but we're going early because Keith's mom is having eye surgery and we're going to help out. That Thursday, though, we're supposed to go to the Texas State Aquarium in Corpus with my sister and a friend. I'm really looking forward to it. The kids haven't been in a long time, so it'll be like the first time for them.

Well, as for an update on our monthly budget...we're officially at 22%. Yay!!! We're steadily going up. Our short term goal is to be 30% by sometime in November. If you'd like to know how you can help, just send us a comment.

To end this post, I've got a little video of Caleb dancing. Way too cute! I wish I had the actual music he's dancing to. It's one of those musical birthday cards. He kept opening it and closing it. Anyway, so here it is. Enjoy!

Haircuts

Nicole and I FINALLY got haircuts. We just got so tired of looking ratty. Unfortunately, I don't have any good "before" pictures. You know, the ones where the lady has no make-up on, and she looks like she just got out of bed. Actually, that's how I look right now, but I'm not gonna take a picture of it!

Well, here's our "after" pictures.


Doesn't Nicole look especially pretty? She looks so grown up. :sniff:

Hanging out with the kids

He's Been E-Ve-Ry-Where, Man

At least he will have been at the end of this week.

Keith's been busy for the last couple of weeks going to meetings all over South Texas. He's been down in the valley, to Corpus, to Victoria, San Antonio, Houston and then Beaumont and East Texas. Whew!! Needless to say, he'll be glad when this week's over and he can stay home for a few days. As much as he likes to stay home, these meetings have been beneficial, which is good news.

On another note, we broke down and bought the kids a fish tank and a few fish. They love it! Every now and then they stop at the tank and just watch their fish swim around. How fun. I'm so glad they're enjoying it. So, here's a picture of the tank, and then a few pictures of Caleb because they're just too cute not to share.

William's Blog

Now it's William's turn to join the blogging world. He has officially started his own blog. Check it out here and be sure to leave him a comment or two. I know he'll really like that.

Oh, and for those who brought it to my attention...Nicole's blog comments have changed. Now anyone can leave her a comment, though it still has to be approved by me first before it's published. Same with William's blog.

By the way, these blogs are completely their own creation. No help from me except spelling.

End of September Update

We've been quite busy these last few weeks. We've been traveling a lot; we're getting a little sick of the car, I think. But it needs to be done. Right now Keith is in San Antonio, and me and the kids are just chilling out at my mom's. I just don't like to stay home by myself. Anyway...

Well, we are at just about 20% with our monthly donations. It's not bad, but we were hoping to be further along. The sooner we get that in, the sooner we can depart. Our calendar is filling up with meetings, so hopefully that will help get us further along. I'll update again when it changes. Also, it's almost time for another newsletter, so be on the lookout for those. Well, guess that's it.

He's Finally Walking!!!

William's Wild Party

OK, maybe it wasn't exactly wild, but he (and the rest of the kids) had a lot of fun.

For all who don't know... We went down south for a week for meetings and visiting family. We had a great time, but it's good to be home, even if it's only for a few days. While down at my sister's we celebrated William's 8th birthday. We invited friends and family...grilled hot dogs, had a moonwalk and water slide, and the kids got to smash their first pinata! So, here's a few pictures of the party.

Here's the cake I made. It's a little sad looking, but it tasted good!

My sister's friends had a moonwalk and water slide, so they let us borrow it for the party. I don't know what we would have done without them! They were the highlight of the party.

I was really proud of the pinata. We stuffed it full of candy and little trinkets. So, here it is before the bashing.

And here it is after.

So, I'll leave with this little video of the kids having their pinata fun.

9/5/07 Update

I realized this morning that I haven't posted in a while. I don't want everyone to stop reading just because I forget to update the blog. So, I'm gonna update as best I can, since not much exciting has happened.

We spent Labor Day with my parents (surprising, I know). We had a nice time swimming and eating way too much good food. They had some friends over, too, so it was a nice visit all around. She took some good pictures and video, so I'll try to get them when we go next time and post them.

Tomorrow we're heading down to Corpus Christi to my sister's house and then the next week to Kingsville to Keith's parents house. We have some meetings to go to, plus we're gonna have a birthday party for William on Saturday. His birthday is actually on the 10th, but this way everyone can come including some friends of ours in Corpus. My parents will be going down tomorrow as well. It should be lots of fun. I'll try and post some pictures of the party next week.

September's gonna be a busy traveling month for us. We have lots of different places to go, which I'm looking forward to. It's nice to be busy.

Guess that's about it for this update. So, until the next one...

Our First Day of School

Well, yesterday was our first official day of home school. The kids were very excited about starting all their work (how many kids can say that?). The boys didn't even want to eat breakfast first...just start their work right away.

I decided to cook them a nice breakfast as like a fun way to start the first day. So, I made Oatmeal Banana Pancakes. They're really good...I did tweak the recipe a bit for our tastes, though.


After breakfast and chores, it was off to work. The kids did a great job and seemed to enjoy all their books.


This year is a bit more involved than the past, especially for Nicole because she's older. They seem to be getting along just fine. Even Caleb did a little reading.