HAPPY BIRTHDAY GEORGE!!

Happy Birthday to a fabulous brother-in-law! You always make me smile!

So sorry we missed seeing you on your special day... we'll make it up to you next week! SOOOO glad you are back north!! YAY!!!!!

Proud mama!!

Hello all! I just need to do the proud mama thing for a moment here. We had our children's parent/teacher conferences today, and our children are doing fantastic in school! The report we got from Adam's teacher was particularly encouraging! He had a rough start to 5th grade, and his teacher cracked the whip on him, and he responded, and has matured so much, and taken responsibility for his learning, and improved 100% in every area! YAY ADAM! His report card was fabulous this trimester....

• Reading B
• Writing B+
• Social Studies B+
• Math A
• Spelling A
• Science A+

She was particularly impressed with one of Adam's persuasive essays. He wrote about why he thought Mike Huckabee should be president. He even included 3 verses of scripture. And his teacher showed that essay off to just about every adult in the school! I am so proud of him!

Nicolas' conference was great too! He was in charge of it, and showed us all the things he has been working on. He is definitely ready for 4th grade. His teacher is very proud of him, too! He has gotten much better at his math, and his writing (neatness and content) is beautiful!!! He has a good grasp on the reading/writing process. Now he is working on math problem solving... he'll figure it out soon, I'm sure!

So.... that is my proud mama moment. Now I have to go to work. I picked up my new glasses this morning (they are no-line bifocals... yikes!) and I feel like I am constantly ready to fall into a ditch or off a cliff! So, walking down the hall in school should prove challenging enough for today! Talk to you soon!

More Easter Day images

Here are a few more pictures of our wonderful afternoon this Easter.

Group photo in the quarry

George and Laurel

Jason and I

Julie and sons

Sandy

Family.... it is the most important thing next to God. I love spending time with my family. Thank you Lord for blessing me with the fantastic family I find myself in!!! You are so good to me!

Easter pictures from church

Ok... I don't seem to be doing so well keeping this blog strictly spiritual... but I can't resist posting pictures of my life... they are relavent to my existence! So, here you go! These are pictures from church this morning.

Kids singing the Rainbow song

Nick just plain looking handsome

My ROCKIN' AWESOME drummer! Dude, you so rocked this morning!

The Ziter family (yes, Sandy is part of our family!)

Me and my honey!

Now.... let's talk about cuteness for a moment...

This is Elana under the veil part of her Easter dress...

This is the smile that lights up the darkest room and melts my heart every time I see it!!!!!

Stacy and Elana... they matched today!

Stacy Elana Meghan and Mike... they are beautiful!

And this is just an awesome picture of Sandy... period!

So that is it in a nutshell. I don't have access to the rest of the pictures from today. When I get them, I'll put them here. God bless you!

Purple belt!

We once again interrupt the spiritual blogging here to interject yet another big family accomplishment, which we are very proud of... Adam has received the rank of purple belt in Moo Gong Do! Here are some pictures from the testing and the belt ceremony.

Take down!

Ditto

Doing his Hwa Shim Il Hyung form during testing.

Using a hook kick for his board break

Receiving rank advancement

Purple is an awesome color!!!

Adam's teacher Miss Doner attended to support Adam. She's as proud of him as we are!

Great job, Adam!!!!! Keep it up! Adam is approaching his one year anniversary of practicing the art of Moo Gong Do (March 16th). He has his eyes fixed on that black belt someday.... I know you can do it, mister!! Never give up!

We now return you to the regularly scheduled spiritual blogging of Northern Apostolic Mom..................................................

Important family news!!

We interrupt this spiritually minded blog to bring you important family news! I am not going to talk about everyday life stuff, just important stuff... like the fact that Adam is no longer a cub scout... he crossed over into boy scouts tonight! Here are some very cool pictures....

Here the Webelos IIs are listening to the boy scouts describe what will be expected of them as they cross into the troop...

One thing they had to do was remove their Webelos insignia (neckerchief and colors) to receive the boy scout ones.... here are the "left behind" neckerchiefs...

Here is Adam, crossing over the bridge...



receiving his rank as an official boy scout.

They also received an arrowhead around their neck as a symbol of passing through the arrow of light...

Here they are!!!! The new additions to the troop!

Of course, Nicolas made rank this evening as well. He and all the boys in his den received their Bear badge tonight... way to go! Nick and Adam also received their awards for completing the God and Me/God and Family program. The medallions are lost in the US Mail system somewhere..... if they ever show up, we'll have a ceremony at church to award them.





It was a fun evening, full of LOUD SINGING, and generally loud noise like only cub scouts can make! Sandy was on hand for the events of the evening.... thanks Sandy for supporting your little brothers! They loved having you there!

We now return you to our regularly scheduled spiritually minded blogging.

Do Not Pass Me By

I cannot believe I found this! I LOVE THIS SONG!!! I've never seen the video before, but the song is so much fun! The traditional version of "Do Not Pass Me By" is in our hymnal at church.... every time I see it, I hear this song in my head! Awesome! I esp. like his rap about "They took me to the water, I went down in his name, I repented of all my sins, and I haven't been the same. My feet started to shake and my legs had to run, his love took my heart and his Spirit took my tongue." Sounds to me like this guy's got the Holy Ghost!!!!! lol!! I was trying to type this and my fingers got on the wrong keys, .... op[iurlknerklmngzl; My fingers were speaking in tongues!!! Enjoy!

Hooray! Number 400!!!

Ladies and gentlemen.... this is the last post of the year 2007, and it is also my 400th post on the Northern Apostolic Mom blogsite! Woo hoo!

Yesterday, I attempted to post some pictures of my gorgeous niece Elana, who is now walking and talking and just generally being adorable, but Blogger.com was being eternally difficult about it , and the pictures just would NOT post... well... HERE THEY ARE!



How adorable is that little baby????

Also, I would like to tell you that my husband and my sons have testosterone galore, and the result is this amazing car rollercoaster in my living room, over 5 feet tall, and fully operational!


I took a short video of them running it for the first time (ar ar ar... Tim Allen grunt), and tried to upload it to you tube so my in-laws, who bought it for them, could see it for themselves. But for some reason, it won't upload. Just my luck. Oh well. The pictures will have to suffice!

That is all for now. Got to go make some amazing Rotel cheese dip for watch night service this evening... that stuff ROCKS!!!!!!! Love to all.. see you in 2008!

"Catch up" Christmas

Well! Now that we are back at home, we had some "catch-up" Christmas to accomplish with the rest of the family. We began last night (Sat.) at my brother's house. My mom and Ray were here from Florida, and she made an amazing turkey dinner last night! We made it a combination Christmas and birthday celebration, as my sweet niece Laura turns 9 on New Year's Day.



Tonight, we had Christmas with Grammie Julie and Grampa Jack. We had delicious lasagne, and a few presents to exchange. Here are a few pictures....

The most hilarious gift I received tonight was totally unexpected. You should read the end of this post in August to refresh your memory first. I opened my package and it was a LOON that makes that sleep shattering sound ALL NIGHT LONG when you're trying to sleep! Here is a picture of my reaction....

(Time passes... it's been at least an hour since the loon pictures.... )

ARGH!!!! I have been trying for well over an hour to upload pictures of my gorgeous niece Elana, who is walking and talking and just generally adorable.... BUT BLOGGER IS BEING TOTALLY FRUSTRATING! I cannot get them to upload... even one at a time. Grrrrrrr...... Perhaps another day. I'm too tired to argue with a computer tonight. Thank you for sharing a couple minutes of your day with me. God bless you all!

No place like home!

There's no place like home, there's no place like home.....
Our week in Maryland was nothing short of heavenly, but afer 11 hours in the car yesterday, it was even MORE heavenly to get out of the car and sleep in our own beds! I love visiting our fabulous family in MD, it's just the drive I could do without! LOL!

We unpacked the truck (with much added drama because Nick our drama king twisted his ankle and proceeded to make enough noise to be heard all the way in Maryland). Then Nick decided he wanted to build the K'nex rollercoaster thing they got for Christmas (which has 1, 118 pieces!)..... at 9 pm, after an 11 hour drive!!!! The answer was NO, the response was a temper tantrum. (pulling my hair out of my head....) I promptly put him to bed, where he belonged. I had a killer headache anyway... so I was ALL DONE with that atttitude before it even started!

Anyway, here is a picture of Dad helping to build it this morning (sorry... cell phone camera pics really aren't the greatest).
(picture removed at hubby's request)
This afternoon, we are going to my brother's house, because my mom and Ray are still here from Florida, and we are having a turkey dinner with them. I can't wait to see them!

Time for me to start unpacking.... we just crashed in bed last night and left the unpacking for today. At least all the laundry is clean... can just move it from the bags to the dressers. YAY! Talk to you all later!

hanging around

Today has been a very peaceful day. Matt, Brianna, and Raven are back in Texas safe and sound. Al and Winnie both took today off (yay!!!!!), so Al, Jason, and the boys are at the swimming pool at the South Germantown rec dept. Winnie and I had such a wonderful time together, laughing, getting ourselves into "situations" involving the brand new dryer, and talking about our wonderful, merciful, gracious Savior, Jesus Christ. I am getting the bulk of our laundry done here so I don't have to spend $10 in quarters to do it at home. This way I can go home, and unpack the clothes directly to the dresser drawers. THAT is SWEET! Tonight we will have a nice quiet dinner here at the house with Al and Win, and pack up the truck for the drive home tomorrow. I kind of hate to be leaving, but it has been a fantastic time with our family! Next year, with any luck, Al and Win will be coming to Vermont for Christmas.... we'll see what the Lord has in mind.

Also, I've been online looking at the prices of different digital cameras, as ours has apparently given up the ghost. Hmmmm.... not going to be cheap to replace.... but my blog is going to suffer terribly without the pictures! *sniff*. Yes, I'm whining. We'll see. For now you will get the occasional cell phone camera picture, but they are not that good, and kind of expensive to be emailing to my computer. So that will only be on rare exciting occasions. Perhaps this will force me to become a better writer! If I don't want people to stop visiting my blog, I must become a more powerful writer to make up for the lack of visuals. *sigh*

Time to fold more laundry. Goodbye to all until we get home to Vermont! HA! It is snowing in VT right now, and I am not there! YES!!!!!!!! NO SNOW IN MARYLAND!!!!! I'm not excited to go home to snow......

Day in DC

Ok, can I just tell you that I am exhausted? :-/ We spent the day in DC, walking around the Smithsonian. It was cold and wet. This time we went to the Native American museum (the boys were bored to death, but hey, we are trying to give them culture). My favorite part was seeing the bibles that have been translated into 75 indigenous languages. They make the most beautiful Bible covers out of beads and other materials like skins and such. Then we headed over to the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The best part of the day for the boys???

THE METRO! LOL! (click to enlarge map... red line from shady grove to metro center... then switch to blue line to get to Smithsonian). However, I will tell you that they had second thoughts as we took the Metro OUT of DC at rush hour! Talk about cramped! Like I said, we're trying to give our children culture! LOL!

Now we are home, chillin', all by ourselves, as Dad, Win, Matt, Brianna, and Raven have gone to a friend's house for spaghetti dinner. We had leftovers (there were PLENTY of those)... it was like a gourmet meal all over again! Now we're just relaxing. Matt, Brianna, and Raven are flying back to Texas early tomorrow morning, so we will have to say our goodbyes tonight. :( How do you say goodbye to this beautiful face?????

Tomorrow, I think we will be going swimming at the Germantown Rec Center (the boys will, anyway... not me!) I'll be here doing laundry, most likely. Al and Win both go back to work tomorrow, so it will be a quiet day. I am looking forward to getting home to my own bed, my own space.... etc. Although I absolutely love coming down here to visit. But there's really no place like home. I'm sure Dad and Win will be THRILLED to have their house back in a routine, no kids or grandkids.... peace and quiet!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you... last night, we watched the movie called "The Nativity". Wow! Was it ever good! My boys really liked it. It made the whole story so very real. Now I have TWO movies I need to buy for our family... The Nativity and Facing the Giants. Both movies that glorify God and strengthen the faith of the Christian believer. Both excellent!