Project 365, week 1; HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

happy new year, friends!! 

we just rolled into town mere minutes ago from a wedding allen did just south of houston. but i'm hosting project 365 this year, so i HAD to make sure i got this up tonight!!

im so excited to be hosting! sara has been doing it for the last 4 years, but with her new empty nest season of life, she was looking for someone to pass the baton to, and i volunteered!

i'll try to get the link up on saturday evening, but a lot of times it'll be sunday morning before i'm able to, just depending on what our saturday holds. i promise to always make sure it gets up, though, or to let you know if i'll be later than sunday for some reason.

for those of you saying "whats project 365 exactly?" you basically take at least one picture each day to document your year. it can be anything from a trip to an amusement park with your kids, to what you had for dinner. anything goes. on saturday (or sunday) you'll post your pictures from the last week and then link your blog entry up here at the bottom of my weekly post. that way everyone who participates can read each others entries and see their pictures. there are several of us that have been in it from the beginning, and we've kind of become a little community of friends. its something i look forward to each week. i'm not always great about getting to read other peoples entries, but im going to try to be better about that this year!!! 

so if youve never done p365, i encourage you to give it a try. theres no shame in popping in every now and then. ease your way into it if you need to.

here are mine for the week....

sunday

i started working on my scrapbook while i had a kid-free house for a few days. i finished it and got it ordered on wednesday!! yay! (if you need a good digital scrapbooking website, mixbook is great, and really easy to use. i have some user tips if you decide to go with them though.)

monday

we started the year with our friends the lamberts and barners, as we've done every NYE since 2004. the brownings joined up with us later at the lamberts house for games and a lot of laughter.

tuesday
i got my kids back tuesday afternoon!! so good to see their sweet little faces again!

wednesday
we had a very lego christmas this year, so of course thats all they've been doing since they got home; building. colbys ninjago legos paid a visit to mollys riding camp, and toasted marshmallows around the campfire. they play so well together; the kids, not the legos.

thursday

molly got a new game for christmas, and we were finally able to crack it open and play before dinner thursday evening. i love it because its a cooperative game, meaning you all play together rather than against each other. we're trying to collect keys and make a path to the treasure before the ogre can get there. pretty cool.

friday
we headed down for shayne and kaysie's wedding festivities friday afternoon. i mention shayne on here every year when he and his sister kristen come and pray over the kids for the new year. shayne and kristen are a brother and sister duo we have seen grow up and admired the relationship they've had thru the years, and we want that for colby and molly. they're both adults now, out of college and starting their "grown-up lives".

saturday
it was shayne's wedding that allen did this weekend. we've gotten to know his sweet new wife kaysie over the last several months as we've done their pre-marital counseling, and they've been over a few times for dinner and hung out with the kiddos. they are precious and we're so excited for them!!!
shaynes eyes are closed in this picture, but its the best i could get!
their wedding was supposed to be outside in a little meadow, and the reception would be held in a barn just next to it. however, the weather had other ideas, so an hour before go time when it was 45 degrees and raining, they had to move everything into the barn. it was still beautiful!!

we start school back up on monday, and im not even remotely ready. guess thats what i'll be doing tomorrow afternoon. :-/
have a blessed week!!!


link up and share your pictures!!
maybe i'll give away a little gift-y at the end of the year for the most faithful linker-upper. :-)

threesixfive, week 52!!

happy almost new year!!!

i hope everyone had a very merry christmas! we spent christmas at my parents house in the dallas area. molly has been praying for a white christmas for about 2 months, and i can count on one hand the number of times i've seen real actual snow in my life (not sleet or ice, not that we get a whole lot of that either.....and none of it has ever been on christmas), BUT right before we turned into my parents neighborhood on christmas afternoon, lo and behold, SNOW!! big, white, fluffy, fabulous SNOW!! the kids were SOOOO excited. heck, we were all excited. my dad called and said, "get here quick! its snowing!" and i said, "i know we just turned into the neighborhood!" we didn't think it would stick, or snow enough to really be of any consequence. we were just happy to see any at all. to our surprise and delight it snowed hard for about 4 hours, and it was just starting to melt away when we left two days later. we made snow angels, had snowball fights, and built a snowmanturtle. 

a very white christmas, indeed.

sunday

allen and colby decided santa needed some bacon this year, but molly and i are traditionalists and thought cookies were more appropriate. we compromised, and i found a recipe for bacon-chocolate chip cookies. they were pretty good, and i think santa was more than happy with them.

monday
our church did two christmas eve services, and we went to the early one (4pm) as did our friends the lamberts and barners. here are all our kiddos together. where are my sons shoes?!?

 lauren (due in february), april, and myself

putting the cookies and water (colby and molly decided it'd be a nice change after all the milk he has to drink) for santa.

tuesday
merry christmas!!!!
my kids are kind of into legos.

snow, snow, beautiful snow! this is right after we got to their house. it isnt even sticking to the ground much yet.

a few hours later it was another story.....

wednesday
we woke up the morning after christmas and had a snowball fight. well, i stayed back and took pictures.  getting pelted with freezing balls of ice? sounds fun!! no thank you.

thursday
there wasnt quite enough snow for a snowman in the kids' opinion, so they made a snow turtle instead. he was still hanging on when we left thursday to come home.

friday
we took all our christmas decorations down, and i got my house put back together. i put new pictures in all the frames and changed a few things up. the white pitcher was my great grandmothers. its been on a shelf in my kitchen for awhile. i decided to pull it down and display it. allen got me the birdcage for christmas. isnt it pretty??

saturday
one of the girls in the youth group danced the halftime show at the UT basketball game, so we went to support her. even though we had great seats, we couldnt see her very well (she was facing the other way), so i didnt get a picture of it.

i think im taking over hosting the 365 project for those of you that participate. if you have no idea what i'm talking about, its this that youre reading right now! only this week i have a lot of extras. basically you take a picture every day, and post them once a week. its a great way to document life since it tends to get away from us sometimes; at least for me. i'd love to have some of my friends jump in on it!!

sara has been hosting it for 4 years now i think, but shes passing the torch. hopefully i'll figure out how to set up the link this week, and next saturday or sunday i'll start hosting for 2013!!

threesixfive, week 51

we were gone most of the week. thats why im getting this posted later than usual. 

heres what we were up to....

sunday

i sang with the worship team. its something i absolutely love doing, but it does make a long morning for the kiddos who i usually have to drag out of bed, only to sit thru church twice. :-/

monday
shayne and kristin (big brother, little sister) come every year and pray over colby and molly. this is the 6th year they've done it. we are so grateful they continue to be a part of our family.

tuesday
we left tuesday afternoon for south texas, where allen spoke at the zephyr staff's winter retreat. camp zephyr is where we take our youth group for camp each summer. they updated some of the rooms out at the conference center, so we got to stay in one of them. the kids loved the bunk beds.

wednesday
each year the the winter retreat, theres a themed christmas party and white elephant gift exchange. this years theme was high school stereotypes. allen went as the obnoxious football coach, and i went as the "mom" crossing guard. check out those mom jeans, baby.

thursday
there are 2 boxes of hats in the kitchen that the staff wear when they serve meals at the youth and childrens camps in the summer. they kept colby and molly very well entertained while we were there this week.

friday
friday morning we got up and drove to houston to do christmas with allens mom and stepdad.

saturday
we all went to the houston zoo for their holiday lights trail. it was a lot of fun. we took a break to decorate gingerbread cookies.

merry christmas eve eve!!!! hope you have a blessed week celebrating our Savior's birth with your family and friends!!

one of life's disappointments

ive been meaning to share this story for awhile, but just havent gotten around to it.
a week or two ago, i was walking thru the kitchen and i noticed molly standing on one of the chairs. i didnt think anything of it. i let my kids do really dangerous things. they're not that high.
i watched as she jumped off, and came thru the living room past me, where i heard her say to herself, "i can't fly!! i guess im just too heavy."
she was completely serious and said this to no one in particular.
i really wonder what goes thru their heads sometimes.

threesixfive, week 50

merry week before christmas!! 9 days to go!

its been a very full but very fun week....

sunday

our youth worker christmas party was tonight, and i took several pictures, but then realized that my memory card was not in my camera, so those are stuck inside my camera somewhere and i cant get them off. BUT i did wrap a bunch of presents sunday night, so i took a picture of that. :-) i love seeing presents under my tree!

monday
pastor perk; christmas goodies from church members!!

tuesday
we went to dinner tonight with some of the other childrens ministry leadership. the cookies they brought out at the end reminded us of something else......

wednesday
ace was naughty again this week, and broke one of my santas, i guess maybe while he was trying to clean up his marshmallow mess. fortunately it was my least favorite. ;-)

thursday
when the kids went to bed they each found a ticket for the christmas express on their pillow. it allowed them a seat, a bag of kettle corn, and a cup of hot chocolate. right before we left shayne and kaysie showed up because they had gotten tickets too!! imagine that!
it was really just us driving around looking at christmas lights, but it was a great way to do it! we had a blast and i imagine that will become somewhat of a tradition.

friday
we went to an assisted living community and sang carols for them with a group from our homeschool co-op. there were about 30 of us total, all ages.

saturday
we went as a family to the winter celebration at sea world. it was perfect weather (about 70 degrees and a little breezy) for it. here, molly and colby are in the candy cane forest. there were 8 foot tall candy canes and all the trees were wrapped to match. you can see behind them a little bit better how neat it looked, especially as it started to get dark.

tonight we go caroling with a group from our church, and then tuesday we head down to zephyr (the camp where we take our students each summer) where allen will speak at the winter retreat for their staff. from there we'll go to houston to do christmas with his family, then we get back next sunday to do laundry, pack back up and head to dallas christmas afternoon. lots of traveling in our immediate future.

just 9 days of shopping left!! are you done???

be blessed!

threesixfive, week 49

i apologize for all of my pictures being terribly underwhelming. i spent most of my week at my computer doing my christmas shopping, and the last few days on the couch fighting a stomach virus. yuck. back to almost normal now, and we hit the ground running tonight with our youth worker christmas party, and are non stop with stuff till christmas. glad i got that virus out of the way, although i did miss a couple of things yesterday we were supposed to go to.

pictures!

sunday

i ran a 5K through our city's trail of lights. 34 minutes and change! 

monday
i have to start going to the bank again. :-/ there was a branch at the grocery store, so i could just kill two birds with one stone when i went to do my grocery shopping. but i went monday to deposit a check and they've moved to another location. ugh.

tuesday
colby has spent most of his free time this week in his room creating this lego "maze" i think he calls it. sorry the picture is at a weird angle.

wednesday
our (very mischievous) elf is back. this morning we found him in a pile of sugar on our kitchen table.

thursday

another weird angle. sorry.

this year a lot of our gifts to family are coming from the IJM and world vision catalogues. we're making donations in their name to these companies to provide villages and families around the world with things like warm blankets, mosquito nets, and fruit trees.

friday
this year we started a tradition of observing advent, something i had to read up on because i had no clue! its been really fun. we read a devotional each day and the kids make an ornament that has to do with what we read. the ornaments go on a special tree set aside for just that. its called a jesse tree. heres molly making our ornament for friday.

saturday
the kids gave us a dance show right as allen was trying to watch the heisman trophy announcement  right before bedtime.

have a great week!!! only 3 more weeks left in 2012!

threesixfive, week 48

not a whole lot to preface this week, so i'll get to the pictures.

sunday

this is our hwy252 ministry's (kinder thru 4th grades) large group time. i just knew if i didnt take a picture at church, i probably wouldnt get one that day. :-) sundays are pretty mellow for me and the kids, or we're at a bunch of meetings. 

monday
i had to go to goodwill to get a costume for a christmas party we have in a couple weeks. the kids said, "mommy take our picture!" this is what they were doing....

tuesday
molly lost her first tooth! she lost her second tooth 2 days later, so now theres quite a substantial hole in her face.

wednesday
allen calls this the crime scene. we're not sure what happened, but im guessing it didnt end well for the bird.

thursday
we went to the shane & shane/phil wickham Christmas concert. it was beyond good.

friday
it was a beautiul day, so the kids and i stopped at a park for about an hour while we were out running some errands.

saturday
allen was asked to speak at an FCA baseball clinic saturday. it was from 10-1 with not much of a lunch break, so we took sonic to him and stayed for his last breakout session. 60 young men gave their lives to Christ later that afternoon at the closing session! God is awesome!

thats our week! 

not too much happening over the next week either. i'm running a 5K this evening, and we have a few christmas parties over the next several days. maybe i should plan to run another 5K or two.......

be blessed!!