Ian

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the days that I just have Ian at home with me while the others are at MDO. I love this time with him!!! He is such a ham. He is always doing something!!!!! Right now he is really into Faith’s stuff. He looks up to her so much. She is amazing with him! She is his little momma. Today while I was picking up a few things around the house I round the corner to see Ian with Faith’s rain boots on. He just kept saying, Faithy, Faithy….. Love this kid to pieces. 

Here's the buzzz

Last week Lee was cutting a tree that had uprooted and fallen over the barbwire fence. As he did it, honey bees came buzzing out. He was able to see golden honeycomb in the hollowed out tree where the bees were living. Not sure what to do he left it alone and continued to work on another tree. He came home and told me about it. After discussing it, we called the previous owners of the property because they raised honey bees. Nancy(the previous owner) was so excited to hear about the bees! She suggested that we cover the tree with a tarp until the weather is warmer or they might not survive the winter. She wanted to take the bees, but said that she couldn't until March. (I'm not sure why, but she's the bee expert. ) On Monday she went out with Lee to see the bees and bring a tarp to cover them. When they were out there, she removed three honey combs for us to bring home.











We got quite the bee and honey extracting lesson Monday night. Basically when you extract honey without a press, you scrap off the waxy sealant and then turn over the honeycomb and let the honey drip out. If you heat it up the process goes faster. We tried a hair dryer but it was melting the honey comb so that didn't work. (For those bee novice, the entire honeycomb is made of wax). I guess just a small amount of heat is better....
Eventually we just squeezed the comb by hand and ran it through a strainer. The wax rises to the top!!!








We ended up with 2 cups of honey from just a small amount of honeycomb. Pretty neat!!! It was a great learning experience for the kids and us. I had to bribe Peyton and Faith with M&M's to try it. Ian dug right in. He kept saying, bite, bite.....


We are thinking we might give bee raising a whirl...... That's the buzz.....

Visiting Mamaw

While we were in Bryant visiting, the kids went with Judy to pick up Mamaw at her place. They love to ride the walker and they love their Mamaw!





I feel so blesssed to have such a great family!

Christmas Play

Play Learn had their Christmas program middle of December. Peyton’s class sang a few songs up on stage. I was very proud of him for going up on stage and singing and not running to sit down with us. There were as always a few classic moments during the performance, thankfully they weren’t lead by Peyton.

Faith was chosen to be Mary in her program. She was very excited about being up on stage. She took her roll very seriously! The day of the play I was worried that she might abandoned the Mary part though. She told me through out the day that her stomach was hurting and that she was nervous about her performance. I felt bad for her and tried to assure her that she was going to be just fine.

We were in charge of bringing baby Jesus to the program. I figured she would love bringing her baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, but I was sadly mistaken. She got very upset about having to take her baby tutu off and wrapping her baby in a white pillow case. Not to mention that baby Jesus was a BOY not a GIRL baby!! I honestly was not sure she would even touch baby Jesus in the program, or if she would take his/her swaddle off! But she performed beautifully and sang her little heart out! So proud of both of my kids!

Mom drove all the way up to see her gran-babies perform. It meant a lot that she was there to share those special moments and memories.

Let me just say that Avery was the star of David and she was the CUTEST thing EVER!!! She sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was precious! At one point she dropped the microphone, but she just stopped, picked it up, and recovered without missing a beat.

Faith’s best friend at school is Faryn. She was an angel.

The boys enjoying the reception after the program.

Fall photos

Family photos might be one of the most stressful things with kids we do!!! First, what to wear, second, hoping the weather will be nice, third will everyone be healthy, fourth, will everyone be in a good mood, fifth, will everyone cooperate and smile?! The list goes on and on…

We had our pictures taken the first weekend in Nov. of course the weather turned FREEZING cold that day! Faith would not shed the frumpy sweater and Peyton wanted his jacket buttoned, but other than that, we made the outfits work. Poor Peyton would not crack a smile to save his life. Later that day Peyton ended up with a high fever so that answers the question of why he didn’t want to smile. Despite the craziness of the kids and the cold weather we ended up with some good ones.

Egg nog

Ian loves Egg Nog! We gave him a sip and he went crazy! After he finished Lee's glass he went running back to the refrigerator squealing for more. It was hilarious. One day he saw the empty carton in the recycle bin and got it out and tried to get a sip out of it. Poor guy, he takes after his dad when it comes to egg nog.








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Christmas Eve service

Christmas Eve we attended the Christmas Eve service at our church. I think this is the 3rd or 4th year that we have gone. The kids love it because they are able to come into the "big" service and they also get glow sticks. It is a good time for us to all worship as a family and spend time together.
Although this year I spent the majority of the service in the lobby with Ian because he was not behaving. All he wanted to do is crawl under the seats and squeal! He's a mess!
















We enjoyed having paw paw and Kat Kat with us this year!!