Fun with Pepaw

Memaw and Pepaw came for Christmas, and one thing the kiddos love to do is jump up and down and climb all over Pepaw. He is probably glad when he gets to go back home to give his poor aching back a rest from my little hooligans. But they do love their Pepaw and they LOVE to make him be the horsie.

Merry Christmas

We had a very Merry Christmas. Both Grandma and Memaw and Pepaw were in town for the festivities. On Christmas Eve we opened up the gifts, as Josh had to work on Christmas morning. We ate traditional enchaladas FROM New Mexico (THANKS MOM!!) and then went to Christmas Eve service at church. When we came back, Santa had come. It was exciting for Jacob, but Emily just said, "Is that it?" I think she may have been in sensory overload at that point. So Christmas was a rather lazy day. No getting up at 3 am and opening gifts. It was over and done with.

It was a very good Christmas. I got an MP3 player from Josh and money for chairs to go with my new table. Josh got a little knife thingy and Storm Troopers. Emily got a childs MP3 player that plays Disney Songs and jacob got LOTS of Thomas stuff. So overall, it was a worthwhile time!!

Santa Came Early!!!

A little Christmas Joy

Looky, looky

Emily and Jacob ready for church a few weeks ago. Emily got this dress for her birthday from Memaw. She loves it so much that she wears it everyweek to church. Sh e always gets lots of compliments on it. I think people still like this look, but not many dress making people make it. Oh well, Emily LOVES it. Plus, Jacob's clothes fit, which is more of a challenge these days.

Jacob's Adventure

Recently Jacob and Emily have been spending quite a bit of time on their bikes, riding and falling and having a great time of doing it. On Sunday Josh's mom and I went to Walmart to finish up our Christmas shopping and as we were coming home about a half mile from our house we are stopped at a stop sign and a little boy comes trucking along on a bike. Josh's mom says,"That looks like Jacob." I say, "That IS Jacob!!" He had ridden his bike over half a mile, crossed half a dozen streets and was head to the "Lake Park" He was in the process of getyting lost, as he had pasted the turn to the Lake Park. Thank God a lady had seen him trucking along alone and had gotten in her car to follow him to make sure he did not get hit or worse. I am SO thankful to her. Josh had gone to the bathroom and Jacob decided he wanted to go to the park. ARGH!! At least we happen to run into him and he made it home safely without and police station being involved, as we have already picked Emily up from the police station. We are hoping to not have to pick either of them up from the cops for a very long while, if ever.

Gingerbread House

This year we bought the kit for a gingerbread house. Last year we tried to make a train, and for anyone who saw it remembers it was more of a train wreck than a gingerbread train. But Mommy followed the directions and we created a fantastic gingerbread house that the kiddos are very proud of. They decorated it just like the one on the box. So we don’t have much imagination, but they were happy it stood upright rather than in a pile on the kitchen table. Also you can see the new table we purchased in the background. They are not allowed to eat at it yet, until I can get a plastic tablecloth to help protect it from the creatures that are my children. We only bought the table, so the chairs look ridiculous with the table, but it is a process. We bought the table outright, not on credit!!! So chairs will come. It says it can seat 8, but I think it could sit 10. It has 2 leafs and I am SO excited about it. Now we can actually feed everyone that is coming for Christmas at a table. Yeah!

The kids like photography

A little Jacob for a Tuesday morning

The mother load

Can you see the excitment on my child's face?

We love KIDS BOP 8

Opening Presents

Opening presents

A Barbie for her collection.

Emily and her cake

Emily and Chelsa

Birthday

Emily turned 7 on December 2nd and we party hardy for a week. On Sat. we had her little party and she loved every minute if it. We started by having her new best friend come over and we all went out to the movies to see Chicken Little. It was a great movie. Did not expect there to be aliens, but maybe I misunderstood the previews. Oh well, we still enjoyed it. We came back and her friend got sick, but we had Jose, Kylee, Deanna, Grandpa Ken and his new wife and all the parents to enjoy a PARTY!! So we cut cake and opened presents. Life seems to be going well for Emily. She LOVED everything she received and cannot wait until Christmas to open more presents. Jacob had a few problems letting Emily have her day and had a chronic stomach ache all week, that I believe to be and attention getting device, but he seems to be doing better.
She had a great party. Lots of photos to follow.

Face Painting at Girl Scout Event

Do I need to say anything?

Face Painting at Girl Scout Event

Choo Choo!!!

Dancing

So my work Christmas party is tomarrow night and there will be dancing. Josh has only danced with me less than a half a dozen times. He dances with the dog on a weekly basis, I wonder if he will dance with me tomarrow night. I hope he enjoys dancing with me more than the dog, but w shall see.

Birthday Time

Tomarrow is Emily's 7th birthday. She is about to bust with excitment. She is truely thrilled to be 7. Of course she was thrilled to eat turkey onThanksgiving, so, I take it with a grain of salt. We are having her birthday on Saturday. We had to have quite a talk with her about the necessety to have it on Saturday because more of her friends could come, we would not have to be out late and Mommy's work Christmas party is on Friday night, so we had a minor conflict. She is on board, fianlly. I think she realized that while the 2nd is her birthday, she will get to wear her new outfit and wear a ribbon saying she is the birthday girl and we get to take cupcakes for her class AND on Saturday we are going to the movies with her new BEST FRIEND EVER!!!! and having some other folks over for a cake and ice cream party. She gets two birthdays this way. I think she finally figured it out and is happy to follow our lead. So anyhow I should have updates next week as to the fantastic party time we had this weekend. I am sure I will need to come back to work on Monday to rest and recuperate after this weekend.

Brownie

We have a Brownie in our house now. She is so excited about selling cookies. Which is good becasue I voluntered to be Cookie Coordinator or as Josh calls it Cookie Nazi. I am basically in charge of her troops cookie sells. All up to little ole me. She is so excited to start getting patches and involved. We have meetings 2 times a month and she loves it. She loves earning her money for dues and paying her own way. I can hardly beleive she is old enough to be a Brownie.

And extra special thianks to those her bought from her fall product sell. She will be getting her first patch soon and her little froggy. I think I am more excited about it than she is.

Halloween a little bit late

We had a really good Halloween. The kiddos dressed up as Tinkerbell and Capt. Hook. They loved their costumes (Thanks MeMaw)!! We have more candy that any one family should ever have. I finally gave up after a week of them sneeking it and last Friday after school Josh dumped it all on the cabinet and said go for it. They were SO crazy!!! But we let them stay up a little late and put them to bed right before the sugar high went DOWN. So they went down easily and haven't asked for candy since. Only one problem, we still have a pumkin full of candy. They only made it throuigh half the candy. I think it might just have to disappear this weekend. I don't think they would even notice.

scooby scooby DOO!!!

We went to a dog show a few weeks ago and the reason that Jacob and Emily were SO excited to go was to see Scooby Doo and the gangf with the mystery machine. Well we went and the first thing we did was run over to the them. Only once we got there Jacob was to scared to take his picture with the crew, which I don't blame him. They are just a little bit scary. Emily did not care, she was just disapointed that Scooby Doo was a doll and not a real dog. She still thinks cartoons are real people. She understands that they are just pretending, but she seems to beleive they are real people, that just look a bit different than we do. She even wore her Scooby Doo shirt to have her picture made.

JacobArt

Here is a little bit of Jacob's Art. It seems he enjoys the art of photography, especailly if I am not looking. These are a few of my favorites. I especially like the cat food bowl and the iron.

NINE YEARS!!!!

I can hardly believe it myself, but it will be nine years on October 30 that Josh and I have been “more than friends.” I am so excited because we have gotten a babysitter for the evening and plan to party all night long…or as long as people with young children who wake up early and have colds can do it. We plan to go to eat at PF Changs. We both really like Chinese food, but rarely get to eat it. And when we do it is usually just from the little place down the street. This will be good stuff tonight. Plus we are going to go to a movie. Can you believe it? And it is a grown-up movie with no cartoon characters in sight. And what makes this even sweeter is I just happened to stop by the old La Quinta yesterday and saw my good buddy Frank the valet and he gave me $20 in movie money!! So now we can get dessert at dinner and not blow our budget for our night out! I am excited and trying desperately to figure out what I am going to wear, as I have no nice going on dates clothes anymore.
On a side note we have a busy weekend planned. Tomorrow we have Girl Scouts and Emily gets pinned. We have been working on the promise all week so she can get her pin. She is so excited. I am also proud to say to got her patches on her vest. Notice I didn’t say sewed the patches on, but they are iron-on and I did it with out any help. May sound silly to you, but I was proud of myself. Then tomorrow night we plan to go to a fall/Halloween festival that the YMCA is doing with free carnival stuff and free Bar b que (that’s how I got Josh to go J/K). And then we have church on Sunday and I have to go grocery shopping and all that whatnot at some point. Busy time for the Sumpters, but sure have fun doing it.

Money men??

Well exciting news in the Sumpter house, we got our dryer fixed!!! Our builder finally got the job done. Once they pulled the cover off they found $2 in change and a pebble keeping the dryer from working. So we (when I say we, I mean Josh because I NEVER have change) learned to clean out our pockets before we do the laundry. This is extremely exciting news, as the laundry was beginning to mount. We usually do a load a day, and with Jacob and I being sick earlier in the week, we had mounds of it. I would not send my children to school in dirty underwear so we hit the washateria last weekend.
Now we had the $2 in change laying in the floor of the laundry room and Jacob found it. I was impressed because he only took a penny and a dime. But he carried the penny and dime around all evening looking at them thinking he had hit the jackpot. During dinner we were sitting at the table and he picked them up and asked "Mommy, are these the money men?" I did not have the power in me to not chuckle as I began to answer his so sweet and innocent question. Of course, Emily being a first grader now had all the answers, told him that they were Abe Lincoln, the first President of our country. Oh well...We are still learning. When we corrected her by saying, "No Emily the first President was George Washington." She just looked up at me and said, "No Mommy, he was the second one." Now I know at one time I thought France was a city in Paris and that a knuckle was a nickel but I am 27 years old and I know our first president was George Washington.
But Jacob now knows that the people who are the money men are not on the money, they just have a lot of it.

ROLLERS!!!!!

Emily decided she wanted try rolleing her hair into sponge rollers. So we went out to Walmart and bought two packages and this is what we got.

Picture of Josh, the kids and Biscuit