DARE Graduation

Sam's school has been having a DARE officer come in and talk to the class once each week. Today they had a little graduation ceremony to honor the kids. I had to go and take pictures for the newspaper so I snuck one in of Sam shaking hands with the officer.

Welcome Home Maude!

Yesterday we got to go and pick up Maude. For those of you that don’t know, Maude is my 3 year old mule. Although I have ridden her a few times she was not actually “broke,” so she has been with the Amish since November 1st for training. We were pretty excited to go get her back, especially BJ, I think he has mentioned her daily since she has been gone! The Amish village is pretty cool, they live just like we did 150 years ago, with no running water or electricity, they travel by horse and buggy and do all of their farming with teams of draft horses. The man who trained Maude has 14 kids! There is no way to contact them to let them know you are coming so when we got there, Maude was not there. One of the boys had ridden her to work at a saw mill about 5 miles from their house. We loaded up a replacement horse and another son took us to the sawmill to swap horses so the boy would have transportation home after work! When we got there Maude was tied in a barn and didn’t seem to recognize us. We loaded her in the trailer and took the amish boy back and headed home with Maude. When we turned her out with Rosie and Blaze, those two went crazy, running and bucking and Maude just wanted to eat… She hasn’t had anything but hay for the last 30 days! Rosie pretty much ignores Maude and Blaze is trying to bully her so he can have second in the pecking order. He did the exact same thing when we first got Maude and it didn’t work out so well for him then and I don’t expect that it will last too long this time either! Maude does seem much, much more calm! Hopefully we will get a day with decent weather so I can ride her and see how she does!

This is them acting like fools after we put Maude back in with them!

They gather their corn into these bundles, then go back out with a horse drawn wagon and pick them up.

This is an auction house where they bring their produce to sell to the public.

This is a typical Amish home, they are all built exactly the same, white with a green roof.

This is an Amish schoolhouse, notice the kids have their horses tied outside waiting for them!

Putting up the Christmas Tree...

It’s officially December… the countdown is on! We put our christmas tree up this weekend. This is the first year since having kids that I have had to celebrate Christmas in a rental house… it just isn’t the same! My beautiful 9 foot tree won’t fit in this house with 8 foot ceilings and there is nowhere to hang any of my outside decorations without major modifications which I can’t do since we don’t own it. I’m bummed! So, anyway, we had to improvise and put up the tree without the top foot and a half (the best part:) and forgo the outside decorations! Oh well, christmas is my absolute favorite holiday and I’m sure it will be great anyway! (but let’s hope next year it will be spent in our own home!)

Thanksgiving

Well, the Thanksgiving festivities are officially over. BJ had to work on Thanksgiving day so the girls and I went to the VFW hall and bought our Thanksgiving dinner! Later that evening we headed to my mom’s house to spend the night so I could get up early and hit the Black Friday sales. After the dog keeping me awake up all night because she apparently cannot sleep in a different place, Sam and I got up at 5 a.m. and headed to Wal-Mart. Apparently 5 a.m. is not even close to early enough to get a bargain! We fought the insane crowd in Wal-Mart only to leave empty handed! Luckily BJ had spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot and went shopping at 4 a.m. and got all of the doorbusters that we wanted to finish out our shopping for the year! Thank goodness for dad!

Today I hosted Thanksgiving dinner at my house for my side of the family. This is the first year that my side of the family has gotten together and I really enjoyed it! My mom and step-father were here and his mother came along. My uncle, and my niece, and both nephews came, and of course my husband and daughters. This was no small feat considering everyone lives in different towns and the two men are truckers! Now I’m ready for Christmas! Hopefully I can talk my husband into putting the tree up tomorrow!

BACK ROW: Dana (nephew) Nicole (niece) and Josh (nephew... aka: "the dude with the weird hair as Alex refers to him!")

FRONT ROW" Sam and Alex

Our Family Addition

Well, I found out today that Clara, our exchange student from Germany, will be arriving on the evening of December 27th! We are all so excited! I’m not sure if the girls are more anxious for Christmas or for Clara to arrive! We will be going to the STL airport to pick her up so I will make sure that we take lots of pics and video to post!

"Mr. Stinky Feet"

Tuesday night we went to a presentation at the school. They had “Mr. Stinky Feet” put on a show for the kids. They really enjoyed singing and dancing along. They even got to go up on stage with Mr. Stinky Feet and play an instrument and dance! Alex thought getting on stage was a good idea until she was up there, she got really embarrassed!

Rocket Launch

Saturday morning we headed out to the local airport for Sam’s REACH class rocket launch. The kids in the REACH have been working for several weeks building and customizing their own rockets. They got to launch their rocket 3 times each and record launch readings. Check out the video of the event on Sam’s Page on our website.