Christmas Pics in February

So, um, Hi.

How ya been?

I know, I'm a tad bit behind. Don't worry, I'll diligently spend the next week or two catching you up. But first, I had to post these Christmas pictures for our sake, as I'm sure you haven't been holding your breath waiting for Roisum Christmas pictures. :) I print this blog as use it as a family journal, so I gotta get all this stuff on here.

We had my favorite tree EVER this year, so you'll see a few pictures of it. It was actually hard for me to see it go.

Jack was so funny about his Christmas outfit this year. I had these gorgeous gray wool patchwork pants for him and a very handsome gray handknit sweater to match - he was NOT pleased. Informed me that he needed to wear RED for Christmas, and what was I thinking? Gray does NOT look like Christmas, mom. So back to the store I went, and he was happy with my next attempt:

I slaved away at making albums for the boys of their entire year - they turned out great, and the boys LOVED studying the pictures of 2009. Most of the pictures they hadn't even seen because they're all on the computer!

After a quiet Christmas morning alone at our house, we headed up to my mom and dad's (and got snowed in). :) This is me and my sis with my mom and dad (missed you, Josh!!)

This was my sister's van. By the time the storm was done, you could only see a glimpse of the back end.

Here's our truck:

My mom and dad's driveway turned into a sledding hill . . .

For New Year's Eve, we had friends over for the night, and they brought their dog and new puppy. He was sooooo cute - and just tiny!! Murphy had a great time entertaining his buddies.

Just a random updated picture of Murphy - he grew up!! He always gets this BORED look on his face when I pull out the camera.

All my boys settled in to watch the 2nd to last Vikings game. That was a happy day. The last Vikings game was NOT.

Whew! There. Got those out of the way. More to come in the next few days . . .

Haiti

My intention over the past week has been to post the 900 pictures I have on my new camera from Christmas and tell you about our impending vacation, but I'm finding it hard to blog about our blessed little sheltered lives when there is such devastation going on in Haiti. My heart is elsewhere. Last night on the news I saw a Haitian mother, literally on the verge of insanity, because all 5 of her small children had died. Can you imagine? Sometimes it's too easy to separate ourselves from other, "different," areas of the world such as these, but I cannot separate myself from a mother's grief. A mother is a mother, no matter where you live, and her heartbreak is just as real as ours would be.

So, for now, I ask that you pray daily for this country and please consider giving - even a small amount - to help get relief to them. There are many organizations out there, but our personal favorite is Samaritan's Purse. You can donate on their website - www.samaritanspurse.com -very simple. And if you don't choose them, PLEASE be careful - a popular choice has been Wyclef Jean's organization but they are now being questioned by watchdogs, which makes me sick. Samaritan's Purse not only provides relief supplies, but they also deliver these things with the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is exactly what these people need right now.

This comes from their website:
As our teams work in crisis areas of the world, people often ask, "Why did you come?" The answer is always the same: "We have come to help you in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ." Our ministry is all about Jesus—first, last, and always. As the Apostle Paul said, "For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake" (2 Corinthians 4:5, NIV).

Truth vs. Lies

I'm so proud of Noah, I had to share this with you:

This child has a constant need for feeding his brain. He absorbs information like we absorb air. (I seriously can't wait to see what God does with his mind when he's older). It's fairly exhausting for me, because many times I do not have answers for his many questions. So, he's developed a great fondness for reading, because books, of course, are an endless source of information when mom has run out of answers. As such, he received several books for Christmas - a few of which were the Magic Treehouse Research Guides - supposedly "factual" (and I use that term VERY loosely here) books on various topics - anything from Dolphins to Tornadoes.

After Christmas, he started reading one on Space.

I had a pile of stuff for Goodwill accumulating by the door, and one day found the Space book in the pile. I asked Noah why he left his book there, and he said, with disgust, "Get rid of it."

Me: "Why? Did you finish it already?"
Noah: "No. I started it, but I'm not going to finish it because it's full of LIES."
Me: "What do you mean?"
Noah: "Well first, they claim in that book that they don't know how the universe was created or how long it took. THEN they say that one idea is that the universe was created with one big explosion. That's a LIE."
Me (full of pride, of course): "Hmmm."
Noah continues: "I can tell them exactly how the universe was created. GOD did it, and He did it in SEVEN DAYS."
Me: "Well, you could skip over those parts and read the rest - ?"
Noah: "NO. They LIE. I can't believe anything written in that book."

That's my baby!! I sooooo love to see Jesus at work in him!! He's already noticing those little red flags of discernment popping up in his mind. What a gift for a parent!!

Back to Reality

I hate it when Christmas is over. Such a bummer. Why can't it last longer? Every year I come up with these grandiose plans of what our Christmas break will look like (what we'll do, what we WON'T do, etc.) and every year I end up feeling disappointed that it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. Welcome to LIFE, huh? Anyone else have this problem? January 2nd rolls around and I always wish I had two more weeks.

But I don't. And normal life returns tomorrow whether or not I want it to. So I'm going to do my best to wake up tomorrow with a positive attitude and dive in!

We had a great - but interesting - Christmas. Many pictures to share but I didn't have it in me to download, edit and upload the 100 pictures I have sitting on my camera. I'll definitely post them later. We had a wonderful Christmas Eve with just the 4 of us - started with going out for lunch and then delivering gifts to friends. Then headed to church and had a yummy meal at home - I'd put some effort into it and the kids actually devoured it - what better present for a mom is there? :) The kids got to open one gift and then headed to bed.

Then our night took a downturn.

About 9:30 Murphy started vomiting, and in the first pile we noticed a big long spaghetti noodle.

Which was moving.

Which unfortunately also means it wasn't a spaghetti noodle.

After an emergency call to our vet we learned he had a case of roundworms - which also, as it turns out, is in fact transmittable to humans. This little tidbit of info put me over the edge. I spent the next hour of my Christmas Eve on the internet, reading about roundworms and trying to assess if my children had already been infected. *I'm a bit of a germaphobe.* I also have the small problem of my mind going places to which there is a point of no return.

Meanwhile, Mark loaded Murphy up in the car and drove him to the vet hospital, who were kind enough to take him because we couldn't have him around my mom and dad's dog the next day, or my baby nephew for that matter.

We fell into bed at 12:30 a.m. We did then have a nice Christmas morning, watching a blizzard start building outside. By noon, Mark issued orders that we needed to leave NOW if we were going to make it to Spearfish to my mom and dad's. We threw some things together - forgot more than we remembered - and headed on down the blizzard covered interstate. After a treacherous drive, we made it - just before they closed the interstate.

We had a very nice Christmas there with my parents and my sister and her family. All the while we watched it snow. And snow. And snow. We woke up Saturday morning to it still snowing (serious amounts) and it didn't stop until 3 feet later, late Sat. night. It was AMAZING. We ended up staying an unplanned night, but had fun eating, chatting, playing games and the kids had a BLAST out in the snow.

Meanwhile, Murphy was being treated for his condition and it actually was probably better he was at the vet for the weekend - the snow was so high we would have lost him.

We spent the next week putting Christmas away and getting the house ready for New Year's Eve, when we hosted our dear friends and their two dogs - one of which was a 7 week old Shih-tzu puppy. We had a great evening of watching dogs play. So entertaining!

So all in all, the past two weeks weren't what I had planned (I had visions of laying on the couch, reading a book, watching movies with the kids), but were fun nonetheless.

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. :)