He Asked! She Said YES! (of course!)

Congratulations Josh and Marcy!! This is my "baby" brother and my future sister-in-law Marcy - we had big excitement around here this weekend after he proposed on Saturday. Marcy already seems like part of the family - she has fit in so well with all of us, there won't be much of a transition, which is awesome. I'm SO very happy for my little brother, who has snagged a wonderful Christian girl, and I'm also very happy for Marcy, who is getting one heck of a guy! :) We are all so excited and have already started pestering them about PLANS. More to follow in that area - they are just soaking up the moment right now, which is what they should be doing! We love you guys!

Tonight we had the kids' Christmas program at their school - it was THE CUTEST thing EVER! Oh my word, we just loved it. Little kids singing their hearts out about Jesus - there is just nothing like it. It was just the best. Jack and Noah did so well, and were so proud. Their "substitute" grandparents (our next-door neighbors) came with us since we didn't have any other family around, which was really special for Jack and Noah. I took lots of pictures, but haven't got them uploaded yet, so I'll post them once I get that done.

We are in the midst of an insane week - between the four of us, from now until Sunday, we have 8 parties to go to, in addition to several other things happening this week. Not sure how we are going to survive this, but we're jumping in head first, and we'll see where we end up! May have to eliminate some things as we go, depending on how the kids do. Even the fun things can be exhausting! 'Tis the season!

Have a great week!

Decorating and a Celebrity

We spent much of the weekend finally decorating for Christmas - I say finally because we have been looking at a huge "naked" tree all week! Finally got the lights on it on Saturday (took me 3 hours!! - It's a 10 foot tree) and then we finished decorating it with ornaments today. It always feels like a lot of work, but I always LOVE it when we're done. We don't follow any "theme" with our tree - it's just full of stuff we love - things that are special and have memories to all 4 of us. Some of our favorites are at the bottom of this post.

In other news, which I wanted to post last week but didn't get around to it - we had big excitement around here last Monday when we realized Jack had a "story" with an illustration published in the local newspaper on Thanksgiving!! The newspaper asked the local elementary schools to submit directions from the students on "How to Cook a Turkey." Zion's lunchladies sifted through the entries at our school, and submitted the ones they thought were "worthy," and then the newspaper chose 50 from the community to be published - one of which was Jack's! We missed it somehow on Thanksgiving, but when Jack returned to school on Monday, his teacher had it proudly displayed in their room - I felt awful that we missed it!! Anyway, Grandpa immediately went down to the paper and bought 6 copies. Here's Jack with his picture (it's on the left side of the paper) - looks pretty proud, no?

I'm sure you can't see the type, so here's what it says - "My Grandpa went hunting. He shot three turkeys because we have a BIG family. Grandma and Mom cook it for 50 hours at 50 degrees. Then they put butter and salt on it. We also have corn on the cob." Okay, so he has his facts a little mixed up - Grandpa was quick to point out to the GF&P officer in his office that the shooting ocurred DURING turkey season last spring - not now, in the off-season! :) And mom doesn't really have anything to do with cooking the turkey - that's all Grandma's doing, so I thought I should give credit where it's due! Anyway, it was funny for us to see what he came up with.

We're headed into our last fairly "normal" week before Christmas - starting next weekend, the calendar really gets crazy. Hope to enjoy some peaceful moments before then! Closing with a few of our favorite ornaments - obviously this one would be MARK'S:

This one is Jack and Noah's - it's lights flash along with the music it plays -

And this one is probably the oldest on the tree - this is one of mine from when I was a little girl - I remember getting SO excited every year when this one came out of the box. He's been chewed on by a family dog, and he's kinda funny looking, but I was attached to him, and he's been on every tree I've ever had! Look familiar, mom and dad?!?

Thought For The Day . . .

"Gratitude. More aware of what you have than what you don't. Recognizing the treasure in the simple - a child's hug, a song, a golden sunset. Relishing in the comfort of the common - a warm bed, a hot meal, a clean shirt."

Max Lucado

I'm BEAT tonight, but I'll post an update tomorrow!! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

"Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;his faithfulness continues through all generations." Psalm 100:4-5

Happy Thanksgiving from the Roisums! We are enjoying the holiday at my mom and dad's house in Spearfish - drove up here last night after Mark got done with work, right before the snow hit - it snowed quite a bit last night here in the hills, and it's BEAUTIFUL! Had a nice evening last night of pizza and games, and now today we are watching the Macy's parade and lounging around. The whole Horak family is here, so we're just enjoying being all together. I can't believe it's Thanksgiving, that there's snow on the ground, and that we will be getting our Christmas tree tomorrow! Unbelievable. And I "officially" get to start the Christmas music tomorrow! :) Can't wait.

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful day filled with many thankful thoughts!

Okay I did it . . .

. . . I broke the "rules" and started listening to Christmas music today - !!! I'm one of those people who believes you DON'T break out the Christmas tunes until the day after Thanksgiving . . but in preparation of Friday November 23rd, I started loading all of our Christmas CDs onto iTunes so I can get them on our iPod. Well, when you upload a CD onto iTunes, it starts playing right away, and I have to admit, from song 1, I was hooked. It was too tempting!! So I bee-bopped along to my favorite Christmas music while paying the bills and balancing the checkbook this morning - it was awesome. Made a not-so-fun job much more pleasant! But that's IT for now! I got my "fix" and now no more till after Thanksgiving!! :-)

Getting Caught Up

We had a great trip to Minnesota - a little "whirlwind-ish" for me, but we made it through just fine. Five nights in a different location each night! Whew! I was worried about how the kids would handle it, but they did awesome and had a lot of fun. We first stopped in Willmar for a couple days to visit the Roisum clan, and were amazed at the remodeling that took place at Mark's parents house over the past couple months. WOW, what fun to see such a big change! It looks awesome you guys! Hope you enjoy it immensely. (Here's a photo of the boys "dressing up" Mark's Uncle Marty - he's a VERY patient man!!) :)

After the Vikings game last Sunday, we headed to Minneapolis, and stayed with my aunt and uncle the first night. They have been blessed with an enormous house and we got a kick out of Jack and Noah's awe-inspired comments - "This looks like a hotel" - "What if I get up in the middle of the night and can't find you?" - "Which stairs do we go down, there are so many?" They had been there several times before the age of 3, but not since then, so they didn't remember it. They had a total blast and didn't want to leave in the morning. I told my aunt I was going to send them to her this summer (they are recent empty-nesters), and she said "SURE!" So watch out, Ben and Ann, we may just take you up on it! :)

We then spent the day at the Mall of America - the kids have been asking for over a year to visit Legoland, so that was top priority, and it didn't disappoint. They were very impressed. We had lunch with Mark's brother and his family, and then headed off to do some rides in the former Camp Snoopy (not sure what they call it now). Then we hit the Build-a-Bear workshop where the boys each made their own dog - they LOVED it. At the end of the day, we went to the Cheesecake Factory and then crashed at our hotel.

Mark's training for work started early the next morning, so the boys and I slept in and then headed to the zoo, which was a much bigger hit with Jack and Noah than I thought it would be! They were enthralled with the dolphin show and the tank where they could pet stingrays and little sharks. I wasn't sure they would do it, but Jack had his arms in that tank up to his shoulders within seconds. Noah took a little coaxing, but after a while he got into it too. They stayed at that tank for an hour! We also hit a 3D Imax movie - their first 3D experience - and that was a riot. We had a great day together.

Mark, his brother, and their boys at LegoLand:

Noah stuffing his dog at Build-a-Bear

Jack operating the stuffing machine . . .

On a ride at the Mall of America:

At the zoo:

Sporting the 3D glasses:

Jack getting ready to "pounce"
Wednesday we headed home! I then spent Thursday and Friday just trying to get caught up - my goodness, four people can create a lot of laundry in 6 days!!! We had a nice quiet weekend at home - Saturday we did some major cleaning/reorganizing in the playroom/family room area, which felt really good. We had to make room for Mark's Mall of America purchase - a LoveSac. If you aren't familiar, they are fancy adult-size "bean bags" except they aren't made of beans, they are full of foam. He wanted the biggest - an 8-footer - but it was almost impossible to move, so we settled on the next size down - the 6-footer. We love it - it's VERY comfy!!
Here's what it looked like right out of the bag:

And after a lot of work by the four of us, kneading and fluffing:

Now we're off to a normal week, looking forward to my sister and her family coming on Saturday!! They'll be here through Thanksgiving weekend - partly at our house, and partly at my mom and dad's in Spearfish. Can you stand it - Thanksgiving is already almost here? Amazing!

Halloween and a Happy Birthday

After finally feeling healthy again, we ended up having a GREAT Halloween. On Halloween "eve" (the 30th) the boys carved their pumpkins, we ate a mummy cake and then snuggled up on the couch and watched The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown on T.V. On Halloween, the boys got dressed RIGHT after school, we went to McDonalds for supper (which was really fun because there were tons of kids there, all dressed up), then headed to the boys' school for the carnival there. After playing several games there, we took them trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. This year, Mark and I followed them with the truck in case they got cold and wanted to warm up. So we just drove along the curb, while they walked on the sidewalk, and Mark and I were SO entertained - both had these fancy masks that they could hardly see through, but they insisted on wearing them, so they were stumbling around, tripping over bushes, nearly running into mailboxes - at one house, they actually ended up going around the garage to the backyard. It was SO funny - - only because we knew they were safe and we were right there with them. Towards the end of the night we got them to take off the masks so they could see. :) As you can see, Star Wars was the theme this year - Noah being Darth Vader and Jack being a Storm Trooper. Jack was having a hard time remembering the term "Storm Trooper," so on occasion when someone not familiar with Star Wars would ask him what he was, he would say "I'm Darth Vader's people!!" It was so CUTE!

Thursday we had parent/teacher conferences at school. Both kids are doing great - we're so glad we waited until they were 6 to start them - we've found it's making a huge difference. They are both excelling academically, but we did hear some interesting comments from both teachers! We were told (and this wasn't a surprise) that Noah is very quiet and shy - which actually is so contrary to his personality at home! He has his group of friends, but isn't one of the boisterous kids, which is o.k. with us! Jack's teacher surprised us a little more when she said he has two difficulties - 1) he misses Noah (WHAT!?!?) and 2) he's highly competitive. Number 1 was a total shock and number 2, not so much. :) I never expected Jack to miss Noah - Jack's the more independent one so I was blown away. She said he's highly protective and possessive of Noah at recess and lunch (when both classes are together). Last night I asked Jack if it was true that he misses Noah during the day, and he looked at me with big eyes and nodded. Wow! Anyway, she suggested we get Jack involved in some outlet for his competiveness, so we need to get to work on that!

Other big news from yesterday is that it was Mark's birthday - 37!! We had my family over to celebrate last night - and also to celebrate my mom's birthday which was on Oct. 26th. It was a fun night, and Mark got his usual haul of Vikings stuff!

Now we are off to Minnesota today - headed to Willmar first, to see Mark's family - then off to Minneapolis to goof off for a couple of days - then Mark has training in Mpls. on Tuesday, and then we'll head home on Wednesday. We're looking forward to a few days away, and some time with the kids!! Have a great weekend!