Holidays are Coming

The holidays are upon us and is anyone ready? My husband still has a 'Bah Humbug' attitude toward Christmas. I wish he could get a little more excited for the girls' sake. I love to decorate for the holidays, but he won't do it until two weeks before Christmas. This year we will have three trees - one in the living room, one in Abigail's room, and one in Rachel's room. The one in the girls' room are small, artificial, prelit ones; the one for the living room will be real.

Thanksgiving will be spent with the Brechts this year. My whole family will be there for the day. The girls and I are planning on staying through the weekend to do some shopping for Christmas. Hopefully there will be some good sales on Black Friday. This will be my first time to be able to get out early and shop. The kids will hopefully sleep in and MK and I can go shopping without them. I know it would help me to be able to get some presents for the girls.

Christmas will be spent with the Rock clan. Michael's family has decided to do things a little different this year. We are not buying presents for the couples in the family. Instead, we are going to choose a family that we know who is need of help and pool the money that we planned to spend and give it to a deserving family. We have talked about doing similar things in the past; this year just seems to be the year that everybody is in agreement that there are actually people out there that genuinely need the help.

I pray that those of you who read this have a safe and wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas and remember the true meaning of the holiday.

A Weekend of Firsts

What a weekend! We went to Atlanta to watch our high school football team play North Gwinnett. Two games were played that night, so we took the girls to my parents' house. It was the first season game for our team and looked like it was going to be their first lost. After three quarters, our team came alive and pulled out the win. While we were at the game, Rachel lost her first tooth!! Here's picture of how she looks now:

Saturday, the guys went to play golf. Marykay and I took the kids to Stone Mountain Park. The guys me us over there after their round of golf. Our family went on Sky Hike for the first time. For those that don't know, this is a new attraction at the park. There are three levels to it; we only went on the first level which is only 12 feet off the ground. While we were on the rope course part, Darrell and Marykay took their kids on the children's part of the course for the first time! Daniel was climbing the rope wall and lost his balance on the way down. He now looks like he's been beat up. All four kids tried climbing the rock wall. Rachel and Abigail made it to the top; Rachel beat Abigail!

Before we got on the course, there were two people that got scared on the second and third levels. I thought that might deter the girls from doing it, but they didn't back down. They really surprised me. I will do it again another time. If you get the chance, I really think you should try it!

New Year, Same Schools

School started yesterday and all went well. Michael and I were afraid that they would be up before me since they were so excited about starting. Thankfully, I had to wake them up. Here are the new outfits for the new year:

Abigail is beginning band and will be playing the flute. She is so excited. The band director told us at 'Meet the Teacher' that she did not have to have her flute at school until next Monday. She took it on the first day. She is also starting the year with braces and will have them until eighth grade (if all goes well).

Rachel got to go to the dentist the day before school. She got a good report - no cavities and some loose teeth. Hopefully the first one will come out soon. She will then be able to compare with her sister and Daniel what the Tooth Fairy pays.

In our class, we have 25 students. Some are siblings of former students; others are new to the area and new to the school. We were hoping for smaller classes this year since we had two new schools open in our district but that wasn't the case. It should be a challenging year. We have one special needs with us for half the day. We'll see if I still have my long hair by the end of the year.

Preteen Time

It's official! She turned ten on Sunday. We have started into the 'tween' time of the life of our daughter. The girls and I ended our two week stay with my family in Atlanta with Abigail's birthday celebration. Once home, we got to celebrate again with Michael.

Today, Abigail got what a lot of kids cannot wait to get, only to start counting the days until they are done. She got her braces on and has to go back next week for an appliance that goes across the roof of her mouth. It is not an expander, just kind of like the spacer that she had on the bottom. Here is a picture of her from a couple of weeks ago - before the braces:

And here is a picture of her with braces. If you look close, you can see the colors she cose for the bands (orange and purple - GO TIGERS!!!):

School's Out, Now What?

Ok, so it has been a while since my last blog. There has been a lot happening here. I will try to cover it all if I can.

At the beginning of May, we did our annual hatching of eggs in our class at school. We were not as successful this year as we have been in the past. We had 24 eggs; 20 of them hatched and 2 were not fertile. For some reason, two of the chicks did not have it in them to hatch from their eggs and one that did hatch had a problem with one of his legs. Here are some pictures of our little ones:

Also, for those of you who have not seen the girls latly, here are their spring pictures from school. A friend of mine here swears Rachel is a little Michael (in girl form of course). Abigail played fast pitch softball this year again; her team finished second for the season. Abigail will be in fifth grade next year and Rachel will be in first. My, how time flies, right?

In case you're wondering, Michael is in the process of getting his shotgun ready for the first boy who asks either of his girls out. You know the new song out: "I'll probably be up all night, just cleaning my gun."

We are getting ready to keep Daniel and Emma for two weeks here in SC. In July, the girls and I are going to stay with everyone in GA for a couple of weeks. One of those weeks is is the mini camp at Mountain Park United Methodist Chiurch, the other week is VBS at Lilburn, which all the kids will be attending. We hope everyone has a happy and safe summer Spend time iwth the ones you love - you never know how much time you will truly have with them!

Here's the Latest

We finally got our new computer. Now I can update everyone on the latest here in SC.

Michael was released by the doctor last week. He is now officially back to full duty at work. He is just glad to be back behind the whell of the truck. He is now hoping that softball will start soon so that he can see how good the surgeon was. We went bowling this past weekend. The only complaint he had was hist wrist was hurting.

Two weeks ago we went to visit Michael's mom in NC. While we were there, we took the family to the circus. It was the first time the girls have eer been to one. It was also the first time in a long time for the rest of us as well. Here are some pictures of what we saw.

A good time was had by all.

Before too long, we will have pictures of softball. Abigail is going to be playing again this year. We could not get Rachel to sign up - maybe next year.

Wintertime Fun

Hard to believe that we are almost into the second month of the new year and I have not had anything to say. OK - for those of you that know me know that I always have something to say; I just have not had time to post anything.

To catch some of you up with what has been happening with us, here is a brief synopsis:

• Michael's mom had a defibrillator put in shortly before Christmas;
• Michael's nephew, Kyle Hardee, had surgery on his knee for the second time;
• Michael had surgery to repair a ruptured disc and is out on short term disability again.

We are spending this weekend with my family in Atlanta and having a fun time. My girls got to play in snow in two states within the same week. We had about an inch of snow this past Thursday at home in SC. Today in Atlanta, we got about a couple of inches and they got to play in it with Michael, Darrell, Daniel and Emma. I don't do cold, so I took the pictures and went inside to wait for hot chocolate. Here are some pictures of them building a couple of snowmen. They also threw a few snowballs at each other.

The kids enjoyed spending time playing outside with Hershey in the backyard too. I just hope none of the kids get sick after all this. Both of the girls have perfect attendance for the school year. I hate for that to be messed up because they were having fun enjoying time outside.