Christmas #2

Christmas #2 started on Dec. 27 when the first of our "kids" and "grandkids" arrived.  We were  blessed to be able to have all six of our children and most of our grandkids down for a late Christmas celebration.  Today is New Year's Eve and two of them were still able to be with us.  Most of the rest went home this afternoon so they could spend the evening at home and get to work/school Wednesday.  Aaron needed to go yesterday since he had work today.  Anyway we are passing New Year's Eve in our usual way -- eating some goodies and watching a movie or playing a game.  Anyway we were happy to have them here with us.

Christmas #1 is over

Well, the official Christmas is over for the year 2012.  We did have Alan's brother Dave and his wife Wanda come to see us for Christmas #1.  They arrived Christmas Eve in the afternoon, spent the night and left the next morning after breakfast.  They had things to be back for on Christmas Day.  Tonight begins Christmas #2.  Aaron, Jeanette, Noah, Laura, Karen, Mike J., Andrew & Emily arrive.  Then Friday Amy, Mike P., Zach, Khoen, and Hailey come.  Saturday Michael B., Laura, Dominic, Dustan, Whitney, Sierra, and Danny arrive.  Unfortunately Jason isn't able to come; he couldn't get enough time off work.  We'll miss you, Jason.  We'll be a total of 20 when all are here.  It will be crowded but happy to be so.  We are so blessed to have such a wonderful family who all love one another.  I've been thinking a lot about that today.

Here's a picture of the pie I made on Christmas #1.

It's a cream cheese pie with blueberry filling.

There have been several other changes around here in the past two days.  I'll share a couple of them in the blog; the other one will wait until you get here -- those of you who are coming for Christmas #2 anyway.  If you aren't coming, you'll have to wait a little while.  I will put it on the blog later when I get a chance to put a picture with it.  We came into a little money thanks to the VA so we bought a couple of things.  Here are the first two:

We replaced our old TV.  We probably would have just kept using the old one but every time we tried to watch it the reflections blocked about half the picture.  That was getting a bit old. We found a pretty good price on this one right after Christmas #1.

 

 

 

Next:  It's a Nikon Coolpix  -- a gift to me from Alan.  He knew that I like to take pictures and got frustrated with our current camera.  I told him that it was usually because I was doing something wrong, but he thought I deserved a better camera.  I'd better learn all I can about this one.  Amy, you may need to help me with this.

I am quite happy with it.

Giving Away Christmas

No pictures with this post.  I was reading an article by Daris Howard.  You're probably wondering who that is.  He is a writer who contributes to the ldsliving.com website.  I particularly enjoy Mr. Howard's articles.  I've emailed several website addresses to many of you lately.  You may be getting tired of my suggestions to read this or that.  This one however goes along so well with Pres. Thomas S. Monson's first presidency message for the month of December.  I think you will enjoy this one.  Here is the address. Hope you like it.

http://www.ldsmag.com/article/1/11947

Christmas is Coming. . . .

Here's our Christmas tree complete with train.  Thanks again to all of you who contributed to the train gift.  Can that really have been over five years ago?

Crinkly French Bread

We had the Elders over for dinner tonight so I got busy and made lasagna.  We hadn't had that for a long time.  You can't have lasagna without French bread so I did that too.  Making French bread makes me think of Remy on the movie "Ratatouille ".  Such a cute movie.  My bread crinkled when I took it out of the oven. Remy would have been proud.

Eeek!  It looks like I have no teeth!

Christmas Lights

Just as a teaser, here is part of the front of our house.  We actually put some lights up this year.  It was probably because we will be here instead of traveling.  It would look better if you could see the roof.  I told Alan it looked like a mobile home in the picture.

Christmas Season in Branson

Okay, yes, we did go to Branson again.  You're probably wondering if we ever go anywhere else.  We had this trip paid for almost a year ago and had to use it or lose it.  It actually was a pretty good time to go since the performers were doing their Christmas shows.  I'm not posting any pictures of the shows but here is one that we had a nice man take of us near a shopping area.

It was a little cool but not cold like today.  Notice I am wearing a heavy coat and Alan is in shirt sleeves.

Creches & Carols 2012

Well, Creches & Carols is over again for another year.  Alan & I were in St. Louis during the week so we missed out on setting up the displays.  We spent most of the day at the church on Saturday though, greeting people and presenting some musical numbers.  He played the piano for a while and then we had a small "choir".  We just grabbed whoever was available at the time and sang some Christmas carols.  It sounded pretty good though.  It took five hours to take it all down and box it up.  Whew!  We were glad when that was done.  We had a good turnout though and felt good about it all.

Each room had a color scheme.  This was sort of the red room.  There were even some trees with red cardinals in them.

Don't you love those palm trees?  Corina made over 50 of them.  Remarkable!

Here is the "blue room".  I took this one so you could see what it looked like when we turned out the lights.

Here's one view with the lights back on.

The branch president's room was set up so that people could sit and watch a nativity video if they wanted.  There was also "Mr. Krueger's Christmas".

Here is a portion of the "gold room".  Gold sounds better than saying the "brown room".

Some of our younger members came to help.

Here is one of our live nativity Mary's.  Sorry if that looks wrong but Marys looks even worse.  Isn't she a darling little Mary?

Our elders were there to show the video and answer any questions people might have.

We started out with a trio.

Then we snatched up three men to join us.

This is Mary & Joseph with Baby Jesus and ---yes, while Joseph has baby duty, Mary has been busy with her digital camera.

Our children's area included the live nativity (with no animals) and a section with unbreakable nativity sets that could be played with.  Many of the little ones settled in there while their parents looked at the displays.  Everyone seemed happy with that arrangement.

Here are some of the Relief Society members who worked Saturday.  They are the ones who were there when we started clean-up.  Our little Joseph and Marys wanted to join us in the picture.  They were really troopers.

Come to the Temple

Merry Christmas from the St. Louis, MO Temple.  Please come visit; we only had 14 endowments the entire afternoon today.  Show the Lord that you care this Christmas season.

We're at Amy's and I can't post pictures of the twins, but here's one I took that struck me as funny. Poor Grover!

Look at the size of the coat rack.  So cute.  I could have moved the boxes of diapers, but hey, that's part of the environment around here.

Look what I found

Hey, I went to Country Mart today and guess what I found?  The jelly nougat candies! You're probably wondering about that.  Jeanette & I tried to find them at two different places when she was here and they didn't have them so I was pleased to get these to have for Christmas.

Alan's Scare

Here's something interesting that just happened.  We were both on the front porch putting up a string of Christmas lights. We looked across the street and saw a skunk in the front yard of our neighbors.  It walked up on their porch.  The lady opened her door and yelled, "A skunk!!" and slammed the door.  That seemed rather funny to us since she didn't get sprayed.  I got the camera and took a picture of him.  He kept ambling all around the neighborhood.  We called animal control but they don't work on Saturday.  I went on inside and soon heard frantic rapping on the side window.  Alan had been on our porch  plugging in the extension cord when he looked over in the corner, about 4 or 5 feet from where he stood, and there was the skunk looking at him.  Luckily he was able to get off the porch without startling the skunk.  So that's our excitement for the day.  Think we'll just stay inside.

Where did November go?

I didn't take any pictures on Thanksgiving.  Since we had our family get together the weekend before, we were at home for the real Thanksgiving.  I don't know why I didn't think to take pictures when we were all together.  We invited the elders over Thursday and cooked the traditional meal.  Afterward, we played Monopoly.  I haven't played that in a looooong time.  I think they had a good time.

Today (Saturday) we brought up the Christmas boxes.  I'm not quite ready to put everything out.  There's too much other stuff to do today, but there they set with my little pilgrims looking over them and thinking, "What happened to my holiday?"

Oh, and yes, you do see the train box sitting there.  When I asked Alan whether he was planning on setting up the train under the tree he said, "Yes, I've got to do it for Noah."  There's a story behind that.

Halloween Night

Glad you all liked the ghost cake.  Today the elders weren't allowed to go out around town since it was Halloween so we decided to invite them over to carve our pumpkin.  They were happy to do it.  Here they are with the finished product.  Actually one of them carved a face on one side while the other carved the second side.

Here they are with one side of the pumpkin.

Here it is on the front porch along with our handy dandy doorbell!

Then we lit the candle and turned out the porch light.  Notice the reflection of the second face on the wall behind the jack-o-lantern.  So cool.

More Halloween Stuff

I seem to have caught a cold.  In order to not dwell on it I am trying to keep busy with other things, like thinking up another post for my blog.  Since Halloween is the next holiday, I will do something about it again.  We have an elder that just had a birthday so we invited them over for cake & ice cream.  I decided to make the cake on a Halloween theme.  Here he is:

"Not all that impressive", you are thinking.  Well, when it was time to bring it out I put a sugar cube on top of each eyeball, soaked them with lemon extract and lit them.  Flames shot out of the eyes. And, yes, it does have to be lemon extract.  I tried it with vanilla and almond extract, hoping that I wouldn't have to buy the lemon.  Apparently it isn't the alcohol in the extract; it must have something to do with the lemon.

Sorry, I know the picture is a little blurry, but this one shows the flames pretty well.  He got a kick out of it.

Bye bye, warm days . . . .

Well, the weather is changing.  The temperature is dropping, it's getting very cloudy and the wind is whipping around.  I'm told we are to expect frost the next few nights.  Our little trick or treaters may need to bundle up after all.  Speaking of trick or treaters, I thought I would share with you a picture of my happy little skeleton.  If I remember correctly I bought him when Aaron had a fund raiser in sixth grade or so.  I'm glad I got him; I enjoy putting him up each year.

This was my weekend

I hadn't posted in a while so I thought I would share my weekend with you.  Actually prior to the weekend Karen, Michael, Andrew and Emily were in Salem.  Michael had another job interview and Thomas had volunteered to watch the kids while they went to it.  Michael ended up taking the job that he had interviewed for a couple of weeks ago, but this trip offered them the opportunity to look at a house to rent in the town of the first interview (in Bolivar, MO).  They really liked the house and were happy to take the first job. The landlord said that they would pay for the materials to fence in the back yard if Michael will do the work to install it. It's a good thing he is good with his hands.  We got a call from them today saying that they would be moving either this Wednesday or Thursday.  It will take a lot of work to get ready and they are hopefully up to it. They have a friend that has offered to watch the kids tomorrow while they pack.  Three cheers for good friends.

We had stake conference this past weekend.  Alan was asked to play the piano during the priesthood leadership meeting Saturday night.  During that same time I had a training meeting for my new calling as Primary president.  I've held this position before, but it's been a while and the training was welcome.  After that was the session held for the adults of our stake.  We had a general authority in attendance, Bruce D. Porter of the first quorum of the seventy.  The meeting was a little different than I had expected. I thought we would be hearing from the stake presidency and the mission president who were up on the stand prior to hearing from Elder Porter.  But no, they announced that after the opening hymn and prayer we would be hearing from two members of the audience.  Then after those two there was a song by the choir and we would hear from two more members of the audience -- one of which was me!  Surprise!  I looked at Alan and said, "Did they just say my name?"  He wasn't sure so I looked up toward the stand where the stake president and Elder Porter were both looking directly at me and smiling.  I pointed to myself and mouthed, "ME?"  They both grinned and nodded.  I asked Pres. Nigliazzo later if it was him that picked the speakers and he said that it had been Elder Porter who picked us out.  Good grief!

Here he is:

He spoke in the Saturday night session and again in the Sunday session.  He was a very good speaker.

Aaron came for a visit part of Sunday and most of Monday.  It was good to see him; he hadn't been in Salem for over a year.  Pakamer was especially happy to see him.  I think she cuddled up to him most of the time he was here.

Not a particularly flattering picture of Aaron, but Pakamer got annoyed with the flash and got down before I could take any more.

I'm old!

Well, it's official; I'm old.  Today is the first day that my medicare takes effect.  It's weird when you start being your grandparents.

Branson Trip

These are the Three Redneck Tenors after they began to really sing.  They seemed to be really nice guys too.

Alan tried out the big rocking chair at the Grand Junction Shopping Center.  I should have had him scoot back with his feet straight out like Lily Tomlin.

This was at the place we looked at when we listened to a sales pitch for a time share.  It was expensive but very beautiful.

This is Todd Oliver's "talking dog".  No, he's the one on the left.  He was such a sweet little fellow.

TOFW

Here I am with Mary Ellen Edmunds.  She is such a nice lady.

I cropped this one into the one above.  I kept this one because Emily Watts is at the edge of the picture.  She's great too.  I was in line so long to see Sis. Edmunds that I didn't get time to see anyone else.

 

 

 

Time out for Women was great.  There was good music; did you know that Jenny Oaks Baker is Dallin H. Oaks' daughter?  Somehow I never did put the two names together.  She is very talented.  If you have never heard her, try looking her up on youtube.

I found myself frantically trying to get things down in my notes so I could remember the good talks.  I wanted to ponder them later on.  Now I'm wondering if I will be able to read my own writing.  The theme of the whole meeting was "Seek the Good."

Here's a picture of the three of us.

We asked the people sitting behind us to take our picture.

It was remarkable to me how many people I met at TOFW that I knew.  Some were from the temple, some from O'Fallon, Illinois stake and some from St. Robert, MO stake.  It was good to see friendly, familiar faces.

Kids at our house

This past Monday and Tuesday we were able to help watch Karen & Michael's kids while they took a short but much-needed vacation by themselves.  If you check her blog you can see some of the things they did.  I'll just show a couple of pictures of the kids.  I did get a pretty good video of Emily emptying off our bookshelves too.

Andrew is wearing a pair of overalls that had belonged to Michael when he was little.

Emily had a pea on the end of her nose after eating dinner.  It looked funnier in person but unfortunately I couldn't invite you all over to see it.

Happy Birthday!!

Today is the twins' second birthday.  I wish I could post a cute picture of them both, but sadly it is not allowed.  I hope today and tomorrow are good celebrations for them.  We won't get up there until Tuesday.  Happy birthday, you little cuties!

Double Baby Shower

It has been almost a month since we threw this double baby shower in our branch.  It was the same weekend that all the "Barnard women" and one year olds met at Jeanette's house for a get-together.  I helped plan and put together what I could before I left the rest to my counselors.  I'm going to post a couple of pictures they took of the cupcakes and the fruit bouquet from the food table.  I found the cute cupcake papers at Wal-Mart in Rolla.  The fruit bouquet I found online; I readied the fruit and left directions with pictures and they put it together for me.  They did a very good job, didn't they?