Merry Christmas!

This cute couple came to us from Dorothy in England. It was part of an ornament exchange. We love them! They look adorable on the Christmas tree and the children enjoyed showing their friends. We sent a log cabin quilt square ornament for our recipient. I learned a valuable thing - I'll never make a whole quilt out of tiny log cabin squares! That requires way more patience than I have at this stage in my life. :)

We are not sending out Christmas Cards this year.

I feel a little guilty, but life is busy and we're cheap. lol. We love all of you dearly and I know family does read our blog. For those who miss the Christmas Letter here is a condensed version..

Charlotte.. now 12. She still stays up all hours to read. Now she's started this thing called "Sleeping In". We're hoping this will rub off on all of the other children. She's still attached to her violin and it's not surprising to hear fiddling coming from her room at various hours. She likes to try new things and is into crafty stuff. Her recent accomplishment has been making a hunter elf costume. I'll try to get a picture of her.

Bethany.. now 9. (soon to be 10). She talks a LOT. For those who are convinced she's my quiet child, well, I don't think so. The quiet child is Naomi, simply because she's limited to a few words. Her best friend in the whole world is a 7yo friend that comes over every Thursday. They have a lot in common. I have a picture on the blog of her showing him some cello music. They're a military family and relocating in the spring. She is also very crafty and likes designing new games.

Both girls adore their little sister. She's spoiled SO much. For those that think the 6th child is lacking in attention.. well.. you haven't seen our home. It's a blessing that for each new child there is a new sibling to give attention.

Naomi.. now 8 months is a cutey-bug. She still has her blue eyes and has quite a few quirks. One quirk is she doesn't like to be held while you're sitting. She will *scream* like she's dying and as soon as you stand up - silence. Charlotte claims they're not going to spoil the 'next baby'. Um. We'll see. It's so fun to have a pink bundle of baby, the novelty still hasn't worn off. (No, there isn't a 'next baby' yet, we'll keep y'all <-- see my southern speak? informed)

James.. now 7 (8 in Feb) has grown so much! He's still Bethany's size. He has a snap circuit set and has enjoyed learning about it. He's also our Bible digger in the family. He's enjoyed the Good and Evil book. It has brought up a lot of great questions. His copy is almost worn out and we'll have to replace it soon. He's also great at making Naomi giggle.

Joseph.. now 4 loves to learn new songs. His favorites are Veggie Tales. His favorite food is peanut butter toast. He's my picky-eater.. he could survive on peanut butter and bread indefinitely! He also loves his stuffed teddy bear. When all else fails.. he loves to pick on his little brother. The two of them! Geesh. One day I'm sure they'll be great friends. If they both survive to 'one day'.

Noah.. now 2 loves new songs too. His favorites are fingerplays like itsy bitsy spider and patty-cake. He will request endless ENDLESS singing of those songs. He's convinced he can count and read. He loves ladybugs (he alternates between squishing them and letting them out). We're trying to transition him into sharing a room with the boys.. preferably before he's 10.

Both Joseph and Noah adore Naomi. We do have to watch to make sure she doesn't get squished. Sometimes it turns into a battle of which brother can be closest to the baby.. and ... well.. the battles almost always end bad.

All of the children are anxious to hit the dollar tree to shop for each other. Charlotte has the boy's presents done already, so she has just her sisters. We usually wait until really close to Christmas to minimize the suspense. :)

Currently we're taking a stab at unschooling. Bethany and James worked on a project about the solar system. Charlotte is writing more on her book. After the holidays we'll return to our traditional method. I'm sure Puppy101 counts for something too!

Oh.. the pet count. Someone asked me the other day about them.

We have:

3 cats - Sugar (Charli's older cat), Peppermint (Bethany's under 1 cat), and Tuna (James's under 1 cat). Joseph wants a cat, we told him he has to share. Bethany offered him co-ownership of Peppermint.

1 dog - Meadow. This is my dog.

1 lizard -she's a mali uromastyx. She hibernates when her light needs replaced. It'd be nice if cats would hibernate with the click of a switch. :)

I keep waiting on the random chicken to wander up. Jim has nixed chicken ownership *unless* a stray chicken wanders onto the property (hint to friends... hehehe).

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6 puppies - these are temporary, we're not really counting them as 'our' pets, although they're adorable and a lot of fun!!

Puppy pictures update

Hurray! I can do pictures again. It's a little bit of a pain because Jim has to upload them to photobucket first, but at least I can put things online. Here is a picture of Meadow with one of her babies. This is the largest boy. He's like a roly-poly bear cub! All of the puppies are up and walking, but they haven't made it out of the box yet.
The puppies are three weeks old and ready to start some solid food. They took to it great yesterday with all of them eating some. Today we start in a routine of feeding them so Meadow can finish weaning. The girls get a little yappy during feeding time! One of the boys quickly figured out Charlotte had the food and came over to get it. We had them on a blanket in the living room with the whole family surrounding them. I have more pictures and will pu them up later. I know our guests are going to really enjoy the puppies tomorrow!
Here is a close-up of one of the girls. The boys have their teeth, the girls don't have them yet. I'm guessing they're a little younger than the boys. It's become pretty obvious they have different paternal figures! :) All of the puppies have blue eyes right now.


Here is a pile of puppies. All six are in the picture, but only the bottom of one is showing (on the far left). The girls are on the right (they have brown on them). The boys are so beautiful with the dark shiny fur (they look like velvet) and bright blue eyes. They're all seeking attention now and love having the children pet them. They'll even climb into laps! The cats are still avoiding them. Pretty soon we'll move them into the little room off of the kitchen, with baby gate, so they'll have more room.

They should be ready for new homes by the end of January.

Testing

Okay, can you see the picture? :) I'm trying to use the direct link from photobucket.

Happy Saturday!

The Great Cat War.. Peace Negotiated by Mommy.

Last year Sugar, Charlotte's cat, had no competition for the prized location known as Spot Under The Tree. SUTT was hers and she liked it this way.

During the year we adopted Peppermint, Bethany's cat, and later adoped Tuna, James's cat. Peppermint is about twenty pounds of fluff and bulk. He's very cute, but oh-so-spoiled. He loves to sprawl behind my sewing machine to get pet in between seams. He also prefers sleeping in a bed. Well, when the tree went up he decided to give the SUTT at try. He started walking towards the SUTT and Sugar, the cat that never shows emotion, zipped after him - swatting and hissing as she went. Tuna heard this commotion, a few rooms away, and went flying. He didn't know what was going on, but heard angry cat noises and scooted. Peppermint, now missing some fur, slinked off to mend his pride somewhere else. Sugar pretended she didn't want the SUTT... until we stopped watching and then she merrily went over to take a snooze.

Tuna is still in the frisky kitty stage and Peppermint is a little.. well.. he doesn't realize he's twenty pounds of feline. He thinks he's still a kitty too. I figured the tree might survive the littles, but it was not going to survive a cat attack! So, to help the peace, I put a few wrapped presents under the tree.

Now Joseph is asking daily "When is it time for PRESENTS???" It's hard to be four. :)

The puppies are doing great. They're getting BIG! One guy looks like a bear cub, he's so fat and round. The girlies are just adorable. For my local friends.. if you want to pick out a puppy, let me know. Meadow was great with having all of our friends handling her puppies. One little girl, N, repeatedly would gently gather up a puppy to love and carry.. and then swap a few minutes later. Well-socialized is going to be an understatement for these pups! If you're not local, we're in SC and happy to meet folks somewhere to give the puppies a good home. They should be ready to go the end of January. The girls are spoken for, I think, but we have 4 boys available. I believe two boys might have homes...

I'm so excited! The girls and I plan to start the Women of the Bible study/quilt in January. The patterns arrived this week and we enjoyed looking at the names. We found Naomi (of course) and look forward to doing that one. My goal - and I'll use the blog to stay on track! - is one WOB block per week and one Dear Jane block per week. The WOB quilt has 52 blocks. Dear Jane has too many to think about! hehe

My pictures still refuse to load, but hopefully we'll get SOMETHING worked out soon. I'm going to test picasa in the next post.

On the mend.. hopefully!

For whatever reason blogger no longer likes my pictures! Once I figure that out I hope to start posting more.

In other news..

We're trying to recover from a week of yucks. It appears we had two different illnesses going through our family. One was a head cold/etc that we picked up from somewhere. The other was a stomach bug. Almost everyone appears to be on the mend except for Noah. He's running a fever today and tired. The medicine wiped out the fever and he's snoozing next to me. Hopefully he's the last one to get it!

The girls managed to avoid the ick, including Naomi.. hurray for breastfeeding! I've been sick and was hoping I'd passed along more antibodies than germs. :)

This is going to be a creative week for school. We did celebrate Hannukah, in a relaxed manner, and I'll put up pictures of our menorah later. We read a few really good Henry commentaries about being a light to the world. The book we used was The Family Guide to Biblical Holidays. For Christians interested in learning more about holidays I'd recommend it. Although, once you understand the real holidays it does feel a little strange to hang onto the made-up ones! hehe.

Most of our Christmas planning is done. I'm thankful we started early with this bug hitting us. I accidentally opened one of my presents from Jim (yes! it was an accident! hehe). The children are still making lists and its fun to see what things appeal to them this year. The presents to out-of-town relatives (which means ALL relatives) have been mailed. Whew. The children put up the Christmas tree, with the girls doing most of the work.. and they even hung lights in the living room. It looks very pretty.

The puppies eyes have opened!! I'm 99.999% sure the puppies have two fathers. I've seen two dogs lately that match them exactly. The boys have a black lab/retriever mix dad, he's just a bit bigger than Meadow. The girls have a rottie mix dad. There's just no way they have the same fathers with the striking difference in appearance and development - plus seeing the male dogs outside confirmed it. We still have a couple of weeks to go before we see their personalities.

We are taking 'dibs' on puppies and will mark those that are taken.

The quote heard most often in our house:

Joseph, 4: "It's taking SO LONG for presents!" He can't figure out why we put up the tree if we're not going to do presents. Poor guy!