Goodbye 2007!

I can hardly believe that 2007 is almost over! We have been blessed so much in the past year and are excited to see what happens in 2008! I haven't updated for a long time....so I'll try to hit some highlights and show a few pictures.

Christmas is definitely my favorite time of year! I love all the baking and preparing, checking the mail every day in anticipation of a Christmas card, and all the excitement. One highlight is the annual cookie exchange where several of us get together at a friends house and make dozens and dozens of cookies to share with each other....its a busy day with lots of baking and kids running around everywhere, but it is so much fun.


Jackson was much more excited about Christmas this year....I think next year will be the really fun year though. He did like opening presents and would want to play with each one he opened for awhile before he realized there were more! His first present of the year was opened on Christmas Eve - the traditional (as traditional as we can make it sound when this is only his 2nd Christmas) new pajamas! He also got his new ornament - a Dr. Seuss "Fox in Socks" ... I was having a hard time deciding what kind of ornament to buy him and knew it would either be Sesame Street, Little People, or Books, so on a whim I typed in "Dr Seuss ornament" on eBay and found one that was Fox in Socks....one of his very favorite books! He loved putting it on the tree, and then would bring the book over, sit down, and read it to the ornament. So funny.
Opening up his new PJs!

We woke up Christmas morning and had our family Christmas at our house, then went to Jon's parents for the rest of the day...the big surprise of the day was when I got Jackson up from his nap and walked into the room to discover that he had evidently been awake for awhile and had pulled all kinds of decorations & flower arrangements (pretty much anything in his reach) into the pack&play with him. As soon as he saw me, he said, "uh oh!" I think that is the most mischevious thing my laid back little guy has ever done :)

Fun present from Nana & Peeps to share with cousin Owen!

We all were struggling with colds over Christmas, and then the next day I woke up with a urinary tract infection....not fun! I was expecting to clean the house and get ready for my parents & brother to come that day, but instead I ended up spending a good part of the morning at the doctors! A few days and doses of medication later, I am feeling much better and my pee is almost back to its normal color. (Sorry if that grosses everyone out but the medicine actually made it turn bright orange). We had a great visit with my family! One of the gifts we had asked for was an air mattress for when we have lots of company...and they got us a really nice one that we decided to try out! Friday night Jon & I camped out in the living room on the air mattresses & sleeping bags and were very comfortable! When Jackson gets a little older we'll make it a family night!

I was hoping to add a lot of pictures on this, but my computer is being so slow, I may have to save most of them for another time.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas...best wishes for a Happy New Year! We made many attempts to get a family picture using the tripod and timer on my camera....here was the only one that turned out half decent!

Giving Thanks for Mousetraps....

Ugh. We returned from Thanksgiving to find mouse poop on the kitchen counter. I was sooo grossed out. Having mice in the garage is one thing, but in the kitchen...that's a whole new ballgame. I went to the basement to do laundry...more mouse poop. We're into the double digits of mice we have caught this week and hopefully nearing the end. (?) I really should have expected mice in this older house but for some reason, I just thought that wouldn't happen. Oh well - before I started to freak out too much, I did remind myself that I love my house and I'm so thankful for it....so really mice are not that huge of a deal. I keep telling myself this anyway.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We traveled to Maryland to see my family and had a good time with them. We were able to see family that we haven't seen since last year at this time, so that was really nice. Jackson did great and wasn't too shy, he was giving out hugs & kisses to everyone like he saw them all the time!

Here's my favorite picture of the weekend:

Jackson and Pap (my Dad)...who he calls "Ba" or "Bap"

Jon and I are looking forward to another weekend of traveling...this time just the 2 of us. We are going to visit Joelle at PBU and attempt to get some Christmas shopping done! Jackson will be spending Friday night with Nana & Peeps, and we'll be back Saturday afternoon. Then next week I plan on decorating for Christmas! Normally I would have this done by now, but we are *hopefully* getting some overhead lighting put in our living room this week so I thought I would wait until that is done. Right now our house is pretty dark so I'm excited to not be living in a cave anymore!!

MODBE Reminder!

Just a reminder that the MODBE party is at my house tomorrow (Monday) night from 630-830...its a drop in when you can kind of thing, you don't have to stay for the entire 2 hours! If you haven't heard of MODBE, it's a clothing line meant to be stylish & modest. She will bring the clothes so you can actually try them on. The stuff is very cute! I was really bad at getting out invitations, but if you read this consider yourself invited!! (And my disclaimer that I tell everyone: PLEASE don't feel pressured to buy anything...honest! I'm just doing this for fun!) Hope to see you tomorrow evening! :)

crazy week!

What a week! We have been kept pretty busy this week...MOPS shopping night Monday, youth leaders meeting Tuesday, Youth Group Wednesday, friends over last night...wow! Jackson and I actually skipped church on Wednesday because he had a little bit of a cold and I wasn't feeling 100%, so I thought it would be good if we could both go to bed early and get a good night's sleep. Jackson had other plans. Normally, he goes to bed between 8 and 830 and falls asleep immediately. Wednesday, I attempted to put him to bed at 8, but he screamed until 1230!! We gave him tylenol & he fell asleep again for 2 hours, but woke up screaming. What fun. He didn't have a fever, so I didn't know what to do. I ended up calling the Nurse Triage center to see if there was something I was missing. They said to give him a dose of Motrin and Tylenol, so we did that around 6. That knocked him out and he slept until 11. By that afternoon, the meds had worn off and the screaming began again, so I decided to take him to the doctor. I wasn't sure if I should or not, because I didn't want to waste anyone's time, but I did it for the peace of mind. The little stinker was in perfect health! So we still have no clue what was going on that night, but we all slept great last night!!!

Here's a picture from earlier in the week....He's starting to run towards the camera so it's getting more difficult to get a picture...but when I looked at this one, I couldn't believe how old he looks!! Not a little baby anymore!!

daylight savings

Daylight Savings is usually my favorite time of the year....the "fall back" one that is.... LOVE that extra hour of sleep without feeling guilty. And if you know me, you know that I love sleep and seem to require more than most other humans do or even should. So this is seriously a "holiday" I look forward to! Seems like there's always someone to make fun of who misses it and shows up somewhere an hour early. Well this year, it was us!! I had absolutely NO CLUE that last night was THE NIGHT...my chance to get an extra hour of guilt-free sleep! We got up this morning at 645, like usual on Sunday, because we go to the early service. We got totally ready, (even managed to be what we thought was a little early), drove to church, and there were about 3 cars in the parking lot. Hmmm. This confused us because we aren't supposed to go back to one service until December. So we saw a few people getting out of their cars and drove down and asked them....even though they were all on the worship team, it still never dawned on us. Finally we figured it out, and came home, which is where I am now, waiting for a few more minutes until we can go back to church! The funny thing is....I had never heard about daylight savings being this weekend, but Jon had, and just forgot about it! But it still didn't dawn on him until much later than it should have :) Well, I guess I'll have to wait until next year for that guilt-free hour of sleep!

Random side note: I'm having a MODBE clothing party Monday, November 19, from 630-830. All of you are welcome! I am a skeptic with home parties but I went to a Modbe party a few weeks ago and their clothes are amazing!! Very flattering to every body shape, modest necklines, and still very stylish! Here's a cool thing...supposedly you can even wear them before, during, and after pregnancy, and they should retain their shape! Anyway, let me know if you are interested in coming and I can give you more details!

It's been awhile...

Yes, I've been putting off blogging for awhile now! Things have been busy, but mostly, I (like Jena!) am SO SICK of dial-up! It takes FOREVER to upload pictures. And come on, most of you only read this to see the pictures of Jackson anyway, right? :)

But yeah, it has been a very busy October for us. We are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel though, after this weekend at least. Our church missions conference was last week, which we love, but it does make it busy being at church every night. Plus Jon is on the committee, so he has even more stuff to do. We also hosted a missionary in our home, who showed up over 24 hours early without warning! A little stressful at the beginning, but it ended up being great - we know if he wouldn't have come early, we wouldn't have gotten to know him as good as we were able to, because he was really busy too!

On Saturday we went to the E-town College homecoming parade (which lasted less than 10 minutes but was still fun....if you read Jena's blog, you will know that we are a parade loving family!) Saturday evening we went to a Barn Party for our Sunday School families. Jackson had fun dressing up in his Halloween costume (a dragon), although he didn't wear the hat much. He loved to pet the rabbit and goats! He kept blinking at the rabbit, because he thinks this is what a rabbit does (he is trying to wriggle his nose but somehow closes his eyes instead). Here's 2 pictures from the Barn Party...

Tonight we have another parade to go to! This was a hit last year because we can stand right in front of Grandma & Grandpa Mohr's house and grab lots of candy - the whole town gets involved and all the kids (and many adults) are in costume.

This weekend is our youth groups annual over-nighter, so Jackson will be staying with Peeps & Nana Friday night. I am looking forward to it, but a little worried....I haven't stayed up that late in a LONG LONG time!! I will have to have an Iced Coffee IV. Well that's about it...I will try to blog a little more regularly now that we won't be quite as busy! Thanks for the reminder Kort :)

to Aunt JoJo

Happy Homecoming Weekend!