THE NEWTON'S

Santa Came!! The kids were thrilled with the presents they got! And then it was time to open the last present... a book from santa and a letter telling us to use the book to choose A DOG! We haven't gotten the dog yet. The family can't decide on what color of dog we'll be getting! lol! :)

We have a favorite family tradition each year of making a gingerbread house. We have been doing this for the past 5 years, with only one year skipped (the year we moved into the house on Dec 23rd! and even then, I baked the gingerbread for it, but we just didn't have time to make it). This year it was a dissapointment to us that the oven was broken and I couldn't bake our traditional gingerbread houses. So, instead we went and tried to pick up a gingerbread house kit to do. Unfortunately we couldn't find any gingerbread Houses... but we found Santa and his reindeer instead! Alex is missing from the pictures because he was so dissapointed that we didn't have stuff to make a gingerbread house, and he didn't want to participate in decorating the sleigh and reindeer. But the rest of us had fun!

I hope to get some pictures of the kids and Christmas morning up soon, but we had a great christmas! The kids got lots of wanted toys, and Santa left us a book telling us that we had to choose what DOG we would be getting for our family! We are still in negitiations within the family on what type of dog we will be getting, but when we finally make the decision, and get the puppy, we'll share a picture with everyone!

Last night for Family Home Evening we took the kids to Pop's for dinner and dessert.  Pop's is a gas station /cafe/ soda shop on Route 66.  It's along a stretch of farmland, and has like 500 different varieties of Soda Pop in the old fashion glass bottles.  It has glass walls that are lined up with a few thousand soda bottles in different colors, it's really cool looking.  And... it has this huge Soda Bottle outside lined with LED lights so you can see it from miles away.  Pop's  We had a good time, even if the kids didn't eat even half of the food... They have a diner there so we all got hamburgers and french fries, corn dogs and onion rings.  They have pretty large portions, and it was like half a bag of french fries for my one order, along with the large hamburger.  I was stuffed!  We had told the kids that we would let them get dessert, so although we were already stuffed, ice cream sundae's or milkshakes were ordered for...

Ashley had her very first piano recital last night. She started taking lessons this september and she did a great job!  She memorized her piece, and she even changed it just this last week.  She had memorized another song, and then got to this song in the book and liked it so much she switched. One of her friends takes piano from the same teacher and we got a shot of both girls together before the recital. Here she is playing her piece, I took the picture and it didn't turn out well, so I went to change some settings and take another picture, but I wasn't fast enough and this picture is the result... Ashley racing back to her seat. :)

Ashley's class had a play, and then their turkey dinner afterward.  They all did a great job with their parts.  They also made the Turkey's in the background. Here's a picture of Ashley, Ashley and her friend Peyton, and the Turkey she helped make.

The afternoon Kindergarten and Pre-K classes did a concert for parents and then had a turked dinner in their classrooms last week right before Thanksgiving Break.  Angela came with me and found herself a little overwhelmed with the noise of all the kids out on the playground.

Blogger seems to be having a hard time with photo's and video's right now.  I'll try to get them up tomorrow...

I've finally gotten some pictures and video uploaded from some of the kids school programs. First is a little video and some pictures from Alex's 4th grade P.E. program last month.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great day at home with our little family. The kids watched the parade and played. Rich got his projector and screen installed upstairs, and I cooked... and cooked, and cooked. We had a great Thanksgiving dinner and the kids all shared what they were thankful for. Then we ate, and had about 5 times as much food as we needed, but it was yummy! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Someone told me that it wasn't allowing any comments on this blog. I've changed some settings to see if that was the problem. If you are having problems posting comments, please let me know. :)

Yesterday Alyssa had a birthday party for a girl in her Kindergarten class. It was at a pumpkin patch, and since it's past halloween, the only people there were those of us there for the party. They had a petting zoo area where kids could pet goats, and horses, and llama's and bunnies. They could go on a pony ride, and play in a giant hay area where there were bales of hay and lots of areas to climb up and down and around in the hay. It was really a lot of fun and since it was just our group there, the kids could run around all over the place. Alyssa has always been a very cautious girl. She usually doesn't like new situations and is very shy and quiet. So it was surprising to me when she announced to Rich and I that she wanted me to drop her off at the party, and pick her up at the end. Since I don't really know the family of the birthday girl, I wasn't going to drop her off, because I could probably fit the definition of an overprotective mother sometimes,...

I've always thought that I would get more into volunteering at the kids school "when the kids were older". I find myself this year in an interesting place, because I do only have one child home during the afternoons, and I am feeling more of a pull towards getting into the school and helping with stuff. This morning I had the opportunity to go to the school and help inventory the stuff for the school's holiday store. The PTA set's it up and most stuff is $2 or $3 and kids can come in and buy stuff for their family at school and get the satisfaction of christmas shopping for their family without mom or dad having to take them to the store. We were able to pull everything out and inventory it and restock it more organized onto the shelves in the storage room in just under 2 hours. It was a productive morning and I'm glad I was able to help. Alyssa and Angela and two other little kids played really well while us mom's were able to go through the stuf...

Ashley pulled out some stickers this afternoon. She's supposed to be cleaning up her room and found them in a scrapbooking kit of hers that the little girls got into in her room (I'll be helping with part of the room since she didn't make all the mess). The three girls just came out of their rooms with "earings" on... the stickers. So I told Alyssa that it was beautiful, and to go clean her room with her beautiful earings on. A minute later I heard Alyssa telling Ashley that I called the earings beautiful... then a second later comes Ashley's voice mimicing me "and go clean your rooms!". So I guess she can hear me in the other room when I'm talking to her right?? :)

I've realized that I really am not using this blog much. I'm going to try and start bloggin on here more about the kids, and the stuff they do and pictures and stuff. Then I'll use my other blog "My thoughts" for more of my journalling and my thoughts and day in and day out stuff... I did just post a huge thing about our disneyworld trip over there, but from now on I'll try and put most of the family stuff over here.

Ok... I'm so far behind in sharing pictures... I'm going to try and catch up, so here's a ton of pictures for everyone to see... :) First though... I'm going to see if this slide show works... so let me know if you can see the pictures in this... or if it doesn't scroll through pictures for you. :) Here are pictures from Angela's birthday back in June...