Everyone Should Have a Weston in Their Family!

This is one of those things that I should probably not blog about, but can't help myself. It's just too funny......at least to us.

Here is our Weston. I may be biased, but he's a pretty good looking kid. Looks like a happy, well adjusted, and fairly bright young man. Right?...

Well, he was sitting at his desk at school twisting his hair around his finger. He fell out of his chair and the hair that was wrapped around his finger was pulled right out of his scalp! Yep. That is the kind of thing that happens to Weston. He has rich experiences in life that usually cannot even be duplicated by other, less talented, individuals. One great thing about Weston is that even when these experiences turn out to be less than pleasurable, he can laugh about them. Which, of course, gets the rest of us laughing too. We all gave him a hard time about wanting to look even more like his Dad. That, of course, wasn't as funny to Thomas! :) Our lives would be much less interesting and we would be deprived great entertainment if we didn't have Weston in our family.

Tis the season continued

Kaylyn is up with a fever tonight. Kaylyn is up...so I am up too! A little middle of the night uploading of photos to the blog. Thanks to Kaylyn I have more time to blog than I thought! :)



More photos with FAMILY. :)

As you scroll down, you will see that: Aunt Jessica is loved!... We have beautiful sun rise experiences here in Illinois. Jensen is a girl who takes matters into her own hands. We put our tree up within a few days after Thanksgiving, but it stood there for two weeks with no decorations. So one day, Jen took paper and scissors and cut out many beautiful snowflakes to decorate the poor neglected tree! I think it turned out beautifully and I would have been content to leave the tree like that for the season. (An indication I am feeling a little burned out??) But, we did finally pull out some decorations and have brought a little more of the festive Christmas spirit into our home. :) Also, Kaylyn loves her baths. The children participated in the Nativity play at church. We had two angels, Joseph, and a queen. Jameson had a ball game that night.

I am creeping up on getting caught up. I need to locate a few photos of the children in the play and of the van that I wrecked earlier this month. Yeah, that's a fun story too....OK, it's not a fun story, but everyone is OK and that is something we are all thankful for.

Tis the season...to have no time for blogging!!

Well, the title says it all, really. But for family and anyone else who may wish to hear more here is a bit about our lives the past month and a half. The more we have to blog about, the less time we have to blog about it. We have been going constantly for weeks now. 5 of the children were in the junior high play, so we have had many practices. Jameson is on the basketball team which has daily(during the week) practices or games. I have also been working on a project for the girls for Christmas.
Below are photos of some of the things we've been up to. We went trick-or-treating. I took a few photos, then forgot I had the camera the rest of the night. No photo of Weston here. He was too busy running ahead to prey on more of our village residents for confection of every kind.

Kaylyn, riding in style on her first Halloween.



Jensen turned six. We had pizza, and cake and ice cream at Papa's house. She put her own candles on her cake!

Pizza Anyone??

A few weeks later Kaylyn had her first birthday. It's a tradition in our family to put the whole birthday cake in front of the one year old just to see what they do with it. With so many siblings with birthdays before hers, Kaylyn knew exactly what to do with it!





You may not be able to tell, but we were trying to get Kaylyn to blow the candle here...(Mom eventually helped.)

Aunt Peggy, and her three children came to stay at Papa's for Thanksgiving. Aunt Jessica, Uncle Mark, and Uncle Paul came a little later too. Here, Hailey has the first blue/green egg laid by one of the Arucana chickens.

The holiday concert/play season officially began and here is Jensen at her Thanksgiving play. Does she look like a pilgrim?




Daddy and Kaylyn at the play.

Haven, Morgan, Hailey, and Megan.

Papa and the boys.
Jensen on stage. She really seems comfortable in the spotlight!

What's a holiday without pajama parties with cousins??

We went out the day after Thanksgiving to get a few photos of the family.


Peggy and Paul sure have a cute family!

I'm still not caught up, but I am getting closer!.... :)

Small Towns and Local Heroes, Okay, Maybe Just Small Towns!

Today when I went to pick up the children from school, I knew I was staying with the play practice children while Thomas took the other ones home. So, I decided to stop at the gas station to pick up a soda. 50 cents, you walk in, open a refrigerator, pick out your soda, and give the polite young man a couple quarters. You can even set the coins on the counter give him a smile as he is pumping gas for some other lucky small townite and walk away. Love it! Today, there was over half a tray of homemade red velvet cupcakes lusciously frosted and sitting inside the fridge with all the cans of soda. I said to the young man(who pumps the gas for you AND washes your windows-for those of you who live in Oregon and NJ, having someone else pump your gas is a luxury to the rest of us in the US!-), "I see someone made you some cupcakes!" He replied, "Yes, feel free to have some!" I declined-not really conducive to the whole 5k goal-but walked away with a -'this is why I love living in a small town-smile on my face.

I guess I will add my heroic endeavors of the day here too. Insert a chuckle and a grin here! At the end of play practice I was sitting near a drinking fountain. It came on automatically, I guess to do it's cooling thing. There was a brief buzz and I was sure I saw a significant flash. So I went to go look for a custodian or the principal. (I had never seen a drinking fountain with inner fireworks before.) I was going to tell them they should disconnect it because I was worried it may cause a fire while automatically kicking on sometime in the near future. Not finding either of them, I headed back. Well, it was already smoking and at closer inspection there was a fire, yes a blaze, inside the fountain. So I started telling the children to walk to the front door. By about the third time, even a small bunch of excited Junior High children can be difficult to direct, I did my whistle. If you know me well at all, you know exactly what I am talking about. If you don't, I am that annoying person at ball games that can make your ears buzz with an insanely loud whistle. The kids quieted down and I once again told them to "Walk to the front doors." Then I turned my total attention to the fountain which still had some flames inside, I looked quickly for a plug, found none, and decided I was willing to face consequences for destroying school property. I grabbed the fountain and pulled it from the wall. The water on the fountain splashed and put out the fire inside. The fountain itself was still running and still mostly connected to the wall with a sort of retaining ring at the bottom. By this time one of the male teachers showed up and wanted to take over. I explained to him that the fountain was actually plugged in and we just needed to pull the plug. He gave it a couple tries and decided he needed a screwdriver and went off to get one. Again, if you know me, you know I am a doer, not a watcher, so I bent over reached my hand into the dark(I could see and I could reach, but couldn't really see and reach at the same time), and pulled the plug out. The power was now cut to this fire hazard taking away any threat. My job was done, heroine for the day! Where's my cape?... Maybe I would have been more of a hero if I could have removed the horrible burned rubber smell from the halls. Oh well, I can be a real hero another day. Maybe tomorrow I will make some brownies, bake some bread, wash some laundry, or be a mom to 6 children... The possibilities are endless! :D

Trunk or Treat?

Every year at our church we usually have an activity around Halloween called a Trunk or Treat, or a trick or trunk or something like that. There is also a chili cook off for dinner. Dinner taken care of and a fun activity for the children-a win win in my opinion. The Trunk or Treat part involves going out to the parking lot and trick or treating around where all the parents give treats from the backs of their cars.
Getting the costume on...
Kaylyn found a new friend, Becca Anderson!

I put in this photo of Morgan from 7 years ago,
And this one of Jensen from 5 years ago.


I guess I can see why some people think the children look alike. :) Kaylyn was a ladybug.

Weston was a Wizard.

If you have never played Zelda on Nintendo then you probably won't recognize Jameson's Link costume.









Our friend Cody came too.

We had a witch. Yah ha ha!!!

And a Unicorn.

And I don't know what we will do the first Halloween we have that no one decides to be a princess! Here Morgan is with a friend.

Our friend Becky with Kaylyn. We had a fun night and were exhausted when we got home.