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Great movie.  Nathan smiled a lot through it.  Hailey even clapped her hands at the end.  We all really enjoyed it.  It’s excellent to see with the kids.

Great imagination. As fun as the preview makes it look.  All around good movie.

Do not go see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  It’s a good story but one more easily summed up in a few words than trying to wach for 3 hours.

It’s a baby born looking old that lives it’s life and grows younger.  There were a lot of affairs, sexual content, the bad word 1 time, it was interesting, maybe that’s why the 9 of us didn’t walk out on it.  It was a little Forrest Gumpish with the timeline-matching up to where people were when big events happened like wars and Hurricane Katrina and a few others, that made it a little interesting but not really worth renting or watching again – for us at least.

We will be seeing The Tale of Desperoux and Bedtime Stories in the next few days.  I will give reports on those as well.

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for taking us out to see it.  we appreciate the experiance.

This Holiday season has been filled with service, fattening food, family fun, secret Santa deliveries, baking, Christmas music, singing, Christmas light watching, Family dinner, catching a peek at Santa – and had fun watching the kids ask him questions.

We had a wonderful family dinner.  Grandma and Grandpa came, Joe and Suzie and their 4 kids came, Aaron, Alice and Ethan came, and we even got to see Kathy and Dan =) even though they weren’t able to make it to dinner.

We exchanged gifts had toooooo much food, Grandpa read Luke: 2 and the kids acted out the Christmas story as he read it.

Christmas morning was a huge surprise.  Hailey, Sierra and I got Notebook laptops Nathan for a laptop table to work on while working at home of “The Office” on DVD and all 4 seasons.  Everyone got EVERYTHING they wanted.   

Uncle Joe and his family were all at our house, He too got a laptop, and there were a bunch of VERY happy kids.  Tons of toys and books.  then i made creamed eggs for both families and we had a very yummy breakfast.  we were going to have more visitors for breakfast but the snow was pouring too badly to want anyone to drive in it so we suggested it not be done.

What a Blast!!!

We had most of the family from around here on Nathans side.

Hailey has homework to catch up on and we are finding out more and more how horrible her teacher is about teaching her students TIME MANAGEMENT.  Nathan was Livid with Mrs. T. last night as we worked with Hailey and her school assignments. 

You see, Hailey had a story writing assignment that had to be AT LEAST 2 pages long.  She wrote 2 drafts of it, and her teacher supposedly read it.  However her teacher didn’t care that she had a bunch of other assignments Hailey could be working on instead of making a 21 page story 2Xs and typing it.  Now she is behind on about 6 assignments, and art project and some thrown away newspaper crosswords that the teacher never sent home copies of.  Now Mrs. T should have stepped in and stopped Hailey from writing such a huge story and should have asked her to cut it back for times sake.  But did she? NO.  So we get to do homework all thru Vacation and Hailey is the one in trouble for not using her time more wisely.  It makes me want to home-school even more, but whats sad is Hailey wants me to home-school and never go back to school because she thinks the teachers are making them do teacher work so the teacher can use it as their own.  -Ya it kind of makes sense, but I had to explain that the teachers are giving the kids age appropriate work and there’s nothing a teacher NEEDS 4th grade schoolwork for.

Nathan believes i wouldn’t be a very good teacher – however I disagree, as long as I have a curriculum, computer access, and my kid can read I’m darn tootin’ sure she would learn a lot more at home than school.  So again, what I want for Christmas is Abeka home-schoolcurriculum like I mentioned months ago.  So I can at least be teaching with it when they are off track.  Then I can prove to Nathan that I can teach Hailey and take care of the needs of the babies.  I would only teach at home until the 6th grade then it’s Public schools from there.

I sooo wish the Arts Academy would take her now or the Gifted and Talented School which she will be testing for in early 2009.  But most of all I wish we could have pay for Private school or that I could home-school.  It would keep me away from the things that Nathan hates like my little business ventures.  I’d probably really enjoy that 1-1 time homeschooling and the kids would too.  We’d develop a stronger bond, and as she gets into her teens what more could she need than a loving supportive family that wants to teach her and not have her wasting time triple writing a 21 page essay/story in the 4th grade, oh, and making a needle point candle as a babysitting tool so the teacher can get other work done during class time.

3 French hens, sorry but the hens were busy so we are delivering chicken soup.

I had a friend do the deliveries on that one. Family 1 no trouble, family 2 – Were without power and their TV was fried in an electrical surge, fire and blew out the TV.  My friend had a spare TV and decided to drop it off that night.  She totally got busted.  I forgot to tell her there were teenage boys there, ready to pounce.  She explained that someone had told her to deliver the stuff, that was all.

The second day of Christmas my friends get “Two Turtle doves.” But since I can’t get read doves i deliver 2 bars of Dove soap and Turtles candy.

Nathan had to remind me to make my deliveries.  I did it myself this time.  The 1st house went carefully.  I had to hide behind their car and peek out to find a safe time to run across the street to my car.  The peeked out the blinds, and a few moments later the Mom stepped out the door and looked around.  Then i could see their shadows walking back and forth and felt safe to head out.

Then I parked by the other house.  I was hoping the Church parking lot would have cars in it.  It didn’t so I parked at the back fence where there was an opening and threw on my dark hat and jacket and hiked thru the snow to the doorstep.  I parked the car and a cop sat at the stop sign near me, trying to catch speeders on the main street.  I was on the wrong side of the road.  So I put my hazards on. (silly me).  The cop moved from one side of the street, across to the other stop sign and down into the neighborhood past me. So I was safe. 

I hopped out of the car and made my drop off, rang the bell and knocked on the door loud and fast and ran thru the snow around the fence on the side of the house.  I almost slipped and fell, but kept it all together and DIDN’T get caught, that was, until. . .I saw the cop car behind my car – I had turned off the hazards before I left and I looked like a Suspicious Burglar.  The Cop in the passenger seat got out and I just walked to his door and told him I was just “ding dong ditching treats”.  They let me go , and I didn’t get shot!!!

Shwoo, what a night that was.