Look what I just did!!!

All by myself! I conquered that Snapper Heavy Duty 8 hsp Snowblower. I'm just so excited because I have tried so hard to get it running before and today it only took like 2 pulls to get it started. It did quit 2 x's but once I got it going....it stayed running. It was quite fun actually...but don't tell Glen! :) It might not be the best cleaned out driveway, and I very well could be the most snow ON person there has been, but I did get it figured out....turn the blower shoot thingy away from the direction the wind blows. :)

Recipe for Lettuce Bundles

Just thought I'd share this wonderful recipe since I love it so much.

1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
2 heads butterhead (Boston or Bibb) lettuce, separated into 24 medium leaves
1 large red bell pepper, cut into thing 2 inch long strips (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 English cucumber, cut into julienne strips (about 1 cup)
1 cup julienne cut carrots

1. In 2 quart saucepan, stir oj, sugar, cornstarch and pepper flakes with wire whisk till cornstarch in completely dissolved. Heat to boiling over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Boil 1 minute, stirring frequently. Remove from heat; stir in vinegar and orange peel. Cool completely, about 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, on center of each lettuce leaf, place equal amount of bell peppers, cucumbers and carrots, roll up, leaving ends open. Secure with toothpick/ place on serving platter. Serve bundles with sauce.

Makes 24

The absolutely wonderful Lettuce Wraps. The dressing is a spicy sweet sauce that was very easy to make...well, I think it was easy, Amy made it so that makes it easy for me.

Our Christmas Eve appetizer spread for the 4 of us.
Meatballs: Reg and Vegi, Cheese & Crackers, Warm Spinach Dip/bread, Puppy Chow, Pizza Dish, Chicken Wings (for the guys), Lettuce Wraps, Fresh Veggies/Dip, Bean Dip/tortillas, Cookies, Sausage Won tons (they didn't turn out good!), Tortilla Roll Ups, and Hot Cranberry Tea.

Our stockings all hung.

Little Sierra on Christmas Day. She hasn't been feeling too good so that did affect her usual cheerfulness quite a bit.

Christmas Pictures

Ok, so my pictures are in 3 different posts. Amy and I uploaded them a bit differently this time and we had some trouble getting it figured out how to put them all in one post. But whatever....here's the pictures.
Here is Hannah Bean. Isn't she just cute? :)

Christmas day 2008

We got to watch Maci Rae on Christmas Eve day. She was such a sweetie. Amy just got her new lens so Maci was the model for several pictures.....here, she's just finishing up her yummy meal.

And exploring...

Our Christmas Tree...

And one more picture from our food table.

Merry Christmas!

Well it's here. Tonight Glen, Amy, Anthony and I spent the evening grazing on lots of appetizers. I think I cooked all day! One of my (and Amys) favorites I think has to be the lettuce wraps we made. She and I have had these at the Rainforest Cafe at the Mall of America and I will say mine were better. Amy's new lens showed up today and she took some AMAZING photos of our spread so as soon as she gets them uploaded I will steal them from her and post them here.
Our gift opening was so fun. We laughed alot. I suppose the funniest moment was when I was opening my gift from Anthony and Glen's like ..."oh, is there something in there?" yes, my wonderful son put a plastic snake inside the wrapping. I screamed and the gift went flying.
We've been playing Wii Music all night. I plan to go and join my family again...I first have to finish up the dishes. Just took a nap a bit ago. Oh I guess it's 11:13...should really go to bed. Nah....
It's Christmas! :)

Scenes from our Christmas Program

It was a cold night, but we did have about 100 people in attendence. Our title was "Tonight, Heaven Touches Earth". EVERYONE did a fabulous job from the costumes, music, acting, directing, narrating and the food. It was a beautiful night. Such a good time of worship.



Gershon and Achim

Our Angel Choir

All of the shining Angels! So cute.

These boys can be angels. :)

Amy took these pictures and unfortunatly she did not get one of Hildor or the other scenes. It was difficult for her the see them from where she was sitting.

Oh the weather outside is frightful..........

Seems like that's all there is to talk about lately. But then Scarlett noticed that I haven't posted much at all on here and she's right. I need to step it up a bit.
The weather is causing a bit of trouble today. So far church has been canceled. We are still planning for play practice but we will re-evaluate that as the day goes on. Program is tomorrow night, weather permitting. I am to go to Streeter today to get Anthony. I hope for good roads...and that I can see. I suppose I can leave him there too, he won't mind.
I think I'll share some fun pictures today just because I haven't shared too much fun lately. :)
Thanksgiving with my cousins. Here is all of us together with Grandma.

Just us girls and Grandma

Sierra

Hannah

Destiny and Amy taking care of the little ones.

Snowblowing lesson

A short while back Glen decided on the spur of the moment (as he usually does) that he should get a snowblower. It had snowed and he didn't want to shovel, I think. :) Me either!
It's a used blower, but nice. He used it once when I was not home and then when I did get home he proceeded to give me instructions as to how to run it myself (you gotta hold this down, and pull here, and push this and turn this........) , in case it snows when he's not home. It snowed. I didn't try out the snowblower. I'm kinda scared of the thing. But on Tuesday Larry stopped by and he gave me another lesson on how to run the snowblower...this time it was hands on, and that's how I learn. I didn't start out so good. I was just moving the snowblower OVER the snow. The blades were not going because I wasn't holding down THAT thing on the other handle TOO! There is way too much to think about when running a machine like that. I also had to know how to stop and turn. Then turn the blower thingy in the right direction so I don't have snow all over me or where I just cleaned. I did about 2 rounds and I was done. Good thing Larry enjoyed running that machine. :) I guess I might need to be using it though in a few days if the weather man is correct. Can expect up to 8 inches of snow by Sunday. Grrr.

Thoughts from Study

I haven't posted anything for a few days and I know I haven't shared this good stuff yet, so here goes. Enjoy.

Several weeks ago I was at a Beth Moore study and I tonight I remembered some stuff in the book. Here's a few words she shared on the chapter that touched me the most.

"When we pray, we are at the very next to Him...right at the veil . He is just on the other side."

"God remembers ALL our prayers. He remember the outstanding prayers. ..the ones we think He hasn't answered."

"Usually we pray like we HOPE He is listening. We need to pray like we KNOW He is listening."

"Do NOT give up hope."

"Things happen in the unseen world when we pray."

"Timing of the fruition just has not taken place...prayer has been answered."

"Timing is everything and there IS a miracle!"

1 year

It has been 1 year since I started blogging. The year was actually on Nov. 23rd. I have posted 148 times (if I counted right). I started looking back at some of my posts and I'm glad I'm doing this blogging thing! There's lot of interesting stuff that has happened over the past year and since I am so bad at getting scrapbooks together, this has been a good way to save those thoughts and pictures. I would encourage people to blog. It's quite fun actually. There may not be many people who actually read this blog, but that's ok. I'll keep blogging. :)

3am...10hours...and a cricut!

First of all....a couple pictures from Thanksgiving Day at our house. Grandma and Bertha joined us for the day and in the afternoon we played Rummicub.



Destiny, Joel, Amy and I braved the Black Friday sale day and I will say it was an fun and interesting adventure. Alarm went off at 3am. It didn't take us long and we were up and out the door. I had told Destiny the night before well........3 hours earlier, since we didn't get to bed till midnight that I was not going to wait around for people to get ready. Your either in this or not. It's up to you. We left Mom's at about 3:40am. Got to Herbergers at about 3:45and waited in the car a few minutes then outside their door. There were MANY people already standing outside the door. Amy wanted to get a DOORBUSTER item...pyrex dishes. She got em...and so did I. What chaos. As we were going in the door I heard someone say"Ya, pyrex dishes" and I thought, there's no way we are going to get them. Made the trip inside those doors even more intense!! :)
Off to Walmart next. We had scoped the Walmart out the night before so we knew exactly where the Cricuts were. We got to Walmart at about 4:20am. Went right to the pallet of Cricuts to find about 8 people already waiting there for them. (We think there were about 12 or maybe 16 total Cricuts on this pallet) So we moved in to a good spot and waited. 40 minutes. Destiny and Joel were wandering around the store and I got a little nervous when I saw more and more people surrounding my pallet of Cricuts so I called them and asked if they could come stand by us. I figured with 4 of us at least 1 of us should be able to grab a Cricut. Well it all happen SO incredibly fast. 5am and the cover to the pallet flew off and people were in the fight. Amy tried to move the cart in front of us only to be pushed away. Thankfully Joel went to the floor under the people and grabbed my Cricut from below!!! Within 1 minute the Cricuts were gone but I had one in my cart!!! So excited!! We braved a bit of Walmart, cart to cart and said that's it, we're outa here. Took awhile in the checkout line. Off to Sears, Old Navy, & Kohls. The rest of the shopping went well. Nothing too serious. Amy and Destiny helped me alot getting the gifts for Christmas Anonymous family that our church had picked to buy for. That was alot of fun buying those gifts. Rewarding.
We decided that we were over hungry so we went to Cracker Barrel and since it wasn't even 9 am yet I knew we had time to eat and still get my car to the Shop by 10. We ordered and waited a half an hour and still no food! Finally the waitress came over to tell us that she was very sorry, but she had lost our order ticket! Well, I understand that happens, and as hungry as we were we couldn't stay and re-order because I had a 10 am appointment for my car. I tried to reschedule it, but that didn't work. So we left, still hungry, but with a coupon for 2 Free meals with dessert! We finally ate at Denny's that morning....well Dinner. It was good.
Destiny, Joel, Amy and I stopped for Coffee at Gloria Jeans before we left town and we had a really good visit on the way home. Good times. We figured out that we had just spent 10 HOURS shopping!!! Whew! :)
So I think I'd like to make it a tradition to do the Black Friday shopping. It was a good day.
The car clock on the way to Walmart.....

The waiting..........(I love this picture.)
So close..........The Cricut.........

My weekend with the girls

I picked the girls up Friday morning and they were here till about 9 pm last night. We certianly had fun! I have yet to clean up the house and so therefor, nobody is welcome here yet! It's amazing how upside down a house can get in a few short hours and they were here for many hours.
Here is Hannah playing Chutes and Ladders. She had never played this game so it was really fun for her to have a new game. Maci, the spitter! I cannot believe how much she spits. It is fun to watch her.

Brushing their teeth. They love doing this. Sierra had to sit in the sink.

Sierra, the goofball. She is a clean freak! Seriously, I have never seen a child that had to have a napkin or washcloth with her when she eats. She does not like her hands dirty.

In this picture Jae is holding Maci and the lights are off in the room. I quickly snapped a picture and this is what Maci looks like when the bright flash went off! :) Here they are all snuggled up in bed. It was about 7:30pm and no they did not stay there. Didn't get them to bed till much later.