The Kamberger Chronicles: 12/14/08

Yet another day of SNOW

The reason I am finally blogging is that today is a snow day - usually homeschoolers don't take snow days, but this is the last day before the Christmas break, so the youngin's begged me. Caitlin and Grace had things they just had to finish up, lest their brains forget before taking the next science test - and with the Sonlight curriculum, taking a break from reading will eventually make you wish you didn't, so, they did what they had to do. The 4 littles went outside this morning and can actually sled down our smallish hill by themselves - yeah!! Me, I decided to blog.

John is on nights this week - got off at 7am, home at 8am due to the snow that hit after 10pm last night. We got 7 inches or so. He snowblowed after getting home and then I went out this afternoon to "clean up the edges". John is not as concerned about keeping the sides of the driveway as far back as possible, but if this winter (which doesn't officially start until Sunday) keeps dumping on us, our driveway will creep its way further and further in. I had Jeremy come out and stand to show perspective. We are starting to pile up already - this is going to be one loooonnnng winter, I think.

Then I've added a couple new ones of dear Lizzie. She is a sweet dog. I have never seen a dog actually "smile" like Lizzie does - we will have to get it on video sometime. Whenever you see her and she is excited about seeing you, she draws her face/lips up in an all out grin! It's hysterical! She is getting quite big - we got a girl so she would be smaller, but I think she's got big in her genes. Her coat is getting kinky and longer. She is 6mths old now.

Hotel pool while in Ohio

The first part of this post follows this one - we were in Ohio for Thanksgiving and stayed at a local hotel .... with a pool of course! The kids loved it, especially when Tim, Dad and Caitlin were in with them.

Sarabeth and Uncle Tim - note who's wearing the water wings!

Great height, Juliana - one of my many water rats!

Juliana getting thrown yet another time by Caitlin.

Jeremy was so afraid of the water in June - just can't get enough now.

Sarabeth doing the backstroke, Juls and Nate getting out.

Hold your breath, Caitlin, cuz you're going down!

Juliana getting ready to go for a dolphin ride on Caitlin's back.

Grace always seems to conveniently forget her swimsuit - the rest of us love the water! The hotel, Country Inn and Suites, was fab! Super terrific breakfast each morning and the bestest beds!

Thanksgiving trip to Ohio

Juliana 5, Grace 14, Sarabeth 8, Mary (old), Caitlin 16, Jeremy 8, John (old,too) and Nathan 5.

John's sister, Sheridan, her husband, Brad and their daughter, Eileen (2) live in Ohio. We decided a good while back to visit them at Thanksgiving. John's brother, Tim would also be coming from VA. Tim and we would stay in a nearby hotel since asking Sher to host 8 of us plus Tim was way over the top - just having us all for the holiday was wild enough! Tim is 8/9 yrs younger than John and Sher is the baby, 11 yrs younger than John. Tim is a bachelor, 37 going on 17 and the kids adore him! They found out on this trip that Uncle Brad is great to play with, too!

Nate and Jeremy hit on Uncle Tim - what a great sport he is!!

The three sibs - Tim, Sheridan (with belly baby on board) and John.

John got the honor of carving!

The turkey was superb - brined overnight and stuffed with citrus fruit. Brad's Mom and Dad also were there, so we had 14 for dinner - not a bad crowd. Brad's Mom baked all the pies - oh, my, were they ALL good! We were all stuffed better than the turkey! We truly have so much to be thankful for and give God the glory for how He has richly blessed us!

Eileen and Sarabeth.

Princess Juliana loving all the "new" toys to play with.

Nathan and his pop beads.

Tim playing with Jeremy!

Uncle Brad and Jeremy who just LOVES to take pix with anyone's camera.

Homemade apple pies

A good friend from church, Carol, came over to help me with a bit of home ec - showing me how she does her pie crust with flour and oil and then baking up some yummy apple pies.

Grace pinching in her first homemade pie crust!

Caitlin filling her first homemade apple pie!!!

Wish I could add a scratch and sniff widget!! : ) Trust me - they were goodilicious!

John, hanging with Lizzie - the man that would really rather not have a dog!

Thanks, Carol, for you efforts in helping us with the pies. We did learn an important lesson - the crust recipe calls for flour, salt, oil and water - NEVER leave out the water! :/

First Snow of the season

First snow arrived 11/7 - not atypical to have snow on the pumpkins here in Iowa!

Lizzie's growing - she was almost 5 mths old here and a bundle of energy!

Harvest party

The next thing in the pix is the bringing in of the corn, but you already heard about all that from John. So on to the Harvest Party.

Sweet Sarabeth - Naaman's servant girl.

Juliana as Queen Esther - of course!

Jeremy as Jacob per his request.

Nathan was a Roman guard - but he was out of costume pretty quick.

Yeah, it's been quite awhile!

Yes, I know it's been quite awhile - just not good about "journaling" every day ... every week.... or even every month for that matter! I'll take my cue from the pix I just uploaded as to what we have done in the last 6-8wks. John blogged about the bringing in of the corn. Before we did that we went and tagged our Christmas tree - back in October! That way, when it's below zero with lung freezing windchills (which it was the day we went to cut it down) we don't have to be trapesying all over to find the "perfect" tree .... which someone would have already tagged since we were so late in going to the farm. So here are a few shots of the warm day we went to tag our beautiful tree.