Our Baby is Eight!

I know she isn't a baby anymore, she is a big girl and big helper, when she wants to be! Here she is through the years.  I am so thankful for her.

7 weeks:

7 months:

1 1/2:

 

 

2, with her new "baby safe" glasses:

 4:

5:

6:

7:

8!:

 

 

Isn't She Lovely?

15 years ago today, I began the wonderful journey of being a Mommy.  I can hardly believe my girl is 15 now, but I  can hardly remember a time without her.  Here are some pictures of our first little blessing:

3 mos

1st birthday:

2 years old:

3

5:

8:

 10:

11:

13:

15!

PS, she got up at 5:30 this morning to make homemade cinnamon rolls.  She made a huge mess, but they were good.  Then she made her own cake from scratch, and even dinner, spaghetti, using spaghetti squash instead of pasta!

Time Capsule Opened!

The kids just couldn't wait until the next day, but we did wait until after midnight, on January 1, 2010 to open our time capsule.  It wasn't quite as exciting as we had all hoped.  No long lost toys were in there.  No dollars. I took pictures of some of the items.  I will list the rest at the end of this post.

Pictures of all of us on January 1, 2000:

(some ink got on some of them)

 

C, above, almost 5

D, age 3

A age 1 1/2

B, 6 weeks!

I had put in a few newspapers:

I put this Y2K book inside, that was obviously useless since nothing happened :) Yes, we did some preparing for that.

Also:

Coins from 1999, and some pennies from the years of our births or high school graduations.

Two Duplos

Lowly Worm in an apple car toy.

My 1999 Calendar

A faded receipt from Albertsons.  It's hard to read, but large red delicious apples were $1.19 a lb.

The kids have been working on our next time capsule to be opened in 2020!  My youngest will be a Senior in High School!  They all said they would come home to open it :)  They wrote about what they are doing now, what they are like, and what they think or hope they will be doing in 10 years.   They added some kind of keepsake, artwork, money, photos.  I will add to it, and I'll try to make it a little more interesting and surprising for them.  I will for sure make the box prettier, seal it up and put it away. Check back here in January 2020 :)

 

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Cards Past

I thought it would be fun to post all of our past Christmas card photos this year.  I do not know how I managed to get a decent card with the old hit-the-timer-and-run camera.  We only got a choice of 24 or 36, and had to get them developed even!  There would always be one clown making faces throughout the whole roll!  Even now, with digital, I took about 100 photos and not one is "perfect"!  But they make great memories. We skipped some years due to having babies or moving.

Our first Christmas with our first baby: (We didn't do cards that year, but here is Christmas Day 1995)

1998:

2000:

2001:

2002:

2003:

2005:

2007:

2008:

2009:

I tried different things. 

In front of the holly next door, with the dog:

In front of the palm tree (California Christmas Tree):

 

 

 

 

 

The final cut:

 

Operation Christmas Child

A couple of weekends ago, my two oldest and I went down south to work in an Operation Christmas Child processing center.  For several years now, we have filled shoeboxes to send to needy kids around the world.  This year, friends of ours are volunteers in the organization and invited us to be a part of this great ministry.  We worked for a few hours going through the shoeboxes taking out anything perishable or breakable and made sure they were full enough.  If not, there were extra things to add to the box.  Some of the boxes were so full of great stuff, while others had very little in them.  The kids will also get a gospel booklet in their language.  Here are a few pics:

This man, named Jim, helped us with our many questions. 

Assembly lines: