Now what!?!  I need to decide if I want to set another goal for this blog for next year.  Any suggestions?  Crafts, more miscellaneousness, weight loss, other miscellaneousness, photography themes, miscellaneousness of sorts?  I’m open for suggestions if anyone has ideas they’d like to share.

For now, here’s the last Monday Moments post for 2011.

Our Christmas weekend!!!

Mandy helping me in the kitchen before the big Christmas Eve dinner.

Waiting for everyone to arrive.

These skirts are the same as the Halloween skirts, only different fabric.

The feast, soups, bread bowls, ham, and salads.

Aunt Sandy did a White Elephant game with the kids.  They were nice gifts for it being a ‘white elephant’.

Karl and Mom.

One of the most wonderful, handsome, classy, humble men you’ll ever meet… my grandpa!

Singing Christmas songs.

All the cousins sang ‘Christmas Bells’.

Eric sang ‘What Child Is This’.  If you haven’t heard him sing, you’re missing out.

My Grandma read a story.

The Hurst Family sang ‘Shepherds Carol’.

Mom shared a story.

Janina and Michael played some duets.

My girls sang ‘Could I Hold The Baby’.

Grandpa read the Christmas Story from Luke .

After everyone went home, we got the house back in order, moved all the tables out of the living room and brought the couches back in.

Then we opened our new pjs.  This has been a tradition of ours for the last 5 years or so.

Paul looked like a deranged Easter Bunny.  For those of you who have seen ‘The Christmas Story’ with the red rider bee-bee gun.  Complete with the bunny feet!

And as our tradition goes, we watched ‘A Muppets Christmas Carol’.  I LOVE that movie!

CHRISTMAS MORNING!!!

Ashley asked for a ukelele.  In 5th grade, they teach the kids the ukelele, and she wanted one of her own.  It’s white so she can decorate it with vinyl, like we did her violin.

Trinkett wanted to be with us, but it was still too early for her.

Can I just say that ruffle fabric is totally AWESOME!

Paul got his hands on an Etch A Sketch.  Not too shabby!

I forgot to blog about our most recent addition to our Christmas decor.

This year I made a large Grinch and Max for outside!

Yes, Max is a bit too dark, I’ll be fixing that before next year.

The Grinch is 5 feet tall!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

P.S.  Here was our Christmas Card this year.

Just in case I’m too lazy to post again…

Have a wonderful New Year everyone!

This is mostly just a post for my reference.  Mostly just Christmas decor.

Here are just a few pictures of the girls decorating our family tree.

And on with the show!  Oh and all these pictures were taken at night, so they aren’t the best.

This tree below, we’ll call Tree #1.  It’s in our front entryway.

This pretty white tree below is Tree #2, or our Santa Tree.  It’s in our living room.

This is the living room fireplace/mantle.

I love that red wreath.  I got it from Target.

These awesome candle cups are from Down East Outlet and so are the candles.

These white reindeer weren’t originally white.  They were brown.  I got them from Hobby Lobby.  I’m thinking next year I’ll paint the swirly designs on them red.

Here’s what they looked like before the spray paint.  I like them better white.

Here’s Tree #3.  On our front staircase.

Here’s our family room mantle.

Here’s Tree #4, in our family room.

Tree #5 isn’t pictured here.  It’s in our upstairs hallway.  The girls decorated it with teddy bears and tiny porcelain dolls.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas holiday full of joy and time with your loved ones!

Back to cleaning I go!

Only one more Monday Moments lefts!

]]> http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/12/monday-moments-51/feed/ 2 http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/12/monday-moments-50/ http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/12/monday-moments-50/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 23:55:43 +0000 Rachelle http://www.stilleveraftering.com/?p=1821 Hello Everyone!

Only a few more days till Christmas!!!

Here’s what I meant to post for last weeks Monday Moments.

I had a birthday last week!  Yay me!  But, got sick on my birthday and ended up spending several days in bed.  As nice as it sounds, spending several days in bed, this was not pleasant, and let’s leave it at that shall we!?!

But that’s okay, we celebrated my birthday the weekend before, so it’s all good!

Paul and I took Ashley to go see Blue Man Group.

Word of advice… don’t go see it.  Ashley really enjoyed it, Paul thought it was okay-ish, and I was down right bored.  Except for the times when they were actually drumming on things, that was cool, but that was less then a 1/3 of the time.

But at least Ashley enjoyed it and that’s all that matters.

Sorry, these are cellphone pictures.  I totally, accidentally left my camera on the kitchen counter.  BOO!

After the show we took Ashley home to the babysitter and Paul and I went on a date!!!  And of course I forgot my camera AGAIN!  I gotta stop doing that.

We went to dinner and then to another concert.  I’m happy to say that the concert we went to was so much more enjoyable!

Just this year Paul discovered and introduced me to Michele McLaughlin.  She’s a piano soloist who is local.  I found out she does concerts right out of her home, so that’s where Paul and I went!  She had another pianist there to play as well.  It was a wonderfully relaxing evening.

If you’ve never heard of Michele McLaughlin, her songs are beautiful and somewhat haunting.  Most of them have a pattern to them and aren’t difficult to learn, but they sure are fun to play.

I’ll blog later this week with M.M. #51.

P.S.  This is my 200th post on this blog!

Not much has been happening here.  Mostly just getting ready for Christmas!  Love, love, LOVE this holiday!

I did want to post really quickly something cute that Mandy said earlier this week.

Mandy:  I can’t believe the school has the same song as church!!!

Me:  (trying to think of what song she could possibly be talking about)  What do you mean?

Mandy:  I can’t believe they have the same song.

Me:  What song are you talking about?

Mandy:  The Star Sprinkled Banner!

I had forgotten that I showed her a couple of weeks ago that ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ was in the church hymnal.  They sing that song every morning at school.

I thought it was cute how she said it.

On Tuesday Ashley had an orthodontist appointment… not a fun one either.

She got her top braces put on, which she has to wear for 2 years!

She also got a contraption put in to fix her over-bite.  It’s called a Herbst.  Never heard of them before, but it is cemented to the top and bottom very back teeth.  Every time she closes her mouth it forces her lower jaw forward.  It’s supposed to lengthen the tendons which will help the jaw bone grow longer.

This is the top part before it was attached to the bottom part.

She has to wear the Herbst for a year.  Once they take it off they’ll put on the lower braces.  She’ll have to wear the full set of braces for a year.

Here’s the bottom part before the top was connected to it.

The placement of the brackets.

All done and still smiling!

(she’s laying down in the chair in this picture)

Here she is 3 days later and still happy!

She’s gotten used to the braces just fine, but the Herbst is really rubbing her tongue raw.  She said it pinches her cheek at least once a day, so we’ll have to ask the orthodontist about that.

Even with braces she’s adorable!  She even sounds cute when she talks!

She’s a real trooper!

]]> http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/12/monday-moments-48-very-late/feed/ 2 http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/11/monday-moments-47/ http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/11/monday-moments-47/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:00:58 +0000 Rachelle http://www.stilleveraftering.com/?p=1782 Happy Monday everyone!

Last week Ashley had a science project due.  Since Ashley didn’t care about going to region or state, we decided to do a fun experiment.

Question:  Which soda will fountain the highest with Mentos?

Of course you already know the answer, but do you know the reason why?  And if you say caffeine, that’s only a small part of the reason.

Here are the sodas we tested.

First she had to make a super tall ruler.

She tested each soda 3 times with the same amount Mentos each time.

First up, root beer!  And for those of you who might be interested, Barq’s put caffeine back in the drink.

Next up… Mt. Dew.  Now that has more caffeine than all of them, and it did the worst!

Here’s Sprite.  Not too shabby for having no caffeine.

Cream Soda… at least it wasn’t as small as the Mt. Dew’s.

And Diet Coke.  Of course it did the best.

But not just because of caffeine, obviously since Mt. Dew didn’t do well at all.

There are 2 other ingredients in Diet Coke, when mixed with 2 of the ingredients and the rough bumpy surface of the Mentos, causes bubbles to form the quickest.

We found out that Diet Mt. Dew had the same 2 ingredients in it as Diet Coke, but the store was all out of Diet Dew.  So we settled for Diet 7UP instead.  But that didn’t have the caffeine in it, so it wasn’t as impressive.  Oh well, guess we’ll have to try Diet Dew at some point just to see the results.

Ashley had a blast!  She said “I love this kind of homework cause it isn’t really work, it’s FUN!!!”

She was so happy to be able to do it.  But her church teachers tried and tried to talk her out of it.  They even came up to me telling me not to let her cut her hair!  I agreed with them that her hair is gorgeous, but I wasn’t going to discourage her from something she wanted to do that would help others.  I was still sad to see all that beautiful blonde hair go.  I mean, just look at it!  When it was curled it was especially gorgeous!!!

We washed her hair that morning and couldn’t style it.  The hair has to be as clean as possible to donate.

Beautiful blonde!

Thankfully the stylist also fixed Eden’s bangs.

Doesn’t she look adorable!

She’s loving the short hair (I think the ‘no tangles’ thing helps a lot).  I can’t wait for her to have long hair again, but until then, we’ll have fun with it short!

Yesterday I did a guest post on Christie’s blog.  You can find it here.

She’s doing a great week long theme of photography!

And here are some pics of the girls!

Have a great weekend!

]]> http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/11/monday-moments-45/feed/ 1 http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/10/monday-moments-44/ http://www.stilleveraftering.com/2011/10/monday-moments-44/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:52:33 +0000 Rachelle http://www.stilleveraftering.com/?p=1688 Finally!!!  I’m posting Monday Moments on Monday!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Ashley is a Dead Bride.

Amanda is Ariel.

Eden is Sleeping Beauty.

Here are some Halloween skirts I made for the girls.  They’ve gotten so many compliments on these skirts.

I took pictures as I made the skirts so I could do a tutorial on them… is that something you guys want to see?  They’re super easy to make and all it takes to figure it out is a bit of math.  Let me know if you want to see it!

Last week Amanda got Principal’s Pride for the month of October.  She got it for showing Integrity!

She got lots of free food coupons and a certificate.  But the coolest thing she got was a metal eagle pin.

Here she is with her principal!

Have a wonderful and safe Halloween and a great week!

Last weekend my older sister, my younger brother and myself flew to Texas to visit our Dad!!!

It was an awesome trip!

Here’s tons of pictures for ya to look at.  Not the best quality, but I didn’t want to take my good camera and risk it getting lost/bumped/ruined in any way.

Frost forming between the window panes on the plane ride.

Pretty sunset, above the clouds.

Dad’s ride.

Our old house we used to live in.  Fun memories!  I was an awesome place to grow up!

Here we are in the ‘way way’ backyard.

So, the way I remember it… we had a backyard, where the swingset was.  Then we had a separate fenced area just past that called the way backyard.  Then we had the rest of the property that we called the way way backyard.  I know, creative right!?!

Pictured below is a great big forest-like area that we used to play in.  About 1/4 to 1/2 a mile into it, you run into a lake.

That afternoon Dad took us to the Dallas International Aquarium!  Awesome place!

The flamingos were hilarious!

I saw a sawfish!

This thing below is a Flamboyant Cuttlefish.  Very strange.  This one was the biggest in the tank and it was only about 4 inches long.

That evening we went to a delicious seafood restaurant.

I had the salmon.

The next morning we went on a long walk (about 3 miles I think) on the Katy Trail.

After a tasty lunch we played 3 games of pool.

Dad and Janina…

vs. Eric and me.  I sunk the last 2 balls and won the game, including calling which pocket on the black ball!

Pizza and music!

The next day we had to head home, but not until after brunch.

This place is amazing!

Not only is this place ridiculously enormous…

they were already decorating for Christmas!!!

I don’t every want to hear anyone in my family complain about me putting up a few Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, ever again… understand!?!

Brunch.

We got an up close and personal performance from the Mariachi band.

Then it was off to the airport and the not so long flight home.  It was a wonderful time.  Now I want to go in the Spring with the rest of my siblings.

Have a great weekend and Halloween everyone!