Most of you that know us know that we are big fans of Dave Ramsey and have been using his plan to pay off all of our debt. We have been working at this for 16 months now and I can now officially say......

WE'RE DEBT FREEEEEEEEE

I am so excited!! We now are starting on our emergency fund so things wont be changing to much around here. God has helped us so much. I have a wonderful husband, because if it wasn't for him I would have given up a long time ago. I was excited so I just thought I would share.

cleaning daddy's truck

if you enlarge this you can see the huge grin on his face when they pulled up.

Konnor thought he was cool riding in daddy's truck

Standing on dad's bed
Last week Randy brought home his truck from work to clean it. Konnor went with him to go get it and rode home with him. Konnor thought he was king of the road. It is actually pretty big inside. He will be staying overnight in it a couple times a week probably so he wanted it to be clean. I took a few pictures.

Sunday Night-Adult Cantata and Drama

Sunday Evening was our church's adult Christmas program. It was a cantata and drama called"Then Jesus Came". It was a great program and God was there! Everyone did a great job. Randy sang a solo and I posted a short clip. Thanks Leanna for taking some pictures and this video.

Sunday Morning-Kid's program

Sunday Morning was our church's kids Christmas program. The kids did great. Here are a few pictures that I took. They are in no particular order.

2 little angels, Jillian Craycraft and Maria Miller

Mary and Joseph, Breanna Lavy and Bryson Craycraft

Deep in thought

Angel cousins,Jenna Snelling and Lindsey Pitcher
My little wise man,Konnor

Konnor on his way to give a present to Baby Jesus

Friday Night- Cookies

Konnor doing his part Megan doing her part

The finished product. The cookies with about 100 chocolate chips are Konnor's creations. He got a little carried away!

The thief doing his part.(if you enlarge the picture you can see the icing all over his fingers.

Kaite went to the zoo with the youth group so she wasn't home when we did these.

Friday- Girls Talent show

On Friday the girls played a piano duet in their school talent show. They played"We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and did great! Yay, no school for two weeks.

Thursday night- Megan's concert

Thursday night was Megan's concert at school. They sang Christmas songs from around the world. I thought it was really good! Here is a video of Surfin USA.( is that a Christmas song?)The kids playing Santa was hilarious!

Hey! I just wanted to you to check out the new link that I put on my side bar. I know a person who started up a website that you can register to win free stuff.Dont worry she is a very nice person and it is all legit. This time it is an IPOD. You can enter once a day so go check it out. When you go to the site click on the item you would like to win and enter you info. You can put my name in the last spot and I will get an extra entry. Go check it out!!

No i have not died! Just caught up in the business of the holiday season. As much as you tell yourself you aren't going to get caught up you do.
Last Friday Randy worked so the kids and I spent a quiet evening at home. Saturday my wonderful husband and I had a date day. We left early and went out for breakfast at my favorite place.IHOP! I had Pecan Strusel Pancakes and they were awesome. They were covered in crunchy pecan strusel and drizzled with a cream cheese icing. Yummmmm we then went Christmas shopping,finished the day at Starbucks to tally up the checkbook damage.(not really,we have been saving) We decided to go home and surprise the kids and take them to Fountain square in Cincinnati to go ice skating. ( hopefully i can get the pictures to upload this time.I have tried twice already)
Sunday was normal except we had a two hour program practice before the pm service.
Monday night we had our friends the Heintzelman's over for dinner.Randy and Duane built a really cool entertainment center for our living room.During that time Katie and I took the two little boys and went to the thrift store not to far from my house.
Tuesday night we took Randy's Grandma out to dinner for Christmas.
Wednesday i cleaned houses all day with my mom and that night we went Christmas caroling with people from church. It was alot of fun. The kids had a blast riding the bus and singing to some shutins who cant attend church.
Randy had to be at work this morning at 2am so we rushed home so he could get a couple hours of sleep. He ran out of hours today so he wont be coming home tonight. He will be sleeping in his big rig tonight and I will be lonely here at home. boo hoo! Megan has a choir concert at school tonight so I will be going to that soon.
So now you have the rundown on why I haven't posted. I will try to do better. By the way, I am not done with my shopping and I haven't wrapped a single gift. I work well under pressure. LOL

Fountain Square Fun

My new love

I have found something new that I love!!! CHOCOLATE COVERED POTATO CHIPS!! I had some leftover chocolate from dipping all of the truffles that I made. I didn't want to throw it away so I thought I would try it. I had seen them in the grocery store but they sounded gross to me. I have had a change of heart. The perfect combination of crunchy,salty, and sweet. Mmmmmm

I just thought I would share last nights sunset with you. This is looking out my back door. Have a good Friday!

Oh the truffles I have seen

My friend Michele and my mom came over today to make truffles. We mixed, rolled, and dipped all day.

The end results were beautiful and yummy!
While we made goodies a little boy made messes.

Another funny thing that happened today.... This evening we were sitting around in the living room and konnor came over to me, unbuttoned his jeans and said " look mom, I have two pairs of underwear on" Low and behold he did. Oh well, I guess two pairs are better than one. 8o)

If you want recipes for the truffles go to my friend Michele's blog here.

http://www.stretchingabuckblog.com/2008/12/meijer-gift-card-giveaway.html

If you frequent money saving blogs you might know about this. Stretching a Buck is giving away 3 $25 gift card to Meijer. Click on the link to go there.

Putting up the tree

Yes, Kade decorated the tree in the buff

The finished product

I don't know what it is about putting up a Christmas tree that stresses me out so much. I know it is supposed to be a warm fuzzy time that bring the family together to do this thing once a year.But.... for some reason this never happens in our family. LOL

Randy had to work so he did wrestle the tree box out of the basement before he left so I need to thank him for that. He then made his exit and I started trying to wrestle the tree out of the box. A couple of years ago we bought a big pre-lit tree and I love it. It is in 3 big parts and it is heavy! I got the stand and the first part inserted and then I noticed that about every third branch the light didn't work. Oh well I thought, you wont notice when it is decorated. Well then I get the middle part inserted and a part of it didn't work either. I didn't mention that it took both me and Megan to get the middle section out of the box because it was so heavy. I am starting to get a little angry now. Then I put in the top part and the whole tip didn't work. You cant have a Christmas tree where there are no lights on the top. Megan did find one plug that I missed in the middle that lit up a few more branches. Do I push in every bulb that doesn't work, do I strip off all of the lights and put my own on, or do I just put my own lights on the branches that don't work. I opted for the last option.Theres nothing like putting lights on a pre-lit tree. It will just be a nightmare taking the tree down.( I wont think about that now) I had this grand idea( me and my ideas) last year to do my tree in red and white this year so I bought new red and white bulbs after Christmas when all the sales were going on. The girls were then mad because they wanted to put all of the old ornaments on that they use every year. I convinced them how pretty is was going to be and they were then halfway fine with that. Kade had gotten his outfit dirty during dinner and someone had stripped him. Meanwhile while I was wrestling with the tree he had taken his diaper off. I thought in the back of my mind" I need to go put a diaper on him" but instead I asked Kaitlyn to take him potty.( he likes to do that)and went on doing what I was doing. Yes you can probably guess what happened. I had to clean up a mess.

I didn't have any hooks for the new ornaments so Kaitlyn cut and tied ribbon on each one. The kids took turns putting on the balls.Kade threw his in the tree like a baseball.

Needless to say the tree was put up and decorated when Randy came home from work.The finished product turned out very pretty. Maybe when the time comes to take it down we could just wrestle it down the basement steps,stuff it in a corner and throw a sheet over it. hmmmmmm

Black Friday

Did you go shopping Friday morning? There wasn't anything that I saw I couldn't live without so I didn't get up to early this year. You can see from the picture what time I left and we( my sister in law Martha was with me) met up with my mom, sister in law Susanne, and Sharla Wall and the mall. I didn't buy much but it was fun just being out with out the kids. You fellow moms know what I mean.LOL We went to Sears first and we were looking through racks of cloths and I guess during that time Martha had taken off a big sign that was hanging on the end of a rack and hung it on her arm while she was looking. Well quite a time later we were getting ready to leave the store and I looked over and saw the sigh hanging there. It was so funny because she had been walking around like that the hole time. She thought it was her purse. She just gave Lands End some free advertisement 8o)

My brother and sister in law spent the night at our house Thanksgiving night so I tries to take a few pictures. My cute little niece Lauren.

Konnor and his best buddy cousin Josiah being cute and silly!

I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving! I did! The meal was wonderful and I have so much to be thankful for! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I didn't take any pictures. boo hoo More pictures to come of my kids decorating the Christmas tree. TTFN....

Happy Birthday

I just wanted to say Happy Birthday to my dad. I hope you had a great day. I love you!!

Saturday Fun

Waiting for the parade to start

Konnor thought this owl was neat.

Three crazy festival goers.The good looking one in the brown coat is my husband.8o)

Saturday was the Christmas festival in Springboro,OH. This is where we used to live and we have gone to it every year since 1999. They have a big parade on Saturday and just normal stuff(craft tents and yummy food ) the rest of the time. Randy was working Saturday morning so I took the kids( Kirstin Stroup stayed overnight) to the parade. It was alot of fun but we near froze to death. I seriously couldn't feel my feet or hands when we got back to the van.

So later that night when Randy got home we packed up and went back to do the normal stuff. The Holdens went with us. We had fun and i didn't get to cold because i was prepared.LOL I added a few more layers to what I had on in the morning and I was quite toasty. I had a yummy Gyro and a big bag of freshly popped kettle corn. Yummmmm. It was really cold so we only stayed about 1 1/2 hours before we were ready to go home. Poor Kade was a block of ice.

I know this sounds weird but I think I would like to celebrate Christmas somewhere where it is 75 degrees. I hate being so cold! We had fun and I will have to wait another year for a bag of kettle corn.

Friday Night out with Friends

The beautiful Christmas tree that was lit while we were waiting for a table. My dinner: Parmesan crusted chicken romano ( no I didn't eat all this)

Sarah's dinner. I don't remember the name but it has shrimp and mushrooms in pasta.

My fellow friends and dinner companions.

My cheesecake pick of the night: Pecan pumpkin ( yes it tasted as good as it looks)

We ended the evening by getting a pedicure. It a first for me and I think I am hooked.LOL It was great.


Thanks for the fun evening girls!!

Thanks to my mom too for watching my kids since Randy was working.