Smoothie Face

I'm not sure how else to add :)

Giveaway

Did I tell you I tend to get obsessive about things and then fizzle out? It's not that I don't WANT to blog, I do, but other things are just more important...or pressing anyway. (((Sigh)))

In any event, my friend Brooke at All Things Thrifty is doing a giveaway...a Silhouette Machine! Go check it out...

Christmas Poem 2010

Well another decade is behind us now
And time flies faster every year somehow
It seems that when we get a handle on things
We stir up the pot and with that brings
Plenty of challenges and opportunities through the years
But we wouldn’t have it any other way, so here’s
To the next decade and though it will appear a mess
May it bring more joy, inspiration and a lot less stress.

Our jobs are the same, Joey is still at SUU
And Kristy with her day care, always has much to do

We added to our family, with a puppy in the spring,
At 10 months old we wonder if she will ever stop growing!
Kala’s a yellow lab, which gives us three pets in the home,
Every time we get one, Kristy rolls her eyes and groans.

Maren our youngest is growing and she is learning fast.
She is a momma’s girl, I wonder how long that will last.

Tyler has just turned 5 and he says he is a big boy now,
Just got to figure a way to get him out of our bed somehow.

Kelley is half way through second grade and doing lots of things,
She has tried piano, soccer, ballet, and she even sings!

Well once again we wish you all well,
Hope everything is going swell.

From our family in southern Utah where the rocks are always red,
To where ever your family may call home and rest your weary head,
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
We hope magic filled your home and you could spread a little Cheer.

Love,

The DeGraafs

Lately

Family Pictures, taken in June 2010. We're blowing this one up to put above the fireplace.

Lately...

I've been very busy. Like normal. I've been often overwhelmed. Like normal. But I have felt so blessed. :) We've moved into this house and we love it. It feels so much like home it's crazy. Prospects are looking very good. But we're waiting patiently to see how it will all work out eventually.

I'm so excited for Christmas. Kind of getting close to being ready. But it's less than a week away and I'm probably less ready than I think I am...oh my!

I've been spending less time on the computer, most days. I obviously have not been blogging much, unfortunately. I like blogging a lot. I like hearing comments from people and catching up on your lives through your blogs. I really like having some type of record written down. My blog has taken a lot of the place of a personal journal and scrapbook. But alas, it's just been one of those things I've had to let slide. Anyway, here's a quick recap of the last little bit.

Tyler's taken to taking pictures of anything everything...including himself and his goofy faces. I have about a million more of these pics sitting on my computer. He's especially fond of taking pictures of his eye up close. Go figure.

He's also taken to putting stickers on everything but paper. And writing with markers on everything buy paper. It's a rather frustrating habit that I'm not quite sure how to address. I know he's thinking about it before he does it because he always puts in in places I won't see immediately....like on the couch BEHIND where the pillow sits. Or on the side of the table, under the top lip. What's the worst part of it is that he's taken to permanent markers. Barring anything that will get me throw in jail for abuse...I'm open to your suggestions.

Taken during one of his daily fits. He can be one grumpy boy sometimes!

Speaking of my little sunshine...he turned 5 in November. He was super excited and had a big pizza party with all his friends. I tried to make a "pizza cake" putting frosting all over a big cookie and decorating it with toppings. But unfortunately when you mix red dye with white frosting it just turns pink. He didn't care.

Maren turned 1 on the 14th. She is crawling everywhere. Her favorite is to go up and down the stairs and it's really funny to watch her do her three point turn to get turned backwards so she can go down. She's not really close to walking, but will finally take steps when we stand her up and help her, which is a big improvement. She continues to sign and is really verbal, probably more so than even Kelley was.

She's a ham and loves the camera. She will say "cheese" and give you a big old grin as long as she gets a peek at the picture afterward.

Kelley was in a Christmas Carol through the Shakespeare Festival's Playmakers program. She was just a little choir girl, but it was a fabulous experience for her. She got to work with an excellent group of directors, stage managers and musicians. I think it really helped her singing and she of course had a fabulous time! They are doing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the Spring and we are all really excited. She will probably just be in the choir again, but it's better for us that way anyway. It's a lot cheaper and not as time intensive.

Oh, so this picture is funny to me. She poses for pictures while she's on stage and supposed to be performing. We have to work on that still I guess!

Joey and I are doing well. We're busy all the time. But we're happy. We've got great kids and life is kind to us at the moment. If I'm lucky we'll get a Christmas Poem written and posted before the end of the year and I'll actually have two blog posts this month. Here's hoping!

Halloween 2010

I already posted these on Facebook, but since one day I hope to make a scrapbook of sorts out of my blog...I will post them here. Halloween turned out to be really fun. Normally it is a really big deal at our house. Our porch is decked out. We have all sorts of decorations for the house. And our costumes are REALLY cool and often coordinate with each other. But this year we were moving and doing flooring and just trying to stay sane. And so our idea to do a whole band of characters from Stars Wars went by the wayside, again. But I had seen a video on A Thrifty Mom about doing quick Tutus. My mom had a bunch of this material from Kember's dancing days and so we whipped two of these puppies out in less than an hour! And with a few accessories from our Halloween box we ended up with:

"The Best Halloween Costume I've ever had!" According to Kelley. She was a Ballerina/Witch thing. And Maren was her cute little twinner, although I'm sad to say we didn't really ever get a good picture of the baby's costume. But you can only do so much I suppose.

Tyler was a Dead Green Bat. And we had a lot of fun. We went around the neighborhood with cousins from both sides of the family, had dinner with grandma and grandpa, and had a great time, without a whole lot of fuss. It was a nice low key night.

Also, throwing this one in here because I thought it was really cool. Yes, that is real chain mail. My brother made it. It has taken him 4 years (I think) and it weighed either 45 or 70 pounds. Can't remember which off the top of my head.

Why I have not been blogging

Because we have been busy transforming this:

Into this:

And moving everything to a great new place that I still don't have good pictures of because my camera was lost in a box somewhere in plain sight. Now I have finally found the said camera, but the camera battery charger is now lost, probably in the ginormous mess that is our office. But now our old house is FINALLY ready to be rented out and we've already made a lot of progress putting away boxes and cleaning up the new house. And we love it and want to stay here forever! (Working on that right now...)

Oh, and please don't judge me because of the top picture. It really didn't look that way when we actually were living there or had kids there. Well most of the time...ha ha! That picture was taken in the middle of the weekend where we turned everything upside down so we could start putting in the floors. But can I tell you that's what I have felt my life has been like for the past 2 months since we started this process! A giant explosion, but in a good way...kind of like the big bang that started something amazing. I know we'll get there....if we survive in the meantime ;)

Squash as big as young children

This summer I seriously neglected blogging about my garden progress. Which is too bad, because it was a lot of fun this year. And who knows if I will actually HAVE a garden next year. We're still not sure what our situation will be in the spring/summer.

But in my garden this year I had a plant start coming up on it's own, presumably from my compost I had used to fertilize. I let it grow. And it grew at least four or five of the biggest butternut squashes I have ever seen in my life. Have you ever seen butternuts this big?