Crocheting party with the Spartans

Great group of girls!

Coach!!!!

Claire and Sarah

Smile Kirsten!

The running queens and the couch potato!

Sarah and Anne

Gabriella, Claire and Maggie

The older girls doing their thing with the yarn!

Coach, my tall self, Janet and Liesa

My girls and I

Coach Heather organized a get together for Spartan girls and their moms at a coffee shop in New Albany. The girls had such a fun time knitting and crocheting while the moms enjoyed the desserts and coffees! Coach Heather had a wonderful devotion about the humbleness of Christ and shared a bit about her testimony. I am very thankful for her influence in the lives of my children. We are looking forward to a great 2010 with the Spartan team!

End of the year in coops

The residents at the nursing home just loved interacting with the children.

We had a yummy lunch for our last coop. Topping the menu was Lisa's potato soup and Natalie's taco soup. We had a couple of salads and delicious desserts as well.

We have enjoyed getting to know some new homeschool families this semester in coop.

Anna and the Chunn sisters!

Ben , John and Molly

We visited a nursing home after our lunch on the last day of coop and played bingo and sang carols.

My algebra students being tortured as they take their semester final.

Rachelle and I ( glad to have a break coming) :)

Eating doughnuts with our algebra and writing coop.

We have had a fun semester in our two coop groups. We started an algebra and writing coop with a couple of other families here at our house on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Rachelle teaches writing and then I teach algebra. We have had some laughs and have learned quite a bit about taking notes, taking tests and writing essays and even some linear functions :)

Our other coop where we do history and science meets on Fridays at Calvary in Tupelo. My children have learned alot this semester and have enjoyed this coop as well!

Ornament party with the Chamblees

John and Jack are about to duel!

Caedmon is soo cute. He is walking around everywhere!

Having fun making ornaments!

Martha, Margaret, Molly, Anna, Claire, Kaelan, Joelle and Evelyn

Christmas with our neighbors

Mr. House

Anna and Mrs. House - she is over 90 years old!

We spent most of the day last Tuesday cooking soup and bread for our neighbors. We have several older neighbors that we have enjoyed getting to spend some time with over the past 5 years. It is such a blessing to get to spend time with our older and much wiser neighbors - we learn so much from them. Some of them have had some pretty rough times in the past few years with illnesses and accidents.

We also have a couple of sweet neighbors who let us swim in their pool all summer and another one who provides us with high speed internet. The Millers spend hours each Christmas season making hand dipped chocolate covered cherries. They are soo yummy. Mr. Jim is always on call when I have internet problems and on several occasions has let me come down to the Miller home to work on their computer! Also on Tuesday, we stayed quite a while at the Blackburn's house. Mrs. Sheryl is a fabulous cook and we sampled several of her homemade goodies and gourmet coffees! Her house is a showplace with ornate decorations and a 12-14 foot tall tree! Even their beautiful barn is decorated for Christmas. We enjoyed their hospitality!

Christmas Day!

Happy Jay on Christmas morning!

Ben is opening a gift with his mouth full of Christmas stocking candy.

Loving sisters!

Claire and her BB! We have already had fun playing BB together.

Anna and her Spartan hoodie!

Jay loved his play rifle!

Butter(Brianna) and Lasses(Fiona) had to get in on the action. Granny had purchased each of them a gift for Christmas. Fluff also recieved a toy mechanical mouse filled with catnip. She went wild!! She is mostly a housecat now with a litter box and everything, so warn us when you are coming over if you are allergic to cats!!

Scott received 3 pairs of house shoes this Christmas. Anna and I can both help him out with these since our feet are almost the same size as his :( Note the light outside is very dim - I am not sure the sun had yet risen when this pic was taken!
A few days before Christmas, I took an idea from Roan, where each child comes to Mom's "store" and picks out a gift for their brothers and sisters. The kids all had fun picking out gifts and wrapping them for their siblings. Anna did use some of her money from making cakes to buy her siblings small gifts that they opened on Christmas Eve.

We had a relaxing Christmas Day! The kids were literally up before dawn!! We calmed them down enough to have a short Bible study and then we took turns opening gifts. John's favorite was probably his cross bow from Vision Forum. Claire loved the basketball and Ben loved his game set. Anna's favorite was her Spartan hoodie! Our family gift was a new TV! Ours was almost 20 years old and had to be turned on with a screwdriver :)

We had a big breakfast and enjoyed the day playing the Wii ( Christmas gift from Granny and Pa) and other board games. Scott and I both took a little nap since we were awaken before daylight and had not gone to bed until after midnight!

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given....."

Praise the Lord for His Precious Gift to Us!

We took no pics on Christmas Eve, but we spent the day in Booneville with Scott's mom and Erin Shea and then went over to Mom and Dad's for Santa's hats and visiting.

Girls trip to Natchez

Anna in our room at lovely Monmouth manor.

Cathy and I ready to head out to dinner at Monmouth.

Granny and Anna in the lounge as we were having our appetizers.

This bread pudding was the best that I have ever tasted!

Gourmet food is not terribly filling ;) It was tasty though!

The dining room at Monmouth.

The foyer of Monmouth mansion.

We enjoyed our stay at this beautiful antebellum home. It was built in 1818 and had a lot of history connected to it.

The room where we ate breakfast each day was beautifully decorated and the food was delicious!

One of the first homes we toured was Longwood. It was a huge home started just 18 months before the civil war started

Longwood was almost completed on the outside when the Civil War began, but only the first floor was done on the inside. The workers just left their tools and never returned. The house is virtually unchanged in over 150 years!! They never finished the upper floors of the interior.

Longwood from the front lawn. The outside is just breathtaking. The bottom floor is nice as well (10,000 square feet), but the upper floors are just shells. We could not take pictures on the bottom floor, but it was nice!

Longwood is the largest octagonal home in the US.

Anna and I enjoying the tour of homes!

This is Stanton Hall in downtown Natchez. This was a beautiful home where the mini series North and South was filmed.

Longwood was the favorite of all the homes we toured this year! Mom loved Natchez and so we plan to go back next year. We look forward to touring some of the other homes next year.

I am so thankful to our Great God for such a great relationship with my Mom, Sister and oldest daughter. We had such a fun trip talking, laughing, remembering old times and acting silly. Mom would sometimes lose patience with Cathy and I and our schemes :) Ask Anna about the fan signals.

The first thing we did after we arrived in Natchez was to promptly check OUT of our first bed and breakfast. I chose it based on the looks from the outside. It was a huge, gorgeous mansion! BUT, unfortunately, when we saw our room, we were disappointed. We found a few dead bugs and one favored a BED BUG! We were mortified and as Mom lay down to rest a bit we headed down to see if they would let us cancel our reservation. Surprisingly they did and we scurried to find another place. I took a chance and called the nicest B&B in Natchez and they had 2 deluxe suites available. But OH, the rates were sky high. Then he said that if we came in right away he would give us the walk in rate which was only a tad higher than the roach motel, so we jumped on the chance. Monmouth was soooo nice and the owners were very sweet as well. The wife, Lani, is a Christian and was so cordial and welcoming. We will probably stay here in the future!

My next few posts will be in backwards order. I am going to start with the most recent and go back awhile. I hope to post about our end of the year party with coop, Spartan get together, ornament making get together with the Chamblees, making gifts for the neighbors and of course, Christmas Day!