A tough day today...with moments of joy :)

So I decided enough was enough with the mess in our house, today I am cleaning up!

For the most part that went okay. Floors are clean, lots of recycling ready to go, kitchen table is cleaned off, Jim's chair is over at the church, back hall cleaned up, Christmas stuff all put away and toys tidied. All good.

It was an exercise in patience....
one four year old who thought it would be a good day to play with his millet seed. WAY easier to clean up than sand, rice, or other such sensory hide stuff in and play with types of material. AND has the added bonus of being able to be composted and the plants fed to the bunnies in the spring. BUT NOT fun to sweep a floor, see a lad playing (and spilling) seed over a floor I had just swept and cleaned up. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One boy child thought that getting mommy's Christmas present out so that HE could play with it would be a good idea. NOT. but we got it out, I showed him how it worked and then let him make one robot with mommy's help and then promptly forbade him from ever using it without mommy's help. Reminded him about what he could touch and what he could NOT touch of what was "mommy's stuff". Hard sell for a four year old, but he knows. Really....he does. he just doesn't always remember......... (or so he says).

He wanted to go outside very badly the whole time I was cleaning. Told him...as long as he changed his clothes and dressed for outside, he could go outside. He insisted the mommy had to go with him. So he had to wait until the house was mostly livable...and then off we went with daddy's chair over to the church and to play "german bunny" in the church yard.

We built a snowman... and well...

see...it's built....

but then the boy happened... :) (sheer joy on his part...that and determination....)

now mommy...now??? all done with the picture???

I will prevail over the snowman!!!!

to the point of STOMPING it to death!!!!!!!

Victory complete, on we went to play "german bunny".
German bunny is a bunny who lives in a castle, and whenever we go to visit him one of two things happens. Either hunters come and we turn into tigers who have to escape from them. OR dogs are set loose who like to bite people and we have to hide from them.

We want to visit german bunny so that we can get some jewels from him!

AND that's as far as the story ever progresses. :)

I do like these moments of sheer joy and fun. Makes it all somehow better when a day is tough with an arguing child that needs time outs and such like.

Indoor fun fair

held at the agriplex on the western fair grounds.
indoor carnival held for four days.

Justin had a blast.

1. magic show. he wasn't impressed with DooDoo the magician clown though she did manage to amaze him a couple of times.

2. bouncey things! boy...bouncey things are a whole lot of fun!

3. fun house! house of glass! he could spend hours in these things. and then to cap it all off..BUMPER CARS!!!!! Could a four year ask for any more fun? NOPE! Sadness when mom called dad to come pick us up. He wanted to play more, but mom was tired and little boy was getting tired too. :)

Put Up the Christmas Tree Today

Jim was supposed to head off to a meeting today. Left at 6ish with a three hour drive ahead of him. He was not looking well at all. 1/2 hour he called to see what I thought about him coming home again. He came home.

He's been groaning around the house ever since. He can't breathe well, his coughing is not good, and he can't sleep unless he's sitting up! Not conducive to good sleeping. He has a doctors' appointment on Monday.

but Justin and I have continued our plan. Putting up the Christmas tree, playing games, listening to Christmas music and sporadically watching videos.

it's going well...we've been helped by Milo the cat as well. :) Pics will follow when we're all done. Stayed tuned!

Our Christmas Letter

If somehow I should have sent a Christmas card but somehow forgot you as I updated my addresses, well...here's the Christmas letter I sent out this year. :)

Merry Christmas!

Has this winter storm put you in the mood for Christmas at all? Well...it has me! :) Isn't Christmas fun? I find myself wanting to bake cookies, get the house tidy, wrap presents and such like. I do so enjoy helping people find a reason to smile. And isn't the biggest reason to smile the fact that Christ came to earth, died for us, so that we could be right with God? Doesn't that fact just blow you away and make you realize just whose you are? We are God's, and we are here to show his glory. Let us this season show his glory to those around us. (at least that's what I hope to do!) :)

Anyways, I've been somewhat remiss this year in getting cards/letters/and such like out to people. I seem to keep finding other things to do.

1.Starting to slowly homeschool Justin. Takes time and planning. Sometimes I feel woefully inadequate because I'm not always the most organized person around. But when Justin wants to learn something, we take the time and learn. :) It's fun. I love watching him think. We've done some simple unit studies and do the odd craft. Making wood crafts is where it is at!

2.Lego! Ah this boy just LOVES his lego. He is constantly building robots of one sort of the other. It's good to see him use his imagination. Now to keep him well supplied with Lego.....

3.Bunnies! I raise my bunnies and thoroughly enjoy them. I have mini rex, harlequin, commercial new zealand, polish and holland lops. All have their shining aspects, and well... they also have their 'challenges'. :) It's all good. I'm slowly improving their type and learning the sheer fun that is rabbit showing! :)

4.I've done some limited pet-sitting.

5.We've had some vacation time this year. Unfortunately this summer every time we camped, we had rain. Kinda puts a dampener on things. But it was good to get away. Jim didn't quite get the reading time he needed, so next year we'll do things a bit differently.

6.Justin attends a nursery school one afternoon a week. It goes for two hours. He has fun but every week he tries to convince me that I should stay there.

7.Jim is serving as president of Classis Ontario this year. It's meant extra meetings and some added stress for him. I personally think he's doing a good job, though I wouldn't mind him being home a bit more often.

8.Things in Exeter continue as they have been. Jim continues to pastor, I continue to do the newsletter and to update stuff as it needs doing.

9.I still work at Subway one day a week. It's time for Jim to play with Justin, and time for me to make some needed funds. :)

10.My veggie garden did really really well this year. I was quite pleased. Lots of lettuces, corn (though the raccoons did raid our patch), I tried a new type of cucumber which flumoxed Jim, they looked a bit odd, but tasted good. Tomatoes like you wouldn't believe! My potatoes grew well, and I tried a chinese cabbage this year. I wasn't wildly impressed and won't do that again. It attracted bugs by the bucket load and was not appreciated by the bunnies either. It was so dirty and wormy that I didn't want it either! And we had some butternut squash. Oh boy... do we have butternut squash.

11.Not sure what else to write...it's overall been a pretty good year. Learned lots, cried some, laughed tons, and walked with God. It hasn't always been pretty, but it's been okay.

We do wish you a wonderful Christmas season. Do know that God sent his son to die for YOU personally. He did that so that you could have a close and intimate relationship with him so that you can more fully show HIS glory to the world around you.
Jim, Annette and Justin

Justin's Ear Appointment

I mentioned three months ago (I think) that Justin's ear doctor moved him to every three months appointments rather than every six.

Jim came along this appointment.

Justin's right ear is healed over completely from the tubes.
The left ear has lost it's tube, it just needs to heal up. So, somewhere in this house is a small green tube that I didn't notice (not that that's a surprise, those things are tiny!).

The doctor thinks that it's not tonsils, but rather adenoids that are causing the trouble for Justin, and in three months may end up removing them.

He's given us a spray to see if that will help shrink them. It's called Nasonex. It's not cheap! A squirt in the nose every night before bed.

Our next appointment is March 2, 2010, at 1115.