Cold and Kids...

Best to stay in when the temps are -5 so that meant uploading the videos from our Christmas trip to the Ramada Tropics Resort in Des Moines. They are up on our youtube channel, you'll have to be a bit patient with the background noise and waiting for the boys and Kena to come down the slides. Todd now tells me that there is a feature on youtube to add background music in place of the sound that was originally on the video. In the future we might combine several shorter video's into one with background music and just show the highlights. We should be able to make it a little better each time, we're learning... I've also uploaded all of the pictures from that trip to our web album through picasa web albums. I've embedded a slideshow right here in our blog for you to enjoy. If you wanted to view any captions or see the pics larger you can follow this link. Click Here for Web Album

We also babysat today for some friends of ours, Garth & Kati. They just got home from a 2 week vacation visiting family in Utah.... they needed some alone time after the 24 hour train ride home over night New Years Eve with their three children. We took a video of supper and it was NOISY to say the least. We almost doubled our numbers with their 3 and our 4 here, and of course both babies cried at the same time, while the bigger ones at the table sang and shouted - ear plugs anyone? Should you elect to watch this video, please do yourself a favor and turn the speakers down a bit :) Click Here for Tonights Video

Happy New Year 2010 and Happy Birthday

Just like we've started the last 4 new years.... we celebrated the birth of Braden! He turned 4 today. Time sure has gone fast, he's been such a joy to watch grow.

He got a lava lamp as one of his gifts today, he and his brother and sister are up in the boys room as we speak, I can hear them on the baby monitor... squealing with laughter about the balls of lava moving up and down through the clear liquid. He also spent the entirety of his day in a swimming suit and swim shirt. That is totally Braden because you know there is a wind chill advisory for tonight and tomorrow... Negative 25 is the perfect weather for running around mostly naked! What a kid!

New years bring new resolutions, one of them is to blog this year, I mean come on get with the times right? I'm a "techie geek" sort of girl, shame on me, we should have a family web site, maybe in 2011. Resolution number two is to read my bible in a year! This is the year to do it! I think I've finally found the bible that will help make that possible. It's in chronological order of the way the events actually happened, it's NIV version (which should make for easy reading), and it's designed to be read in 365 days. It is marked for what your supposed to read each day, it's only 3-6 pages per day. All of those things combined make it all most fail proof. I'm prayerfully hopeful that God will grant me the discipline to make it through this year. Last resolution is number three (and that's plenty) to eat healthier and build up our immune systems, as a family. I seem to have come to a new understanding and appreciation for the value of the immune system, and how easily we can damage and destroy it with anti-biotic medicines.

I'm looking forward to this year, mostly looking for spiritual growth, a better understanding of God's word, to be more faithful to it and my personal prayer life. Spending time with my wonderful husband and our delightful children (currently numbering 5). Now I must close because even though those delightful children have been tucked in for the night, I can still hear the pitter patter of little feet, and still small voices on the monitor. Good Night, and God Bless!