Welcome!

Welcome to our new family blog! Some of you have been around for awhile and some of you are just joining us! So let me introduce myself; I'm Judy! Mom to Christian (3) and McKenna (10 months). I've been married to Ryan for almost six years and I'm blessed to be a stay-at-home mom. My sister lives one street over with her three children; Emma (7.5), Abby(5) and Nate(3). Emma gets off the bus at my house everyday, so we spend lots of time together. Abby and Nate split their time between daycare/preschool and my house, although I always get to see their precious faces whenever they're sick :) So those three cousins are often included in our family blogspot!

I used to be a school teacher before becoming a mom. I taught third grade and fifth grade. I do occasionally miss the classroom, but know I'll go back to teaching one day. I love to read, but don't have much time for it. I am currently reading The Christmas Train, but I'm not too impressed so far. I am very excited to start a new study of the biblical character of David in 2009. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about that. I don't like coffee or tea, but Diet Coke is a must have for me! I got a new camera for Christmas and have already taken hundreds of pictures with it! I used to be an avid scrapbooker, but now I just blog and make photobooks online. It's much easier! I don't watch much TV, but if I do it's probably the news or something on HGTV. These days I mainly watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Bear, Franklin or Max and Ruby. I actually like to clean and I find myself cleaning ALL THE TIME, but I would be embarrassed to have you walk in my house right now! Thanks to my three year old and a baby on the move nothing ever stays in it's place!

This blog started out as a way to keep our friends and family in touch with our lives, but somewhere along the way my motivation for it changed and I found myself writing more for my kids. The main purpose of this blog is to testify to the goodness of the Lord in our lives. I'm going to have this blog printed into a book and one day when my kids read it I want them to not only be entertained by all the stories of their early years, but I want them to see how much they've been loved. I want them to read about my failures and successes and how God blessed us along the way. I want them to know their mom as an imperfect vessel that God used to mold and shape their lives. I want them to know how much their daddy and I love Jesus and how we did our best to be obedient to His word.

So enough about me! Leave a comment and introduce yourself if you like. Or tell me something about you I just might not already know! Or you can leave a comment and tell everyone else how it is that you know me or found me here in this blog world!

CONTEST

I want to have a cute new name for our new blog! Let me know if you have any ideas. I think I would like to incorporate our last name without really using it. For example something like: "Just a Little Chatter" Leave a comment if you think of something cute! If I do end up using your suggestion I'll send you a little prize. I'm not sure what that will be just yet, but I'll come up with something cute and I promise it won't be a re-gift (hehe)! Oh yeah, "The Chatt Pack" is already take by a Chatterton cousin craftier that I!

A New Year - A New Blog

On January 1st I'm going to be launching our new family blog! http://ryanandjudy.blogspot.com/ (Don't check it out yet - I'm still working on it!) So make sure you bookmark it or change your link to my blog!

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. The main reason is because I want to get our last name off of our blog. I want to keep our blog "open" but don't want to reveal too much info about our family. In our current blog I've posted about where we live and our last name. It would be super easy for anyone out there to find us. I'm not really worried about that, but I want to be wise in protecting my children. So our new blog doesn't mention our last name and I'm going to be a little more careful about not posting exactly where we live. I'm NOT going to use code names for my kids or anything like that! I guess I could use the nicknames Ryan always gives everyone (he's famous for ridiculous nicknames) but I think it would confuse everyone if I started referring to Christian as "fishstick) or McKenna as "the little Mohican." Don't even ask! Truly I have no idea the story behind Christian's nickname! Just look at McKenna's hair these days and you'll understand hers.

All of this was set into motion a few weeks ago when I got a rather creepy phone call from someone whom I do not know. They did however know my name and exactly where I live. I told them they could talk to my husband and they hung up. I haven't heard from this person again, but it got me thinking and I just want to be wise. You can see how many hits this old blog has had and probably half of those are from people who I do not know. I would love it if every person who visited our site would leave a comment, but apparently that's not realistic. I even allow anonymous comments, in the hopes that it will encourage people to leave comments. Just to be fair, I will say that I don't leave a comment every time I look at some one's blog. It's too time consuming to keep up with. But I have left at least one comment on every blog that I read. So the author of that blog at least knows that I'm there! I'm certainly not upset that people don't leave comments. It would be nice if they did occasionally, but it doesn't really bother me. If it did I would just make the blog private and not worry about it.

The other reason for a new blog is that I love for things to be brought to completion! I've been working (since August) on turning our blog into a book and it's bugging me that I don't have a good stopping point. Now I do!

Thanks for bearing with me in all of this :) I'll still be posting on this blog until 2009!

Christmas Slideshow

Make a Smilebox slideshow

This is the fastest and easiest way to share all of our Christmas pictures with you. I know this may not work that well for people with dial-up, but everyone else should be able to view this! Enjoy!

I'm Spending My Day....

Sitting on the couch
With a throw-up bucket
Holding my very warm little boy
who keeps telling me how cold he is!

Not the day I had in mind!
I have so much to do:
laundry
suitcases to unpack
Christmas to be put away
organizing
organizing...
and I've got to get a baby gate up on the stairs.
It's only a matter of time before McKenna takes a nose dive.
But gate installation requires a trip to the hardware store.
Not today!

So I'm going to grab a book and try to ignore the never ending DVD of Max & Ruby that Christian got for Christmas.
And I'm going to enjoy the fact that my rambunctious three year old wants to snuggle me!

My Favorite Christmas Memory

On Christmas morning the first thing Christian saw when he came down the steps was his stocking! He was so excited about it and immediately started looking at all the treasures inside.Then he spotted this (see the picture above). He was so excited that he started jumping up and down and then ran over to me and hugged me and said "thank you mommy" before he even went to look at the toy! Oh melt my heart! I love that boy!
This was by far the hit of the day. Now if I could just figure out where to put it!

McKenna's First Christmas - So much fun!!!!

McKenna's first Christmas was so much fun! Don't you just love the chair.

Clapping because she was so excited about her stocking!

McKenna's holding a baby doll that my grandmother, her great-grandmother, made.

Look at those beautiful eyes!

Christian showing McKenna the new penguin teether he got for her.

Kisses for mommy! One of the best moments of Christmas!

McKenna did a pretty good job of opening presents. Although her brother was right there to help her each time a present needed to be opened!

That's the grin I get now whenever she sees the camera! She's learning early isn't she? And that's her new baby doll stroller/walker. I'm so excited to have pink toys!

Christian gave McKenna a new baby for Christmas and she loved it! Watch the video at the bottom to hear her squealing about it!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

We miss you Chatterton family, Marshall cousins and Brinkley cousins! Wish we could all be together!

There's a lot of excitement around here! I hope each of you has a wonderful day with your family!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

How thankful we are that you're our SAVIOR!

Christmas Crafts

Monday was craft day! And today was cookie baking day (pictures of that another time). Check out what we made on Monday!

Rudolph made out of a footprint and two hand prints.
Snowman made with Christian's thumb print.

This makes a very cute gift!!

Poor Abby is always stuck with boys. Christian and Nathan at home and then lots of boys in her class at school. She's totally out numbered all the time. So to get a little girl time we invited our friend Kate to come over to make crafts with us!! In this picture the girls are filling their socks with rice to make their snowmen.

Abby's snowman.

Kate's snowman (You'll notice that Abby and Kate made the same exact snowman. Even their buttons are in the same exact color order. Isn't having a best friend great)!

Christian's guy that he named "snowman." Very original!

And Nate! Oh Nate! He spilled rice EVERYWHERE! From the stove, to the refrigerator, to the living room. What a disaster! He started crying immediately (and truth be told - I wanted to cry too) and I told him that I wasn't mad just disappointed that I would have a big mess to clean up. I think that made him feel even worse that I was disappointed, so he gave up on the snowman and refused to make one. Thankfully the sweet little guy recovered after his nap and ended up with a very cute snowman. I love this picture because he actually gave me a real smile. Not the squinty ones I usually get from a three year old.

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Thanks for the great craft ideas SARAH! Don't you just love blogging! I would have never made these crafts if it wasn't for you and your blog!!

Christmas is Coming!!!!

It's getting closer!!

Yes that's McKenna in boy pjs! Blue is just as comfy and warm as pink, so why buy pink when you've already got blue! She doesn't seem to care, so I don't either!

The Jesse Tree is getting full (you can't see all the ornaments because most of them are on the right side of the tree by Christian's head). I did NOT rearrange all the ornaments on this tree :)

We went to Daddy's work today for a Christmas party and when we were getting ready to leave Christian said; "Daddy when you get home it's family time." He loves our family time that we've had around the Jesse Tree this Christmas! This picture was from last night!

Rewind to Saturday Night

If you had come to my house on Saturday night here's what you would have seen.

My family

Amy's family

My brother Tim's family.

Uncle Tim with lots of presents

McKenna opening her very first gift with a little help from her brother.

Finally getting the hang of it! I think she'll do just fine on Christmas morning!

Hannah and Elizabeth opening their Littlest Pet Shop stuff.

Christian opening his armor. Nate and Adam opening their armor.

Adam putting on his armor.

Christian in his armor!

Emma and Abby with their new roller blades.

I know what your thinking....."Have they lost their minds??? Three sets of armor, including a sword given to each three year old? Roller blades for two girls among all the other chaos?" All I have to say is NO ONE GOT HURT! The only sword injury we've had so far was Nate poking himself in the eye.

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Now back to our night!

Christian with some new playdough!

Nate got a very cool monster truck race track that was the hit of the night.

Look at McKenna's face!!! She got lots of attention from her twin cousins Hannah and B-Beth.

The twins spent lots of time playing with McKenna.

Hmmm...It looks like she's trying to get away!

I think McKenna preferred hanging out with Auntie Erin! Much calmer!!

Everyone decorated their own cake. Can you tell that Abby's is a ginger bread man?
Seven kids with sprinkles results in lots of great memories and just so you know, I still have green icing on some of my chairs! It was a great night and I'm so thankful the Brinkley's made the effort (they had quite an eventful trip) to come and see us! We miss them and love spending time with them!!

Group Shots are always IMPOSSIBLE!

I've always wished for the perfect picture of all the cousins together, but it never seems to happen with this side of our family. We had great success over Thanksgiving with our Chatterton cousins, but this Brinkley/Marshall bunch seems to bring out the worst in at least one person most of the time.

Everyone thinks Uncle Tim is funny except for Nate. It got much, much worse after this!

Now it's Adam not cooperating.

And Nate again.

Oh yeah! Now it's Christian's turn.

And this is the only "smile" Christian could come up with in the middle of his major tantrum.

And it's been that way for years! That's Abby in the purple on the verge of a major meltdown because she wanted to hold Christian and Emma got to hold him instead. To see a history of our attempts, click here!