January Highlights ... and some December ones too

Hello all! I feel like I keep saying this. . . but I am so sorry for the lack of blogging on my part! :( Confession: I am not a very good time manager, it's a skill I need to work on. I thought I had gotten the hang of it, but well, yeah. Bunch of things got thrown my way and hehe, I found out time managing hadn't actually been quite mastered yet *blushes* Just want to say, thank you to all of you who are still hanging with me even though I haven't really been posting. Means so much :) 

Ok, so now that I've got that out of the way ;) I'm gonna attempt to wrap up January and some of December as well since I didn't do a December Highlights posts *grins guiltily* 

Life

Before I forget, I finally updated the Our Family page. So if you'd like to check that out, you can go HERE. 

// Took an updated family photo, this time with Sweet Pea (yesss....finally found a name for her! Thanks, Faith ;)) The hilarious thing about our family pictures is that each time we take a new one, the tree just gets smaller and the number of people just get bigger. And the focus! My poor camera gets so confused on what to focus on, there being so many faces and all xD 

// Sister time! Dad found our little tent from yeeeaarrrss ago and so we had a girls' campout in the living room. By the lighted Christmas tree, sipping hot drinks and munching on toaster-oven s'mores, playing on Picmonkey...couldn't have been better! 

 // Three words. My. Little. Pony.
Ok so first off, you all should know, Snow White has discovered a love of drawing...and her art has been incredible! MLP was a popular subject for her for awhile, so Tiger Lily and I joined in to help her. We came out with uh...quite a few pictures! :D

// Umm....just a random picture... of pictures 

Yeah...we're wackos ...

// Christmas Day - Toblerone was simply exuberant that day. His enthusiasm in every single gift he

opened was precious :D

// Sledding. Dad may or may not have turned our toboggan hill into one of those black diamonds ... even I'm too scared to go down it ;P 

This isn't even the part I'm scared about. What you can's see is beyond the bend. At the start
of the hill is a monstrous pile of snow that Dad built up with his Kubota. Simply monstrous.
When you're at the top, you can't even see the bottom. And it goes straight down. At like a
90 degree angle. And the 'loading dock' is super narrow too, so if your sled is too long and you don't balance properly,
you either go straight down the hill or backwards, which hurts just as much. No sane person would go down it. 

Ahhh....we celebrated Tiger Lily's 15th birthday!! So blessed to have her as a sister, best friend, 

and partner in crime. Love her a ton!!

// Hosted several parties, some Christmas, some New Year, and one for the birthday girl too. It was an amazing time with friends and a nice opportunity to get to know people from the new church too :) 

// *squeals* I am absolutely in love with this picture. She is an utter doll! We have a baby girl to play dress up with againnnnnn *cackles evilly* xD 

// Snow White got a chocolate mould for Christmas and for a time, our family was surprised with many sweet little chocolates :) 

// Another random picture of Sweet Pea. (my iPod is gonna explode with all the pictures I have of her ;)) 

// Spent lotssss of time with friends...

Seriously, these guys are the best. When we get together, do you know what we do? We have jam sessions. It. Is. Amazing. Last time, we had vocals (harmony and melody complete!), guitar, fiddle, piano, whistle, and cajon (anyone know how to pronounce that? ;) Tiger Lily and I have settled on sounding like honking geese when we say it xD) Really, it is sooooo much fun! I LOVE hanging out with all of them!!!!! :D 

My very awesome group of friends ^_^
We're actually missing
a couple people (LEA!!!!!) in this pic...

// Cinderella photo shoot! This was soooo much fun! And a great opportunity for sisters time too :D We're hoping to make a video, but we'll have to see... ;) 

// Celebrated Ironman's 11th birthday in January! Tiger Lily and I made him a Lego Star Wars cake. (wish I could show you the whole cake but it's got his whole (and real :P) name all across the top xD) Anyway, Tiger Lily and I wanted to try this new decorating technique where you dab coloured icing on the cake, then run a spatula across it to smear it. It actually turned out better than we expected! 

// First skiing trip of the year! And this time, Livs came with us! Soooo much fun! (guys, Liv is fast. Like really, really fast. It was her first time skiing...and she caught on so fast. By the end of the day, she was shooting down those hills faster than the rest of us :P 

Oooo yes...talking about first-time skiers, Toblerone started skiing too!!!! He is SO adorable, with those miniature boots and skis. And he's super good too. At the end of the day, he was exhausted, but he managed to ski on even the blue hills! Which was uber amazing! It's so weird and funny and cute when you see little people skiing on rather big hills. Or maybe that's just me. . . 

// Baking classes. Did I tell you about the courses I was taking? If not...well, now you know ;) Here are some of the things I've made so far:

// Teaching. Our online school closed down on some unfortunate circumstances, and it was very sad :( We're still praying for the head of the school. He had done such a good job running everything, it was a major blow to everyone to hear that he had to close down. But as my friend (Allison, where are you, gal? ;)) reminded me with a quote from Sound of Music: "When the Lord closes a door - somewhere He opens a window". And he certainly did. An amazing woman, (can't give names just for privacy reasons :)) had this idea to start a school for people to teach independently. They could teach anything they wanted, and age limits ranged from kids to full grown adults. We've got a good mix of pretty much everything and everyone. Kids from age 10 to adults are teaching things from growing pumpkins, to Home Ec, to Drawing, to American History ... it's amazing I tell you! I volunteered as an English teacher and the experience has been sooo amazing. My students are all awesome (two of 'em are my brothers ... which makes class uh...interesting ;P). But thank the Lord for the opportunity to experience this! 

Also, the teachers from Landry have been absolutely amazing. They continued to teach their classes at a very-much-so discounted price for all the families' sakes. Seriously, they are amazing. They are sacrificing their time just to continue to educate. They are dedicated. Love them so much! 

//Racing for Time. My friend is hosting her blog tour for her brand new book...starting in TWO DAYS!!! Can't wait! :D 

// Random "conversation":

Toblerone crying hard

Dad: What's wrong? 

Dare Devil: I didn't mean to...

Dad: Where does it hurt? 

Toblerone *wails*: NOWHERREEEEE 

Mom, Tiger Lily, and I all die laughing

// Oh look. Another picture of Sweet Pea. I wonder how that got there? 

Music

I've been listening to a lot of songs...but these are the two newer ones. 

Come Alive - Lauren Daigle

Priceless - For King and Country

Books

*cringes* 

So..umm...yeahhh. Time hasn't really allowed for much reading. I did finish reading Beyond the Horizon by Jesseca Dawn...it's an absolutely AH-mazing book! OH, and in December I finally finally FINALLY got to finish the Blades of Acktar series. Tiger Lily and I were talking and squealing about it for DAYS. And now we're positively dying for Book 4 ;) 

In the whole month of January up 'til now...I haven't even read 1 full book. In the process of reading Water Princess, Fire Prince and I'm re-reading Ruins of Gorlan but I haven't finished them yet *sighs* Anyone got extra time they could give me? 

Goals

PRIORITIZE. School, teaching, work, blogging, family, friends, and even most importantly, my relationship with God. Everything's been all jumbled up and my main goal is to prioritize. Pray for me, please ;) 

That about wraps it up for now! I will see you all, Lord willing, in a couple days for Liv's blog tourrrrr! :D 

How has life been for you?