Happy New Year!!

Our family would like to wish each of you a very Happy & Prosperous New Year. We are so thankful for the gifts from above and are blessed to have such an awesome family and great group of friends. Thank you for your many blessings. May you all be blessed in 2008.

The True Meaning of Christmas

I almost forgot to share this awesome story with you all. Probably the week or two before Christmas Haylee looked at our Christmas tree and noticed that there was a really neat ornament of baby Jesus in the manger and Mary and Joseph on each side. She asked if that was baby Jesus and I said yes. And then she noticed the angel at the top of the tree and said, "Mom, that looks just like the angel that told Mary she was going to have a baby"! I said, "yes, it does and I would imagine that the angels did look alike". I couldn't let another day go by without sharing that special moment. She knows what the true meaning of Christmas is and with the reinforcement from preschool and AWANA and Sunday school she has absorbed it all!! I feel truly blessed that my children are learning so much each day, not just in the world, but from God too. The circle begins to feel complete doesn't it!! I hope that Christmas was special for all of you as it was for us. And Alexa just thinks that Christmas is so much FUN!!! She can't wait for it to roll around next year.

The New House (finished)

These are the photos from outside to show the finished look of the house. We moved a couple tree rows and while I was watering I took photos of the outside. The photos are from the top: the front; the back (the little shed out is the old fireplace area that was built to house the small pipe and above that is the original upstairs; everything to the left of that peak is new); a nice view from the west looking at the garage and office windows; and then the view from the east (the left two windows are the kids rooms and then the door is into the kitchen). We even got our lawn started!! That was a very busy 4 weeks of constant watering. As many of you know that while your building/remodeling a new spot you don't always have the funds to put in underground sprinklers, so I am the watering crew (if you will). We feel pretty fortunate to get the lawn started so the kids can enjoy it next summer and not have to play in the dirt. But I am guessing that Noah will probably prefer the dirt over the nice soft lawn. Alexa will always prefer to play in the mud because it is so much fun! And Haylee would rather be clean most of the time. I will try to get some finished photos of the inside so you can see how we chose to finish the look. That will be tricky since we have three kids that love to make messes! And as always, when you are in the area please stop in to see us.

Alexa turns 4!!!

Thanksgiving at the Sandman's

We hosted our first ever Thanksgiving at our new home and it was AWESOME. At least in my opinion. We had lots of space and lots of people too. I think 16 adults and 8 kids. We had a table dedicated to the little ones and they sang, yelled and laughed the entire time. It is so much fun to get together with your cousins and be crazy. I am not sure that they ate too much, but they loved the cookie turkeys that Tami made them. I think this was the staple of the meal, forget the nutritious stuff!! As for the adults, we ate too much. Which is the usual story, but we are good cooks and have great recipes to share. You can see that we enjoyed the food too. And then there is a photo of Mary Jo pushing the kids around on Great Grandma's walker. It was truly hilarious to hear the kids laugh and giggle as the air flew through their hair!

Noah pulls himself UP

Noah is pulling himself up in this photo, but he was doing it long before I could snap a photo of it. He thinks that he is pretty big stuff and is even crawling stairs!! YIKES. I didn't plan on that so soon, but we are putting the gates up. I couldn't believe it when the girls told me that he crawled up the stairs behind them. I was sure that they had helped, but they said no. Oh my gosh, I couldn't believe it. Then that afternoon he did it again and I caught him two stairs from the TOP!! Wow, he is growing up too fast!!

Happy Halloween 2007

Halloween was a princess repeat at our house. The girls love being princesses. What could we say to that?? Several families from the MOPs group got together to take all the kids treating before the sun went down and it got too cold. So we started off at the Wheelers and made our way around the countryside and then into town. As you can see, Noah didn't partake or really cooperate too well. So, we are hoping for a more visible goblin next year.

We have TONS of turkeys!!

Several mornings we would see these turkeys wandering into the yard and the girls thought is was so neat to have them so close. Close until the dog would chase them off. And of course the girls wanted a photo of them. This is taken out the front door to the north and they were running off as soon as we quietly opened the door. But we did have right next to the house a week before. These are perks of living along the river--wildlife. We have seen the deer crossing our drive with their babies early in the morning. Did I mention that we are very early risers here at the Sandman house? We are and some mornings I wish we weren't.

Noah's Crawling!!

Oh my goodness, Noah is by far the busiest of the kids yet. I had always heard that boys are so much different then girls when it comes to getting into things. But I thought...yeah, right. Well they are right on and I have to be one step ahead of him in search of the next object that he will try to put in his mouth. Our girls could have cared less about eating anything (that includes food), but then we have our busy boy who isn't content very long with much unless it is playing in the water dish until he is SOAKED!! And he just smiles and laughs which melts my heart. And he started crawling on October 23!! Here are the photos for your enjoyment so you can see for yourself.