Christmas with Jen, Dave, and Erin

We got together with long time friends Jennifer, David and Erin the Sunday after Christmas. For those of you who know us, this is actually early for this crew to get thogether. We usually end up celebrating together in about July! We had a blast.

We had good food...








Good company...









And good entertainment!!!





Then we opened presents.
















The girls were in a silly mood!!!!!! They had us cracking up all night!







The kids entertained us on Rock Band!! They are so talented!

Christmas in Huntsville

We went to Huntsville the Saturday after Christmas to celebrate with Keith's family. Cousin's from everywhere came-- Locust Fork; Cullman; Birmingham; Fort Myers, Florida; and of course those that live in Huntsville. We even had a friend from France here to visit. It was a warm 70 degrees so the kids were able to go outside and play baseball. We had good food, good fellowship and lots of fun!

Disclaimer: I did not take the time to edit any of the pictures!

Christmas 2008

What a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!! Enjoy the slide show.

Basketball

Kaleigh has started her basketball season with the church. She is very excited. I have a few pictures of a practice. Our 5th grade team played a practice game against the sixth grade team. Our girls lost by only one point. Both teams looked really good. Kaleigh shot a couple of baskets but missed. In practiced she shot and made 5 in a row. It's a shame she could do that in the game! Maybe she will in a "real" game!

Running "suicides" at practice!

Reader's Theater

Kaleigh's 5th grade class came to my 3rd grade class to perform a Christmas reader's theater. (One of the perks of teaching at the same school where my daughter attends!!) If you are not familiar with reader's theater, this is where you read your script not memorize it. This helps with fluent reading. They did a good job plus it was a great way to get to see Kaleigh in the middle of the day!

Oh, yeah! It was pajama day for her class and for the kids in my class. We all dressed in pjs and watched Polar Express. It is fun to go to school in pjs!! Yep...even I had on pink snowflake pjs. One of my students gave me frog slippers. I wore them all day!

Wrestling

Donovan placed third (out of about 12) in the 145 weight class at yesterday's wrestling tournament!!! The tournament was here at Hewitt's new high school. It was a great day. Of course, he did this on the day when the batteries went dead in the only camera I had with me!! So, no pictures :o(


We are so proud of him!

Camp McDowell

Well, I survived 3 days at Camp McDowell!!! I am too old to go to camp, that is for sure!! It was great fun don't get me wrong but my bones can't handle camp beds and 3 hour hikes twice a day! Our weather was crazy. Monday was freezing...42 for the high. Tuesday was 65 degrees and very cloudy. Tuesday night the rains came in...tornado warning about 11pm. Yep...our cabin slept through it all!! Wednesday was cool and drizzly. We learned lots. The best part of the trip for me was meal time and not for the reason you might think. We learned about making wise choices at dinner about the amount of food we put on our plate not necessarily wise choices about the kinds of food we ate. Our goal was to have zero waste at the end of each meal. It was so cool to see how much we wasted at the end of each meal. The first meal we wasted 18 pounds of food. At the last meal we wasted 4 pounds of food. WOW!! My table of kids (9 in all) rocked. We had two meals with zero waste! (There were about 80 kids in all that went.) We learned about ponds and streams, Native Americans, writing about nature using your senses, and using the land for mining. I don't know about the group of girls I was with but I sure learned a lot!! I think Kaleigh would go back again if she had the chance. Here are some photos in no particular order.

Kaleigh in the creek looking for bugs.



Kaleigh in the pond looking for bugs.


The bugs!


Our Field group at the waterfalls.


Kaleigh and me!


Our field group with painted faces like the Native Americans.


Our field group crossing the swinging bridge.


Kaleigh was blindfolded then led to a tree. She had to use her sense of touch, feel the tree, be led back to a starting point, take the blindfold off, then go find the tree she had been led to. (Not sure why!)


Killing a stuffed rabbit using a Native American weapon. The girls had way too much fun doing this!


The fork in the road that led to Camp McDowell! To the right- the girls cabins. To the left- the boys cabins.



The girls at bedtime!



It was a great group of girls. They got along. They did everything that was asked of them without a complaint. It was great!!