B-E-N-N-N-Y

WOW! my child is funny!

everyone has to have a ridiculous black mail photo!

Helping mommy sweep, I think I see the beginnings of dimples!

After the Veterans parade. He fell in love with suckers. Notice the blue mouth.

Christmas Traditions

Once a month I go to this meeting of Christian ladies called MOPS (moms as preschoolers). They have speakers and food and usually a craft. Last night was our one in November and You could put a booth up and sell things. so I prepared like crazy for two weeks and turned out a good assortment of things I can make. I did ok and that is all I was expecting, so I came away happy with that. Before I had to go sell we were supposed to discuss in our groups Christmas traditions.

I grew up in a divided home, not just divorced but DIVIDED) and so every other Christmas I trucked to my dads house. Now there is nothing wrong with that aspect, but because I had to spend most of my holiday vacation in the car traveling, Holiday traditions were kind of non-existent. I mean there were a few and all I could think about was at my moms we do the advent calendar, and dad has pizza and egg nog on Christmas eve.

As everyone started to tell all their favorite Christmas traditions, I ust sat there blankly so desperatly wanting to join in and tell a wonderful story, but instead I felt this rising panic and the tears starting to build up. Thank goodness the time ran out and I didn't really have to say anything, but I realized that one of my favorite holiday's is leaving me empty and sad.

Because of the way I grew up I have a distorted view of the world in my way of thinking, (A + B (has to) = C) and I had convinced myself that I was normal, just like everyone else with grand holidays with lots of traditions and happyness...this is all a lie.

So now that my Christmas is teetering on the ledge of reality, I would like to enlist the help of all of you! Please tell me your Christmas traditions.

Candy, hay, and a little Parrot

Halloween was a very eventful day for our family this year. We had a birthday party to go to first off in the morning. I babysit Solomon and we are really good friends with his parents Garret and Jeanie Anderson. It was a swimming party so Daniel and Ben went in the water and had a blast. We were there for a few hours and then we headed out to Silver Dollar city. We have season passes so we wanted to get the last day of Fall Harvest. It was such a beautiful day and Ben's favorite part of the park is this ball area. He figured out how to make the balls get sucked up these tubes. Then we came home and got dressed for the trick or treating. We wen to our trunk-or-treat at the church before it got dark and too cold. There were a lot of great costumes. Then we headed over to the RecPlex where the city had a kind of carnival. You buy a punch card for $2.00 and then you can do up to five things per card. We went through a blow up maze, on a haunted hay ride, we got lots of candy, caramel pop corn and hot chocolate, and went through a maze to get candy from buisnesse. Then we entered Ben into a costume contest and he was selected to be one of nine finialists. He didn't win, but he did get a candy bar for getting into the finals! Then we went to Grandma and Grandpa Hamman's house to trick or treat. They watched Ben for us while we went to a Halloween party at a members house who is part of a show. It is called "SIX". You all should look them up on youtube. They are awesome! We were very tired out and went to bed at midnight. We used up every part of our day!