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| Clearing out the furniture.. big boys come in handy.... :) |
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| "There's lots of space, let's run....." |
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| Filled the dining area.... |
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| Boys with the vacuums.... |
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| Hubby with the shampooer... Gives such a good feeling to have them all cleaned!! |
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| Lemons and greenery and artificial roses... |
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| Tea lights in lemons.... |
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| Lemons in water with sprigs of greenery... Normally this would be used with real flowers... |
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| Broccoli soup, sweet potato pudding and meat balls (that was Jenny's favorite).. |
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| Then a autumn pudding and a boston creme pie... |
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| Entertaining little Owen...:) |
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| Our 'small' family playing Dutch Blitz :) :) It seemed so empty without Joylin and Joanna :( Didn't get pics of our birthday girl, but she turned 28 years old and is a wonderful mother, wife and daughter!! Love you, Jenny :) There will be baby news soon :) :) |
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| Here is Mr. Jesse at the Steam Pump Ranch Farmers Market in Oro Valley. My hubby was with him but was somewhere else at the moment. :) |
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| And Mr. Joshua at the Sierra Vista Farmers Market in Sierra Vista. Two boys go together and it works great. :) Joanna and Joel will be getting married this coming Saturday, so more pics will come later. |
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| It is nice to have Jessica and the kids down for 3 weeks! |
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| Missed my little man!♡ |
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| As usual Jessica is always a big help when she comes. :) |
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| Jubilee taking advantage of the girl time, had a tea party with Kezia. |
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| Organizing the book cases for Mom. |
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| Looking at books they forgot they had? Or maybe it was just more fun with books everywhere and your friends reading too! |
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| Making Cheese with little onlookers. :) |
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| The girls smashing bananas for muffins. |
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| Ready for the freezer and many breakfasts to come! |
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| What the house looks like when 6 kids under the age of six are having fun! :P |
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| All the grandkids! Hoping for a girl with Jenny's new arrival next March! :) |
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| Hello Everyone, Hope this finds you all doing well!! Well, December is finally almost gone. Wow, where did that year go to. Was it only last January that I was asking myself what this new year was going to be like? Well, now its gone and we look forward to finding out what the Lord has in store for us in the coming new year. As far as I can tell now, its going to be a very busy, full, fun year! :) So there was a lot that went on in the month of December. As I put in one of my earlier posts, Jessica, Chris and Kezia came down for a few weeks. Kaitlyn was also here for a few days. I turned the old age of 21 and my nephew, Micah David, who is trying to catch up, turned 3. Four calves were born leaving us with 24 gallons of milk a day to do something with. Dad, Micah and Joshua are working hard at finishing a HUGE tree trimming job in a RV/mobile home park, Justin switched jobs and is now working for another farmer, we had 24 dogs staying over Christmas and 46 total boarders the whole month.The boys went snowboarding, I did chores for the neighbors, my kittens finally got past the bottle feeding stage, Jenny and Micah found a place to live in about three miles from where we are moving and are working at getting moved, packing, and the list goes on.... Yes, this month has been a busy one! |
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| We will start out with Micah David's birthday. It's hard to believe that he is three already. |
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| He loves helping with Annies (Micah's horse) clean up, so a wheelbarrow just his size was the perfect gift. |
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| He also got a pooper scooper just his size! |
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| Happy birthday, little Buddy!! :) |
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| It was so good to have the Derksen family here. It's been so long since we could all sit down as a family and talk about the good old days. Those days when we were all little and we didn't have the problem of siblings getting married and moving away, It's all a good thing, but is sad that some things don't stay the same! |
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| Jubilee and Kezia, looking a bit bored. |
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| Yup, that's us. :) |
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| haha sorry this is kind of a bad picture. |
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| Jubilee couldn't wait till Kezia could come and play with her. They had so much fun together. Jubilee don't have any other little girls to play with, all the little people in our church are boys, so it was special for her to have a little girl around. |
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| They both love reading books. |
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| Here's the kittens that I raised, they finally hit their cute stage and the little guys really enjoy them. |
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| Jubilee does everything with this little guy. She sticks him in her crayon box. |
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| She talks to her animals. It's the cutest thing. She tells them she will be right back when she leaves them and then she will ask them if they are scared, or how they are and then she will comfort them. |
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| So we butchered off our old batch of chickens and we had one little bantam hen that Mom decided to keep for Jubilee. Jubilee has fell in love with her "Pumpkin Pie". She named it herself and the once wild chicken has become the tamest chicken around. Jubilee does everything with her. |
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| She loves playing the piano for everyone, especially Pumpkin Pie. She carries her food around in a bowl and Pumpkin Pie sits there eating her food while Jubilee plays. It cracked me up when she put on Mom's reading glasses! haha |
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| Someone mentioned eating a chicken and she says, "Don't eat Pumpkin Pie!" |
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| Jared helped Jessica make penguins out of cream cheese and veggies. |
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| Isn't he cute? |
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| Our big family of penguins! |
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| This year was a little different then last year. Kaitlyn was able to come spend the day with us and Chris, Jessica and Kezia came down from Canada for a few weeks!! Yeah, it was so good to see them again!! Since Chris had to leave on the 14th, we celebrated our Christmas on the 13th instead of the 25th. It made Christmas come early for all of us! Now it seems like New Years is taking a while to get here! Everyone showed up early for a late breakfast. |
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| Jenny made us all fresh cinnamon rolls and we had egg casserole, etc... |
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| We took an hour to take family pictures before jumping in to open gifts. For Christmas we draw names a month ahead of time. This year everyone did a great job of keeping who they had a secret. It was very surprising to find out who had who. |
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| It was so nice having Chris and Jessica both here. We enjoyed every moment with little Kezia. She is growing up so fast! Did I tell you that their little family will be growing in June!? ;) Here's some pictures of us opening up our gifts. Hope you enjoy! :) |
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| Poor little Micah hasn't been feeling well, but when he was handed his presents his face sure lit up! :) |
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| Looks like someone found a candy! ;) |
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| After all our gifts were opened, we went around the circle to show everyone what we had gotten.Then around 3;00 we all sat down to a wonderful Christmas meal. "Thank-you for taking the picture, Kaitlyn!" :) |
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| Instead of making a Thanksgiving meal all over again, we decided to go with a salad and all the toppings. |
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| Of course, we couldn't do with out the ham and the pecan pies.. :) |
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| The boys checking out Jesse's new game. |
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| Christmas day ended up being rainy and cold in the afternoon. We spent the rest of the day enjoying the comfort of the wood stove and having all our family around us. We had gotten lots of nice gifts, but we will never forget what the greatest gift of Christmas was! We are so glad that Jesus came to earth in the simplicity of a baby, so that common people like you and I could have eternal life. Hope you all have had an amazing Christmas. And may the greatest gift of all be in our hearts. Merry Christmas! from the, Strite Family |
