Christmas Eve and Christmas 2011

Well, I can't get this to type above my pictures. I also couldn't change any red eye. I will try to come back and journal about everything later, right now I just wanted to get the pictures up, it's late.


Eating candy canes on Christmas Eve.
Sharing music and movies on Christmas Eve
All clean and ready for Christmas
Cute clean baby girl
Cute clean Emery
Kids and Trigger(temporary pet, we were trying to see if he would be a fit for our family)
Pretty Tree
Presents and Tree
Kids and tree again
Christmas morning breakfast
Homemade hot chocolate, cinnamon roll cake, and breakfast ham, egg, and hashbrown casserole
All dressed up for church
Cute Christmas kids

Being Silly
Cam and his laughing shark
Bailey getting her smoothie maker
Cam and presents from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe
Bailey and present from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe
Cam with his drums
Addie and doll from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe
Joelle with her baby from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe
Kids with cool bike from Grandma and Grandpa Fox
Excited Cam
Addie with her new I-Pod charger/alarm clock
Happy Bailey with art supplies and voucher for ear pearcing
Joelle loves her new laughing Cookie Monster.
Joelle a little afraid and not so sure how she feels about Cookie Monster, now that he's laughing and rolling around.
Bailey with presents from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe
Emery and her cool elephant
Joelle trying out the cool bike
Emery's little feet poking out from under her huge present
Emery excited about her barbie dolls and camper
Addie teary eyed over her new pet shops. She'd been hoping for a giraffe (her favorite animal) forever.
Joelle with clothes from Grandma and Grandpa Beebe.

Cool rug from my parents.
Addie opening up games from Grandpa and Grandma Fox.
Emery holding her new baby doll that Grandma Beebe made.
Chase happy with his new wallet, I'm glad he made the effort to look surprised :)
Emery excited about her Agent P slippers.
Cam and Chase flying Cam's helicopter.

Cool helicopter that lit up. Unfortunately, the batteries wouldn't hold a charge after a week, so we took it back. We got our money back and used it along with the Christmas money Cam got and other money he'd saved up to buy a Nintendo 3DS.
Jello Pretzel Dessert
Overcooked Ham
Yummy Green Bean Casserole
I love these rolls :)

So, as you can tell we had a pretty good Christmas. I was fortunate to have found some presents that we had in storage for 3 years which helped on Christmas costs this year. I also am thankful to family for helping make our Christmas fun with fun presents and Christmas money. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Fox, Grandma and Grandpa Beebe, Great Grandma Fox, and Great Grandma Black! The other presents from us and "Santa" came from good deals at Costco and Goodwill. I was amazed at all that I was able to get with some great deals. Chase gave me my present a little early on Christmas Eve. He wasn't supposed to get me anything else because he'd already gotten me a Zumba Wii game for an early Christmas present. He got me a really nice camera! I even cried a little, I think the last time I cried over a gift was the song he wrote for me when I was pregnant with Addie. I really needed a new camera. The old camera was spazzing out and I had already lost several pictures, which made me sad. It's important for me to capture memories for my family.

Anyway, so this is basically how the day went... woke up very early on Christmas, ate breakfast, and went to church. When we got home we opened presents and then later that day ate dinner. We got to skype with Chase's family which was also fun. It was great to finally have our own Christmas again in our own home. I had a lot of fun getting out all of our decorations and putting them up with the kids. In fact, I just barely took down all our decorations this week. I was tempted to leave the tree up and just decorate for every holiday. I also think we need to put in carpet in the living room, I lost count of how many decorations we lost from falling and breaking on the tile. We hope everyone else had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year too!

Chris Madrid's and River Walk

My favorite Burger Ever!!!

We received some Christmas money from Chase's Grandma Fox. So, over Christmas break we decided to take the kids to San Antonio. We explained that it was Great Grandma Fox's present to them. First we went out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Chris Madrid's and had some awesome burgers and cheese fries. I'm normally not much of a burger person, but I love the cheese burgers at Chris Madrid's. They are delicious and huge! Then we drove over closer to downtown and parked and walked over to the River Walk. It turned out that the night we picked was right before one of the play off games being held in San Antonio, so it was crazy crowded with football players, band members, cheer leaders, and fans. We walked down the River Walk and enjoyed all the beautiful lights. I was paranoid that we'd lose a kid or that someone would fall into the river. We had to wait a little longer for the boat tour because they had taken football players and band members on VIP tours. It was kind of cool though because one of the bands performed while they were on the boat as we were walking by. The kids had an awesome time and it was fun to be able to get out and do something as a family that we normally wouldn't do. Thank you Grandma Fox :)
Bailey getting ready to take a bite.
Addie, a little blurry, taking everything off that she doesn't like...as usual.
Cam in serious concentration mode, digging in.
Not sure what this expression is about.
Chase and his mammoth burger.
As you can see, Emery likes to dissect her food, and will usually eat everything on the inside first, then eat the outside bread. You can't tell very well from the picture, but it looked like she was sporting a beard because her little mouth was poking through the middle where she bit.
Messy Joelle enjoying her yummy food.
On one of the bridges on the River Walk.














Kids on the boat tour.
Chase and Joelle on the boat tour.




Kids looking at lights on the boat tour.
Emery and Joelle playing and being silly.
One of the buildings on the River Walk tour all lit up at the top with the flag. It didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but it looked pretty cool.

Listen

Well, this was going to be a post of our Yo Gabba Gabba concert, but our camera is on the fritz so I don't have access to the pictures right now. Chase took the card out of the camera and put them directly onto the lap top which he has at work. He was able to save those pictures, so I will post them later. Until then here is a story and/or lesson for y'all...

About 3 weeks ago I went into our youngest's room to check on her. I wanted to make sure she hadn't thrown all her blankets out of her bed which she likes to do; it was supposed to be a cold night. As I went in through the adjoining bathroom door, I was only using the light from our bedroom so it was dark. I noticed something on the floor by the door and thinking it was a toy I decided I should probably pick it up before someone stepped on it. Right before I bent over to pick it up, a thought pops into my head... "Turn on the light". Well, I reasoned back to that thought in my head that that would be stupid because I would risk waking up the baby. As I'm bending down, and looking closer I'm not sure if it's a toy or something wrong with the carpet, but I kept going, never turned on the light, even though that prompting came again. Well, my finger made contact, not with a toy or the carpet, but with a scorpion. I screamed and immediately as it stung me I knew what it was even though this was my first time being stung by a scorpion and I couldn't see what it was. I flipped on the bathroom light and saw it scamper away out of the corner of my eye.

Chase came running in to see what happened and as I tended to my wound he flipped on the baby's light to try to find the scorpion to no avail. All, the screaming, and rummaging, and lights shining never woke her up. Well, a panic set in because I have had really bad reactions to ant bites here and I thought for sure I would stop breathing or lose a limb. I immediately took some benadryl and tried to ice away the pain in my finger. The whole time I'm doing this, I know very well that I had been warned. How stupid could I have been to just dismiss such a blatant prompting and warning. I have no doubt that the spirit tried to warn me, but I obviously knew better. I couldn't have felt more stupid and humbled. Well, I was blessed that nothing but some temporary pain occurred. The sting hurt really bad immediately, and dissipated into a dull throbbing, but by morning I felt nothing, only a barely visible bump was at the sting site.

I began to wonder how many other times had I just ignored a prompting that would have saved me so much grief and pain. I also wondered how many times a "thought" popped into my head that was an actual prompting that I had followed that had helped me or someone else. I hope that I have followed more promptings than I have ignored. Sadly, I think often times, being the humans that we are, there are lots of times where we think we know better or because something doesn't make sense to us we ignore it.

My scorpion sting was a big wake up call. I need to remember to listen and not think I can handle things on my own or don't need the help of my Savior and Heavenly Father. I need to realize that my Heavenly Father knows what's best for me and He can and will help me if I allow Him to and if I will take the time to stop and listen. This life is so crazy and busy, it's very easy to get caught up in the bustle and forget to stop and listen. I think of my own children and how I try to keep them safe and warn them of dangers and how sad it must be for our Heavenly Father when we don't listen. He's there to guide us and protect us, even if it's to prevent me from a stupid scorpion sting. I just hope I'm paying attention to the bigger promptings no matter how strange they may sound that may have eternal consequence for myself, others, or a loved one. I started to think how many times does Heavenly Father use us to help someone else, or uses others to help us. I started to think, what if I was lazy on one of those days He needed me to follow a prompting and I just dismissed it, I really and truly hope not.

On Tuesday night I took my youngest to the doctor for what I knew must be another ear infection, which it ended up being. As I waited at the drive up to pick up her medicine I had texted Chase about it and slipped my phone back into my purse. Almost immediately, my phone rang, so I fished it back out. It was my friend from church who I also visit teach. She asked if I had tried to call her, I said no. She said her phone rang, but then no one answered and/or it went dead after she picked it up. I apologized but couldn't understand how I would have dialed her number. Instead of just ignoring it though, my friend decided to call me back. I explained that I was in the drive up getting meds for Joelle and that she had an ear infection again.

My friend is a nurse and she asked if they gave her the pain drops for her ears as well. I answered no, and she was shocked because it was a common thing to do for the pain. She then told me that she had an extra bottle at her house that I could have for Joelle. Even as "coincidence" fell on "coincidence", it never occurred to me that she had possibly followed the spirit by calling me back. My friend then said, "Well see, you may not have called me, but the spirit called me for you". I laughed, but looking back she could have just ignored my call and assumed I'd call back if it was important. It may be just a little thing, but it shows me that my Heavenly Father loves me and He loves Joelle and is mindful enough of her that He would care to ease her pain, even just a little.

I am going to try to be more active in listening, even when a thought or an idea seems a little strange or even uncomfortable. I'm going to try to pay attention and try to create more opportunities for me to be able to receive and recognize the promptings in time for me to act on them. I hope I have learned a valuable lesson from all this and that I will not be foolish or stupid in the future and always listen.

p.s. Sorry about my blog background, I just realized it covers some of the text on the top. I will try to look for a new one tomorrow.