Music Class

Check out a short video clip of Zion at music class at our church on our friends blog. Our music ministers wife who is a music teacher is teaching them which is so nice of her and the older kids seem to be learning a lot. Zion was even catching on. Also if you homeschool this blog has lots of cool ideas as well. You will see Zion in the back.

http://mamashomeschool.blogspot.com/

Updates

Zion has a new bedtime routine and it is very easy to get her to sleep now that she is a big kid. She has her bath and then a sneaks in a little more playtime with her dad and maybe a story or two. She has a drink of water while we do devotions with her. We have this cute devotion book we got her for Christmas and it has a verse for each day and a short little story/poem that is just right for her attention span. Then we pray with her while she says Amen the whole time (possibly the cutest thing ever in the whole world). She then brushes her teeth which she is doing quite well now ( and she keeps getting new ones to brush, those mollars were rough!). Then her Dad carries her through the house and she turns off all the light switches. He gives her a hug and lays her down. She snuggles her duck Puddles and drifts right off to sleep. What a change from the old days where we had to work hard to get her to sleep.
One of her new favorite things is coloring. Today she worked on coloring fish that we are going to turn into a mobile.
This is her new play corner. We rearranged the living room so she had her own spot to play (ie make a mess). As you can tell she was very excited (and cute).
Lounging in her spot. She can play and watch the ducks and turtles outside and lounge when she needs a rest. Speaking of rest I am off to bed myself. Goodnight!

Thanks Jack!

We love our little bench. Zion pushes it around to different spots when she wants to sit somewhere. We hope you will come and visit us in Florida sometime.

Some Big Shoes to Fill

She did this herself and surprisingly could still manage to walk all over the house.

NOP

Praise In Motion has now been doing Night of Praise for four years and now we also have a very active young adult choir Echoes of Praise to be involved. This year the church was beyond full. It is so amazing to see how God brings everything together. We prepare for quite some time but every year there are many things that go wrong in the weeks and days before but somehow despite our mistakes or issues that seem impossible to overcome it comes together and has surprised us every time. It is a privilege to be in ministry with these wonderful ladies and men and to be a part of a church that gives us the opportunity to actively worship our God in this way and to share something like this with our church and the community. Below you will several clips. If I could I would put the whole program but I don't think my blog would like that.

More NOP

Here is clips of two other of our pieces from nop. Enjoy!

Night of Praise Revelation Song

Night of Praise was held on New Years Eve this year and we were able to bring in the new year with prayer at the end of the service. This is Revelation Song and is the piece that I choreographed. Travis's mom recommended the song and I loved it.

One More Thing I Am Excited About

If you don't know about this you have to check this out. Besides my home appliances I am also very excited about this. I have always loved pictures and taking them. I especially love taking pictures of Zion now which I am sure you know if you frequent our blog but I have never had the patience for storing or organizing them. I have admired those scrapbooking moms and even tried to do it a few times when Travis and I were first married. I just can't compete with those beautiful dainty pages some people create. I would never be able to complete a whole scrapbook. This however I can do. I created a book about Zion's first year with pictures for Travis for Christmas at www.blurb.com

You can go there and make your own book. You can import photos on your own or from a photo website you use like flikr, smugmug etc... and write a story, captions or whatever you want. You can also upload your blog into a book which is what I chose to do. That way I already had all the milestones and fun stories. I just deleted the pictures and the stories that I did not want and added a few extra captions etc.. Here is the cover. I think Travis really liked it too and it was so much easier than scrapbooking the old school way. So write a book, create a photo album or whatever you can think of. It is really easy to use and they ship you the book.

Things I'm Excited About

I thought I would take a moment to share a few of the things that I am very excited about. Travis apparently made a vow to himself that he would never by his wife a household appliance for a holiday so he bought them for me after Christmas instead. The above may look like just a vacuum but I believe this invention is going to change our quality of life. When we moved in I was very excited about having Mexican tile because I thought it was pretty but at that time I did not know how hard it was to clean. Now this may sound horrible to you clean freaks but in the days before Zion I really did not clean my floor too many times. But, now this just won't do with Zion splattering gooiness everywhere from her highchair and because of the fact that she crawls on and sometimes eats off the floor. To get my floor clean before I have tried everything from swifers to industrial type mops like I used when we worked on the janitorial staff at my college and nothing worked except scrubbing on my hands and knees (yuck!). Even the special slop mop technique from my janitorial days did not work.

So somehow Travis came across this machine. Not only does it clean my tile nicely with limited effort on my part which is a miracle in and of itself. It cleans the laminate floors in the bedrooms, the tile floors in the bathroom and it vacuums (yes vacuums) my big area rug better than my regular vacuum. I LOVE this thing. My floors look better than I think they have since we moved in. It spits water with soap in it, scrubs, and then sucks the water back up and you can just suck up the big pieces including Cheerios that I find everywhere. This thing gives us cleaner floors with less work and now I only need one thing instead of 3 brooms, 4 mops, a scrub brush, bucket, 2 floor cleaners, and a vacuum. I live in a condo and I don't have room for all this stuff. So yeah!

The second thing is the refrigerator. If you have been to visit you may have heard the purring (or should I say roaring) of our vintage fridge from 1978. It is the original one that was put in here...and that thing has just kept on working. Over the past couple of years the noise it made changed from endearing to obnoxious and as it would stop roaring it would make a CLANK CLANK CLANK which began waking Zion up from her nap. At one point it leaked water all over and we excitedly investigated it thinking we could lay it to rest but alas it was just the water line that had died of old age so we could not use the ice maker. The inside had parts that were rusted and the freezer did not like ice cream (it was half frozen at all times). Some people that knew me in high school have likened my fridge to my first car in high school which my friends (affectionately called the airplane due to the roaring noise it made when your tried to go up hill). So if you missed out on the specialness of the old fridge sorry its too late. I emptied it out and filled the new one and it looked empty because there is so much more room and much better lighting. I can actually see what is in the fridge. We have nice glass shelves instead of rusted wire and the gallon of milk fits in the door. Many of you may have been putting your gallon of milk in the door for some time but to me this is a novelty and very exciting. AND the house is now so quiet I almost miss the old friend (okay not really).

Having Fun!

Thanks Aunt Jill and Uncle Shawn for the super cute outfit!

Zion has a new love for buddies. She is now officially weaned and only eating table food. Now she is sleeping 12 hours at night without waking up and when Travis puts her to bed she just lays down and goes to sleep. We suffered through a couple of horrible nights of crying but now she is sleeping well and going to be easily which is better for all of us. Yeah! It is a little sad because she is turning into such a big kid already. Since she is spending more time sleeping in her crib (rather than our bed) she has developed a love for her buddies.
This was from thanksgiving but I had to post it. Is way better bed head than the old bed head picture if you saw that. She has so much more hair now.
She can even have a clip in her hair!

Christmas Highlights

We enjoyed our trip to Pittsburgh and the time that we got to spend with family and friends. We did some of the special Christmas things our family always does and some new ones. We went to my grandparents on Christmas Eve with all of my extended family like we always do. We enjoyed seeing friends and meeting Mason Greg and Devons baby for the first time. He is very charming. Zion enjoyed seeing her friends Landon and Lauren again. Unforunately we did not get to see all of our friends but hopefully next time. We ate a lot. That is what you are supposed to do around the holidays right? My mom also created a new tradition for Zion. She got her a wooden nativity set and had hung mittens (that she made from old sweaters, dont ask me how) around the window and in each one was a piece of the nativity. So each day Zion got to get a mitten and find the piece inside and on the last day was baby Jesus and the whole nativity was in place. It was really cool and Zion loved it. My mom is very thoughtfully creative. Above us a picture from Christmas morning breakfast wearing her pj's with her Daddy. My mom always gets up pajamas on Christmas eve for us to wear to bed that night. Zion gets them now too and she got some nice footie ones that were super cute.
It was so fun to watch her faces when she opened her gifts. She also liked helping others open theres. She is just a little slow because she tears small pieces of the paper. Check out this face.
Another one!
Carrying around the Mr. Potato head that we got her. It has its own suitcase. She loves to try to carry heavy things lately that set her off balance. She thinks she is such a pro at walking that she might as well make it more difficult I think.
With soon to be aunt Rachel later on Christmas day who she really seems to like.

In her Christmas dress from sunt Trish.
While we were there we got to see Tim get baptized at his church on the Northside of Pittsburgh I got to visit his church twice and I really enjoyed it. The church is called Mosaic and meets in one of the Pittsburgh Project builidings where Tim now works.
The christmas lights that we saw on our date.
Hanging with Uncle Doug. He is such a good pal he even watched Baby Praise with her. Doug came home from school right before Christmas and we were all in the house at the same time. It had been a while since we were all together and we had a great time. Time seems to stand still for a little bit when we are with familiy around the holidays whether it was with mine for Christmas of Trav's for Thanksgiving and I like that feeling.
The Cook tree of gifts before the big day! Hope you had a blessed Christmas and you are enjoying the new beginning that a new year can bring. We have been bustling around getting things back in order and setting some priorities for this year.