Continuing on with my 1000 gifts from above ...

~ This morning I woke up to singing. Not like when I was younger and I woke up to my mom singing to the AM radio station. No, this was not really in tune. Not really quiet either. But Nathan was belting out roasting chestnuts on an open fire and then added some drumming and a cymbal noise (with his voice, not actual drums or cymbals). He is really talented in his own way. He makes up his own music and then adds words that someone else has already wrote. He later told me that it was hard to make up your own songs, you just gotta listen to the music and let it get inside your head and then you make up the words, they just kinda come to you. That's pretty genius if you ask me for a 2nd grader wouldn't you say? So, even though the music wasn't what I was used to I'm sure it was glorious music to Jesus' ears and it was a gift to wake up to early in the morning.

~ Sunday night, Nathan and Jenna spent the night at their grandparents house (Jason's family). Nathan took his phone with him. At 11:00 PM our phone rings. Jason flies out of bed because we are sure that it is an emergency (isn't it always when it is at that time of night?). It's Nathan making sure that he told us goodnight. He remembered us, even though it was probably pretty chaotic there with 9 people staying the night in that house. Yes, it was an emergency, but it was a different kind of emergency, one that was a total gift of love.

~ Cats. Have I ever said how much our cats make us laugh? We have a HUGE cat and a normal sized cat and then a kitten (6 months old). Hercules chases our middle sized cat (Pumpkin) around the house because he likes to torment her. When he gets done tormenting her our kitten (Si) will crouch real low to the ground and then sneak up on him and pounce on him and grab him by the neck and try to wrestle him to the ground. A lot of the times, Hercules will just get up and start walking off, and Si will just be hanging on and biting at his neck and eventually fall off. Imagine a 2nd grader attacking a professional football player and the football player could just walk off with the 2nd grader hanging on for dear life continuing the fight. That's kind of how this scene is played out and it happens often. This is something that can make even the saddest person crack up. We find laughter in our house a huge gift from God.

~ This year Jenna made a gift at school. We always get the gifts of pottery or whatever else and this year (on her own doing) she has decided to give it to someone else who is more deserving of it apparently. It is a gift of God that she has continued to have a heart of giving.

I have many more and I really should write them down as the day goes on but I always forget. Old age ... is that a gift? I can't remember.

Exciting happenings at the Redman's...

Jenna finished her science fair project last week (or so). This is her right before her presentation in front of the judges.

Nathan has his lips sticking out ... this was last night at the singing concert.

This is half of the kids that were there. You can't really see Nathan.

I don't know what he was doing here but it is a good picture.

Payton and her uncle Jason. She's moving around so much (crawling) and now has TWO teeth!

And this is a rooster pheasant in my car. Today while I was driving I saw 3 rooster pheasants in the middle of the road all standing around something. As I got closer they scattered and I was able to see this guy. A car had hit him and kept going. He was still alive and was trying to walk. His whole left wing was ripped off and bone was showing. You can kind of see how the wing is gone. He had kind of flipped over and was frozen (by the blood he was losing) to the ground. He let me pick him up and put him in the car and he had no problems at all with being in my car. Anyway he got a ride up to the Game and Fish Office and from there I don't know what happened to him. He was gorgeous. I hate it when people hit something like this and then speed off. They could look in the rear view mirror and see it flopping around. Plus it was HUGE. As you can see it took up a good share of the front seat floor. Jerks.

So that has been our last couple of weeks. We've only got 2 more days of school and then we get 2 weeks off ... that could be good or bad, depending.

Hope You Had A Great Thanksgiving ...

We did ...

Jason and his onion chopping goggles ...

Jenna doing her job

Nathan AFTER doing his job ...

This is Nathan's job ... the pumpkin pie!

Jenna and Nathan with our table full of food. YUM!

Nathan ... see his black eye. It happened at school when he had a run in with the slide. I'm not quite sure what happened.

Nathan again.

Jason, Nathan and Jenna. Eating our Thanksgiving dinner.

Jenna eating. She ate so much she was sick.

So that was our Thanksgiving Day and we have so much to be thankful for. After dinner we watched a movie, had a tickle fight, watched another movie and took a little nap and had seconds! I'm just wondering where the maid is ...

GOBBLE GOBBLE

Are you ready for Thanksgiving?

More importantly, are you ready for the day AFTER Thanksgiving?

(I think I might've been in this picture ^) -- I've seen this scene a lot.

The next picture, I want you to take a real close look and see if you recognize this person ...

IT's MONTE!!!!

... really it isn't but it sure looks like him. I think he has that same coat. I have no idea who it is but we could call it a picture of Monte. I think it is his twin.

And the next picture I had found and I thought it was so sweet ...
Nathan was a little over a month old and Jenna was 2. Look at how scrawny his legs were and how curly Jenna's hair was. She was bugging him I'm sure and see his hand already at that age he was thinking he wanted to make her knock it off. Poor kid got tormented from day one. She's the best big sister. (sometimes)

* Amazing moments. I had an awesome amazing moment tonight. My son, whom the school psychologist is trying to get me to medicate, just proved her wrong once again. He has proved her wrong time and time again but today, it was so bittersweet. She said that he can't focus on anything long enough to read a book ... baloney. He read a book, knew the words and all, of a 65 page book ... I'm not talking one of those books with 5 words on each page. It had probably 15-25 words on each page and he read every single page without hardly any mistakes. He wouldn't stop until he read it. He was so proud of himself. I'm so proud of him. So that was an awesome gift ...

Here's a picture of Jenna too ...

* Science fairs. Even though it is a royal pain in the backside ... the girl is learning a lot. The beans are under their lights and kind of growing. Funny thing though, Nathan gets up early this morning and you hear him trying to wake Jenna up. Finally he and Jenna come in and here is this bean sprout (it once was quite tall) bent and half of it gone. Nathan said that he came out and stood by the fire place and the cat had a piece of bean sprout in her mouth. Jenna was about ready to cry. Luckily we did 6 plants instead of just 5 and we need 5 so it worked out okay. Note to anyone out there doing science fair projects ... don't do plants. They are a pain and especially if you have secondary things that disrupt their progress. There is no way to make sure that they all have equal growth opportunities before they are actually to be started in the science fair project. (It'll be a gift when this will be over.)

S*W*I*M*

Another swim meet today. The kids did great. They each swam 5 events plus a relay and they had qualifying times in the majority of their swims meaning that come spring time we will be headed to state!

Jason has 2 more meets to go to before he officially is an official and then he can work on his ref position. He said he liked it and it was pretty easy but we have timed the meets so much that it's pretty easy to spot something "illegal".

Time for more noticeable gifts from God ...

* Quiet. The quiet after a meet in the car is such a blessing. It's that time when everyone is settled into their spot and are relaxing and it's great to have some time to reflect on the day.

* Friends. Every year Nathan has this one friend who is a girl he sees every single time and they haven't seen each other in a long time but they sure do remember each other. They don't know each others names but it's kind of cool how they remember each other. He also has another friend that is the same age as he is but he towers over Jenna and is a bit rounder and then Nathan is short and thin. It's like a giant and a mouse but they are the best of friends when it comes to the meets. I believe his name is Zack. It is a gift for Nathan and in return a gift for me for these friends to know him and be good friends to him.

* Friends. I better put Jenna's friends in here too because she has friends from all over the state too and it is a true gift to have them in Jenna's life.

* About half way home we turned on the radio. Of course Jenna is still awake, Nathan is out like a light. We have Serius radio and we had fun listening to the different channels. I just don't like it when the radio says "Classic Vinyl" and it is something that I really like and know all the words to ... however it is a gift from God these moments we get to spend with each other making each other laugh and sing and bop around (yes Jason bops around).

Well, that's my day. I don't think I took any pictures. I had my camera but I was busy with timing and looking for everyone else's kids to get them where they had to be. I didn't really have time for pictures. We have more meets coming up so I'm sure more pictures will be coming! :)

Random things ...

From November 2008

Nathan, Payton and Jenna getting ready to eat dinner last night.


Payton and Jenna getting ready to eat dinner.

In this picture, Payton was getting a little tired of the kids trying to make her smile. (Never really succeeded with that) So Nathan has a look of disgust because Payton is starting to fuss, Jenna LOOKS like she is flipping me off. (She is snapping her fingers) ... take a look at how far over Jenna is leaned and then look at the next picture ...

Yep, she hit the floor! (She's not hurt) but take a look at Nathan's face. You can almost hear him laughing. Payton was not sure what to think it looks like.

Even dinner is never dull. You can try your hardest to have a nice and quiet time and the harder you try the more chaos seems to happen. What would life be without all of it though? I read somewhere that chaos means ... Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome ... that's us! I think I read it on FlyLady.

Payton having to take a bath after the exciting dinner. She had sweet potatoes and bananas and then she had a banana in one of these mesh things and she had it squished all over the place. She loved it though. She also loves to take a bath as you can tell.

The next photo is from today ...

This is Jenna's science project ... notice the fire extinguisher (smart girl - or sarcastic I should say). She is seeing how plants do in different light and how deep their roots will be after some time. Plants have still not been acquired. Not sure what to do about that. Hopefully Sprouts will have some bean plants.

It's November 14th ...

It's November 14th and I still haven't told about the kids' Halloween.

From Halloween

Nathan carving his pumpkin.

From Halloween

Jenna carving her pumpkin. The one she picked out froze and rotted so she carved the extra one we had.


Jenna and Nathan with their masterpieces.


Ms. Payton the Princess ladybug

Nathan and Jenna the rockstars

Jenna and Nathan in their costumes (minus Jenna's wig) and pumpkins

Apparently rock stars don't do chores or smile ... haha. See his tattoo's. This will be the one and only time you will see Nathan with a mohawk while he is under our roof! :)



Wondering what this is? These are the candles aunt Barbara gave us that were ghosts. We lit them and went and lit all the other candles and came back to take a picture of the ghost candles and they were half gone! And then they went all over ... so Barbara, here's our proof that we used the candles you gave us in my "surprise box of knitting stuff". More on that in a later post.


And this is our Halloween dinner. Our traditional dinner on Halloween is McDonalds ... my kids have finally outgrown McDonalds and now are hooked on El Sol de Mexico (especially Nathan, see him scarfing his down?)

Halloween was fun for the most part. We ate dinner and watched some "scary" movies. Ghostbusters 1 and 2 and Goonies and Gremlins. Nathan fell asleep during Ghostbusters and so we changed it to Gremlins. Jenna was jumping around and shrieking and yelling at the TV during that movie so we decided not to watch Goonies. I don't remember Gremlins being that scary (it's not ... it's just my kids don't get to watch scary movies). In fact our TV has been broke for well over a month now and we haven't watched any movies except in our bedroom with everyone piled on our bed.

Last weekend ...

What did we do last weekend? We put insulation in our new addition finally! Here are a few pictures of things that were done ...

From And They Lived Happily Ever After ...

Jason and Nathan with their iPods on and their rags on their heads. They did an awesome job on the addition!

From And They Lived Happily Ever After ...

This is Ivy in a hut that Nathan made out of a box. He forgot about the "hut" but Ivy didn't and loved it in there.

From And They Lived Happily Ever After ...

Nathan working away.

From And They Lived Happily Ever After ...

I'm getting old.

From And They Lived Happily Ever After ...

Why? Because all I remember old people doing in my family was making banana bread and then wrapping it up and handing it out. This is what Jenna and I did, make 3 things of banana bread ... except I didn't have time to give it out. Jason and the kids ate it before I could give it ... sorry to those of you who might have been looking forward to some banana bread.

Another thing why I'm getting old ... I can't remember the recipe to put it on here for you all to try.

The next few pictures are from Spook Splash 2008 ... 2 weekends ago.

Nathan waiting for his events to come up. He is building a masterpiece I think.
This is a picture of most of the kids in the swim club. I can't remember how many kiddo's swam their first swim meet that weekend. It was pretty cool seeing all that green.

Nathan trying to splash his mom. His poor mom ... don't you feel sorry for her?
This is Tiger Sharks.

Jenna and one of her friends.


Jenna warming up for 200 Freestyle. Does she look nervous?

Jenna, Aana and Jenna ... wasting time before their next event.

I haven't gotten the results yet of this meet. From what I saw, they did awesome!