Where in the World is Blake Risenmay going?
Blake put in his mission papers this week. This is your chance to guess where Blake might serve.
Blake we are excited for you. No matter where you go - it will be the best place in the world for you.

Erin and I thought I could buy a little food to take to California with us so that we could have a few snacks at Disneyland the first day. I think I may have over bought. But you know me and having enough food!

Now Doesn't this look familiar?
I answered the door today and who was standing there but a policeman. Now if Reed and Blake was home with Jason and Justin, I would have said, "What did they do this time?" But the boys weren't home. I was sure that I didn't do anything! The police officer asked if he could look in my backyard. I wanted to say, "I promise my boys don't live here anymore! You can find one in Provo and one in Brazil." But instead I said, go ahead. I'll keep the dogs in. The police officer was looking for a weapon that a student had possibly thrown into our yard or one of the neighbors yards. They never found it. I have gone in the back yard and couldn't see anything. I told Mickayla if she finds anything she is to not touch it and let me know immediately. We did get a lot of phone calls from the neighbors asking what was going on.

Lillian and I took Mickayla to have a pedicure for her birthday.  (I got one also)  Mickayla loved it.  She had her toe nails painted green  with little white flowers on her big toes.  She thought it was a great thing to do on a birthday.

This is what the weather was like for Mickayla's 9th birthday.  I think it was the first time it snowed on her birthday.  School was delayed two  hours.  She was afraid we wouldn't be able to do all the fun things we  had planned for her birthday.  Everything turned out great.

This is from LaDawn's post. Here are the ones I have read.
The BBC says most people have only read 6 of these books. You're supposed to put an X next to the ones you've read, + next to the ones you love, and * next to the ones you plan to read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X (I bought it at a used book store recently)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X (the abridged version
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible X+*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (part)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (part)
41 Animal Farm - George Orville X (I hated it)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X * fun book
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X(hated this as well)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (No desire at all to read this)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (terrible things happen to me every time I try to read this!)
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker *
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X (I like this book but it was so sad)

I read less than LaDawn. I read 19. I couldn't really see any I think I will read or want to read. When I get bored someday I'll use this list to choose a book and see what I think.
I'd love to see what all of you have read, as well as additions you think should be on this list.

My additions would be:
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne which is my other favorite book (I have read this also and really enjoyed it. I read it again this last year and had different insight on it. Just because of my years of life.)
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay (I haven't read this one)
and I think the Twilight series is a new classic :) (No desire to read this set.)

I would add:
Hiding place by Corrie Ten Boon (My favorite book)
Oh Rugged Land of Gold by Martha Martin (one of my favorite)
Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale (a must read for once a year)
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (this is about the Zulus in South Africa. It is a good book but very heart wrenching)

 

This is our Annual Christmas Elves picture. This year Jason and Justin helped us out. Erin missed her sisters. The boys and Mickayla did great on the snow flakes but that left the stockings and the sign to Erin. I think Erin felt like the Elf slave at times. I appreciated all their help. This year was a little challenging to decorate because we had very little room. They were staying in a house that had a full garage and we had the garage house enterance door we could decorate. We also had challenges to get there in the snow. Thank heavens for chains.

 

Blake and Mickayla having a snow ball fight in the front yard while building their fort.

 

Will helping build the little fort at our house. We found it easy to move the snow by loading it on the sled and pulling it to were it was needed. Will was a good mule

 Jason and the kids playing in the snow while Blake works hard on the snow castle. Erin is working hard but you can't see her.

 
Mickayla having fun with her friends in the snow.

 

Mickayla was in the play Annie. She played an orphan and also Lily St. Rigis. Most all of the pictures I have are videos. I don't know how to down load them yet.

 

"Oh the weather outside if fightful... Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." This picture was taken when we had 6 inches of snow. We got three more last night and it is snowing again right now. REALLY SNOWING. WOW we have a lot of snow for Seattle.

 

THis is totally out of order for my postings but... at the end of the day when we were headed back from sledding Blake pulled the kids down the hill. They loved it. THey are sure glad that Blake is home! As Mickayla said, "Blake has great ideas for having fun in the snow."

 

Mickayla flying over a jump that some kids had built.

 

We all headed up to the Elementary school after picking Blake up from the airport for some fun sledding.

 

Will had a great time sledding.

 

Erin tried to make a snow angel but Decko thought he better help her out. He is on her chest.

 

Poor Fritz had the snow stick to him like snowballs. I had to give him a warm bath to wash all the snow off. He was about froze before I got it all off him.

 

We made the Christmas train and gram cracker village again this year. We had a fun time. Erin made a clock tower and some cone snow covered trees. I made a hotel...