Happy New Year!

We are enjoying the evening at home tonight. We have good friends and family to spend the evening with and we are all playing Wii bowling :) Jessica got a Wii from Santa and we have all enjoyed it so much. I had no idea it would be this much fun. I am not normally into video games but this is awesome! It has been the cause of some sore muscles, but I am pretty sure that is a good thing. More exercise than me and Todd are use to anyway.

The pictures are of our new kitten. We have decided to call him TC. We kept Trenton since that was his name when we got him. We got TC from calling him Trenton Cat. He is so adorable and is already getting bigger. He loves to sleep as close to your face as he can. As you can see, he also gets pretty comfortable in a lap too. I also added a few pictures from Christmas morning. Please ignore our fireplace. We are still working on getting it finished. We took down the old tiles and we found out how crappy the builder had done originally. We are trying to find glass tiles to go back around it with the new stained wood mantle. We still haven't found any that we really like yet.

We wish everyone a wonderful New Year!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! We are ready (finally) for Christmas...the kids especially. Now all the shopping is done and it is time to sit back and relax. I think we have fixed every kind of goodie to snack on this evening. We have a new addition to our family this Christmas Eve. His name is Trenton and he is adorable. He is only 9 weeks old and I think he is the cutest kitten ever. We are now up to 2 dogs (Oliver and Jenny), 2 cats (Leonard and Trenton), and 2 fish (Flare and Earth). I already have some pictures of Trenton, but I will need to get them loaded so I can post him in all his cuteness.

These are just a couple of pictures that I snapped of the kids a few nights ago. Not sure why they came out a little fuzzy though.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hope everyone is ready for Thanskgiving festivities and then a few days of Christmas shopping. We will be with family in Alabama. This is the big rival weekend of football for Alabama too. Alabama will play Auburn on Saturday. Since our Titans lost this past weekend, we are hanging on to hope that Alabama can finish with a perfect season. I wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I imagine that we will be putting up our Christmas tree by Friday night too. Our new movie theatre just opened this past weekend so maybe we can also catch a good movie over the weekend. We are only a little over a mile from the theatre :) I see a lot of movies for us this holiday season! Love to all - Stephanie

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Football Heaven

Seriously folks - football doesn't get much better than this. Alabama is 8-0 and our own Tennessee Titans are 7-0! We are lovin' some football this year!

Everyone is doing great here. Dad got to start back to work and that is just an awesome accomplishment considering all that he has been through in the last year. The kids are doing great in school too. Doesn't get much better :)

Halloween Tea Cakes and Fall Flowers

Fall is my favorite time of year. Cooler weather, pretty leaves and beautiful flowers. My favorite part is baking cookies with the kids. We have been having some fun with an old recipe of my grandmothers.

It took a little bit more to talk Jonathan to join in the baking this year, but I think he ended up having fun too. Jessica really gets into it....notice the food coloring on her hands!

We also made a bit of a mess, but sometimes getting messy is just as much fun as getting to eat the cookies!

Jonathan is very serious about the decoration on his cookes. He was picking up pieces of sugar one at a time to make sure they were placed just right on his cookies....or should I say his work of art :)

Where to begin?

We have had a lot going on the past month so I hope to catch everyone :)

Jonathan turned 14 a couple of weeks ago, and we had a small party at home.

We worked on a social studies project for Jessica. This is our Indian camp setting. Pretty neat!

Time for Fall Break so there was plenty of time to play! Jessica had to take time out for a nap though so that was the perfect time to aggravate Jonathan. He may be getting older, but just threatening to tickle him gets him laughing.

We also got to go to our very good friends football games and celebrate their victories.

Then there was time for fishing. Both of my kids love to fish. They were catching these little ones as fast as the hooks could be baited.

Hope everyone is doing well and I will have more pictures from this weekend. I will try not to take so long to get updates posted :)

School Daze

School has started off great for both of the kids. We are already at the end of the first 6 weeks. First report cards will be on the 25th. This is also normally the time of year we are planning our trip to Orange Beach. Unfortunately, we are having to put our Fall trip all this year and start our goal for a Spring Break trip. I wish I had some updated pictures of the kids. I will work on getting some this weekend and getting them posted.

I have been reluctant to really chronicle all of the past few months of trials for our family here on my blog. Most all of you know that my dad has been fighting cancer for the past couple of years. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early 2006. He had surgery and was responding to a mild treatment for over a year. Things were going great. Mid last year, we knew by blood work results that the cancer was growing again somewhere and we were on a search and destroy mission. The cancer was found growing in his lungs. After a few more tests for baseline, he began chemo the week of Christmas 2007. The first few months were ok, but then the treatment started taking more of a toll on my dad. Dad became very ill in April 2008 and we have been on a long road to recovery since that time. I am so very happy that my Dad is doing very well at this time. He is on a new experimental treatment and is body has become so much stronger. He has had to work VERY hard to get to better. He will have scans next month to see how/what the cancer is doing. This past Wednesday, he was able to attend church since being home from the hospital! I am so very thankful that even when we don't know how to pray, the Lord knows our hearts. I thank you all for your endless support and prayers. His hair is really beginning to grow back and it is VERY dark. He still has some gray, but the majority is dark. I will have to get him to let me take a picture to post.

Please be patient with me. I am trying different things for my blog so there might be a few more changes before I settle on what I really want :)

Love to all

Prayer Request

Please remember the Ruotsala family in your prayers in the coming days and months. This morning, their beautiful son went home to be with Jesus. This precious baby was just 3 years old. I do not know this family personlly, but this story has touched my heart so very much. Please to www.caringbridge.org to read Coles's story.

My love to all
Stephanie

ALABAMA FOOTBALL!

We are right in the middle of the Alabama vs Clemson game! Oh how I love me some football!!! Things are going pretty well fo us right now. Let's just hope that Tide don't change.

Back To School - WOOHOO!

It is hard to believe that is already time to start back to school. Summer has flown by and it is time for 4th and 8th grade. Both of the kids seem to be indifferent about going back to school this year....I don't think it has really hit them yet :)

I believe that Jonathan has grown at least a foot over the school break. Football practice has been going on since the first of the month and I am praying that they will have good season this year. Our previous seasons have not been anything to brag about. They were actually very difficult seasons to tell the truth. We have a new coach this year, but these coaches are not even comparable to the coaches we had playing with the city league. Our first game will be next week. Wish us luck!

Jessica has continued her guitar lessons thru the summer and has really done a great job. She really enjoys playing and seems to pick up pretty fast. I am anxious to see how 4th grade goes for her. Jonathan was buried his entire 4th grade year in homework. Thankfully, we have not experiened another year like that since. Jessica also enjoys school more than Jonathan, so I think that will make all the difference too.

I am going to try to do much better in keeping our blog updated during the school year. It will help that we will be on a more fixed schedule too. Hugs to all!

A Day on the Set

Both kids got to spend the day on the Hannah Montana film set today. It was a really hot and long day, but they both seemed to have fun. It was something that neither might ever have the chance to do again, so I was glad they both got to go. They got to see the filming of the concert and it was pretty cool that they got to see Miley Cyrus. The movie is not coming out until May 2009 so we have awhile to wait before we know if either of them will be able to be seen in the film. Pretty neat way to get to spend a summer day.

Memorial Day - Proud to be an American

Remembering our troops and all of our Veterans today.

I love my flowers!

Just a few of the flowers we have blooming in our yard right now. There are many others, but these are a few that I have loaded on the computer right now. This last picture is actually the blooms on my chives.

What in the world have we been doing?

In this post, I would like to try to give you an idea of what we have been doing lately. Jessica and all the kids did GREAT at district finals and her team won an automatic bid to Nationals. Here are a couple of pictures with the trophies and CASH they got. I didn't get to go to Regionals with them, but they did well there so now we are getting ready for Nationals. We will travel to Wisconsin in the next couple of weeks!

Sorry about the quality of the picture here, but this was one of the best shots I could get with my camera. This is Jonathan at their Spring concert. He plays drums and has already gotten his invite for next year. He plays drums on EVERYTHING. Tables, walls, with spoons on tables...whatever is handy.

Jessica had a birthday in April and her favorite place to eat is Logan's. Here are a few pictures from her family party....sorry, no pictures of her dad. He wasn't able to be there that night.

Just a few days after Jessica's birthday, my dad got really sick and spent quite awhile in the hospital. He is doing better now and is getting stronger everyday. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers for our family.

In April, we also got to see Casting Crowns in concert. It was a great concert and we had a blast.