"Can you hear me now?"

Our new Youth Group hoodies!!

We got them last Wednesday after Religious Education.

We were all excited to get them...and now most of our Youth Group members have hoodies that match!!!

Ceara Laura Lisa

The front...

And the back!!

Aren't they cute?!?

**Posted by Ceara**

*Christmas Tree*

Walking down to get the tree...

Cutting it down... And it's down!

Pulling it home...

And it's up!!

Now the story behind the tree and doing it...

Our parents insist on putting up an artificial Christmas tree every year and we kids always complain about it!!

So this year when our dad put up the fake tree...and we complained again!

But - we had a plan our parents didn't know about!!

The day after putting the artificial tree up was our parents 28th wedding anniversary, so they went to town for the day.

And they left all of us kids home. Our older sister Jessica was also home for the weekend.

Shortly after they left we went out into the woods to cut down a REAL Christmas tree!!

As you can see in the photos it was snowing quite hard out.

So we went trudging along out into the woods to get a tree...which wasn't easy at all since we couldn't even find a decent tree!! (That was kind of a problem!)

We looked and looked and looked for a decent tree!

And this is the only tree that looked half-ways decent and it was the only one that looked like it would fit inside our house!!

So Colter got his ax and cut it down!

We carried it back to the house only to find it really was too big and it was hitting the ceiling!!

Actually it wouldn't even stand up, it was that much too big!!

So we had to take it back outside and cut a fair amount off the bottom of the tree.

Then we carried it back inside and put it up again, but it still touched the ceiling a little bit, but it worked out better then before.

We held the tree up with a cement block and some wood chips, since we didn't have a real tree base.

We even put lights and few decorations on it!
Our parents were quite shocked at the whole thing when they came in the house that evening! But they both laughed and laughed about it.

Our real Christmas tree only got to stay up for a few days. :(

But then it got hauled outside and it's now stuck in a snow bank out front and decorated with bright lights!

It was lots of fun and well worth shocking our parents!

We all called it our "Charlie Brown Christmas tree."

**Posted by Ceara**

Thanksgiving...

The Thanksgiving table:

Everyone digging in:

And here's the food... before everyone dug in:

I love Thanksgiving at our house!!

It's SO much fun!!

We get to stay up late the night before making all the food except the turkey, (that's made Thanksgiving morning.)

We had our almost normal menu, we added a few new things this year!

We had...

Turkey

Mahed Potatoes and gravy

"Cat Food" (it's really a broccoli bake)

Stuffing

Corn

Sherbet salad

fluffy banana pudding

Broccoli salad

7 Layer salad

Sweet Potatoe bake (which was a new recipe this year)

Buns

Deviled eggs

Cranberries

Baby Carrots

Olives

Pickles

and finally, that's all!!


Oh, and the desserts...

Mud Pie (another new one!!)

Pumpkin pie

Apple pie

Pecan pie

and Ice cream.

And I know everyone went away from the table full!!
Or if not, too bad 'cause the food was good and there was lots of it!!


This year for Thanksgiving Jessica came down from her house and Ana and her husband, Brandon came up!!
So we had a full table!!
Actually this year we almost ran out of china plates!!
So who knows what we'll do in up-coming years when our family gets bigger!!

After the Thanksgiving dinner in the afternoon, we watched a movie then sat around and played board games.
Then after a while we had dessert,
sat around a little more talking and laughing and playing games.
Then it was time for bed for the little kids.
Then we older ones stayed up and played a very long and very confusing, game of Rummikub!!
And we had LOTS of fun!!

**posted by Ceara**

Bread making...

On Wednesday afternoon Laura, Lisa and i went with the Youth Group over to the Church to help make St. Lucia bread for the Sunday school kids to hand out after Mass.

It was TONS of fun!!

We made the bread from scratch, so we got to mix all the ingredients, knead it, watch it rise, bake it, and so forth.

My favorite part was probably kneading it!!

And my least favorite part was probably adding the raisins, 'cause we had to stick the measuring cup inside the bag to get the raisins out and we got raisins all over and it got quite sticky!!

Another highlight was the whole time we were making the bread i got to talk with my friends!!

I love doing that!!




We each got to take a loaf home with us... and it tasted awesome!! The loaf was gone pretty quickly!!

**posted by Ceara**