Operation Christmas Child project!

A few years ago, our Junior Church took on the Operation Christmas Child project. It's something that we look forward every year. We get donations of items and money for shipping from people in our church, then we get together and assemble the boxes. After we are finished we pray for the children that will be receiving these boxes. We pray that they will be a blessing to each child and that they will somehow come to know Jesus. (It has always been a dream of mine to one day get to go overseas and help deliver these boxes! It would probably tear me up seeing the children, but I would love to experience it!)
Parker enjoyed putting a box together for a boy.

Our group of workers with out finished products...

32 boxes this year!

We always order pizza and listen to Christmas music while making these boxes for the children. It's a fun evening and everyone enjoys helping out, even our kids!

September happenings...

Parker's 8th birthday was on Sunday, September 19th
I can't believe we have an 8 year old!

He chose this theme when the Reds were still in the playoffs!!

World's biggest baseball nut!

Parker with his siblings and cousins!
Brycen Thompson, Kerrigan Anthony

Peyton, Parker, Paige and

Carter Thompson

Here comes double trouble...

Paige and Peyton, 4 1/2 years old.
Today, August 17th, 2010 marked the first day of school for our twins, Paige and Peyton. They attend Asbury United Methodist's "Children's Morning Out" on Tuesday and Thursday. They were so excited to start back to school and eagerly jumped out of bed this morning. I know that before too long, I'll have to drag Peyton out of bed for school. However, there was much excitement in the air today at our house as we quickly got ready for school and ate a good breakfast. The twins are in the Red Room this year and Mrs Hollie is their new teacher. I'm hoping that they learn a lot and that this gets them all ready for Kindergarten next year!
Look out Miss Willard....you're gonna have a busy year next year!!!

He's growing up too fast...

Monday, August 16th, 2010 marked the first day of school for Parker. He is now a 2nd grader at Bethel Holiness Christian School. He was excited about going back to school and seeing his friends but said he just wanted to be able to go to school, but not do any work. I took him to school and asked him if he needed my help in carrying his stuff into his classroom. He replied..."NO, Mom! I can get it just fine, you don't need to walk me in!" :( So I said my goodbye and drove off. I began to think about how quickly he is growing up on us!

He will be 8 years old in September and weighs just shy of 100 pounds! Jonathan looked up in his school book to see how old he was when he reached 100 pounds and he was in the 7th grade! I had to buy him size 14 shirts and his "husky" pants from last year are quite snug around the middle. I wonder how big he'll be, will he be bigger than his Daddy and what will he one day become?!

On that sentimental note...I hear laundry and housework calling my name!

A peek at our family vacation...

We had a great time together as a normal family on our vacation to Wisconsin Dells! We had ten wonderful days together but by the end of the vacation, I think we were all on Daddy's nerves! :)

Of course, we couldn't let this trip get by without a crazy story or two! You know me...

One day the twins wanted to ride the inter tubes in the "lazy river!" I thought it sounded like fun so said I would take them! I got in the water, grabbed a double raft, and then proceeded to try to jump in very graceful like!!! I was a bit awkward to say the least. I was feeling mighty proud of myself for finally getting onto the back of that thing when all of a sudden...my inter tube did a complete flip backwards and down I went! I came up sputtering and looked at Jonathan who was about to die laughing at me. It was then that I realized that I had lost my glasses in the current of the river! Oh no.... I am blind as a bat too!!! I let my inter tube float away and grabbed the twins. Jonathan proceeded to climb into the river and go searching. He did end up finding my glasses quite a ways on down the river. They weren't broken and I was thrilled. That experience wasn't very "lazy" for us that day!!!

On Wednesday night, the weather had been bad and it was really storming outside. They kept talking about tornado warnings in certain counties. Of course, we had no clue what county we were even in that day!! The sky was black and winds were strong, thunder and lightening flashed but we didn't let that stop us from sleeping soundly! All of a sudden, Jonathan and I woke up to an ear piercing sound of the fire alarms going off in our resort! We both quickly got dressed and I went out in the hallway. People were staggering out of their rooms in a daze wondering what in the world was happening! I began to try to wake the kids who hadn't even moved since the sirens began blaring!!! Talk about extremely sound sleepers... Parker wouldn't budge and I was trying to figure out how in the world we were going to carry these kids down 5 flights of stairs! The sirens stopped as I was trying to wake the kids and I told Jonathan to go downstairs and make sure it was really something big before I woke up our kids!!! Ha!!! He took the elevator downstairs of all things!!! Said it was total chaos in the lobby and people were asking what time it really was! Would you believe it was only 11:22pm!!!!! Ha Ha!!! The storm had actually knocked the power out a couple of times and that caused the alarms to go off. It took us a while to settle back down and sleep but the kids never knew it happened!

The next morning the kids were looking out our patio door and saw some debris on the patio. As they looked below, Paige saw that a huge pine tree had fallen just below us! Good grief....

Click on the picture below for a photo journey of our vacation!

Wisconsin Dells...July 2010

4th of July weekend!

On July 4th, we got to visit TaMerra Edwards...

Daniel & Angie Edwards new baby girl!
She's precious...
Paige thought she was hot stuff cause she got to hold baby TaMerra!

Parker fell in love with the farm cats at Jonathan & LuRhe's and wanted to bring one home!
Lucky for us....Paige came in from outside and her eyes were almost swollen shut! :)
I do believe she has a cat allergy! So...no kittens for this household!

Parker & Peyton having the time of their lives on the Edwards 4-wheeler!

I had several mini heart attacks that day! :)

Parker did a great job driving Peyton "slowly" around the farm!

He just HAD to take me for a ride!

I think Daddy enjoyed his ride more than I did!

Paige had her cousin Jesse wrapped around her finger!

Boys will be boys...

I'd do it all over again...

It was a beautiful summer day, on July 6th, 1996. A day I had dreamed about for many years. I was about to become Mrs. Jonathan Walden! We had fallen in love at a youth camp in July of 1991 and had 5 happy years of dating.

He proposed to me in July of 1995, in the middle of a wheat field, on a huge John Deere tractor, on his sister and brother-in-laws farm.

I thought our wedding day would never arrive. We were counting the days and the hours until we would be married! I was afraid the Lord would return before we got married!!

That beautiful summer day finally arrived and our wedding was a dream come true. I was the luckiest girl in the world! (I still am by the way!)

Now, 14 years later...here we are...."So happy together!"

Happy Anniversary Jonathan. I love you SO much!

Thanks for letting me be your wife and for choosing me out of all the girls in the world! I'm so glad you did!

I Love you!

Char-broiled...

Last weekend was an extremely busy weekend for me. I had a baby shower for a girl at work on Saturday afternoon and had been busy preparing my house for the shower all week long. On Saturday morning, Jonathan had gone golfing with a friend and the kids were spread out with a couple of different sitters. I had a fun day with the girls away from work and was cleaning up after the shower when the phone rang...

Jonathan was calling and wanted to know if I felt like having company that evening. He thinks every time the house is clean, we need to invite someone over! :) I told him that would be fine and we quickly decided to grill out hamburgers and hot dogs on his new grill that he had gotten for Father's day, just 6 days earlier! I ran to the grocery story and grabbed what I needed and hurried home to begin supper.

(I want to throw in a tid bit of info right here... Chuck and Mary Jane McGuire highly recommended the type of grill that we chose and said that we would never even have to use a squirt bottle on it!!!) :o) Hold that thought...

A short time later, I had the side dishes cooking and Jonathan went out to start up the grill. He turned on the grill and heard a slight hissing sound. He said he thought the gas was just going through the tubing since the grill was new. (However, we had already used it twice the weekend before!) He then proceeded to flip the "ignite" switch and all of a sudden... huge flames began to shoot out of the back of the grill! He ran around to the back of the grill to see the entire gas tank engulfed in flames!!! He immediately sprinted towards the door, and in his haste, pulled a muscle in his calf! I was in the garage getting something, and all of a sudden, Jonathan came busting in the patio door, screaming..."I need a fire extinguisher!!!" Of course, my first reaction was "WHY???" He proceeded to quickly run to the pantry and say "The grill is on fire!" I had no clue where the fire extinguisher was at that moment but he found it within seconds. We have kept it right inside the pantry door ever since we got married! Glad he was thinking straight because I sure wasn't!

Back out the door he went, doing the "PASS" acronym to quickly put out the fire. Pull the pin, aim, squeeze and sweep! The fire immediately went out as soon as he started to spray it. The next door neighbors quickly came running out to see if we were okay! They had seen the excitement from their kitchen window. After Jonathan's heart rate slowed back to a normal rate, he then surveyed the damage on his brand new grill. :( It was now covered in a white powder, my side dishes were basically done, company was on their way and we had raw hamburgers and hot dogs!

Jonathan ended up cleaning up the grill and reconnecting the gas tank. I can't believe he would even try to light the silly thing again, but he did and it worked just fine. Evidently there was leak in the connection from the tank to the grill. It's a wonder we didn't blow up our entire street!

The hamburgers and hot dogs were delicious and we had a good time that night with our friends despite all of the excitement! We had several good laughs and made more hilarious memories! Someday, I'm going to write a book of all the hilarious happenings in my life...

Happy Father's Day...

to my wonderful husband of nearly 14 years...
The kids and I got him a new gas grill that he picked out!

We had dinner together today at Mom's and it was delicious!

Jeff and I are posing with the best Dad in the world! :)

Jeff with his two boys, Carter and Brycen.

Kerrigan was celebrating with her Daddy today.

My four favorite people in all the world!
Jonathan celebrating Father's Day with his three gifts from God!

Our room...almost finished!

New bedspread from Kohls. My birthday present from Mom and Dad.

Not kid friendly... the kids are not allowed to sit on it!
I didn't want to put our wedding picture away forever, but I'm not happy with the gold frame.
Jenny Grissom says I can paint it white and "distress it!"

My favorite picture ever of my kids!
Thanks to Jenny Grissom...

My purchase from IKEA...

(Now I need to get one for Jonathan's side to match!)

Another picture courtesy of Jenny Grissom!

A purchase from Kirklands...

Lamp from Hobby Lobby...

Hobby Lobby find...

I love these rub on's...

I dug this out of the basement...

The window treatments are not purchased yet and I still need to find curtain/swags.

I was afraid that if I waited to post these until after I get the windows done, my walls would need painted again!!!

Just call me Mrs Bumblebee...

I had been looking so forward to this day for several weeks now. My alarm clock went off early on my day off, but I eagerly jumped out of bed to take on the new day! There were 5 of us labor and delivery gals that were all heading to Cincinnati to check out the huge IKEA store! Two of us had never been before, but had heard great things about it! We could hardly contain our excitement!

I was the chosen driver as I have the biggest vehicle! We wanted to be sure we had plenty of room to haul our purchases home! So, with our cell phones, purses, cash and debit cards in hand, off we went!

There was lots of happy chatter going on in the vehicle as you can imagine with 5 nurses on board. This was a special occasion...all of us off work at the same time, no spouses or kids, and a huge store awaiting our arrival!

I was driving on highway 46 towards Greensburg, In. I had just crossed highway 9 and was almost to Newbern. It was an overcast day and a slight chill in the air. The traffic began to slow down and we all wondered what was causing the traffic jam! After all.. we were on a mission! There was a long line of slowed traffic and 5 impatient gals in my SUV. We finally saw the culprit up ahead. It was a big truck that was spray painting those bright yellow lines down the middle of this two lane road! As we got closer, we could see a flashing sign in the back of the paint truck saying, "Warning, do not drive on paint!" Well, no duh........ We followed the truck for several miles until we got a break in the road and were all able to pass on the right! We were so happy to have finally gotten around that silly truck, but not another word was mentioned about INDOT painting the road! Until...............................................

We arrived in Greensburg and Nicole wanted to stop for some caffeine! We made a quick stop at McDonald's and grabbed something "to go" and were out the door! As I was walking out of McDonald's, I heard the shock in Nicole's voice! She squealed......"Oh no, Karen.....look at your car!" At that moment, I turned and looked at my "new paint job!"

I had apparently crossed over the freshly painted, yellow, center line in the two lane road and it had gotten all over my tires. It then splattered all over the inside of my wheel wells and onto my quarter panel and back bumper! Terri teased me about adding racing stripes to my car on the way to IKEA, while Amy teased me that I now looked like I was driving a bumble bee! We all were laughing hysterically and at the same time, I had a very sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach! You see, I was going to have to try to get this off before my husband saw it!

However, we did not let this slow us down one bit! Onto IKEA we went! I couldn't help but think of my horrible mess that was awaiting me as I walked up and down the isles of IKEA! (By the way, I loved the store and definitely want to go back again someday!) Over lunch I talked to my husband and dad and told them what I had done! Jonathan took it much better than I expected, but it was just because he could not even picture what this vehicle looked like! :o)

Later, the gals told me that they saw people pointing to my car and laughing at us! I am glad I was able to give them their laugh for the day!

Once we arrived back in town, I went to the car wash and inserted several dollars into the Super Power Wash. Unfortunately, you couldn't even tell that it helped! I went to the auto store and a body shop, and all the men basically said to me was, "Good luck!" :(

I've gotten a police report filed and will be going to see Mr Insurance agent in the morning. My dad also has a friend that has some sort of "potion" that he declares will get it off! So, I now have new plans for my Friday! I'll probably be spending it in the garage, de-striping my bumble-bee!

We had a great time in spite of the circumstances! And yes, I do want to go again, but next time, I'll let someone else drive!!!!