MERRY CHRISTMAS 2013!!!

This year we had a relatively small Christmas. It was perfect! Ethen was so excited and to see his eyes light up was worth it!

As is tradition the first gift we open is a special one, given to us from our Father in Heaven. The gift of our Savior! We always read the Christmas story – straight from the scriptures!

Stocking time – Yea!!! DISPICABLE ME 2!!!

Ethen was excited to get new RED headphones from Santa!!!

New Beyblades (from mommy & daddy), Mega Nerf Bullets (from Uncle Jason, to go with the Mega Nerf Gun that Ethen thought Santa couldn’t get) and a case (from Nana) to hold all those new Skylanders!!!

Ethen got daddy some Duck Dynasty memorabilia and ME a beautiful new necklace!

More Skylanders (from Grandma & GW) and Beyblades (from Grandma Sharon) and a new shirt (also from Grandma & GW)!!!

Ethen made us a great calendar for 2014! It has his hand prints on each month! Lord knows those little handprints don’t last forever!!! Thanks Ethen – We love it!

Jonathon got me the gift of self defense with this cool kitty cat keychain. You put your fingers through the eye holes and the ears become a weapon! I love it!!!

I ordered Jonathon a Sawyer Straw from Thrive. This straw weighs 2 ounces and can filter 100,000 gallons of water. You can use the straw to drink from the source or bottle, attach to a standard water bottle or even attach it to a camelback!!! BRILLIANT! Jonathon knew I was ordering it but we weren’t expecting it to arrive before Christmas. It came Christmas Eve! SCORE!!!

Another gift from Grandma & GW, a new movie called Ephraim’s Rescue! I’ve been wanting to see this one for a while now!!!

We got Ethen a SWAT play set and Jonathon took it to work to do some custom work on it!!!

Ethen looks AWESOME in his new threads and headphones!

As is tradition, we made our annual birthday cake for Jesus! Ethen was super helpful and even wrote the “Happy Birthday Jesus” on top!

Finally, we revealed that Ethen did, in fact, get the Mega Nerf Gun! He was totally excited to see it!!! This thing is seriously the .50 cal of Nerf guns!

We had an amazing Christmas and are so blessed to have awesome family and friends. Heavenly Father has been so merciful and gracious to us.

Canning Pickles!!!

I have REALLY gotten into food preservation this year! I did a whole batch of tomatoes that were given to me (score), and yesterday some friends and I went here… Gilcrease Orchard and picked our own cucumbers for pickling. This was my first attempt to pickle cucumbers, I can’t wait to try them out in a few weeks.

 

This crazy lady is my friend Amber – she’s amazing and I just love her. All pictures go to her credit – without her skills behind the camera – I wouldn’t look this good!!!

Cucumbers and okra – ready for the pickin’!

I think she got my good side… I hope so! Anyways. I have never picked cucumbers or okra before, thankfully there were some very helpful and quite knowledgeable workers there to help me out. I was fascinated to see the little spikey nubs on the cucumbers!!!

Prep time! Wash… Slice… Pack… Can… Repeat!!!

Did I mention we were going to make our own relish too!!!

All done! It took us several hours to complete everything, but we had a ton of fun doing it! We totaled 48 jars of pickles, relish and okra and even made our own cucumber scrub with the scraps! Check out my awesome prepper/canning/self-reliant skills!!!

Preparedness, for me, is not about doomsday, Armageddon, a hostile government takeover or any other radical idea like that. It’s about being able to provide for yourself when times get tough. It’s about that case of Meningitis that Jonathon had earlier this year, or the partner that messed with out hours at work. It’s about real life. Sometimes life doesn’t go as we plan. Sometimes it’s not all rainbows and sunny days. Dark clouds and rain are always threatening to destroy the sun. The question is will you have the umbrella to keep you dry – to a weathered piece of newspaper – or even nothing at all?

Trip To Bass Pro Shops

This summer Bass Pro Shops is hosting kids workshops – so we thought we’d go check them out! We had more fun looking around then in the actual class… and it was about archery – something I’m SUPER into right now! The class was super boring, even for adults! So we took our happy butts to walking around!

Check out the size of this fish… HOLY HANNAH!!!

Ethen loved trying on the woodland camouflage clothing! He’s so much like Jonathon it’s ridiculous!!!

Of course he found a quad that was his size and IMEDIATELY called out – Mommy I want this! Sure son, let me just run out to my money tree and get that for ya!!!

Safety first!!!

We had a ton of fun afterwards we headed to the park with the Smith’s. What a fun day! I snapped some shots of Ethen rolling down the hill!