Christmas Week

We started off our Christmas week with a couple days at Michelle's grandparents' farm. The kids had a great time climbing on farm equipment and hay bales, playing in the dirt and doing anything else outside that we would let them do.

Katie, Josh, Jacob and Aaron on the tractor (not running).

Mamaw showing Katie how to hit a golf ball. Luckily, she didn't hit her 1 1/2 year old grandson standing 10 feet in front of her.

Katie and Aaron after a round of golf.

About 20 people showed up for the holiday gathering in south Arkansas. It was almost like there was nothing else going on down there... We exchanged gifts - Matt was shocked at the bag of socks that great-mamaw gave him. I think he secretly was hoping for a High School Musical CD (he's a huge fan)--but unfortunately, he received the same gift all the men in the family receive every year.....a package of socks.

Here are a few family pictures we took during Christmas.

Katie, Jacob, and Josh with Great Papaw and Great Mamaw.

Aaron, Josh, Katie & Jacob with Papaw and Mamaw.

Josh, Katie & Aaron

Aaron, Katie, Jacob & Josh

A couple of days before Christmas I found this card Katie had made under our Christmas tree next to her piggy bank. The card says:

To: God From: Katie

Merry Christmas, Jesus!

Here's a picture of her gift to Jesus. Yes, it is a piggy bank, and there is money in it. She gets an allowance every week, and we make her take 10% of it to church, and the rest she either gets to put in her own piggy bank or this black piggy bank which is her China piggy bank. We got this idea for her to have a "special" piggy bank after she told me that she wanted to give some of her money to her Mamaw and Papaw so they could use it to tell the kids in China about Jesus. She decides every week whether she wants to put money into it or not, but we put the piggy bank under the tree this year so she could give it to her Mamaw and Papaw since they were able to spend Christmas with us. Much to our surprise, she had put over $20 in the China piggy bank since this summer.

Christmas morning was a little chaotic at the Thompson household. My sister and her family, as well as my parents were here to spend the holidays with us. We told the kids that they were not allowed out of their room until 7:00 a.m. After a quick breakfast we went downstairs to open gifts. The kids were ecstatic at the Nintendo DS's that Mamaw and Papaw had bought for them.

Here's a picture of them later that night all curled up in me and Jeremy's bed playing with their new favorite toy.

They also had a blast playing the High School Music game that Katie got from her Grandma.

Aaron, Katie & Josh really got into singing and dancing to all of the High School Musical songs. Even Jeremy and Uncle Matt got into the wildcat spirit by singing a duet together (FYI - Jeremy had to tell Matt several times to quit gazing deeply into his eyes). Unfortunately, I was forbidden from taking any pictures.

HOLY PANCAKE!!!

Every now and then the Creator of the universe decides to bestow blessings upon some of his closest followers by branding his holy image onto food. We've all heard of Jesus' face showing up on pancakes, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc., but few of us are actually holy enough to have experienced this special touch of God ourselves. Your wait is over. While making pancakes for Michelle and Katie this morning, a holy light shined down on me and the voices of an angelic host echoed in my ear. Take a deep breath. Below, you will see photographic evidence of God's divine favor on my life.

What am I to do with this unexpected blessing from above? Bidding starts at $5,000. Amen.

Christmas Lights

Jeremy finally got our Christmas lights up this past weekend. This is the one thing I think he hates doing more than anything when it comes to getting the house decorated for Christmas. But he puts the lights up without complaining too much because he knows Katie and I love them. As you can see from the picture below he's super excited about the task at hand.

And of course he has to pose for the camera while he's working--he wanted me to take this picture of him. You would think he'd be a little more careful about maintaining his balance since he's about 30 feet up in the air, but no.

What a stud--or at least he think's he's one.

Sweetie, thanks for putting all the Christmas lights up they look great. And thank you for not falling off the roof of the house and breaking your neck while posing for these pictures.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I absolutely love Thanksgiving and everything about it. I love planning the meal, going out and buying all the groceries, cooking, and spending the day pigging out on way too much food. This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Langhams--we've been doing this for the past several years, and we always have a lot of fun together. After we have gorged ourselves, Jill and I always spend the afternoon poring over ads and getting our game plan ready for Black Friday shopping. Yes, we are some of the crazy people who get up and are waiting in line for the stores to open up at 4 am. This year was no different, and we found some really good deals. On Saturday Jeremy went golfing with some friends while Katie and I stayed home. We spent the day wrapping Christmas presents, listening to music, coloring, and baking. Katie loves to help in the kitchen so we decided we'd bake some pumpkin bread. It always takes twice as long to get anything done when she's helping (and I do have to pray for patience beforehand) but we have a lot of fun together. She's my little Martha Stewart. Here are some pictures of my little chef.

She's so goofy.

While the bread was baking we headed downstairs to color and watch Camp Rock. Katie all of a sudden started screaming, "Mommy, Mommy, Maggie has an animal in her mouth." This didn't really surprise me since we live out of town. Maggie has been known to drag dead carcuses of animals into the yard. And it's not uncommon for us to see deer, foxes, beavers, armadillos, skunks, snakes, etc.... So Katie and I put our shoes on and went outside to investigate. This is what Maggie had killed.

Katie was fascinated with this very fat field mouse that Maggie had caught. She wasn't quite as interested in it as she was in the snake that she spotted while I was picking blackberries this summer. The "very large worm" that Katie spotted while I was picking blackberries turned out to be this snake she's holding in the picture below.

Yes, it is alive.

The weekend ended with snow on Sunday. Katie absolutely loves snow, and we couldn't pass up this opportunity to take even more pictures. On the way to church as we were listening to Christmas carols and Katie says in a loud voice, "Thank you so much for the snow God." I'm so glad that she is thankful for the little things in life, and is so willing to verbalize how grateful she is to our God.

Our little Indian--Running Fox

All the kindergarten classes at Shiloh were in charge of chapel this past Thursday. It was the Thanksgiving chapel so they were all decked out as little Indians. As you can see from the pictures below Katie had a blast being up on stage and singing all of her Thanksgiving songs. They were all able to choose their own Indian names, and Katie chose "Running Fox"--much to my delight. Hopefully, she'll take after me when she gets older and love running as much as I do. Maybe then I'll finally have someone to go running with me since Jeremy won't run with me. The last time we ran together I ran him into the ground. He had to stop after a couple of miles. So I guess I don't blame him for not wanting to be embarrassed by a girl--especially his own wife. He will deny this ever happened but I have proof--my mother-in-law was there. Jeremy and I are glad the powwow is over because we have had to listen to these songs over and over and over again for the past few weeks. Here are some pictures from the big show.

Katie and Belle.

Busy Little Bees

It's that time of year again where Jeremy starts cutting and chopping wood for the winter. He spent about 4 hours working outside on Sunday afternoon, and Katie was right there beside him the whole time working away. Katie loves to help in anyway she can when we are doing different projects around the house, and she is such a hard worker. She rarely complains and has such a good attitude. She comes by her hard work ethic naturally. It's in her genes. Last week she was working outside with Jeremy gathering some little sticks for kindling. She told him, "Daddy, we need to salvage as many sticks as we can for our fires." She's only 5 and she's using the word salvage. The amazing thing is that she even used it correctly. Here are some pictures from a few days ago.

Katie stacked all of this wood by herself.

Katie's Sleepover

Rachel and Porter came over last night to spend the night so Mike and Jill could have an evening to themselves. We all had a lot of fun. I got to listen to Katie educate Rachel on prison--don't ask me why they were discussing this. But according to Katie, "Prison is like a place that really bad people go to for like a 100 weeks. I actually have never been there but it's really bad." It's amazing the things they talk about. At least she wasn't trying to educate Rachel on Obama and everything he stands for. She asked me the other day if I knew that Obama was trying to steal everybody's money and that he was going to give our money to whoever he wanted to. I just looked at her and then it dawned on me that she had just gone somewhere with her dad. I can only imagine what he said to her about Obama. Anyway, before I had a chance to respond she said, "Mommy, I've got a great idea....why don't we give all our money to Jesus then Obama can't take it away from us." She has such a generous heart.

Here are some pictures from the sleepover.

Porter enjoying his dinner.

Katie and Rachel enjoying their bubble bath.

The girls were so excited that they got to use Katie's High School Musical bubble bath--thanks grandma.

They had a fab-u-lous time!!!!!

Porter even got into the wildcat spirit in the tub.

Katie and Rachel thought it would be fun to wake Jeremy up at 6:15 in the morning.

A Day in the life of.......

I was so depressed last night over this financial crisis, I called Lifeline.
Got a freakin' call center in Pakistan . I told them I was suicidal. They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Anyone who works in the financial industry right now can totally relate to this.

HOW RUDE!!!!

Why is it that people in today's society are just plain rude? Are we so insensitive about how what we say affects other people or do we just not care at all how our words affect others? Case in point.....today I got a phone call from a client who was ranting and raving about some letter he received in the mail from our home office. As I was trying to talk to Mr. X (who was speaking to me in a very condescending manner), he said "Listen here sweetheart....." Mind you, I do not mind being called sweetheart by some people--I have several older clients who do refer to me at times as sweetheart. I am not what I would consider an extreme feminist and do not feel insulted when being called sweetheart. However, it was the way Mr. X said "listen here sweetheart" that got to me. It was very condescending and degrading. I don't know what came over me but in a very professional and I must say, dignified manner. I said, "Please do not refer to me as sweetheart." This is so out of character for me when dealing with clients. Normally, I just take whatever they throw at me. And right now with the way the stock market is reacting to our economic crisis they can throw some pretty ugly stuff my way. Mr. X's response to me was, "Well, what should I call you then...A**hole?" Mr. X then proceeded to laugh. He thought this was pretty funny. I didn't and my response was "That's not going to work either. What can I do for you, Mr. X?" Somebody must have been praying for me at that exact moment because God gave me the grace and dignity to deal with Mr. X. Although, I probably will not be talking to him again anytime soon--thank you Jesus. After, relaying this conversation to my boss he proceeded to call Mr. X and told him to move his account elsewhere. You rock Boss man!!!!! But here's the question: why do people feel that it's totally acceptable to talk down to other people? Why are we so rude to each other?

Another black eye......this is what Jeremy looked like when he came home from work yesterday. You might think that I would be concerned about what might have happened to him. Did he get beat up for voicing his opinion on how he really feels about Obama or Houston Nutt? That might have made for a more interesting story. But alas, it was another basketball injury. Black eyes in our household are very common, and they are always a result of him playing basketball. I no longer feel sorry for him. I just laugh and make fun of him for a few days, and joke about the fact that I beat him up. Katie, on the other hand, is the more sympathetic one. She cried when Jeremy walked in the door because she was so worried about what had happened to him. Unfortunately, she didn't believe his story about him getting in a fight with a bear on the way home from work.

Here's another picture of a black eye he got while playing basketball earlier this year. It's a good thing that he's really good at basketball (and I'm not just saying that because he's my husband) because otherwise it'd be pretty pathetic to walk around looking like this for a week.

October

We have finally succumbed to the peer presure to blog. Since we don't have a ton of time on our hands, don't expect much. Our (and by "our", I mean "Michelle's") goal is to post at least once a week so our friends and family can know what's going on in our lives. We've posted a few pictures of things we've done in the last month. The day at Devil's Den was pretty fun. The only downside to the trip was that Katie wasn't really in the mood to do all of the hiking. She had just finished a 1 hour 3 on 3 soccer game and only 2 of her team members showed up. It was still a good time, though - she's a trooper. She takes after her mother (I am writing this under duress...). We've also been to the Razorback home football games this fall. Katie is an avid hog fan as you can see from the photos of her at the U of A. Those were taken on the day of the Ole Miss game, the same day of Nutt-bag's return to Fayetteville. Katie and Michelle spent about an hour and a half walking around campus taking pictures while I did my best to educate Ole Miss fans on what they had to look forward to. (3rd and long?? Off-Tackle!!) I'm not sure why the girls wanted to distance themselves from me... Even though the refs robbed us of a storybook ending, it was a pretty fun day.