Family Christmas Letter 2012

I have never really typed up a family letter before. This year I got one put together, but I know myself well enough to know I may not get it in the mail. So I am sharing it here with the few who still check in to my blog. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Dear Friends & Family,

    With another year gone sooner than we expected, we thought we would draft a Christmas letter and try to get it sent out before Valentine’s Day. There have been a lot of changes this year that we wanted to share with you.

    Matt has set a family record by both graduating from high school and attending college. We really miss him, especially when it is time to split wood, but we are incredibly proud of him.

    Chet is still ignoring his diagnosis, and is rebelling against the list of “don’ts” by keeping busy in band, chess club, and texting his lovely girlfriend. If you text Jennifer and get a funky reply, you should know it is Chet on the other end. If you don’t get a reply at all, it is because Chet is on the other end.

    For some reason, the National Guard and Marines are actively recruiting Faith. We aren’t sure if it is her
propensity to sing everywhere she goes or her insane ability to peel potatoes that makes her such an attractive prospective recruit for them.

    Kyle is playing football, baseball, and basketball. He has also discovered a passion for hunting. We never
expected to have a fully-armed child, but it is what it is. We encourage him in all his activites, as long as he doesn’t shoot his teammates or tackle a deer.

    Todd spends the majority of his free time reading, and uses his brilliant mind to come up with zingers. Most recently he quipped, “Mom, you stuck?” when he walked in and found Jennifer stretching. He wants you to know that you should keep the Christmas card he signed so you won’t have to track him down for an autograph when he is famous.

    Beth is still wildly obsessed with frogs. This works out great for us in the spring and summer, when she can catch all the pet frogs she wants and we don’t have to feed them.

    Speaking of feeding the animals, all of the kids are growing very tall and have bigger feet than their mother. At last she can seek revenge by borrowing their shoes and then “forgetting” them in her room, the car, or a friend’s house.

    Jennifer started a full time job at a boys’ ranch a few months ago. With this new schedule, we tend to have a lot of Hamburger Helper or PBJ sandwiches for dinner. We have both on feast nights.

    Jack is following in his dad’s footsteps, which means his hair has turned almost all white. We plan to dress
him up as a grinchy Santa Claus sometime in a future Christmas season and rent him out to the malls to earn some extra cash.

    It has been another great year where we can thankfully say that disease, fire, and pestulance haven’t done us in. We still combat the stress with as much laughter as possible, blanket everything in prayer, and trust that God has us in His hands and is our great provider. We love you and miss you all, and hope and pray that the new year brings you all peace and prosperity.

With much love and a touch of insanity,

The Wellborn Family
December 2011 (or January 2012, depending on when we get this mailed.)

First Family Photos

There are lots of firsts in marriage and parenthood, and sometimes you just never know how long certain firsts will take to happen. We had a phenomenal first for our family last month. Jocelyn, her hubby Brian, and their girls came out to see us. For the first time ever we had all 8 kids and all 3 grandkids together at the same time. It was frrrreeeezing cold outside, but I wasn't putting off taking photos of us all together another minute. Carpe diem.

I gave Brian a crash course in using my camera, and he took this one of the thirteen of us. I'm still not sure if the little bit of camera shake is just because he was cold or if my little pep talk included the phrase "Don't be nervous, but you better not cut anybody's head off!"

I was giddy as I took this one. I have waited so long to take this picture! Would it be a bit over the top if I turned it into an entire wall mural instead of just framing it?

The weather didn't allow for much time to play around with positioning, but Jocelyn and Brian have decided to stay a while. So as soon as it truly warms up we are going to find a lovely day to take pictures of us all again, and do some different groupings. That should eliminate the shivering and give us a chance to maybe get everyone to look at the camera at once. Chet... are you paying attention??

I remembered to take one of all the daughters and granddaughters.

And this one of the daughters. (Aren't they gorgeous?)

Then I snapped one of the sons, son-in-law, and giggly little grandson.

And one of this group of particularly handsome sons. Todd was trying to smile big enough the first time to not have to sit there for another shot.

I even got this momma and her baby,

and this pretty family...

and some couple shots of Jocelyn and Brian.

I must have had brainfreeze, though, because there should be a picture here of the 3 adorable grandkids together.... and I forgot to take it. The incoming snow clouds must have distracted me.

Then I handed Jessica the camera, and she took this one. Gads, I love this man!

So how is life, you ask? Well... it is busier than ever. It is noisy, and a little crowded, and a big change for everyone. But you know what.... I love being surrounded by talls, smalls, grands, and growns. Sure, a few more grey hairs are beginning to take hold, but I found the cure for that.

Clairol and highlights.

Life is full. Life is a wee bit hectic. And life is good.

Stowaways

I jumped in the car and was headed down the road to work this morning, when one of my cats jumped up in the seat next to me. He never made a sound, just looked at me a bit frantically. I stopped the car and opened the door for him to get out. He fled the scene.

I continued on down the road and happened to glance back and found the rest of my cats staring at me with big huge eyes, obviously wondering why the warm snug bed they had discovered when I left my window down last night was moving. Sighing, I turned around and headed back home.

As we drove back home, Midnight jumped up on the back of my seat and laid his head on my shoulder. Rosie jumped into shotgun and batted at the door, as if she could open it herself. Patchy continued riding in the back.

I arrived home, opened the door, and Midnight and Rosie quickly evacuated while Patchy had to be physically removed from the car. As I sat back down to try to go to work again, Patchy jumped back in. Apparently, he likes the idea of having a taxi-cab mom.

Since it isn't "Bring Your Cat to Work Day," I unceremoniously dumped him back out onto the ground, bid him good day, and made my way to work.

Tonight I will make sure to roll up the windows in the car.

Random Sunday Stuff

Today was a quiet day at home. Half of the kids and I are sick, so we stayed busy mostly doing nothing.

This was Jack's only day off this week, so he spent the day working in the yard. You can see the big pile of smaller tree branches behind him. We are going to have to rent a woodchipper to get rid of all of those instead of burning them. That would be a bonfire that could too easily get out of control. We are enclosing our front porch this spring to expand the front room and kitchen. After the ice storm, Jack decided he is also building a fireplace into the new front room. So he has been cutting up the thick branches into firewood.


As he cut the wood into fireplace portions (is there a particular word for that??), Faith and Kyle stayed busy stacking it up...


and making bunnyears.


Sammy stayed busy sleeping.


Since the lumberjacks, the sickies, and the teenager were all hungry I made a quick lunch. The Macaroni Grill is one of my favorite restaraunts, so when I saw their version of Hamburger Helper I thought we would give it try. I still prefer homemade, but this wasn't bad for a box of preservatives.
I was invited to an all night crop last night. I started feeling sick on Friday, but I could not pass up the opportunity to leave the kids, the husband, and the laundry behind and get out for the night. I even had the pictures from the Silver Dollar City trip printed out and I brought paper supplies with me. Crystal (married to Nathan) met me there, and we lasted until midnight.

I didn't finish my album, although I did get the covers cut out and I got all of the photos taped down to their pages. Today I looked at all the boxes on the table that I hadn't put away yet and decided to leave them out for a couple of days so I will actually get the album done. I forgot how much of a mess I make when I scrap with paper goods. Digital is a lot cleaner!

However, as I worked on this this afternoon, the kids kept coming up and clamoring to see their pictures and their pages. All of them were flipping through what I had done and talking about that trip. Beth kept painting tags and stealing sticker letters to spell words on her painted tags. I liked making the album; the kids loved me making the album. Jack and I were talking about their reaction, and I have decided to make more time to make things like this that they enjoy so much. It was touching to see how much they enjoyed it.

I still have half of the album to finish filling in and journaling. It is a junque style album with chipboard pages, tag pages, transparency pages, etc. I will post pictures of all of it in a couple of days when I get it done. I just couldn't get through it all today feeling like I do.


I am going to go track down some cough syrup and Tylenol and see if I can make my throat not feel like somebody has been rubbing it with sandpaper. Then I am going to go to bed, where I can tuck my ice cold toes under Jack's legs to warm them up. I am crossing my fingers that the kids wake up feeling a lot better and this doesn't get any worse this week. We have a lot to do over the next seven days. We don't have time to be sick!

Dinner and a Movie Game

I am not a movie buff. I go to the movies about twice a year, if that often. I recognize faces, but I rarely can tell you which actors were in which movie. I do know lots of strange trivia just because I read voraciously. For instance, I can't tell you all of the movies Haley Joel Osmond was in, but I do know his sister is "Lily" on Hannah Montana. I don't get much more out of watching movies at home on DVD because I have a habit of reading while watching a movie. It works for me, but drives Jack crazy.

Matt, on the other hand, is a major movie buff. He can tell you who was in what movie, when movies are being released, who directed them, what their plot is about etc. In fact, we finally had to make a rule that he and Bob couldn't discuss movies or video games at the dinner table because they would take over the conversation with it. So for Christmas we got him a Scene It game. (Seriously... you have to check out all the Amazon deals at Christmas time.)

Josh and Mystery came over this evening with food, which I cooked. I also made Matt the pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting he has been wanting, and then we sat down to play Scene It while the younger kids were watching a movie.

My favorite parts were the pictograms. I almost have a chance of getting the answer right whether I have seen the movie or not. Matt was really good at the "fill in the quote" things. He and Josh usually had the answers before the blanks were even on the screen. Braggarts.

Faith and Mystery and I were paired up against Matt, Chet, Jack and Josh. The girls lost, but not toooo badly since Mystery has seen more movies than I have.

Then we discovered the Party Play feature and went with that. It was fun. Not once did I come up with the right answer at the right time. On some of the clues you see the character's clothing and props, without a body in the clothes. I knew it was Harrison Ford, but the question was to name the movie, in this case The Fugitive. Then if I needed to name an actor/character, I couldn't think of it but could come up with the movie title. I suck at this game.
It is a fun group game, though. And if it ever has Young Guns or Fried Green Tomatoes questions I will blow my competition away, even if my competition does have freakishly long toes.

Silver Dollar City

We have had tickets to go to Silver Dollar City for months, but we have held off so we could see it all set up for Christmas. On Sunday we packed up the kids and drove up to Branson for the day to use the tickets and enjoy the day together. This is going to go down as one of my favorite family memories... ever. In fact, I have been invited to an all-night crop this weekend, and after not paper scrapping for over a year I am going to break out the scrap crap and make an album with the best of the nearly 300 pictures I took.

Matt was wingman for the younger boys when they wanted to ride the scarier rides. It was awesome to watch them just having so much fun together. Kyle wouldn't ride the swing ride (although Todd couldn't wait to get on it),
but for some reason this behemoth appealed to him. And for me, the expression on his face makes this the best carnival ride photo.... ever. He did this the whole time, while Todd would occasionally open his eyes as he swirled by and smile at us, then promptly shut them again.
I love the interaction in this shot as Matt was telling Todd how well he had done as the ride finally came to a halt. After all those I-want-to-puke expressions throughout the ride, Kyle was all smiles when it ended.
As Chet and Matt rode a big roller coaster, these guys were planning which rides they wanted to hit. In the end they rode every single one in the kid area.
My baby is tall enough to ride the rides alone? Are you sure?
Maybe she is, but that doesn't mean she would! Faith was her buddy on all her rides, and when Beth didn't want her elephant to fly Faith just put her arm around her and they circled around at ground level.
Kyle was on the front of his roller coaster ride, and here he is telling us "No!" when we told him to put his arms in the air "like you just don't care" (Todd called up that last bit to him.)
For Beth, the very best part was the frog ride. They all hop in a circle ribbiting and bouncing. She wanted to bring it home and keep it in the backyard. The property is big enough, the truck isn't.
In the end, we watched the lighting of the tree, saw the parade of lights, ate a funnel cake, and then left the park to take the kids to dinner.
It was about as close to a perfect family day as we have ever had, and a fantastic memory to end the year on.

Christmas Pictures.. Here ya go, Matt!

On the Saturday before Mom left we all dressed up in our Christmas clothes and came into town to try to take some family pictures on the square. It turns out it wasn't a great location visually for taking pictures, and the wind decided to join us in full force. I ended up not liking most of the pictures, particularly since my camera is having issues at the moment, but I have been fiddling with them. In the meantime, Matt keeps asking me if I have them uploaded yet. "Hey, Mom... pictures done?" "Mom, where's the pictures?" "Mom, can I have the Christmas pictures before next Halloween?" Okayyyyyy, Matt.. here you go.


These actually all need to be edited better, and I may even retake the whole thing if I can't find a way to liven the pictures up a bit.
Here are my pretty little girls.
And my handsome guys.
And here is the entire 6 pack.
When we got home that afternoon, I asked them all to sit on my favorite bench for photos and try some that way. They came out better than the ones on the square, but by this point the kids were freezing.
Mom took some of Jack and I together too. (Matt just came in and saw this one and said "Any photos of me going up?)
Here are the individuals.
That afternoon I asked my icicles to change their clothes and put on the funny shirts we had found for them. We found one for each of them that really suited their personalities. These are going on the family cards. (Mr. Impatient's is the first one posted on this thread.)
Now, in the first set of individuals you can see Todd's picture. But this one IS Todd. How does so much personality get packed into one little person??

I am hanging this one in our bedroom.
So off I go to edit them better and get them ready for print. I want to frame them. I found the perfect frame at Target today that I am going to go back and get eventually.
It has the exact amount of spaces oriented exactly the way I need them for this set. Isn't it pretty?

The rest of the week's updates.

Faith's volleyball season is almost over, and she has come a long way. Having never really played volleyball before, she had to start from the ground up. One of the things she really had to get comfortable with was serving. The first several games her serves never made it over the net, and despite her efforts to be a good sport about it you could often see the disappointment etched on her face. But she has been practicing, and has finally become almost one with the ball on her serves. Last week it was her turn to serve during the last volley, which left earning the game point up to her. I could read the nervousness in her demeanor, but when that ball sailed over the net, and her team got that final point, she just lit up. Her teammates swarmed her, and I was just so happy for her. I didn't have any pictures of that, but I made sure the camera was ready for the next game.

She began the game by serving first for her team, and proceeded to serve five points in a row. It was a bright, shining moment for her. You go girl!



They ended up winning that set of games, and here they are cheering afterwards.

After the game I took the girls to McDonalds so Faith could redeem her free ice cream cone pass.
I think this will end up being the last bowl of salsa from my garden. It is a variety of bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, Big Boy tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and jalapenos.The tomatoes seem to be done, although I still have about a hundred jalapenos and peppers out there. I will probably end up dehydrating those for future chilis.

There is a baby hamburger in the next door pasture who likes to come over and play in our tall grass. Yes, our back yard is calf-high again. All the rain this year had our acreage growing faster than we could deal with it with one little riding mower and both of us working. Therefore, we are growing majestic hills of hay, and are not really sure what we will end up doing with it. Our neighbors all have so much hay already that they don't need ours. Maybe this little guy will corrupt enough of his herd-mates into breaking through the fencelines to come chow down on it.
My friend Roberta calls this a Willy Worm. I assumed it was a caterpillar of some sort, but I really am not sure. They keep hanging out on our doorstep for some reason. Do you see its knife-ish mouth on the right side? I really hope that thing is just for cutting leaves, but I am not willing to let one crawl on my hands to find out if it is carnivorous.

Oh yes, I need to update you on Chet's run for Student Council. I am terribly sad to report that he was defeated. By one vote. That isn't the biggest kicker, though. He lost by one vote, but he didn't vote for himself. He says he thinks it is selfish to vote for himself. I was flabbergasted, and yet so proud of him for deciding what his own honor code is and sticking with it, even though it really did cost him this time. I told you he would be a good candidate for Congressional reform!

The kids and I are on our own this weekend. Jack and our friend Nathan have gone on an Emmaus Walk and will be back on Sunday. I don't know how I didn't notice Kevin giving Jack bunny ears when I took this. Jack and Kevin are both six feet tall, but they sure look short next to Donnie and Nathan, don't they?

I have one more story to share, then I am going to finish up the housework, chase the kids to bed, and relish being able to stay up all night and scrap. Kyle brought home a note from the nurse. (I will scan it on Monday and post it here.)Did he have a fever, you ask? No. He wasn't coughing, didn't have a headache, and wasn't in any pain. What caused him such distress that he was sent to the nurse's office? I quote...the "stomach" box is checked, and in the notes it says "shirt on backwards, said it was choking him." Do you think the nurse had a straight face as she wrote this?