It's the most wonderful.....

Or possible stressful time of the year. I'm sure most everyone feels pressure during Christmas, I usually feel more relaxed then I do this year. But next Monday I'll be 4 weeks away from delivering a 4th child, I'll have a husband that will leave the next day to go back to work, working away from the girls has been difficult for them, at least Maddie, and I have no idea what job I'll have after the baby comes and no child care lined up if I do get another project. Pile that list with I've done nothing to get ready for baby and trying to make plans for 4 Christmases to make everyone happy is leaving this mama overwhelmed.
I need a break, but since that's not happening maybe I just need to spend some time in prayer. Also I should remember that I'm lucky to have families that want to spend time with us over the holidays, even though I'd just like to stay home; I also have a great project right now that I do get to semi work from home; and so far an extremely healthy pregnancy. I know things could be worse! We did manage to squeeze in shopping for a tree and breaking out some Christmas Jammie's! Cooper gets to wear his to school tomorrow for a Christmas read in and singing and party! I don't have great pics of decorating the tree cause we squeezed that one in Tuesday night after basketball homecoming! See it's a busy time of year.






So while everyone might not get their way next week sometimes you just have to make sacrifices; possibly it'll work out better then planned.....

Busy Last Week!

Last week we were busy. I'm continuing working in Alva, the girls are doing okay with the adjustment. Maddie isn't a big fan, so hopefully this is short lived.

Cooper's Christmas program was Tuesday, my mom and Mama Jo came up for the program to watch him. I didn't get a picture of all of them together, I should've. After the heater in the Auditorium wasn't working well, they moved their 2 shows to 1 show in the cafeteria. It was crowded. I attempted to film and take pictures for Jeremy, because they were making their start in the Frontier tourney at the same time as the program. So I was especially glad for the help, to attempt my video and picture taking while not having to worry about the girls.

See you can barely see him. Oh well. Kirk, our new elf came to our house after Cooper's Christmas program....thanks mom. But in all seriousness, the kids are so excited to look for him every morning, now if I just remember to move him around. The play was cute, the text from basketball mom's were stressful, but we won, so all turned out good! We had a break on Wednesday, then Thursday I didn't go to Alva and just worked from home so we could make Thursday's game for the tourney. They played Tonkawa, which is a bit of a rival, we have not beat them since Jeremy started coaching at Newkirk. We won in a thrilling double overtime game for the boys to make an appearance in the Championship game!! Everyone was so excited, and I didn't go into labor, so double bonus! Friday night the JV played and the kids and I stayed at home.
Saturday was the annual Newkirk Christmas Parade;/ I took the kids to that before heading back to Frontier for the Championship game. The parade was pretty cute, and freezing cold. As long as the kids were collecting candy, they were good to go. Except Maddie just sat in the back of the car and let her siblings round up the candy.

Then off to Frontier we went to watch the boys take an impressive commanding lead the entire game. They played so well, I am so proud of them. I am also so excited for them, it's been a long time since a boys team has accomplished a tourney win, so we're told. They have worked hard for it, hopefully it's only the beginning. We've got 2 games next week, so hopefully they'll continue their winning streak out! I know winning isn't everything, but it's definitely more fun when they win!

 

Newkirk's biggest fans!! Jeremy had extra medals, so everyone wanted one but Maddie. Kellyn actually tried to wear hers to bed, but don't worry we didn't let her!!

 

Tis the season!

Nope not the Holiday season, but it's Basketball season, finally! I know I'm a crazy coach's wife who is probably more invested in these games then I should be, but a happy home is a winning coach! (He's not that bad if they don't win though!) We had our annual pasta dinner on Sunday night, the regulars came, the new guys just don't know what they are missing.
We ate leftovers 2 nights and I sent a pan of spaghetti home with one of the boys. But you better believe I kept the entire ice cream cake roll that was left!
















Monday night the JV played Ponca City, Jeremy only played his best JV players for half, so they lost that game. Then last night was the official start for Varsity. They were playing a private school out of Wichita. The boys were pretty nervous cause if you matched the teams up their stats might have looked better then ours. But the boys played so well, ahead by 10 or so the entire time until the 4th quarter when it got close. I told them after the game I like those relaxing games, and they said they liked the closer ones. I reminded them that's all fun until I go into labor.....they agreed so maybe they'll make the rest of the games easy wins! The night ended well with the JV and Varsity boys winning, and the Varsity girls won too at the last minute! (No JV girls game.) So opening night was an entire sweep for Newkirk! Hopefully there are a lot more of those to come!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We spent Thanksgiving day at Mama Jo's and Papa Staff's this year. I'm pretty sure this is the first time since Jeremy and I have been married we've had Thanksgiving at their house. We've been with them on Thanksgiving, but it's always been at a large family reunion. David, Leslie, Charlie, and all the Anderson's minus Luke were there. We had a lot of fun, and all the kids loved playing with each other. David was really set on frying a turkey this year, so he did all the research, bought everything, and told Mama Jo to go ahead and cook on just in case. His turned out so good, it was delicious! The biggest bonus was he didn't blow anything up!

Christmas Cookies

I know it isn't Christmas yet, but Cooper asked to decorate cookies on Monday; so I obliged and made it happen. He has been off all week for Thanksgiving Break, we will call it some mom guilt cause starting Monday I'll leave my kids with a someone other then my mom while I work. (Which I realize I'm totally lucky cause I've only had to leave Cooper with her longer term.) So after making dough yesterday and cutting and baking today, I let them loose with the icing. They had fun, until Kellyn woke up and stole Maddie's star cookie. Luckily, I made plenty of cut outs to last us through the Christmas Holiday. They insisted on wearing their aprons!









Cooper went a little overboard with the icing, and Maddie well of course she made rainbows on all of her cookies!

Date Night!

Jeremy and I got a rare date night in Thursday, and it was a big one! Back in April or May I bought tickets to go see Justin Timberlake cause I may or may not be slightly obsessed with him. As in you should've seen behind my door and both sides of my closet in high school. I'm not ashamed, I love him! I thought about selling our tickets cause I figured we had to drive to Tulsa and pay a babysitter for several hours, but Jeremy luckily still has his head on straight and said no. I missed JT's last solo tour for my internship in NYC; I had won tickets, so it was a little sad to miss but totally worth it. I'll just say his 2 hour 45 minute performance was worth every penny to me! We had a great time and I don't regret going one bit! Personally I'm a fan of all his music, but I have a lot of respect for him cause he's not reliving his teen years or hasn't completely acted out since he was so famous so young. His show was very entertaining and had a very cool moving stage and light show! There is a good chance that this was our last date night before Drew gets here! I should've taken a pic of the people's faces in front of us when they found out not only was I about 31 weeks pregnant, but that it was our 4th, oh and our oldest is 5. They told Jeremy basically he needed to create an app cause teaching and coaching wasn't going to cut it! So here are a few pics, as you can see I'm HUGE!















Oh and in other news, which is good. Friday I got a call and it looks good that I've landed a landman project to get me by until Drew is born. The bad thing is it's in Alva so I've got to find someone to watch the girls, but I figure maybe it'll be a nice break for all of us, and hopefully during that time I can book some weddings for the spring and summer! We are hoping a nice lady from church will be able to watch the girls. See God is good!

Change is good??

I ask that question with some question marks, cause this is a time where I feel like change isn't really good. I've been pretty quiet on the blog lately, nothing exciting going on with the kids, which is nice. A little slower. However, my contracting job that I've had since 2008 is not good. I recently finished a project, and now don't have any work. There are people that say "isn't it time you're just a mom?" Well, I kindly remind them that my husband is a teacher and a coach and his salary unfortunately doesn't allow that. So while this timing is awful and extra stressful cause I'm oh, you know only 8.5 weeks away from giving birth and Christmas is coming up soon; I'm trying to make the best of it. If you've known me for a while; I do have this photography business that I've always wanted to really make my full time job/income. So a few months ago, I started getting serious about it, changing my logo, redesigning my website, and business cards. (Truth be told, I should've done this years ago!) I started to attempt to get more facebook page likes, which isn't that easy and started advertising on theknot.com to brides. Weddings is the best source of income for this, basically working about 20 weekends a year would replace my contract income and then some. So, since everyone wants to hire someone that's real pregnant I'm trying to remain optimistic that I'll start to book up for next year, weddings, family pics, events, you name it, I'm available. I've debated a lot about writing this, this is why I chose to write a post about it, I need prayers, lots of prayers. I need prayers mostly for peace and patience. Cause again, it's stressful, real stressful, and I'd be lying if I said it was easy. But luckily this isn't the first time we've been in this situation, and every single time God provides the perfect answer in the perfect timing, but let me remind you, I'm 30 weeks pregnant. I am so fortunate to have such amazing parents who are real supportive of me trying to make a photography business and who I know won't let us go hungry. So while I know that God is so good and he will provide for us as we need it, I still need prayers, take that back Jeremy and I both could use some extra prayers, cause it isn't easy for either of us. Although he's handling it a lot better then I am! So that's that, and that'll be all I post about it cause I don't like talking about it. (You'd think my house would be squeaky clean since I pretty much don't have anything else to do all day, but funny thing, it's still not....go figure)

Halloween

Well like everyone else we did the Halloween thing, a couple if times. Ponca City does a Goblins on Grand party, for kids 12 and under to do games so we started with that last Thursday.












This is where we learned the Kellyn is going to be all over trick or treating, she loves her candy!
Next up we carved some pumpkins!


















Grandma came up Thursday morning to trick or treat with the kindergarten class, Kellyn and Maddie came a long and they got quite the loot!






She stayed around til after lunch so I could make Cooper's class their treats for the party. I thought it would be wise to sign up for the Halloween party since I currently only have 2 kids at home and Christmas is a little close to my due date to do that party!
I did ghost banana pops and spider web cheese pizza!


















Then that night was time to trick or treat. So we for the past 2 years have gone over to some friends house that throw a huge Halloween bash and eat dinner then go out and trick or treat, then come back for dessert! The kids love Deb's house!

And now we've got enough candy to last for weeks around here!