Family Night With The Jones, Parkers and Stahmanns

The Jones invited us over for Family Night last night. What a wonderful time! They had the cutest costumes for the kids to perform a nativity scene for us. Boston played a shepherd, Piper an angel, Sarger was the inn keeper, and Briggs was the STAR! It was so cute. Then we all enjoyed birthday cake together. What a nice evening. Thanks Jones!

Puzzles Are So Fun!

Another tradition that we have is I like to set up a table and chairs for some puzzling. This year we got a puzzle of Mickey Mouse so that the kids can get excited about our upcoming trip to Disney World at the end of January. Doing a puzzle is a perfect activity. We get to talk and laugh and enjoy the fire while listening to Christmas music. It makes for some fun holiday memories. I really love it.

THIRD ANNUAL BARRON NATIVITY!!!

So much excitement and anticipation goes into our annual Barron family nativity! It has become a family tradition. We invite everyone we can think of to come. Neighbors, teachers, everyone from church, bus drivers, mail man, people at the store, Daddy's co workers, and they are all invited to bring their friends. It is a celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Our Christmas season revolves around this big event. Every year I get nervous about the animals, the hot chocolate, the cookies, the weather and are all of the actors going to show up on time. The people come and take a 20 minute tour around the backyard. The tour begins at the top of the driveway. A tour guide welcomes them and they begin their journey to Bethlehem. Daddy set up five different sound systems around the yard that play music. There is music playing along the road to get people in a quiet and reverent mood. We also have tiki torches burning all along the tour. First they enter the shepherds field. There are shepherds and goats crouched around a warm fire. As the people look at the shepherds, a bright lights comes on behind them and it is an angel appearing. She tells them of the good tidings. Then many angels appear around her and they sing "Hark the herald angels sing". After this, the travelers go on to meet a roman solder who tells them where to go and that they need to find lodging for the night. They walk on further to a small inn. They knock on the door only to find out that the inn is full. The inn keeper tells them to check the animal stalls next door. As they approach the barn, lights come on and you get to witness the nativity scene of Baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The shepherds approach and then the three wise men come to worship the new born King. Beautiful music is playing in the background. After the song is done, the lights go out and the people are invited to share hot chocolate and cookies with us in the garage. They stay and visit for as long as they would like. It is a fun night and full of the true spirit of Christmas. The first year we did it we had 150 people go through, the second year we had 200. This year we had 250. We did 10 tours. A huge success! We feel so blessed to be able to do this each year. I hope that the kids remember this tradition and that it helps thier faith the Jesus Christ to grow.

There's A New Colonel In Town!

The Barron family now has two new loves! Our donkeys! I found this beautiful brown donkey on Craig's list. "Do you deliver?" I asked. I called to talk to his owner and she talked about how sweet he is and how mellow is. These are good characteristics and she would deliver! We decided to go for it, besides, the "Barron Family Nativity" is days away and we NEED a donkey! As I was talking to the lady about the donkey, she threw in a buy one get one FREE and included this sweet little white baby donkey. He is attached to the big brown one. All for two hundred dollars. That is a good price for one donkey not being delivered. We instantly fell in love with these two sweet donkeys. They are both so mellow and the baby is just shy and so precious. We named the big one COLONEL and the baby OLIVER TWIST or "Ollie". We plan to be able to ride them and possibly get a donkey cart to take us for rides around the block! Fun!

Christmas Luau ANYONE?

My husband found someone who was giving away a FREE pig. The word to be scared of is FREE. The lady brought him over. Her cheeks and nose were red from all of the tears. She was going to miss this love able, sweet pig. He was "truly a part of the family". They fought over who would get to sleep with "OWEN" every night. She begged to be able to come over and visit with him. Then she was gone. ( I think I heard burning rubber sounds as she left.) Daddy decided that someone should sleep out in the barn with Owen because he was used to sleeping with people. Boston thought this sounded fun so he was designated to do it. Being the careful one, I insisted that Boston sleep in a different room then Owen because I do not know this creature and who knows if he likes to eat little boys noses in the night? Boston was fine with this idea. We got him set up and turned off the lights. As we left Daddy said, "What do you bet he doesn't make it?" Well, he did make it all night was seemed to do fine. The kids started enjoying Owen. Soon I found out why Owen was free. To put it nicely, he is evil. Owen is destructive! He chews things up, knocks things over and he even turned on the water in the barn and flooded the barn under a foot of water. My husband told me about these things while laughing. I will save the giggles for when he is gone out of my life. Until then, my quest is OWEN GOES! FREE pig anyone!

Mistletoe $1

I really wanted some mistletoe to hang up in the house (for obvious reasons). I told the kids that if anyone could bring me home some mistletoe they would get a prize. Boston LOVES these types of challenges. Off he went. He didn't just come home with a small bundle, he kept coming home with bunches of it! Well, I got a great idea of having a "mistletoe stand". Boston made a sign and recruited his friend Mike. We made it into nice bundles and put pretty ribbon around it. He went out to the front of the neighborhood and ended up selling out! He sold $20 worth and they had fun doing it! They all ready have plans for next year.

Quincey's Gift To Shadow Ridge Middle School

Quincey painted this picture of a panther that she gave to her principle, Mr. Gibson. It was just a fun summer project. It will be fun to have her painting hung up in the school for her little brothers and sisters to see as they go through that school. He loved it and I was proud of Quincey for doing it.

December Nights

Some of the very best memories I have are of our family are December nights. Daddy lights a fire and we play games or work on our puzzle with Christmas music in the background. These are great times. Tag always chooses to be with the family over watching sports. What a blessing. He adds so much to our lives by spending time with us. I'm glad that he has good priorities. Life can be very crazy with all of these kids, but it's these moments that make it all worth it. Our very own little piece of heaven.

November 13th 2008

For the record, this year I put up our Christmas decorations on November 13th! I loved every minute of it! Doing it that early just frees me up to get on to the next exciting "thing" for the holidays. (Plus I get a little kick out of the reactions from my family and neighbors.) =D "WHAT!!! Already!"

Gingerbread House

While Quincey was at Young Women's the rest of the kids and I built a ginger bread house. It was fun for all. Who doesn't like candy and frosting? These kids ate this entire GB house within two days. I made them wait one day before diving in so we could enjoy it for at least one day. After one day, gone instantly.

Briggs Barron

After getting ready for Church, I took some pictures of Briggs while we were waiting for everyone to come. Briggs is so sweet and handsome. I have often thought that in a way, my life as Briggs’s Mom is a piece of cake compared to mothering our other children who will someday move on and make all of their own decisions. For parents of kids who have that potential, you have to always be on guard, always advocate, always consider how this or that will affect the future, You can’t be afraid to confront, you have to tear down walls everywhere you go. You have to be some kind of super parent and do everything just so, whereas I can make mistakes or take a break now and then with Briggs and because it won’t affect the endpoint nearly so much, it a little bit easier. I guess I have put Briggs in the Lords hands. I will do my very best to help him to progress, but we are prepared for no progression and I am at peace with that. It will be fun to see him some day without any challenges, where he can communicate freely and tell us all what he is thinking about. Until then we will love him as much as we can and make sure that he is a happy boy. What a blessing he is. He has made it.

Fall Colors!

This was what we came home to after our trip. The house looked so pretty with all the red oaks turning red. Life is beautiful!

Grammy and Papa's pond

I took these pictures of the pond at Grammy and Papa's house. It looked so calm and beautiful. I thought they turned out neat.

On the town in Jameson ,MO

The day after Thanksgiving, Mom and I took the girls and went shopping in the little Amish town of Jameson. We saw lots of craft fairs, and stores. We also toured an old cabin that is in the town center. (I can't seem to get enough of those.) I even managed to get a picture of an Amish buggy. Fun!

Grammy's GAZELLE!

Grammy has this exercise contraption that the kids went crazy on....the gazelle. Briggs was on that thing non stop. (Watch out Tony Little!) It was so funny to watch how much he enjoyed it. Sarger got a little bit possessive of it. (He will learn to share in the next few years I bet. =D )