Bells Will Be Ringing.....Part 2

Colby and I went on Monday night to RING THE BELL. Oh what a huge difference 5 years can make in hanging with your Mom. Cale and I sang Christmas carols on Friday. Colby says to me when we are there, "could you not sing Mom its kind of embarrassing." Nice, thanks my boy! I took candy canes for him to hand out to people and he kind of liked that. We had a good time, and I tried to explain to him how fortunate we are and how important it is to give back, I'm not sure if the boys understand this yet.

This is definitely a tradition we are going to continue every year!

Bells Will Be Ringing.....

Our family is so blessed. I really hope to instill on our boys the importance of helping those that are less fortunate than us. There are lots of ways to help others and I want the boys to realize how nice it feels to contribute to this world.

I was reading a newspaper article a couple weeks ago about the fact that the Salvation Army had a huge shortage of volunteers this year. It said that when there is no one there to man the kettles the donations go way down, I thought this totally made sense I almost never put money in the kettle if someones not there. Not sure why, but I don't, and I guess most others don't either.

Soooooo last Friday Cale and I went to RING THE BELL, and tomorrow night Colby and I will RING THE BELL. We are working at the same location, inside Merle Hay Mall near the food court. It was a lot of fun, and am looking forward to tomorrow with Colby. Its not a huge thing, but its a start.

Oh Yeah!

So as always I'm behind in my posts....Wednesday night we got to see the Glenn Beck Christmas Tour. It was absolutely amazing! I had heard such great things about it so when I heard from Amy that the show was coming here, I jumped at the chance to go. Out of 8 cities I cannot believe that Des Moines was actually one of the stops. Woohoo!

His show is described by himself as politically incorrect. The last story of the night I was wondering if anyone had a dry eye. He talked about Jesus, the man he became, and what he did for all of us. He is an awesome speaker and I hope that since this is the last year for this tour that he will release it on DVD.

My biggest regret would be that in my rush to get out the door I forgot my camera and then kind of thought they wouldn't be allowed anyhow. But I was wrong, there was a lady in front of us that took pictures the whole time. I found this picture on google and had to giggle because I totally knew the story that went with it.

Amy, Mark, Shawn and I went to dinner & the show and had an absolutely fabulous time. We were in the fourth row-our tickets ROCKED!

Addiction....

I have a new addiction this is my confession. Usually I am not a fan of Triscuit crackers I always thought it was a little like eating a bale of hay. But not these, they are sooooo good. To quote Dora the Explorers friend Backpack---yum, yum, yum, delicioso!

Merry Christmas!

I read a similar post on my friend Becky's blog, and I'm sure that is something we all feel often at this time of year. I am a huge fan of Glenn Beck -listening to his radio show and watching his show on CNN daily I guess you could call me a groupie. We have tickets to go to his Christmas show next week--one of his nine city tour stops is here in Des Moines, can you believe how lucky we are? I am totally pumped. He describes his show as politically incorrect since there is a lot of talk of Christmas and Jesus. I love it.

Today I stopped at Dahl's near our house to mail our Christmas cards, and outside was a man ringing the bell for The Salvation Army donations. This guy was so funny. You could hear him inside the store and all through the parking lot. MERRY CHRISTMAS! he was saying at the top of his lungs, how refreshing to hear those words. I heard one woman say "its so nice to hear you say that" so he says "well than I'll say it again-"MERRY CHRISTMAS" When I said Merry Christmas to him he said PRAISE THE LORD, I think he was about as politically incorrect as you can get.

More gingerbread fun!

The Sustala's
The Patterson's
The Singleton's
The Singleton's
The Adair's

Fun with Gingerbread!

The Workman's
The May's
The Cecil's
The Smith's
The Brown's

&

The Wilson's

Last night we had a potluck/gingerbread house night for church. It was soooo much fun. The food everyone contributed was awesome. The kids got along well and it was a great time for fellowship. I tried to take some pictures but got a little distracted and didn't get a whole lot. I was totally excited for last night and got crafty this week with some things, I'll post some pictures of that later. Here are some pictures of all the families hard at work. We had a few more families who had signed up but of course with this wonderful time of year comes lots of sickness too. We missed all of you who couldn't join us.