My Mom has a Blog!

Just wanted to let everyone know that my mom has a blog. She is on my list of blogs. I think that she will have to invite you to view her blog. I'm not sure. If you can't connect to her page and want to be invited you can comment me your email address so she can invite you. I either accept or reject your comments; so I can just reject the one showing your email after I get it so no-one else sees it. I'm sure she would love to have some "friends" to read her blogs and leave comments.

Christian

Blah! Again, it has been WAY too long since I have blogged! Christian's Birthday was quite a few months ago and I never did a special blog just for him. I decided not to blog about his Birthday, but here's a blog just for him!


I look at my first baby and I'm amazed at how much he's grown! I've always suspected he'll be built like his Daddy, but it's becoming more and more evident. It seems like we just bought him new pants, but they are already getting too short for him!

Christian is 8 now, and he really is a good kid. He's very helpful around the house, and good at his schoolwork. He seems to get along well with other kids. He will still accepts hugs from his
Mommy! (Even though he does act a little embarrassed about it). What more could a Mom ask for?

Since Christian is getting older, I've started worrying about the stages in life that are coming up for him. I worry about having the right type of relationship with him so that he feels he can come to his Dad or me with questions and concerns he may have. I'm worried that because he requires so much less attention than the other kids, that we give him less attention. I want to try to give him more attention, and let him know how much we appreciate his helpfulness.

In school, Christian's favorite subjects are Math and Science. I think that being good at these subjects could be really good for him when choosing a profession someday.

Christian is such a good help to us; sometimes I worry that we expect too much out of him. At the same time, I am proud of how responsible he already is.

My Crazy Happy Holidays

Christmas time is always kind of crazy. We had quite a few different celebrations. One weekend we had a Christmas party with the Brethren here on Saturday at Bro. Sean & Sis. Marisela's. It was really fun. We were supposed to dress up crazy; so I went all out and fixed my hair crazy and everything. I don't have a picture of it when I had the ornaments and everything in it because I forgot my camera, but I had Matt take a picture of it after we got home. Sis. Marisela has the better pictures of everyone in the get-ups!



Anyway, on the same weekend we went to Brownsville on Sunday so that I could go to the Sisters Christmas party. It was nice to have an evening with the sisters to visit and exchange gifts. We had drew names ahead of time. I had Ashley, and it turned out she had me! We also did the white elephant gift exchange. We had the party at a Chinese restaurant. I had a really good time.



The weekend before Christmas we went to Bro. Lee & Sis. Sabriena's wedding. It was a nice little personal ceremony. We were so glad we could be there to share in their joy and see the different brethren who came.



My Uncle and Aunt came to visit for a few days after the wedding. I really enjoyed the time we got to spend with them. They even babysat for us one evening so we could finish up our Christmas shopping, and then we did the same for them (even though their children are older, and didn't really need babysat) They had gotten gifts for us; so we had a little "Christmas" one evening with them.



We didn't really know until the last minute where we were going for Christmas, but we ended up going to Brownsville. We opened all of our gifts ahead of time so weren't hauling them with us. On Christmas Eve the McManus clan gathered at Gramma Linda's house and all the kids opened gifts from her. It was a very full house!!! We spent the night at Gramma's house, along with Bro. Brian & Sis. Michelle & their kids. The kids opened their stockings in the morning, and then we had Christmas dinner at Bro. Marshal & Sis. Connie's house. We spent the day there eating, visiting and playing games.



Saturday morning we took the kids up to my Grandpa's house to visit for a couple of hours, and then we had a Christmas party with my family for lunch. We gave out our gifts, ate and played games.



There were quite a few at church in Brownsville on Sunday. About half went to Bro. Marshal & Sis. Connie's to eat and the other half joined us at Gramma Linda's for haystacks. We had a very busy, but enjoyable Christmas weekend.



New Year's Eve was on a Thursday this year (which is our church night). After church Bro. Rusty & Sis. Mary invited everyone over for snacks & games to wait out the new year with our Brethren. I had a good time. We had Bro. Lee & Sis. Sabriena spend the night with us so they wouldn't have to travel home that late. It was nice to have them over and get to fix breakfast for them and visit with them in the morning.



Sunday we had a Birthday celebration for Zaccheus, but I will make another more detailed blog about that.



All in all we really enjoyed the Holidays, but it was kind of crazy busy! My house and I are still not fully recuperated from it!



I think what I will do, is I will make another post with some pictures from our Holidays.



I hope all of you enjoyed the Holidays and have a wonderful New Year!

My little 3 year old

As always I am late getting my postings up. For those of you who know, Garrison's Birthday is old news! I thought about just skipping blogging about it, but I wanted to do this post about him. We didn't really do anything really special for his Birthday. His cousins from Brownsville were able to be there so that made it a little more special. Here is a picture of some sunglasses that his cousins gave him for his Birthday! He looks very cool...

Here he is showing us how old he is.

Garrison is definitely 3! He has really hit a difficult stage in life. There's times when he wants to do things for himself and he throws a fit if you try to help him; then there are other times when he wants you to help him and throws a fit if you don't! We've really been struggling trying to find the balance with him and his fits. We don't want to go too easy on him so that he won't throw fits, but we don't want to be too hard on him either. As each of our children grow older we've really seen where we need to be so careful and seek the Lord in how to deal with each of them in the right way.

Garrison can be so loving sometimes. There's pretty often that he'll come up to me for no reason and give me a hug and say "I like you Mommy." It just melts my heart when he does this. There's times when I ask him to do little jobs for me and he's so proud of himself when he does it! He's also been showing his McManus side! He likes to do funny things and make people laugh. The kids have been on a joke kick lately! Here is one of Garrison's favorites:

"Knock Knock"

"Who's there?"

"Why did the bear cross the road?"

"I don't know, why?"

"Because it was the chicken's day off!"

And this is where I make a point to laugh hysterically!

Garrison, Mommy loves you and she hopes that she can be a good Mommy and help you to grow up to be a wonderful man!

IT'S A BOY!

Well, God has blessed me once again with a beautiful healthy baby! Things went real well (as well as labor could be), and me and baby are doing good.

My mom and husband are bugging me about needing to lay back down; so I won't go into too much detail, but here are the important facts:

Zaccheus Cash McManus was born on January 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 P.M. He was 6 1/2 lbs and 20 in. long.

I will try to get some better pictures on later, and if anyone wants some more information, just ask away and I will get back on here some other time.

Thank You every one for your prayers that helped to get baby Zaccheus safely here to us!

Snow Days & Family Time

Well, I finally decided to acknowledge the existence of my blog! I have a lot to catch up on, I'm sure. I just put new pictures on my computer and have plans to turn some of them into blogs.

The most immediate news is that we have had snow ALL WEEK. Now for some of you that is the norm, but for here it is very irregular. The amazing thing is there's no end in sight it seems. We really don't know when it will let up. I will post pictures of my family playing in the snow. For the most part I've enjoyed this weather. My biggest concern really has been what our energy bills are going to look like after this. Which leads to some other news...

I was going to save this for it's very own blog entry, but it really is a part of this blog, sooo.. Matt got laid off last Friday. The construction business is really slow right now, and they just didn't need him on the job anymore. We are trying to be as up beat about it as possible, and trust in the Lord. It seems like that we are doing ok so far. Matt especially seems to be taking it really well. His last layoff he didn't deal with it so well. God has always taken care of us, and we are really trying to trust that he will continue to do so.

One thing that we have thought of is with the weather this week, and then Christmas and New Years the next couple of weeks he really might not have made that much more money working than getting unemployment (he doesn't get paid Holidays). He's been looking for odd jobs or something, but so far hasn't found anything, but this week people have pretty much been hibernating at home as much as possible; which takes me back to my original subject...

Christmas break was not supposed to start until next week, but because of the road conditions Christian has been out of school all week, and Matt has been home all week too. It has actually been really nice to have the family time that we've had this past week. It seems like it's been a long time since our lives had slowed down enough for us all to just enjoy each other. We've spent more time doing fun things with the kids. Matt has got an amazing amount of things done around here too. It has been really nice to have him here each day to help me.

I think it helps him to see what my day to day life is like too. There's always so much to do. Today he was really getting restless and tired of being at home, but for the most part it's been really nice. Matt has actually been the one to run the few errands that have needed done in the last few days. I have actually never drove in these kind of conditions; so he's been doing the running around. So he hasn't been holed up at home as much as me, but then I'm used to it.

Today it snowed quite a bit. We haven't been letting the kids play out in it too much because they've had colds. Plus at the beginning of this weather it was in the 20's or below, which was way too cold! If the snow is still there tomorrow we might let them play in it some. I've also been considering making snow ice-cream. Yum! My aunt told me how to do it today, and it sounds simple enough, and I'm sure the kids will like it.

Anyway, there's a little update on our life. I better get to bed so I can enjoy more snow and family time tomorrow! There isn't going to be church in the morning because of the weather, but I might see what Matt thinks about us at least having a little family Bible reading or something.

I will try to blog again soon, and take the time to visit everyone else's blogs. Enjoy these pictures:

The "Twin Cousins'" 2nd Birthday

As some of you know, my sister-in-law Kim and I had our last babies only 17 hours apart. Her's was born on the 28th of October and Garrison was born on the 29th. We had their first Birthday party together and I thought it would be neat to have their Birthday's together again. When they get older they might not like doing this, but I think it's kind of neat to celebrate together when their this young. Anyway, since their Birthday's were in the middle of the week, Matt and I went down the following weekend and we had a little party for them after church on Sunday.

I really enjoyed the party. I, of course, took pictures. I think it will be neat to look back on them in years to come and see them sharing their special days together. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Here are the Birthday kids with their cakes. I had a REALLY hard time finding a Blues Clues cake, by the way. Garrison really likes Blues Clues, but you can't hardly find it in the stores anymore. So if anyone finds some nice Blues Clues items, let me know and I might see if I can get them for him for Christmas.
Here's Kylee blowing out her candles.

Garrison actually blew his out in one blow! I was surprised, of course Kylee had just shown him how it was done...

Kylee opening her presents with her big sister Shay.

Daddy's helping Garrison open his presents. Whatever this one was, he was excited about it!

He got $2 in one of his cards. We still need to take him to the store and let him spend them...

He really liked his presents, but it was nap time too; so he looks pretty tired, poor little guy!

You can't really see, but Kylee LOVED the hangers that came with these cute clothes. We were all laughing about that!

I did manage to find a few small Blues Clues things, but not much.

Here's the Birthday boy hamming it up while he makes a mess with his Birthday cake.

This is just a really cute picture of the 2 of them at Gramma's house later on. What cuties! Garrison is wearing his new shirt and vest from Uncle Mark and Aunt Kim.

Well, I thought I would post these pictures before Garrison's Birthday was too far gone! I just today put the pictures onto the computer. I have some other pictures I want to put on a post too, but that will have to wait until another day. It also dawned on me that I should take some pictures of my pregnant self so you all can see how fat and sassy I'm getting. Who knows when that will happen though. I have approximately 2 months left. Time is flying by. I really need to get busy making sure I have everything ready for this precious little bundle...

Spending Time With Dad

I'm sorry everyone that it has taken me so long to make a new post. Life has been busy, but I still think I could have taken the time to post. After I get this posted I will try to take time to slowly catch up on everyone else's blog.

In my last post I had mentioned that I was going to go spend a few days in B-ville. He was actually doing a lot better than he had been, but he was still so weak and so much frailer looking than when I had last saw him. I left on a Tuesday and had planned to come back on Saturday morning. Matt had to work; so I left him behind at home by himself. Dad had a lot of visiting family while I was there, so he was in pretty good spirits. I spent a lot of time at Dad and Mom's house through the week, and I was doing pretty good dealing with Dad's illness, I thought. On Friday my pregnancy emotions got the better of me, and I had a pretty weepy day. Early that morning I was laying in bed feeling my baby move all over the place and I got to thinking about how I always like to have Dad there when I have my babies (not in the room, but in the house). It occurred to me that if he didn't get better that he may not be there this time. Anyway, throughout the day thoughts like that would creep up on me and I felt very emotional. I was trying to decide whether to come home Friday or wait until Saturday morning. After the day I had I really felt like I needed my husband; so I went home on Friday evening.

We spent this past weekend in B-ville too. It seems like Dad has stayed pretty much the same, except that maybe he's lost even more weight. It seems like they've been able to keep his bowels moving pretty regular. He's still really weak, but he's able to walk by himself (but not very far at a time) and get up and down by himself for the most part. What we're worried about now is that his stomach is so sensitive and he really can't eat very solid foods or he throws it up, or it really causes him a lot of pain and makes him get worse for awhile. He just hasn't been able to consume all the calories he needs. Matt and I found him a liquid diet that was 350 calories per 8 oz can, but the first time he drank some of it (about half a can) he threw quite a bit of it back up. He thought maybe it was a little too rich for him. Anyway, Mom has been trying to think of things that will be easy on his stomach and have lots of calories. I think they will try mixing the liquid diet with other things, or only give him a couple drinks at a time. Anyway, him and those that help him need prayers that they will know what to do for him. If anyone has any suggestions as to what to feed him I would love to hear it and will pass it on to my Mom.

I actually stayed up with Dad Saturday night. Matt slept in the spare room so I could get him if I needed his muscles. I didn't get much sleep until after 6 when I traded places with Matt so I could get some sleep, but I enjoyed the opportunity to help my Dad somehow. Sometimes when someone is sick like that you really don't know how to help them. Matt actually didn't wake me up until after church was over; so I missed church, but I'm glad I got to stay up with Dad.

You might pray for my Dad's spirit. It's so hard to keep a good attitude when your sick for so long. Just pray that he will have the grace to endure whatever God wants him too.

Thanks again for all your prayers.

Pumpkin Patch

After the days of being apart while I was visiting my Dad, Matt and I decided to do something fun as a family on Saturday. Around here there are quite a few farms that are open to the public this time of year. We went to one last year that we really enjoyed; so we decided to take the kids to a farm again.



At first it seemed like the day might not not turn out that well. The first farm we went to was not as interesting for the kids as we had hoped; so they were kind of grumpy and irritable. We finally left and decided to go to the same farm as we had went to last year since we knew we enjoyed it last year (and it happened to be close to where we were already)



This farm was much more fun. There was a neat gift shop that Matt and I enjoyed browsing through. We bought some fresh apples and squash and a few other little items. There was a huge blown up apple bouncy toy that the kids enjoyed jumping in. They also had face painting and a hayride. We all rode the hayride together and really enjoyed it. They also had a pumpkin patch that the kids enjoyed climbing around in. They had hay bale mazes too, but for some reason our kids didn't go in them. I guess they were too busy with the other things. We took pictures of course! I decided to post last years pictures from the pumpkin patch to compare how the kids have grown in the past year.



All in all we had a pretty good day. It was nice to enjoy a fun day as a family!





Here we are on the hayride (I'm taking the picture) What an adorable family I have!

Here are all the kids in the pumpkin patch.

Here are Ruby and Garrison last year. Notice Ruby's faithful elephant? I still feel sad when I see pictures of him. I wish we hadn't lost him...

Here is Christian and Anthony last year.

Here are all the kids together last year.

This is Ruby posing in the pumpkins this year.

Here she is with elephant last year.

Garrison this year.

Garrison last year.

Christian this year.

You can't see him real well, but this is Christian last year.

Anthony this year. The sun is in his eyes, but it's still a cute picture!

Anthony last year.

Oregon Airshow

I'm kind of late with this post. My excuse is that I'm having a yard sale this weekend and I've been busy going through stuff.

A few weekends ago, Matt and I took the kids on Friday night to the airshow here. We had a really good time! Sometimes when we take our kids out it's not so fun because they get cranky or bored, but they actually did really good. All of the kids enjoyed watching the airplanes doing tricks; even Garrison. They had a lot of different planes doing different tricks. I had never been to an airshow and I really enjoyed it.

You can't see this plane real well, but they were bigger than the other planes doing tricks and there were 4 of them at once; and they had red, white and blue tail smoke. They were pretty impressive to watch.

Here was a duo doing some tricks. It definitely takes talent and lots of practice to get all the moves synchronized like they did.

This is a pretty good picture of one of the planes. I actually took a lot of pictures, but it was hard to get good ones.

When it started getting dark they had some planes go up that had some sort of sparkling tail smoke so you could see them in the dark; and they had some parachuters (my spell check just told me that parachuters isn't a word, but I don't believe it) with sparklers attached. It was pretty cool to see. I tried to take pictures, but it was useless. My camera is just not made to take good night pictures like that. They had a really good fireworks show at the end. We actually left during it because it was pretty late by then and Matt was tired and had to work the next day. We saw the fireworks as we were walking to our van though. It was very impressive. It was nice to get ahead of the traffic and get to go home without fighting the traffic rush after the fireworks were over.

It was a really enjoyable evening. It's so nice when we get to have some nice family time like that.

It's Alive!

A couple of nights ago I was laying in bed reading a book; when I felt something! I thought could this be my baby moving already? It seemed a little early to start feeling the movements, but I lay there and sure enough! What was very surprising was how strong the movements felt. Let me tell you, when I'm reading a book, I'm usually very engrossed; so for me to notice the movements meant that they were fairly strong for so young a baby. I put my hand on it and just enjoyed the moment! Of course I told my husband who was at the computer in our room. He even came over to see if he could feel it since the movements were so strong. He wasn't real sure, but he thought he could feel slight movements! Every since then I've noticed my baby letting itself be known to me! I love this point in the pregnancy! I'm not so uncomfortable with pregnancy, but I still get to enjoy feeling this small being moving inside of me! Now I have a little over 5 months until I get to see it eye to eye!

Mourning the Curls

Garrison's hair was getting pretty wild with all of his little curls; so I finally broke down and cut his hair. I wanted to cut it a little shorter than I did last time, but I was hoping some of his cute curls would stay behind. Here is a picture of him before his haircut. He's awfully cute with those curls, but they were getting a little out of hand; so one day when daddy was gone (Matt kept saying he didn't need a haircut) I did the deed...

What happened to my baby???? Where did he go. I cut off all his curls, and now a toddler has switched places with him! I miss the curls! He's still really cute, but not quite the same. I'm hoping they will grow back, but I'm beginning to wonder...

I couldn't resist posting this picture too. Here he is with his wild hair. Daddy brought some groceries home and he wanted to help; so Daddy gave him the bag of potatoes. He dragged them as far as the front steps, but couldn't figure out how to get the bag up the steps! Mommy came to the rescue and helped him. (After having a good laugh at his expense, and taking this picture, of course!)

Real or not?

A few weeks ago we took the kids to the Saturday Market in downtown Portland. We road the Max, which the kids think is really cool! Even though we didn't have much money to spend it was nice to browse around at all the different booths, and also see all the interesting people. There was a point when it was getting to be nap time and Garrison started throwing a screaming fit, but other than that it was an enjoyable outing.

At one point we were taking a bathroom break, and way up on the edge of building Christian saw an owl. I zoomed the camera as far as I could and took a picture, and then when I got the picture on our computer I cropped it even more. While we were watching it we did see it move. I guess it never occurred to me to wonder why an owl was out and moving in broad daylight. After I cropped it on my computer I thought it looked like it was fake. Maybe it's some kind of surveillance camera or something.

What do you guys think? Is it fake, or not? The more I look at it, the more I think it's probably fake.

Feeding the Ducks

Earlier this summer, Matt's mom came and spent a few days with us. The kids really enjoyed having their Grandma around! One of the things we did while she was here is take the kids to feed some ducks. The kids really enjoyed it and it was cheap entertainment! There's a library next door; so we went to the library too. I'm thinking about taking them again soon.


I had them all sit down and throw the bread so the ducks would come closer.

There were a couple of geese there that would actually eat out of your hand, but Christian was the only one of my kids brave enough to do it.

Poor Baby

This is what happens when your older siblings wake you up too early in the morning:

I went to get Garrison out of his highchair this morning and this is what I found. Anthony got up pretty early this morning and decided to wake everyone else up too.

Here he is in another similar situation awhile back. I came in to clean up from breakfast and found my baby laying on the counter with every one's cereal spoons clutched in his hands fast asleep. I, of course, had to snap a picture while laughing quietly to myself. I quietly cleaned up around him while watching him closely to make sure he didn't roll off the bar. It wasn't very long and he woke up and went about his day.

Here's a cute picture of my baby I just wanted to add for the fun of it. He won't be my baby much longer! He's already showing signs of wanting to be potty trained, but I'm not very excited about it. It would be nice if he were potty trained when this baby came though, but none of my other kids were done that early.

I hope he keeps those beautiful blue eyes and that curly hair. It's time for another hair cut too, but I love his curls so much it's hard! Christian and Ruby's eyes are changing to green like mine did. I like the green eyes too, but I hope at least one of my children keep their daddy's blue eyes.