St. Nicholas We Love You

Happy St. Nicholas Feast Day! December 6Th.

He is one of our favorite saints in this house. We love that he was such a generous soul in the name of his Christ. He led his people while caring for them. He is known for loving the children in his diocese as well. Learn more about this Saint here and find cool coloring sheets here.

As always St. Nicholas did not let us down. We set our shoes out the night before and the next morning we were blessed with a few small gifts of candy. It is just a small taste of the generosity shown by our dear friend St. Nicholas. It isn't even a shadow of the complete generosity shown by our loving Father in heaven who sends us his beloved Son.

We then got to join in an neighborhood tradition. We meet us with Santa for picture time. We bring him canned goods for the local food pantry and then we pose for pictures.

Pooker and her Thanksgiving pictures

When trying to post the Thanksgiving pictures I realized the Pooker was a main theme. Maybe this was because of her new job. She has been working quit a bit and the younger ones really miss her. When she was life guarding we would just go swimming everyday. She is working a little less now that Thanksgiving has passed but the kiddos really did enjoy the day with her, as you can tell in these pictures. Goobers liked not being the oldest for the day!

Oh My Goodness they are so beautiful. Look at those eyes. I think Bagel looks the most like Pooker did when she was younger.

My girls have taught this little man to pose for the camera. What a good Jumba is becoming.

Pickle was a hard one to capture on film today. He is the one that is heard stating how this is his favorite day of the entire year. He also is worried that his Pooker will be leaving home soon to go away to college. He knows that she will do what she needs to do but he has made it clear that he doesn't want her to go far!
These two are the best of friends. Both in high school right now and enjoying that time with each other. They had a blast leading the crowd on Thanksgiving. Goobers and Pooker will enjoy time like this for ever.

I love these two red-heads. Both are strong willed and bull headed but both Pooker and Princess would do anything to take care of you.

Another Goobers and Pookers!

Bear and Pooker are acting goofy for the camera. She better not hurt the boy. He cooks the best turkey ever, moist and juicy with lots of flavor.

Thanksgiving - Our favorite day of the year!!

The theme of the day is to be thankful. How does one show that? I hear people let mom cook and then they sit with mom and show how thankful they are by eating and then catching a movie. I hear others visit a friend or family member and eat and then return home stuffed. Not us. We show how thankful we are by serving each other. Everyone is involved. Everyone helps. Everyone feels useful. Everyone, no matter how big or how small, helps in some way by using his or her talents for the good of this family meal. We are blessed because this is how we are most of the year. I don't have to push them to help with this meal. I have to push to try to help myself. They all want to plan, buy, prepare, cook, decorate, eat, clean up, and have the pies. It is a family process that says thank you to our heavenly father for each other and for our talents.

Everyone helped even Jumba!

Pooker and Goobers usually make the mash potatoes. This year Princess could not wait to help. She dreams of the mashed potatoes being just her job some day. This year it took her 3 hours to peel a 10 lb bag of potatoes. She did it, though, all on her own. She had that same grin on her face when I turned to her during dinner and said that I was thankful that someone had taken time to peel the potatoes because they were wonderful. I need to also point out how proud of Jason I am. He lets each one do their thing, make mistakes, and spends all day with them guiding them. I don't have the patients. God bless him, he really is a wonderful dad and I am so thankful that God hand picked him just for me and our children.

Bear's job is the turkey. It was always dad's until recently when he was willing to share some of his tricks with his son. We have tried different ways of cooking, used different tricks, and even used injections of spices a few times to add flavor. Here Bear is perfecting our favorite method. He is putting slices of butter in between the skin and the meat of the turkey. His sisters thought it looked a little gross, but trust that he and dad make the best turkey ever so they wanted to watch and learn.Here is Bear getting ready to put the prepared bird in the oven. This is a ritual that he and his dad have worked out. It is worth the effort . I am telling you this is the best bird yet. Way to go Bear!

Goobers worked on a stellar pie. She made the apple pie this year. Every year they all try something a little different. As always she did a great job and it was wonderful.

These two trouble makers mostly helped by being the cute comic relief. Although Bagel was always there to run get something. She is eager to be old enough to learn more. I think she helped put out the pickle tray.

In this dish is the recipe for a green bean casserole. Pooker has made this in the past. One year she couldn't find the recipe and tried to make it from memory. It didn't work that year. So when I was out shopping and saw this dish with the recipe as the design of the dish I knew she had to have it. I heard one of the siblings ask her if they got the dish when she left for college. "Oh no, this is my dish, I will give it to my daughter, who will give it to her daughter." I love the idea but the dish will probably break before we can make the green bean dish for Christmas dinner.
Look at this green bean casserole. It was as good as it looks. "M'm!" just like it says on the the side of the dish.

Sugar prepares the rolls with lots of helpers. Poor thing had mom get mad at her when they didn't turn out. I doubt it was her fault she really did have tons of help.

Goobers and Moogie working on the yams and salad. I must say that Moogie was very involved this year. She is watching. learning and trying to find her thing.
Dad is ready to lead us in prayer and begin this meal!

Each one helped serve the dish they helped to prepare. The tray of black olives, green olives, pickles, and okra is one of the favorites and probably most unique to our thanksgiving day menu. The table was set with the good Christmas China. We only lost one dish during this meal. That is a pretty low number for this wild crowd.

The feast was delicious!

Thank you for the Most Wonderful Day of the year! Thank you for the time to say thank you. Thank you for each memory we created today. Thank you for each tradition followed. Thank you for the small taste of the feast of heaven.

Prepare for Thanksgiving

Our celebration of Thanksgiving starts with planning the meal. Everyone has something to offer and everyone helps on Thanksgiving day. Our preparation began with mom shopping over the past month and picking up odds and ends when they were at a good price. Then we all sat down and planned the meal on paper. This is one of the rare times that mom and dad don't say no to something and we try to work it all in. After the list we headed to the grocery store with everyone. This doesn't happen often. It just gets expensive when 11 people throw "just one thing" in the basket. It is worth it for this meal.

I love taking them all with me. We really do draw attention by our numbers. We walked down every isle and got to hear meal wishes from each child.
We were stopped by several strangers asking if they were all ours.

We were asked one time if we planned on having more. This was from a woman that herself was pushing a cart with 3 kiddos. Girl-Girl-Boy and they were adorable. We answered as we always do, "We are open to it. We are not currently expecting but it is in God's hand." She smiled and said "same here". Pooker has recently started working at the grocery store so we were also stopped by many of her co-workers asking if this was her famous family. The fun thing was that she also gets a turkey for being an employee. So this year she got to contribute the main dish.

After our shopping was finished and our frozen turkey thawed, we had to wait. This is the hardest part.

Busted Again

Jumba must really want to grow up and be just like his dad. We caught him sitting on his dad's desk. He was taking lighters out of the case. This served as a reminder to my husband to keep the BIC lighters out of Jumba's reach. Also serve to remind him to work hard because the younger generation is much more aggressive and might try to steal his job. Either way this little cutie was not supposed to be in dad's office playing with dad's stuff. Truth is he is so cute it was very hard for dad to punish him.

Pickle's Birthday 11-19-08

Our sweet little Pickle is now an 8 year old. This little man is growing up so fast. He still can tug on my heart strings like no other. You see there was a little drama when this little man was on the way out 8 years ago. I knew, I don't know how I knew, but I knew that something was wrong. We arrived at the hospital and they kept me. Being that he was number 6 they were worried I might deliver very fast. There was one problem. The more you have, the later the baby drops (at least that is what I have been told.) Pickle did not drop into position until about an hour before he entered the world.

I was in labor and had a bad feeling. I called for the nurse that was just not paying attention to me at all. I remember not wanting to "disturb" her and really hoping her shift would be over before the baby was due to be born. She came to check on me, said everything was fine and started to walk out. I called for her and told her something was wrong and that I wanted to see the doctor. "Oh no" she told me, you are not ready for us to call your doctor. I didn't care what doctor but I knew I needed to see one right away. She assured me she would track one down and left the room.

Several minutes went by and she did not return, and no doctor was to be seen either. I hate to be pushy, I really do. I was trying hard to be nice but was getting very agitated. It wasn't like me to demand to see the doctor and Jason knew this. I was watching the heart rates and the baby's rate would go way down with every contraction. I told the nurse and she told me it was just the position of the monitor and I shouldn't worry. With each contraction I saw his little heart almost stop and I couldn't take it any more. I knew it was wrong. I paged the nurse, or the front desk. I think it was my nurse that answered and that is why it didn't help me out. I demanded to see a doctor immediately.

Another 15 minutes with a few more contractions went by with no doctor. With the latest contraction it looked like the baby had no heart beat for a few seconds. . . I panicked and tried to get up off of the table to go find the doctor myself. Jason told me to settle down and I looked him in the eye and said, "Get the doctor now, we are going to loose our son!" I don't know why I said that but I knew something wasn't right! Jason takes such good care of me and our children. He ran into the hall and just started yelling for a doctor. A doctor one from another room came running.

This wasn't my doctor but one of the house doctors. I had seen him when Moogie was born. He ran in and looked me in the eyes. "There is something wrong, I just know it. This is number 6 and I just feel that something is wrong. Every time I have a contraction the baby's heart rate drops . . ." He examined me and the reports and then started barking out orders to Jason. My nurse came into the room and without waiting to hear the doctor just callously said, "She is exaggerating the baby is fine, I have been watching it for awhile now". I told her to leave and not come back, the doctor looked at her and said, "you heard her, now get me a nurse that can help me save this baby!" Jason had run to the nurses station with the doctors message.

The room changed quickly. The lights fell from the ceiling, the bed changed, medication was brought in, there were nurses and doctors all over. I think I counted 15 people within 2 minutes of the doctors exam. Once everyone was in position and the equipment was at hand he told me that I needed to push the baby out in one or two pushes or we would loose him. I didn't have time for a c-section. Apparently the baby's heart had stopped on the last contraction and he had been in the room to monitor it.

Jason grabbed my hand and I could see the fear on his face, it was also on each of the people that were in the room. They usually want you to stop between contractions but not this time. Nothing mattered but getting him out. After just a minute or two of pushing (it seamed like hours but it was only seconds) out came the baby. No sounds, no cries, no smiles on the faces of those around. Jason looked at the baby that I could not see and almost fainted. "WHAT" I yelled. "Wait" said the doctor. I couldn't see but after an eternity I heard a faint cry and I saw a tear role down the check on one of the nurses.

Snip - snip and the baby was gone and surrounded by doctors. I was later told that the neonatal specialist was there and that is who first held the baby. I couldn't see and Jason just held my hand and started praying. What, he never burst out into prayer, what was going on. He later told me that the baby was born the wrong color. He had never seen anything so frightening. We prayed and listened. Within a few seconds our little man was screaming loudly and was the perfect shade of pink. I was never so happy to hear a baby cry in my entire life.

I was able to kiss him briefly and off he went for many check ups. Apparently the cord had been wrapped around the baby's neck twice. With every contraction I was choking him. He had "died" during delivery and was resuscitated. He is listed as a live birth but it was a close call. When I was finally handed a beautiful pink baby to hold I threw water on his head and Baptized him right then and there. I never wanted to let go of him again. He still holds that major string around my heart. The other kiddos tease me. He isn't my favorite, none of them are the favorite. I can say that he is the one that I feared loosing the most. I did baby him longer, hold him more, nurse him forever. All those accusations are true.

Turning 8 is a big deal. This is the year that he receives more of the sacraments. All I can say is Thank you, dear heavenly Father for this wonderful young man. I love him so much and am so glad that you didn't take him that day. I will try to live up to your call for me and give him all the training he needs to be your faithful servant. Happy birthday Pickle.