....for whom you ask? Only for Hunter. He was being rough with Colten, so I sent him to time out but guess who is a glutten for punishment? Pretty much every time I send Hunter to time out, he has a buddy to keep him company. Oh well...What do you do?

Well, as a parent of young children, of course we have some big decisions. This one in particular is about school. A friend emailed me some information about our local elementary school in the subdivision. It was surprising to me and Mark. The number of subsidized lunches is supposedly 83%. In addition, the spending per pupil is $16k a year!

Indeed, Alexandria Public Schools even made headlines in Forbes magazine back in 2007, but not in a good way. One mom shares her thoughts on her blog.

Mark & I desperately want Hunter (and Colten) to be raised with Christian values, which is our duty, but choosing a school for your child also must be factored into the equation, as you parents know. We have much in which to be in prayer.

Private Christian school? Costs too much.
Move to Fairfax County? Don't want to leave my neighborhood.
Stay here? Very concerned.

I would love to hear feedback from you, including you former teachers.

Fortunately, we have another year and a half, probably, but you know we have to start thinking about it now.

Apparently, I was not the only one thrilled about the snow...

We received our first snow fall of the year (or of 2 years!) this week and it was, though modest, fabulous! I have been whining and wishing for snow for about a month or more, so I was thrilled!

I received a call from one of my precious neighbor friends- "Wanna bring the boys over to play in the snow?" That's all I needed to hear and we were out the door (Yeah, it was about an hour and a half later, but that's as fast as I could go.)

I had to return some kids' snow bibs to a friend, so I dropped off Hunter for him to play, and returned to find this:

Pam pulling a couple of the girls.

Notice the snowman in the background on the left? Abby must have said, "What nose?" That's a girl who likes her vegetables!

Hunter was being pulled by a couple of the girls (Gabriele and Maggie, I think). He was the only boy there and think the comment was made, "Every man's dream." Ha!

I don't know if you notice but in almost every picture, Hunter is sucking on his coat. I can't get him to keep it out of his mouth. The end result is that he looks like he has an extra set of lips.

December was a dizzyingly busy and stressful. I guess it is for most people, even though I always hear advice on how to make it less stressful. Is it because it's also my birthday? No! I know- we spent about 5 weeks shopping for a new car! It was crazy stressful and put us behind in all of our Christmas preparations! None the less, I am quite thankful.

Here is a summary:

Hunter's Cubbies class acted out the Christmas story. Here he is as a Shephard. What a cutie! (Thank you, Renee, for taking the pics.)

Mark and Hunter decorated a gingerbread train (a tradition). It was set out for looks. However, Hunter and I went to my friend, Kathryne's, for a pajama gingerbread house decorating party. That house we did eat- YUM!

We celebrated Jesus' birthday with our MOPS group- the kids did crafts, ate lunch, had birthday cake and a story about Jesus' birth, finished off with singing. The kids love it!

My dear friends, Candice and Renee, surprised my socks off with a little Birthday pampering! They asked me to get a manicure/pedicure with them, but when I showed up, there were balloons; there was champaigne, chocolate, flowers and- best of all -more friends! We spent the next couple of hours together getting our nails done, chatting and laughing. It was SOOO nice and it was a total surprise!

Mark took me out that night for a fun dinner at Cork. It was a wine bar, which was a very neat little place with an amazing wine list!

Colten started pulling up. Not only that, but the first time he did it, he went on climbing up the stairs! He's now cruising.

This is actually a picture of him NOT smiling like he always is!

AND... I am the proud owner of a bus and I actually love it! We got it for one amazing deal.

I am not giving our Christmas celebration its due but when you're two months behind in blogging, this is the best I can do. Enjoy. :)

Well, Mark is out of town, I have nothing pressing on me, so I have a couple of minutes to BLOG! I can't believe it's taken me so long to get back into it, but here goes...

Thanksgiving:

Well, Mark's Mom and Dad pleasantly surprised us by accepting our invitation to give thanks at OUR house! It was great- we hadn't been together since March. They kept the boys for us one night for us to have a movie date. We love movies, so we greatly appreciated that. (Thanks, Mom & Dad.) Hunter loved having them up, too. I'm currently trying to talk them into getting DSL (cable is apprently not available where they live) so they can SKYPE with the boys.

Mark's Mom & Dad:

Isak brought some killer wine and Mark made a fabulous bird!

We had 2 other families with us for T'giving. This made for a total of 5 children 3 & under. Needless to say, it wasn't actually quiet at our house and the only people who sat during dinner were Mom & Dad. Lucky them.

The Loud Table (being supervised):

Candice & Isak:

Gregory & Christy

I forgot to mention that Mark's Mom blessed us to pieces by making much of the side dishes and she such a good down-home food cook. YUM!!!