Gingerbread Houses

Yesterday, Dave and Bonnie Hunter (our new pastor & wife) had us (without kids!) and others over to make gingerbread houses. Bonnie cut out and baked all the pieces herself. The table was covered with lots of different candies and pretzels! It was quite yummy, and so was the frosting!Here they are, along with Pam Holsten. Mike got architectural and added a little roof... Here's their finished house. It turned out good! It even has a satellite dish.

Finished house

And this is ours! It was a lot of fun! See the kids looking out the window? Here's what's on the inside before I added the kids. Matthew made the rocking chair that actually rocks, and even sheet rocked the walls! I made Bingo lying there with a bone. Such a cozy little cabin. The backyard, complete with an igloo and an outhouse! The front Meadow, Logan, and Brennen looking out the window. Ashlen is on the floor next to Bingo, but you can't really see her. (her head is the orange dot in the corner of the window) Now we'll see if the kids can keep from eating it until Christmas!

Singing Christmas Tree '09

We just finished our Singing Tree performances. As you can see we had a nice big choir this year, and it sounded really good! This is the first time I've been a part of it since having kids. My mom offered to babysit so I could do it!
Brennen had his first drumming performance (at age 2)! He went up front to play his drum while the choir sang Drummer Boy. He only actually drummed a little each time. I think he got shy, but he was so cute running up there when it was his turn, and he sat there very nicely holding his sticks, and when he did drum, it was mostly in time with the music! He's a natural! In the first performance, when the audience clapped he stood up there happily clapping too! Everyone thought he was so cute! :)
Pastors in costume! Ha Ha!
One of the new things Pastor Dave did this year was have comment cards at each audience member's place, where they could comment or suggest improvements. He also led everyone in a prayer to accept Jesus, and had a box they could check and leave their contact information if they had said the prayer, or just wanted to learn more. As far as I know at least 4 people said the prayer!

Here is a short clip of one our songs- The Night That Christ Was Born. It's the only one Matthew was able to film, since he had Brennen with him.

Here's part of a solo by Kayla L. on the same song.

Meadow's Party

Here are some pics of Meadow's party on Saturday. It was just a girls party, no boys were allowed, so the brothers went to grandma's. Krista, Genesis, and Jenna came. It was a nice, very mellow time. What a difference boys make! Birthday girl requested a "horsey" cake.

We played a game of pin the tail on the mermaid.

And opened presents of course. Ashlen loved joining in with the girls, and determined that the wrapping paper tasted quite good!

Meadow loved the pillow Krista made her!

Insider's View

I decided to capture a different view of the Singing Christmas Tree- from inside it! I took these exquisite photographs at last night's dress rehearsal.

Here's an artistic scene. I call it "Music and Mesh".
The very cute kids choir. Meadow looks a bit lost! I especially like the giant sheep on top of the life sized buildings off in the distance.
Some lovely ladies in my row watching the kids sing.
(Laura, Jenelle, Kelly, Krista)

A view up the tree

And director Rob making our music glow!

Meadow's Birthday

Yesterday Meadow turned 5! When she woke up in the morning she said, "I don't like 4 anymore, 'cuz now I'm 5!" And this is what she decided to wear for the occasion: a ballet tutu, fairy skirt and wings, 2 other skirts, and velour pants. Very Meadow indeed!
Since her kid party isn't till tomorrow, one of the special things we did was paint each other's nails! (Can you believe how girly I'm getting?!) They're a mixture of 3 different colors of course.

Later on, we had a family party at the Cooke's house, because there was Singing Tree rehearsal that night. Meadow has been hoping for (and thoroughly expecting) a mermaid for her birthday, and was very excited when she opened one!It was a fun day! I can't believe how fast 5 years went, and life shows no signs of slowing down any time soon! Yikes!

Oh, how very British

Today Meadow, Logan and I went to a lovely Cream Tea in the Little Red Church. We were served yummy scones with cream and jelly, and several delicious cups of tea in china tea cups!
Proper British children drinking their tea. They loved going to a tea party!

And here's Grandma Cooke, who put this all together! It was done as a donation fund raiser for the school. She and Marge Fowler painted lots of ornaments which they had for sale for the school too. The whole thing was very well done, and lots of people came!

Thanksgiving

This year we had Pilgrims and Indians join us for Thanksgiving dinner! We wanted to teach the kids about the first Thanksgiving, so they helped make the feather head bands, and I made the (extremely authentic, as you can see) costumes! It was a lot of fun!

So cute!! Ma and Pa PilgrimOther Ma Pilgrim and Chief Cooookee

Thanksgiving Eve

Auntie Christy has come for the week! The kids are enjoying their special days with her-each kid gets a day and night with her by themselves (except for Ashlen). In this picture we went for a walk on the breakwater at Thomas Basin, which the kids call the "otter walk" because sometimes we see otters and otter poop! It was very cold and windy!
The preschool classes and parents were invited to join the rest of the school for their annual Thanksgiving Lunch.

The kids each made a hand print turkey for our banner which we add to every year.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Worship Conference

Matthew and other members of the worship team recently attended the Overlake Christian Music Summit in Seattle. It was 2 full days which started out with a worship time led by different Christian artists and song writers, then lots of classes and workshops to choose from. Everyone went to different classes for their instruments, vocal classes, sound system classes, and also ones about playing as a team. Everything was very practical, and everyone learned some new things, but the overall focus of everything was worshiping God. Matthew said he learned the most from a vocal class. Everyone especially enjoyed the worship times. There were 2300 people attending, all great singers and musicians, singing, harmonizing, and really worshiping the Lord together! It sounded amazing, and they all felt like they got a small taste of what Heaven will be like!Here is a picture of some of the group with Paul Baloche. (Krista, Rick, Paul, Matthew, Tiffany, & Carla) Another fun part of it all was hearing and meeting some of the current song writers and musicians such as Paul Baloche (Open the Eyes of my Heart, Above All), Brenton Brown (Hallelujah-Your Love is Amazing, Lord Reign in Me), Brian Doerksen (Come Now is the Time To Worship, Refiner's Fire), Matt Redman (Better is One Day, Blessed Be Your Name), Laura Story (Indescribable), and others. The group was very impressed to find that most of them were very sincere, humble fellow Christians, and it was nice to learn about their lives and families, and the stories behind the songs. Paul Baloche has been one of Matthew's favorites, and many of the new songs we have been singing in church are by him, so Matthew was excited to get to meet him, and invited him to Ketchikan. He said Alaska is the only state he's never been to, so we'll see! Each night ended with a concert with several different groups performing: some of the ones already mentioned, the great guitarist Doyle Dykes, New World Son (which was really fun to watch) and a few others that I've never heard of, but all very good!

Everyone came back very encouraged and excited, and can't wait to go again next year (hopefully)!

Logan and Daddy

We are all happy to have Matthew back after being gone for several days! He went to Seattle over the weekend to attend a worship conference with 10 others from our church. They had a wonderful time, learned a lot, got to meet some of the singers/song writers who have written many of the well known worship songs we sing, and attended some great concerts each night! I'll post more on that later when we get some pictures from other people. He didn't bring a camera. Then he was home one day before leaving again to Metlakatla to finish a tiling job with his dad! They didn't finish in time to get the last flight home, so they had to stay overnight. Thankfully they made it home this morning in between snow squalls!

Logan has been having a hard time with daddy being gone, so today they worked on a project together, putting down non skid stuff on our stairs. Logan really loves helping daddy, and often talks about the things they've done together. Of course he's very happy about the snow too! (Even though it's wet and slushy!)

Gingerbread

Today we made gingerbread men and ducks. It was fun. The kids ended up eating most of their frosting and sprinkles, of course!

I was having them say "frosting" for the picture, but Meadow said "raisin" instead. As you can see, that doesn't make the right kind of smile!

Here are mine! They had yummy cinnamon icing.

Oh so very 2!

Ever since sweet little Brennen turned 2, he has made sure he fulfills his obligation to be "terrible"! I can't look away for even 3 seconds without him getting into some kind of mischief! Pouring water everywhere, drinking soap, splashing in the toilet, and coloring himself and furniture with markers (which he always finds when I think they're put away) are some of his daily rituals. Somebody please help me! Well, here's what he did today: he tried to feed the fish all by himself, and dumped the entire can of fish food into the aquarium! I found him by a very red tank saying "too much!"

I took a picture thinking maybe someday I will see it as funny. Not today. Then, after I got the fish out and started siphoning out the water, he was trying to grab the bowl the fish were in and almost pulled it off the counter!

Now here's a funny picture! I know, I'm a bad mom to let my little guy out in the wet and cold with no pants on, but he got himself all ready to go out with Meadow and Logan. He just forgot one little detail! It was cute. He's in his new "choo choo" underwear!
Then we had a nice little picnic in the rain. (with pants on!)

Mommy's Slaves -just kidding

This week I made a chore chart, and put these kids to work! So far, it works well and they're excited to do their jobs and get a sticker toward a prize! The jobs on the chart are get dressed (by themselves), jobs on their job wheel (below), Quick Clean- clean up as much as you can in one room while a song plays, and make bed.

These are the job wheels. Each day they have 2 jobs. They turn their wheel to the next pictures, which I will trade around between kids each week. Some of the jobs look hard, but I just want them to do a little, to learn how, and get used to doing chores! We'll see how long it lasts! Hopefully this will keep working well!

Today our church is having a Harvest Party! I made a Tweety Bird cake for the cake walk. Meadow chose this one from a cake decorating catalog. I'm glad she chose this instead of one of the wedding cakes! It didn't turn out too professional looking, but it was fun. I've really had the urge to decorate cakes lately, for some reason.

I had to include Ashlen here, who loudly screeched like a pterodactyl throughout the cake decorating process! She is growing up so fast! She sits up really well now, can feed herself cracker pieces, and is almost crawling. She slides herself all over! She's a sweety, but also can out-scream and out-cry anyone! She's SO LOUD, especially when I'm getting dinner ready and at night!