Questions About Santa!

OK so the questions were not asked of me but I overheard them. Mary and Galina are busy making late birthday cards for Anya. I am in the other room when I overhear Mary ask Galina "what did Santa look like as a baby? and Who took care of him?"

Ok made this mamma chuckle! I love my kids.

I am so happy they are out of school for two weeks (Mary gets three). Galina had her Christmas program this morning. Very precious to see children sing their hearts out for their parents and for Jesus. Makes me sad Mary goes to public school they had no performance (I know shocking!).

Tomorrow we have a cookie exchange with all 5 sisters and my brother and my mom. I am bringing 7 dozen cookies tomorrow at 1 pm. I have made none so far. Looks like a late night of baking!

Sweet Sixteen!

Well yesterday Anya turned 16. Hard to believe the shy little 12 year old we met is now a beautiful confident 16 year old. She has grown so much. She is 5'8" (taller than me now) and so beautiful inside and out. Peter and I each worte her a note sharing how proud we are of her and thankful that GOd blessed us with her. We also gave her a ring we purchased in Russia that has a stone that is mined in RUssia (my bad, cant remeber the name of the stone :) I will have to look it up). We had Grandma, Aunt Annette, Uncle Bill and their girls come over for a celebration of dinner and cake and ice cream. Speaking of cake, this time of year is always so busy with preparing for Christmas that I usually purchase a store bought cake for ANya's birthday. This year I woke up early and made a homemade birthday cake. Ok I should clarify that homemade in my vocabulary is homemade from a box. Anyways I decorated it real pretty with using candy canes broken into the shapes of letters spelling out "Happy 16th Birthday ANya" It was adorable if I might say so myself. I had purchased a nice plastic tray (but did not look like plastic) to put her cake on. It looked fabulous. Well before going out to run errands and pick the girls up from school I noticed a fly in the house (unusual in the winter) so I put the cake in the oven to keep the fly off of it.
Well all afternoon I ran errands (mostly picking up kids from school). On the way home I stopped by to get some dinner and called Peter who was already home from work. I asked him to throw some chicken nuggets in the oven for my younger nieces in case they didn't want what I was serving. I got home to find out Peter had nopt done what I had asked so I turned on the oven and flew around the kitchen to do the final preparations for dinner when something began smelling odd. Finally my mom said something and it dawned on me! Anya's cake was in the oven on the lovely plastic tray. I opened the oven to find the tray had completely melted in my oven (can you say toxic cake?) I had to throw the cake witht the melted tray attached in the trash.....I could have cried I spent all morning on that beauty! Oh well she ended up with a store bought cake after (seeing a tradition forming here).
All was well and I think Anya enjoyed her birthday!
Happy Birthday ANya!
I will have to post pictures later!

Exciting Week for The Murray Girls!

Anya started basketball at her new school and had her first two games this past week. They only have one team and it is varsity. She got a chance to play in both games. I will have to try and take pictures next time. Anya also had her school winter formal that she attended. We went out and bought her a pretty red dress and she looked so beautiful as ususal.

Of course I forgot to take pictures, so I stole one from her camera. She said she had a great time. She loves her new school with only 90 something students in the high school she says its like a family. The kids are great that go there.

Galina had a HUGE week. She made honor roll this semester and if she was going to a public school she would have had a 4.0 (her school considers a 90 to 92% a B). Anyways she was thrilled and so were we. School has always been such a struggle but she is doing awesome this year. Reading a book a week has really helped her! We are so proud of her!

Finally PJ, my sweet boy is cruising all over the place. STILL not saying mamma (stubborn boy) but an absolute joy!

The Murray History of The Christmas Tree!

Ok over the years Peter and I actually thought our marriage would come to an end over Christmas trees. The pressure of it all. I always romancitized the going out to find a tree with your sweetheart, cutting it down and bringing it home and decorating it while a bing Crosby song plays in the backround with a warm fire crackling in the fireplace, stealing sweet kisses between hanging each oranament and just feeling warm and fuzzy and lovey dovey. Murray Reality? We would go to the tree farm where none of the trees looked perfect til an hour into it and then all the trees looked the same. You get your perfect tree home only to find out that a 10 foot treee does not look as big outside on the tree farm as it does in your livingroom. I guess we always had an eye for big, tall and fat trees. We could never find a stand to hold our trees even after buying everyone on the market and having everyone we know invited over to assist with getting it to stand up. We ALWAYS ended up wrapping some rope (the straw stuff that my dad always had on hand while growing up) around the tree and attaching it to a nail in the wall. So by the time our tree did stand up we always had to decorate it the next day and then there were the LIGHTS. What ever man invented the little white strand of whites that if one light goes out they all go out was not an inventor but an idiot and I mean that in the most christian tone I can give. LOL! So by the time the tree stodd and the lights all lit. . . . . we had shared a few choice words that did not include stealing quick little kisses in between. So the year we adopted our Russian Princesses, after 16 married Christmas' were the tree issue each year was more difficult than our infertilty we purchased an artificial tree prelit (the kind of lights that one can go out and not ruin the strand). It was a neccessaity for the salvation of our marriage and Praise God for it!

Today we decorated the tree. . . . and it was peaceful and sweet. the kids like to hang ornaments up all in the same area which adds charm.

Here is the final project.