Ella's Choir Concert!

Ella has been a part of the Cantate Homeschool Choir since January 2022. This was her 6th choir concert. This time the choir was so big they ended up having the event at the Federal Way Perform Arts and Events Center. I knew that with it being at a new location there were going to be hiccups that would come up. The hiccup this time around was seating. People weren't supposed to be able to save seats unless they were the families with the Jubilate kids which are the really young kids. When they opened the seating up for everyone almost all the seats in the lower area were already taken. It was a bit disheartening, but thankfully they had a balcony and there were plenty of seats up there. 

I think I would actually want to sit in the balcony anyway...it was a nice view! 

You can see part of our group....Justine is on Jack's left he's looking at the stage, Zeke is the blur between Owen and Jack. Ga-Ga, Pa, Papa & Ruth were sitting on the other side of me. 

There are 4 choirs total....Jubilate, Cantate 1, Cantate 2 and then the audition choir which is called Ensemble. Each choir sings individually and then at the end they bring all the choirs together for one final song. Ella is in the Cantate 2 choir...they sang 3 songs. Ella is right in the middle of the second row looking at her choir folder. 

Here she's looking up. 

Here's everyone! This was the biggest choir they've had...at least since Ella joined. There was 192 kids! 

Ella was all the way over on the right side which made it really easy to see her! 

Ella's fan club....well maybe not Zeke! :)

Ella and her friend June.

They really enjoy getting to see each other every Friday at practice. Now that this session is over she gets a break for exactly a month before she starts back up in January for the next session. 

Women's Christmas Dinner 2024!

The Women's Christmas Dinner fell on Friday, December 6th. My mom and I were both asked to lead tables again this year. Because we all needed to be there at different times we ended up taking 3 vehicles to church. Michael took Jack in the truck and left first to go pick up Justine. They need to get to church early enough to set up for the men volunteers. Owen needed to come home early from the event since he worked the next day so he and Zeke were gonna take the Ford Fusion. Ella and I didn't need to be at the event until later so we were going to take the van. When it came time for Owen to leave he couldn't get the Ford Fusion to start. Unfortunately the last time Jack drove it he forgot to turn off the dash cam so it sucked the battery dry. Here I was already dressed for the evening and I was having to help teach Owen how to jump start the car. Plus I had to block the neighbors driveway in order to jump his car. It was dead dead and took me revving the engine for about 5 minutes before the car would finally turn over. I had never even open the hood on our 2023 Honda Odyssey before and once I got his car started I couldn't figure out how to close the hood. I was dropping it just like I would for cars we've had in the past and it wouldn't close. I ended up having to ask Google and the trick was you had to drop it from at least 12 inches where I was just dropping it from around 3 - 6 inches. It just wasn't enough force. 

I decided to use my Old Country Rose place setting again. I love any chance I get to use it!  

I basically did the exact same place setting I did last year with the exception of the gifts for the ladies being a little bit different this time. I asked Michael's cousin to make the ornaments again, but this time I had them make 4 different kinds and each kind had a corresponding hymn that was printed in the background. You can see the ornament in the above pictures with the wise men on the camels. They turned out so beautiful! 

 

Michael is the one that heads up the men volunteers and my boys always volunteer, but this was Justine's first year volunteering. Ella had been wanting a new dress for the occasion so we went out shopping the day before. We ended up finding this dress at TJ Maxx...so pretty! 

By the time Ella and I got there the boys were all busy with different tasks so I didn't get a lot of pictures of them. 

Mom was leading a table and helping at the registration table. It was too much though...she said she barely felt like she was able to talk to the ladies at her table. :( 

Pa was also helping out the guys by serving. 

These are the 3 guys that made all the wonderful food that we ate that night. It was all so yummy! 

Just outside the kitchen in the hallway was where everything food related was set up...all the salads and desserts got plated out here. 

Here's the registration tables and in the background you can see one of the buffet lines there were actually two to help all the ladies get through faster! 

We sang some Christmas Carols prior to be dismissed to get in the buffet line. 

My precious girly! 

Mariah McCleary was our speaker and she did a great job. She just has a way with words! 

The food was I think the best we've had ever, the music was so festive and the speaker was encouraging. This is always one of my favorite nights and it definitely didn't disappoint. 

At the end of the evening we stayed around to help clean up for a bit. I was having Jack and Justine empty the garbage and because of their hats like looked like festive helpers. After that we had to get Justine home so he could get to sleep since he had a wrestling tournament the next day. 

Thanksmas 2024!

We have been working towards remodeling our 17ft high "crawlspace" under our house into usable space since Sept 2021. There's been lots of things to overcome which I'm going blog about eventually. My hope was to be able to use the space for Thankmas 2025, but then God was like...nope I can actually make that happen this year. I love that He cares about the little things that make us happy! 

This is our old pantry under our stairs. We knew eventually this would be the stairs to the basement so in order for us to use this as stairs Michael had to build me a place to store all that food. 

So he built me these cabinets and they have been wonderful! We still used the under the stairs closet for storage because we are a family to 6 and you use all the storage you have when you have it. 

This is how the closet looked during the beginning of 2024 after the broken pipe. 

This is how it looked in November 2024. 

In all honestly I never thought this day would come...we have stairs inside our house that go to our basement! This was huge step...no pun intended...in the process. As you can see the stairs go down a bit and then turn to the right. 

Here's the rest of the staircase as it leads to the finished space below. There will be a door at the bottom of the stairs eventually. 

This year we really had no idea how we were going to have Thanksmas because our garage was a mess from all the constructions we've been doing. We actually contemplated getting heavy duty plastic and enclosing the covered deck space we have so we could set up tables out there. That didn't sound ideal though. Once I saw that we were actually getting close to have a semi-finished space I talked with our contractor and let me know that I would really appreciate it if we could utilize the space on November 30th for Thanksmas. He didn't give me a definitely yes, but he did seem open to shooting for that goal. He actually ended up coming over on Friday, November 29th in order to finish cleaning up the area so we could use it. 

The morning of November 30th, Ga-Ga & Pa came over early so Pa would have time to get all the tables set up. At first we thought we might do separate tables like we've done in the past...men, women and kids, but with this nice huge space we opted for just one long table and people could sit wherever they wanted.

The space is usable, but not completely finished. We have limited electricity down there and zero heat so I went online and rented an indoor propane heater from Home Depot. It was a little noisy, but it made it so everyone wasn't freezing! 

Our chiropractor was selling his practice and he asked if we wanted these cabinets for free. Yes please! We plan to make this basement space into a studio apartment so these will come in handy. We used them for the dessert and punch table. 

I didn't get around to taking any pictures of the food all set up, but here's food line. 

We ended up having 22 people present for dinner. Poor Christina wasn't feeling well so she stayed home. :( 

Since Papa comes over most Tuesday's for guitar lessons with Jack he'd actually already gotten to see the work that had been done. 

Later on Justine's family stopped by and we played a new game we learned called Tens. 

You're really supposed to play until someone has 200 points or something like that, but we were only able to play one hand. 

Look at this handsome guy! 

Cuties always wearing their matching shirts! 

While we were downstairs playing most of the adults were upstairs because it was warmer.

Ga-Ga is sitting with Linda Patrick here. Linda is such a gem and I'm so happy she was able to come to Thanksmas. She had just had surgery earlier in the week. 

The kids were horsing around upstairs for a bit. 

The bromance is strong! :) 

Gotta love this cute picture of me and my Dad with Owen cleaning gunk out of his eye in the background. Hahahaha! 

Caleb has gotten so tall! 

These girls are such beauties! 

Justine's Mom, Jhaycee and his little sister Micah...they were only able to stay for a little bit because they had already attended another party that day. 

Pa and Bill...such a wonderful, longstanding friendship. 

Thanksmas was awesome! It was such a treat to have so many people over and get to utilize the new space. I'm so excited to see how this space transforms even more this next year!