Family Alive

A few hours after participating in the December graduation ceremony, I finished grading my last exams, biked home, loaded into the car everything Kristine had packed, and we headed out of town for our Christmas vacation! Nearly 16 hours of driving later, we made it to the cold, beautiful white north!

We stopped at a McDonald’s in Maquoketa, Iowa for breakfast after driving all night. It was 8 below zero and there was snow everywhere! After a nice breakfast, we zipped up Hwy 61 through Dubuque across the mighty Mississippi River to Platteville, WI. Uncle Hal and Aunt Anna got to play with a well-rested Analise while Kristine and I got caught up on some sleep.

Before we left, Analise was as cute as ever — here is her latest adventures. She enjoys bringing the holy family together with the floating family (Noah and the animals). Also, she can climb up onto her rocking horse all by herself now. Merry Christmas everyone!

We just got back from an awesome adventure at the Birmingham Zoo. This one is for sure to become an annual tradition for us. When you first walk in the zoo, there is snow falling from an artifical snow blower. Looks pretty realistic! And then there are lights everywhere! Kristine may write more later, but I think I’m going to leave the pictures in the rest of the blog speak for themselves. Look for the animals in the lights!

I have to share this amazing Christmas light display

with you. If you CLICK

HERE and be patient while it loads (it’s a 4.9MB

file!), you’ll see the coolest synchronized light and

music display I’ve ever seen. Snopes.com verified that it is real and

said,

“This display was the work of Carson

Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent

about three hours sequencing the 88 Light-O-Rama

channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in

his annual holiday lighting spectacular (from Christmas

2004). His 2005 display includes over 25,000 lights that

he spent nearly two months hooking up. So that the

Williams’ neighbors aren’t disturbed by constant noise,

viewers driving by the house are informed by signs to

tune in to a signal broadcast over a low-power FM radio

station to hear the musical accompaniment.”

VERY COOL, in my humble opinion! I used to feel that

Christmas light displays could be tacky, but since I now

have a daughter that will say the cutest, “oh, wow” at

any lights or decorations she sees, we think anyone who

puts up lights is very cool:)

Almost Christmas morning at the

Toone house
The excitement just overcame us this morning:) We’d

ordered Analise’s Christmas present from EToys, and it

arrived yesterday in a huge box. We were very excited

to get her one, and only one, gift – the Fisher Price Little People A to Z Learning

Zoo. She has her Little People Ark and animals that she

plays with endlessly, and we just knew that 26 animals,

from A-Z with a mat that makes corresponding sounds

would be a hit. (In case you can’t come up with one

animal for each letter of the alphabet, here you

go!)

Since we are leaving next Saturday for

Wisconsin, not to return until Dec. 30th, we wanted her

to get a chance to appreciate it. Besides, both Brian

and I have gotten our Christmas presents from each

other, so Analise deserved the same! Anyway, she was

impressed by the snowman wrapping paper, and she needed

a little nudge to start tearing the paper off. But when

she saw the corner of the box with 3 of the animals in

view, she got really excited. We were not let down as

we opened it… she loves it! She got even more excited

as I opened each next bag of animals. She played with

it for hours before collapsing into a 2.5 hour nap.

When she woke up, she squealed with delight to find the

zoo and animals awaiting her in the living room. I know

what my family is saying, that we’re terrible for not

being able to wait or keep secrets, but let me tell ya,

there was not ANY less excitement in our household with

Christmas this morning! Here’s Analise, the

zookeeper:)

Santa Adventures
Wednesday morning we set out with Grandma Beverly to

visit Santa at the mall. When we arrived, though, Santa

was unavailable because he was having breakfast with

special needs kids. We decided to try the other mall in

town, since Analise was all dressed up for a picture

with him. When we got there, Santa was sweet and jolly

looking, and Analise was beautiful in her Christmas

dress. But she wouldn’t go near him and burst into

tears when he tried to hold her hand. Not even a sucker

could convince her he was nice enough. So there will be no picture of Analise with Santa this year, but we snagged this one in our rocking chair on the front porch when we got home.
PS – Brian just said, “No one’s going to read the blog that I posted now, because they’ll be so busy reading your fun one.” He wanted me to post a link to his, but maybe you could take a second and read his blog and even leave him a comment:) Thanks, y’all! Hope the joy of the Christmas season is filling your heart and home!

Yesterday was my last day of teaching for the Fall 2005 semester at Samford. It ended with a bang as I also gave a presentation on Research Proposal Writing to our department and to scholars participating in the BACHE Scholars in Computer Science program. The talk went really well! Below is a picture of the group after my presentation and also a picture of all the food that I bought at a nearby store and carried back on my bike. There are four 2-liter sodas inside the backpack along with two fresh fruit containers!

Other things happening here at the end of the semester … Kristine came to pick me up one evening and listen to the Samford bells, and as I was taking the elevator down to meet her outside, there was a spectacular sunset visible all the way down the hall, through the open door in a classroom, and out the window of the classroom. It was amazing — as if everything was on fire!

Lastly, it has been unusually cold at the beginning of December. On my bike ride in on Tuesday at a brisk 22 degrees, my water bottle was beginning to freeze. I took this picture below of the ice inside my water bottle after I had been inside the building for close to five minutes!

I actually don’t hate the “art” of sewing. I like creating things, especially easy things. I’m in the process of making the fuzziest, fleeciest fringed scarf ever. It’s simply 3 long strips of fleece sewn together right down the middle and fringed. I got a beautiful new jacket as an early Christmas present for Brian, and I’ve been so excited to make myself this scarf. Today I got all ready, cut the fleece, got everything pinned together – took all of 10 minutes! – and pulled out my sewing machine. It’s a hand-me-down from Brian’s grandmother, a Singer from the 1980’s (or earlier??). It’s done fairly well for me, though I always have to do some form of trouble shooting. I actually really hate sewing machines. That’s the worst part of sewing for me. So to finish the story, I was all ready to sew my one, simple long seam down the middle of my fleece, and the needle doesn’t move. The machine whirs, like it’s trying to sew for me, but the needle won’t even move with the hand wheel. ARG. I hate that. I don’t know how to fix it, my father-in-law is out of town until after we leave for Wisconsin next week, and I am not about to shell out the $100 necessary to take this silly machine in for a cleaning and fixing. Oh well… So much for my “motivated” morning of accomplishing things, at least with my sewing machine.

Warning… a mother’s opinion ahead:) I have to say, I think Analise has a bit of genius in her. She has a box that allows for sorting shapes, but the shapes are more complicated than your everyday circle, square and triangle. It includes a pentagon, ellipse, diamond, tree, rocking horse, train and more. We expected it wouldn’t be really enjoyable for her until she was quite a bit older. In fact, advanced shape sorting isn’t a skill that’s developed on average until about 23 months. But Analise has mastered this box. It began when I started giving it to her in her crib to play with while I showered. I’d dump out all 15 or so blocks, and in the last month, I’ve been coming back to find ALL the shapes in the box! I caught her on camera today:) She’s very meticulous. When she starts with one shape, like the diamond, she’ll be sure to look at all the other shapes to make sure there aren’t any other diamonds to put in. She’s even able to rotate them around – in all directions – to make them fit into their holes. It’s honestly very impressive to watch! I’m a proud mom:)

We dressed up yesterday for a quick family picture at church. Analise looked like a little angel in her cute maroon velvet Christmas dress. But by the time we were ready to snap the picture, all she could really muster up was an “I’m tired” smile. So I’d like your opinion on which picture to use as our Christmas card this year. Leave us some feedback!

Lastly, a couple cute pictures. Brian and Analise were busy with yard work this afternoon, and below, Analise dances on her Aunt Kat’s Christmas present. Kat’s doing all she can to analyze the box and try to figure out what’s in it (including trying to hack into my Amazon account!), but I don’t think she’ll figure it out:)

Are you still eating leftovers from Turkey Day? None left at our house, but I do have all kinds of tidbits that I’ve been wanting to post. I’m sitting here procrastinating from laundry/finishing up Christmas decorations/figuring out what to do for dinner. We’ve got severe weather blowing through the area, so the main TV stations are in full-coverage of the weather, and the weather sirens have gone off 3 times now. Don’t worry, I’m keeping my ears on James Spann with ABC 33/40 and an occasionally eye on the radar that’s permanently on the TV.

The Real Reason for my Lack of Blogging
So my dear hubby posted our exciting news about the newest Toone-to-Be:) I’m officially 13 weeks along, and maybe starting to feel better. I felt pretty lousy from about 6 weeks until a week ago, so that’s the real reason for my severe Lack of Blogging. Terrible, I know, since it’s not so hard to sit at the desk or curled up on the couch with my laptop and type, but it’s honestly taken all my energy to keep Analise fed and clean and the absolute bare essentials of my home in order. Thank goodness my sweet girl is a trooper, and we love our naptimes together! Anyway, early pregnancy is notoriously hard for me, but I think we’ve turned the corner. January 6th is the big date to know if this little Toone-To-Be is a girl or a boy.

A Day of Thanks
Our Thanksgiving was a great success. I wrote a blog in my head during a few quiet moments of Thursday morning, but I was super busy Tuesday night-Thursday cleaning, washing dishes, cooking, baking, and setting up the guest room. Our friends from Mercy Ships, Michael and Heather Drown and their 3 year old son Jason, came to spend Thursday and Friday visiting us. Brian’s parents, brother and grandmother also came for dinner, and it was my first year of hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksfully, Beverly made the majority of the food – turkey, ham, sweet potato souffle, stuffin, asparagus casserole. I made cranberry relish, corn casserole, rolls, pumpkin and apple pies, and a cheese/sausage/spinach dip platter as an appetizer. It was a lovely meal, and it looked beautiful on grandma’s china! It was so fun to use it, and now I’m trying to figure out what to do with it so I don’t have to pack it back into a plastic bin. My Christmas dream… a china cabinet:) Anyway, just before all the Thanksgiving cooking/eating/cleaning up/dishes, we noticed that our dishwasher was leaking water onto the hardwood floor. Not only that, because that’s happened a couple of times before, but there was a waterstain on the basement ceiling. AG. We’ve tried to fix the dishwasher before, yet we’re back to the same problems. Thankfully, we were able to put some pans in to catch the water, and it’s not leaking much, so maybe we’ll wait on the new dishwasher until after Christmas. And wonderfully, the dishwasher functioned the whole busy time.

Analise and Jason
Analise had such a fun time playing with Jason. I’ll have to post pictures soon, but if I try to right now, this will never get posted tonight! He was a bit of a whirlwind, so she tended to stay just out of his way, but he was very good about being gentle with her. My favorite moment was the morning they were leaving, and Analise and Jason were playing in the leaves out on the front sidewalk. She was walking through them, and he was running full speed through them. I called out to Analise, “Watch out, sweetie!”, and a few minutes later, I heard Jason call out to Analise as he came barrelling by, “Watch out, sweetie!” Cute. Analise cried and cried when Jason left. She likes having a playmate. I hope she’ll enjoy having a little brother or sister!

Christmas decorations
I finally had the energy and the motivation to start unpacking our Christmas decorations earlier this week. We have our little 32″ fiber optic Christmas tree up. It’s not quite strong enough for the handful of ornaments on it… When Brian reached to turn it on to show off the fiberoptics to our home church last night, it toppled over at his gentle touch. We’ve got so many ornaments that we haven’t even put up yet, that I think next year we’ll have to have bigger tree. Note to self: get out for the after-Christmas sales! I set up my beautiful Willow Creek Nativity set (like above) and Advent candles on a shelf that is within A’s reach. She’s learning that it’s just to look at, but she just loves the little wooden sheep and can’t resist taking them down every now and then to play. I don’t even have to be watching her… I’ll know from hearing her little, “Baa, baa!” She even added Noah and his family of animals to the Nativity set one day. Quite a familiy reunion!

North Country
Brian and I had a chance to see the movie “North Country” before Thanksgiving, courtesy of Samford. A group of students and professors were invited to go, and since my hubby is great at finding free date options at through Samford, we jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, no students showed up, just 2 other professors, including one from the law school to lead a discussion about the sexual harassment issues in the movie. Anyway, all that is to say that we give the movie a definite TWO THUMBS UP. Charlize Theron was excellent as a woman who goes to work in the mines of northern Minnesota, not a woman-friendly environment. She faces a variety of sexual harassment, and eventually takes the mine to court, in one of the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuits to be won in the nation. It’s an intense movie, but very well done.

I hope I can come back and post some pictures later, but no promises. We’ve got a New Members Dinner at church tomorrow night, a baby shower on Sunday, and then Samford Christmas events start the next week. ‘Tis the season! Hope y’all are well!

Here I am! I’ve got a long blog half-written (from Monday!) that I’m going to try to finish, but I realized something last night. I know it’s been nearly 2 weeks since I’ve posted anything, and I figured out one reason. From Wednesday 2 weeks ago through tonight, we will have hosted 47 people at our house. Wed: Home church (15 people), Fri: Home Church leadership dinner (10 people), Wed before Turkey day: 3 friends from church, Turkey day: 10 people including 3 overnight guests, Tonight: Home church (17 people). Whew! It’s a good thing some of my energy is returning because I’ve been so busy getting the house in order, cooking, cleaning up, and then doing it all over again! Gotta go – Lauren’s coming over for coffee and prayer in an hour. Make that 48 people! hope I’ll be back later today!

Kristine went to a baby shower for an expecting mom in our church last week, and inspired by the awesome diaper cake we got from the Haffly’s last year, she made this awesome diaper cake, which was a hit at the shower.

And then these next three pictures of Analise being her darling, adventuresome self. First, holding her baby glowworm close, Analise has been carrying this friend around with her everywhere! We went as a family to go shopping for Christmas gifts to send in a shoebox via Operation Christmas Child. It’s become a yearly tradition now, and here’s Analise posing with everything that went into the shoebox. Analise also has been challenging herself by trying to stack as many of her “Little People” friends onto her children’s bible as she can. Maybe that’s what it was like on the Ark! She actually had almost 10 friends at this gathering at one time! Lastly, Analise brought her pumpkin in from outside to join in the fun with Daddy.

Yesterday, we had a fun time at the Galleria Mall seeing all the Christmas decorations and riding the carousel. But the highlight of the day for me was taking my family on the glass elevator ride in the attached office building. Hope you enjoy the pictures and video below!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!

This view below is from the glass elevator on the 17th floor of the office building attached to the mall. If you look just to the left of the highrise Wynnfrey Hotel in the foreground, you can see a strip mall. This used to be a cement plant, and we used to ride our BMX bikes back behind the cement plant up a hill from which we would sit on rocks and watch them build the Galleria! My parent’s neighborhood where I grew up is located in the forest behind the strip mall. Isn’t it sad how these days, builders just chop down all the trees when they build a neighborhood? I’m glad when they built our neighborhood they left so many (probably 80%) of the original trees. Today, I’d expect they only leave about 20% of the trees (if that much) around the border of the entire neighborhood. Sad, sad, sad. If you are wondering where Kristine, Analise, and I live now, the general area is indicated by the green arrow. My parents live somewhere near the red arrow.

CLICK HERE TO STREAM VIDEO OF OUR ELEVATOR RIDE!

For those who haven’t heard the exciting news, here’s an exciting announcement we’d like to make…

The newest version of the Toone family will be release in June 2006. Analise has been so much fun, and it looks like we’ll be having double the fun very soon!