Confused?

This is the email I got from my Dad today:

Hirthy Bapday to you
Hathy Birpday to you
Birthy Hapday to Regi
Bathy Hirpday to you

You think maybe he is slightly confused?

12 Days of Christmas

Quite possibly the best a capella group I've ever heard. 10 guys and they can all sing. Originally heard them singing this rendition for Mrs. Bush at the National Building Museum "Christmas in Washington" production that we had recorded. Apparently they were together at IU back in 90s and now having come back together after getting nearly 8 million hits on their YouTube video. They have a CD out now but haven't heard it.

Straight No Chaser

The Greatest of All Gifts

Pictures from the Christmas program - The Greatest of All Gifts. Jay along with others from the church built the set which I think turned out pretty good. About 65 people attended the program which is a lot of people for our little church :o)

More Christmas

Baker Christmas

Dad drinking milk and eating some of my peanutbutter pie, that apparently he doesn't like. However, I didn't see anything left on his plate.

Merry Christmas from us!

Dudley wearing his reindeer antlers and sleeping in the sun.

Jay gave me this awesome set of perfume. It's 'Daisy' by Marc Jacobs. It is wonderful!

John Mark and lil Maverick

Christmas Dinner with the Lavys - prime rib, ham and shrimp

Happy Birthday to us.

Dani and Ally opening a gift from me - stationary with their names on it.

Ally testing out her new shoes from Holley.

Dad showing off his santa suit

This is payback Dad!!!!

Mom's cute snowman made out of baskets!

Allyson obediently pouring some lemonade for Dani. (see below for explanation)

Here the discussions are ongoing as to what all Ally must agree to do in exchange for Dad and Dani's vote to open gifts on Christmas Eve.

Here Ally agrees to be a servant for 12 hours to Dani and Dad after a long discussion - Why did she agree to do this? Because they in turn agreed to open gifts on Christmas Eve which is not our normal tradition! She ended up getting drinks, food, cleaning up the living room and several other menial tasks.

Christmas Galore

This has not been that great of a weekend for me. After a mental meltdown on Friday night, I slept in until 1 on Saturday afternoon. So give me some slack on the blogging schedule (Aaron!) Huge thanks to Kris (my counselor :o) for listening to me.

Here are some pictures of our Christmas celebration with the Collingsworth side of the family. I have no idea what Jay is trying to say or do here.

Trying to act like they are 'normal.'

Christmas punch

Christmas munchies

Christmas soup buffet - yummy stuff!

Waxing 'elephance' as my hubby would say

Waiting for the Christmas blessing so we can eat

Christmas cookies

Uncle Phil getting the fire just right.

Doesn't it look just perfect?

Tonight is the big night. Everything that could go wrong, has. (Murphy's law) The sound system has a short in it somewhere, so Jay had to get his parent's sound board from Anderson, Indiana. One of the kids has hardly been to practice at all (not entirely his fault.) The professional lights that Jay went to Indy to get are fine electrically but they didn't work well where Jay had first wanted them, so now they are on both sides of the center aisle (exactly where we didn't want them). The powerpoint projector (also from Jay's parents) is working fine, except we need the video cable from the projector to the laptop to be longer than 6 feet. Walmart doesn't have any longer than that so we are still (yes, at this late hour) trying to figure out how to do this since the cord is now suspended in the air between the sound board and the stage (cute, huh?) We had to arrange the actors differently otherwise they would be running right into the cable and jerking the projector and the laptop from their respective places. One of the actors only had a sleeveless dress for one of the scenes so I tried to find a small white sweater last night but no luck. Thank goodness one of the ladies at church had the perfect thing.

Now for the dinner afterwards - we are small so there aren't a lot of us to make food for all the visitors. So as of this very moment, I am cooking 160 meatballs in the crockpot, 3 peanut butter pies are chilling in the fridge, I just took a large corn casserole out of the oven and I have 3 pounds of corn to put in the crockpot for later. Oh and a large package of dinner rolls.

Christmas Program

Well, the big day is approaching. Our Christmas program is this Sunday evening. I have tried to invite friends and family to this momentous program :o) Jay has been working really hard. Today he went to Indianapolis and rented some lights and then hauled them back to Kentucky. We met at Qdoba Mexican Grill and that was a nice little oasis in this busy day. We scarfed down our meals and switched cars. Because of a wreck, we decided to go south on 75 and cut across the hills of Kentuck. Which is absolutely crazy since it is so curvy! We finally arrived home at 6 which incidentally is the time program practice was supposed to start. We switched cars again and while he unloaded groceries into the house, I drove Jasper (yes, the infamous $930 car) to pick up the star of the play, who incidentally is named Star. By the time I arrived back to the church, Jay was up on a ladder putting up his lights. I left him to his fun and shenanigans, ran home, changed skirts, logged into my second job and worked for about 20 minutes. I logged off and ran back over to the church to meet up with a friend who was donating a ton of toys for our Christmas shoebox project. After talking to them for a couple minutes, they left and I headed back to the house where I logged back into work and typed for a couple hours. Sigh! What a day! Anyway, we would love to have you attend the Christmas program. It starts at 6 p.m. this Sunday night with a dinner to follow. All are welcome!

As you can see, Earlina found my camera!

Gameworks

We had a great time today with Tim and Kris. Jay and Kris are showing off their dance moves on this wild Dance arcade game.

Jay and I racing against each other. He beat me here, but I did whup up on him in the Indy car race. I also cleaned house on one of the rounds of Hoop Shot.

Thanks to Kris and Tim for a wonderful "double date." We ate at Mitchell's Fish Market at Newport on the Levee and that was very yummy! I had Parmesan Crusted Tilapia and Jay had Pecan Mountain Trout.

....Sigh....

Last night was an adventure. We had Christmas program practice before service and the girls had to be back home by 7 p.m. So while Jay started his Bible study at 6:30 I took the girls home. On the way there, we had a slight problem. It looked like a garbage truck had lost it's load on the road, but I didn't have time to slow down and slowing down wouldn't have helped. It was across both lanes so I chose the least cluttered area and drove through it. Immediately this loud "whapping" sound took all three of us by surprise but after about 3 seconds the sound went away. I figured some of the trash had gotten caught in a wheel well.

I took the girls back home. They live at the top of a hill on a dirt road with huge potholes, but Jasper made it up the hill just fine. (This hill is so bad that the kids have to walk to the bus stop about 3/10 of mile down the hill. The bus can't made it up the hill.) I was headed back home when I thought something didn't sound quite right so I figured I would find something stuck in the wheel well when I got home or that the bumper was falling off...again. It's rusting out where the bumper clips on the car and it has fallen off before. I rolled up our driveway and popped out of my car. I had a flat driver side tire, like completely flat. I smelled the hot rubber odor and realized how God had really taken care of me. Kenton County sent us a notice to pay our registration on this car and they based our taxes on Jasper's value, $930. So total I drove about 12 miles on a flat tire, up a dirt hill and lots of holes and then back home in a bumper-defected $930 car with a flat tire :o)

I have not been in the Christmas mood. I haven't put out the first decoration or put up any lights. The farthest I have gotten into Christmas stuff is going to Jay's Christmas program practice. I had even told Jay maybe we should use the money we would use for our own Christmas tree to purchase one for a community family who can't afford one. My dear hubby, being a Christmas baby, just can't imagine Christmas without a tree. He hung icicle lights on the porch and put out the green garland around the columns on our porch. Tonight when I came home this is what greeted me from our living room.

Our mini tree

I took this so you could see how small it is.



I think this is the most adorable Christmas card ever. A friend of mine, Jenny, makes really neat cards and I saw these on her blog. I ordered a few to give out this year. You should check out her blog and I believe she also has an Ebay store.

Oranges, Oranges and Grapefruit

As promised...part of my free purchases via Amazon.com, two dark brown leather ottomans. As you can see they are being used.

The smiling faces of two preachers, my honey and Mark Mander, a friend of ours from Northern Ireland. ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to an invitation from Mark, Jay and I are scheduled to go to Ireland next summer. As of now, our plans are to be there for two weeks and Jay is on the program to speak at two youth camps.

Oranges, oranges, oranges and grapefruits. One thing our church can do: fundraisers. We sold lots and lots of boxes of oranges and grapefruits.


Earliena decided to pose with the boxes of oranges.

A Celebration of Daniel Stafford's Life

The Bakers are quite spread out throughout the nation so we thought it best to take a picture now since we weren't sure how long it would be before this group would be together again!

Aaron singing a beautiful song - Home Where I Belong

It was too cold and snowy outside to do a graveside service, so the celebration concluded in a small chapel at the memory gardens.

Indianapolis Metro's finest escorted us on these wild looking motorcycles with 4 wheels.

Rev. Leonard Sankey spoke briefly at the memorial service.

The youngest of the Baker clans were privileged to ride in the 6 door Cadillac limo.

The family doing what they do best - gabbing!