Christmas at Lakeland

A REAL Christmas tree

Merry Christmas! We Hope you all had a nice Christmas.

Our Christmas was different but really fun. We went to Lakeland to see our relatives (dad's brother's family). We left on Christmas Eve and spent the night at their house. We had fun opening our stockings, making our own pizza for dinner, decorating Christmas cookies, playing with our cousins (we have six cousins), and going to bed late. In the morning it was Christmas! We got up early to help Aunt Michelle and Ashly as they were preparing food for lunch. The food was sooo delicious. Aunt Michelle and Ashly are really good cooks. We ate when Grandma and Grandpacame over, and then we opened the presents and watched everybody else open theirs. We played with our cousins for a little while and then went home. When we got home we unpacked and sat down on the coach and had our family devotions, we go over this book called "Christ in Christmas" that is our tradition every year, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We sang Christmas songs and prayed, then we opened our presents, we left them home so we could do there. We all had a fun time this different but fun Christmas. We hope you all did too. Here are some pictures of us with our family on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

Sarah, Rachel, and Jayleen

The boys opening their stockings

All of us opening our stockings

Waiting for presents

Watching them open their presents

The boys playing pool

Us with Our Cousins

Here are some other pictures that were taken when we were just playing and doing other stuff with our family.

The pizzas

Ashly the Chef making her pizza

Already eating their pizzas

Zach and Ray, the last to make their pizzas

Ray and Uncle Karry

Eating pizza is fun

Zach and Caleb

Me and Caleb

Rachel, Jay, and Sarah decorating cookies

Aunt Michelle

David on Josh's back

Me, Uncle Karry, and Ashly

-Jazmine

December 4 - 6

Thursday
On Thursday we have been doing school while men have been putting knew shingles on our roof (there was a lot of noise), so mom took us to the library to do our school. We did our school for a while and then we went shopping. We left home a little before 7:00A.M. and came back home around 4:00P.M.! We were gone for seven or eight hours, and that's along time. We went grocery shopping. We were signed up to bring a veggie tray to the Resolved Christmas Party, so we bought some vegetables, and while we were there we bought David a birthday gift, his birthday is on December 9th(tomorrow) and he's turning eleven! And then after that it was lunch time and mom bought Little Ceasar's pizza. We ate our lunch at the park and we played there for a little while and then went thrift shopping. Then mom took us to JCPenney's, we looked around for what we might get dad for Christmas, but we didn't get anything from there. Then we went to a couple more thrift shops and went back home.

Saturday
On Saturday we stayed home and I studied my biology for a while and then Jay and I cut the vegetables for the Resolved Christmas Party. So we were in the kitchen for a while then we went outside to play basketball with our brothers and then they started sword fighting with their light sabers. Here are some pictures I took.
Then I went back in and got ready to go to church with dad and David for dad's band rehearsal because I was in the choir with Mrs. Neu, Libby, Mrs. Hyers, Andi, Noelle, and Jessie. We practiced singing with dad's band(his and David's bands will be playing Christmas songs at the church's Old Fashion Christmas Party. Then after that we helped Mrs. Neu, Libby, and Mr. Dunlop decorate the church for the Resolved Christmas Party. It looked really fun with Christmas lights, a Christmas tree, poinsettas, candy canes, gifts for the White Elephant, and a Charlie Brown Christmas movie playing on the screen. When everyone was there, Mr. Dunlop prayed and everyone went to get some food to eat, and some of us sitting with me watched the movie without sound soLibby and Noelle translated it for us! It was really cool how they memorized it all.
Then we played these weird games (I don't know what they were called), but they were really fun. My favorite one was when each team had to dress one member of their team (we all were in teams) as a reindeer. My team dressed Eddie up, and he won third place for the antlers Mrs. Neu made (she is very creative). Then after we played the games we did our White Elephant. It was really funny watching what everyone got. I got light bulbs, Ray got a recipe book, but then he switched with Hannah, and dad got a candle. It was a fun night. Here are some pictures and videos I took.

Sunday

On Sunday I found out that I wasn't going to be in the choir at all. Dad canceled the choir, so it's just his band playing with no choir next Sunday for the Old Fashion Christmas Party, but it still will sound good and we will enjoy watching them.


~Jazmine

Angel Tree

Today at church the Christmas tree was up. There were angel tags on it. On each tag was a kid's name. Each of the kids had a parent or both parents in prison.On each of the tags was a name and their Christmas wish. We try to serve them by buying a gift for them. We try to make them happy. We will have a party for those kids and will give them there gifts.I hope they have fun.

The Angel Tree Tags

Yesterday Mr. Stickley came over for me and Ray to help him with the angel tree tags. He told us what to write and we wrote it. It was fun helping him. Here's a picture of us holding the angels.

Our Christmas Tree

Every year after Thanksgiving, we put up our Christmas tree and the Christmas lights on the house, and we decorate the house with Christmas decorations. On Friday, we put up our tree(we don't have a real one) and decorated it with Christmas ornaments, but we didn't put the Christmas lights on the house because some men were coming over to fix the roof and dad didn't want to put them up until they were finished, but anyways we have our tree up and it's really pretty.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving this year.

Sorry we didn't write about this earlier. This year we had a nice Thanksgiving. We had our families and some friends over to our house for lunch. We had sixteen people over. Mom, Jay, and I(Jazmine) cooked the food, and some brought some over too, so we had a lot of food! It all tasted really good. After we ate, we went to play with our cousins(we have six cousins) and cleared the tables and cleaned the dishes. Then we had dessert. Before they all came over for Thanksgiving, we already made cupcakes and decorated it to look like turkeys. It tasted so good! We had a fun time with our families and friends. This Thanksgiving was great, but this year was different because usually we had only our family over for lunch and sometimes dad's friend, but we had a lot of friends over and our family. But anyways we had a great time.

Fort Christmas

Yesterday my brother(David) and I(Ray) went to Fort Christmas with the Future Men and anyone else who wanted to go. First we went around the fort and looked in the rooms that had tools and other things that pioneers used. There were guns, saws and axes, and in one of the rooms there were Indian clothes and weapons. The fort had a small weapon room where there were boxes marked WEAPONS.We saw men dressed as soldiers. They told us about their uniforms. We all learned that the knapsack is the most important part of equipment for a soldier, because it carries all their belongings like food, boots, clothes, and other things. They showed us how their guns worked and told us about the history of the fort, and we learned that Florida is the 25th state. Then they told us about the Indian Wars and how they didn't want to move from their lands.Then Mr. Maccione had a test for the Future Men. They had to find out what the 25th state was. David and Boyd won three dollars each. Then after we were all done looking at the fort, we went to Taco Bells. We had a great time!

My (Jazmine's) Week

Today is Sunday and I didn't get to go to church because I was sick. I have been sick for almost a whole week now. During the week I have been sleeping, taking medicine, and eating soup, but when I was feeling better I did some school and watched some movies with my family. Yesterday I even did some cleaning. Jay and I cleaned the kitchen pantry(so now it's nice and clean), and then I cleaned the bathroom while my parents went out to buy a new toilet because the toilet wasn't working right. My dad tried to clean the pipes, but there was nothing wrong with it. So he took the toilet out of the bathroom and found out that there was a cleaning brush stuck in it!(We don't know how it go in there.) But anyways, after that we had LOTS of laundry to do. When the boys came back home from the Future Men, they helped us clean up. So this week all of us were sick except for Ray and Jay.

Celebration!

Celebration was fun! This year only me (Jazmine) and Ray went because dad had to stay home and work, and mom stayed home with him and our brother and sister. So we went with the Hyers family. It was fun with them. The message was about "FREEDOM". The worship was really good and fun. We served in the children's ministry and the kids in the class I was serving in were really good. We also had fun hanging out with the teens from our church and the teens from Daytona. We had a great time watching the concert which were "Tall Tree" and "Generation Letter", they were so good! We had a great time.

Our Biology Class

Every Wednesday my sister Jazmine and I(Ray) have a biology class at our house; our teacher is Ms. Kim Paladino. She teaches us,her two sisters, and two other homeschoolers. We have alot of fun doing the experiments. Here is a picture of our biology class.

Just started this blog

Hi, we just started this blog! This is how it all started, while we were going over the book "Do Hard Things" written by Alex and Brett Harris, our dad said that he wanted us to do an assignment that involved doing hard things. He said that he wanted us (Jazmine and Ray) to figure out how to start a blog (which we just did) without asking him for help, but going out and asking other people who already have their own blogs. That is because he wanted us to do a hard thing, which is speaking out to other people and asking them,and stepping out of our comfort zones ... And since we can't talk to people in person we're writing!
- Jazmine