Half My Life

I have been officially married to Byron 1/2 my life. 18 years Monday - we were hoping to go hiking -but the weather does not look too promising. Many times we end up on our anniversary doing our Christmas shopping - which is fun too. In the meantime, we had a great Thanksgiving with just our little family. Gracie and Byron cooked - and it was great!

In the meantime, the Christmas decorations are up! This is a photo of one of my 3 favorite ornaments. Each kid's first shoes are hanging on the tree - with their name and birthdate written on the bottom. Such a neat way to remember when they were so tiny! Their feet are so big now, if I hung their current shoes - it would pull the tree over.

I have really taken advantage of so many great online deals for Christmas this year. I DID finally get my 100 free photos http://ayersfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com/2009/11/amazing-deals.html there is still time to get yours if you haven't already. I also got some other great stuff online. I traded in my Swagbucks for about $20.00 worth of gift cards. I am working on some other projects -but I can't tell you about them because they are Christmas presents!

The kids decided to have a lemonade stand as many of the kids in our church have been. One of our church's missionaries to Cambodia has determined they can remove a child from an orphanage to an actual home for only $150.00. The children's ministries have encouraged kids to raise money on their own with lemonade stands to get these orphans into homes. All the kids together have almost raised $1000! My kids felt very convicted and really wanted to help. They set about to sell lemonade - without a lot of preparation and not much encouragement from me. I didn't have and disposable cups - so they started making cookies. They raised $130 in 3 hours with a cookie stand in the driveway, is that incredible, or what? They are a hard crew to say no to, believe me! They really prayed throughout the time that God would bless it - and He certainly did. Several times I would see one of them praying while the others worked the stand. I guess I didn't have much faith as I thought our sleepy little street would maybe yield them maybe $20 by the end of the day. You can learn so much from the faith of a child!