Category: Home Life

My online friend Christina (aka Tassie) gave me this blogger award today. Here is what she said on her blog, “Louanne’s blog is a great read, she is witty and insightful, and she is a real humanitarian. Keep up the good work Louanne!” Such kind words and I appreciate it. Now I have to choose 5 bloggers to give the award to. Here are the rules:

Rules:

1. Awarded parties must nominate five people who have not received the award.

2. The blogs that receive the award must serve some purpose.

3. In their post about the award they need to link back to the blog/post where they were given the award.

4. Awarded parties must post the award banner on their site. The banner must remain linked to bloggingwithapurpose.com.

Now here is the tricky part. I have to nominate 5 people who have not been given this award. I went to some sites that I really like and they have already been given the award this week. So I am going to have to think about who I will pass this on too. What I find interesting is that the person who started this award is a teenage boy who is a blogger and home-school proponent. I read through his site tonight and I really enjoyed it, he is a good writer and very thorough in the things that he posts about. I also liked the links on his site to other teens who are blogging with a purpose – teens that are thinking about the world around them rather than just “reacting”. Teens who are being brought up to serve God, but also to be adults. What a concept, I know! I could do a whole separate post about how many teens today are not prepared to be adults and go off to college or into the work force because they haven’t been raised up with a good foundation. But I will leave it at this – I am very happy to see that the founder of this award was a home-schooled kid and a dude! What a switch 🙂

My sister Tahni came to visit last week. She was our first visitor when we got home from China at the beginning of August. What a change she saw in Nadia over the course of those months! I enjoyed our visit because I was alive and functioning rather than a jet lagged zombie. Hee hee. Here are a few photos and the sketch she did of Nadia is really awesome and I don’t think that my photo does it justice. It was our Christmas gift and I will always treasure it.

While she was here we ate great food, picked out new glasses for me (thanks T), visited with Grammie, Paula and Clay. We also watched Kevin James’ “Sweat the Small Stuff” and Bill Cosby’s “Himself” which in my opinion are 2 of the funniest stand up routines ever. I also added a few extra photos from this weekend and Nadia cuteness.

Below is Nadia sharing an ice cream cone with Mommy. And our family lunch.

Nadia goes everywhere with a toy in each hand. So with this outfit I put a toy in each pocket and told her that she could now have 4 toys. She was not sure what to think of those pockets, so she walked around holding on to the toys IN the pockets. Cracked me up!!

With all the crazy activity of the holidays I didn’t get to do a post about our Christmas time with Mike’s family. Chris and Dee hosted the event a couple days before Christmas and a good time was had by all. Especially Nadia who grabbed a drink left on the coffee table and promptly dumped it all over herself. I give the girl credit for knowing how you are supposed to use a cup, but she had a shocked look on her face once she was wearing the beverage.

As usual we did the gift exchange and there was plenty of wheeling and dealing between family members. We ended up with a Target gift card and some totally COOL travel mugs. They are stainless steel and say that if sealed they keep drinks warm for 12 hours and cold for 4 and they have these really nifty lids (yes, I used the word nifty). The event wouldn’t be the same without the family members working together to get what they want.

It was the first chance many of Mike’s side of the family had to see Nadia, so that was really fun. Joy’s kids came in from out of town and it was nice to spend some time with them over at her place. We were getting really loud and laughing a lot and Nadia probably thought we had all gone crazy. But she was mostly just interested in the toys that Janis kept bringing out 🙂 It was really great to see so many people this holiday.