It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Because it's snowing and snowing and snowing! Hello, everyone! It's been awhile so I thought I'd do a end of the year post.

We've gotten a lot of snow the past couple of days. We went down to Pocatello earlier this week and we were all amazed that once again they had pretty much no snow! The kids were saying they would have to come up to our house for Christmas if they want a white Christmas. Then when we were there that night it was snowing enough we ended up staying the night. Hopefully it will stick around for all of you for Christmas (just not to the roads).

As for us, we've got lots of snow. Barry had to snow blow the driveway TWICE yesterday so people could get in our driveway for a meeting. Then the roads were bad enough only two people came. Unfortunately that also meant Grandma and Grandpa Hansen didn't come up since the roads were slick. We missed you and we'll make our cake again for you the next time you are up.

Enough about the weather. The kids and mom are all very excited to have school out for two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in until 8:30 today. They are already planning out cousins sleepovers and play dates with friends.

Barry will take his last final on Wednesday and I am hoping maybe he can actually hang out with us for Christmas and not be stressed he should be doing homework. I think the next week, though, he will have to spend starting his 60 page paper. I asked him if he had lots of charts and graphs he could stick in it so we can see him occassionally once school starts. Since they don't offer 9 credits worth of classes that he needs (and we're discovering he may only need 4 more!) then he has to go back to work full-time. They only let him work half-time if he is going to school full-time so now he will be trying to write this massive paper while maintaining a regular schedule. Please keep him in your prayers. He is really discouraged right now and wants to just quit due to a number of reasons but he is so close he is going to try to stick with it. Unless of course I said I'd be fine with him not finishing. Then I think he'd run while he had the chance.

Braden, Tyler and Karina are all doing fairly well in school. Karina had an absolute perfect grade and behavior report card at parent teacher conferences this month. Her teacher said you don't get any better students than her. I'm hoping some of the boys past teachers will get Karina to make up for the boys. Haha. The boys, amazingly enough, BOTH had good conferences this trimester. Normally I get frustrated teachers that don't know how to get them to focus and both teachers said they are doing well and are very smart boys. If they'd focus, they could get even better grades so the teachers are challenging them on that.

We also got Braden's ISAT scores back and he was advanced on everything so then we found out from his teacher that those scores are what they use to determine honors classes. She let him know how important it was to keep those up and to work hard on his math since he wants to be a scientist. Tyler got advanced on math, too, so we were excited to see that. They both absolutely love science and by now know more than their mother. I never could stand it so I think I promptly forgot all of it as soon as I passed each test.

Kayli is getting to be a big girl and is SUCH A TEASE! She just loves to play with Tyler and they tease each other constantly. She is a smart little bugger, too. We were helping her to say words and the conversation went like this:

Dad: Say "I"
Kayli: I
Dad: Say "Love"
Kayli: Love
Dad: Say "Daddy"
Kayli (with a very mischevious smirk and a laugh): Mommy!

She did the exact some thing to Angela and Jared, throwing in Jared instead of Angela and then laughing.

Kayli is also a dancing and singing girl. Right now we are working on teaching her Jingle Bells. I keep telling the kids they can't sing the silly versions of songs from school as they will confusion, especially the Jingle Bells ones.

As for me, as my family knows, I've been busy with Angela working on our website, Coupon Stretch. Some of my family members went to a internet boot camp conference and so we started picking their brains for information. We've made the website awhile ago but dropped it as we couldn't figure out how to monetize it well. So now we've got it set up and are already making money. It's very nice and is lots of fun to do. If anyone else has web pages, could you please add the link to ours to yours? Right now we have deals, printable coupons, a store and review on there. We will slowly be adding more stuff to it as time goes on but it is finally ready for everyone to see. I think my favorite part is the coupon codes feature, though. I had no idea there was a nicely organized place with all the coupons and deals for lots of major stores out there. Since you all know how much I love to bargain shop this is a good fit for me. No more scouring the internet for a coupon before I go to a dept. store. Even Barry liked it.

Debra, I went and looked at your website when I found the link on this page (that I apparently haven't been to for awhile) and love it! You two are doing a great job with that and it looks great. I was really impressed with the whole Spanish section.

Okay, thanks for stopping by everyone and have a great Christmas!