Year in Review-December 2017 Part 3

I spent a lot of December planning the last Advent supper at church. I made supper for 75 people and served it on December 22. Several church families had family home for the holidays and it was a fun evening. We collected peanut butter and jelly for the Seminary food bank and here is some of what was collected. After supper that evening we decorated the church for Christmas and had Christmas cookies and goodies while we decorated. I served the wassail tea that our church in ID served at the Ladies tea every year and everyone loved it. I think it will be a new tradition to serve that while decorating at our church now. I love that our church waits until the end of Advent to decorate the church and it is all ready for Christmas Eve.

One day my parents babysat the boys so they could decorate Christmas cookies with my mom. Our boys had been sick with colds so the date got changed several times until everyone was healthy to do it. Ram and I ran errands while they were at my mom's. It was so nice to be able to go without them. When we got back to my mom's our Lambs monkeys were in my mom's tree in her front yard. I know it is just a few more years until we can leave them alone, but I love days like this when I get a little break, because a homeschooling mom doesn't get many breaks like this.

We ordered our own hats for our local March for Life. It was a major pain to order them,  we could not get the website to work. We finally called the Synod and they were so helpful to place our order for us. Shipping was outrageous because they expect churches to make a big order, not just order 5 hats. After all that we were really excited when they came in the mail and we had to take several selfies. I don't know if we will ever make it to the Washington D.C. March for Life, but we will proudly wear these at our local March for Life.

I really liked how this one turned out. 

Lamb 3 needs to work on his selfies a little bit.

I told you Lamb 2 loves selfies!

On December 23, the day after I served the dinner at church, Ram went to get our tree out of storage. While he did that I quickly swept and did a little cleaning to get ready for the tree. The whole family helped and we decorated the tree quickly. We chose a slightly different spot than last year and I love our tree in this house with high ceilings. I am so glad I purchased it at a church auction last year.

All of the Lambs were acolytes for the first time together on Christmas Eve. 💗💗💗
I think I am done buying Christmas outfits sweaters or dress shirts for them because they will be acolytes for the next several years.

My parents ended up coming to church with us on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day even though that was not planned, because my mom did not want to drive in the snow. It ended up being really nice to worship together. Ram assisted with the service so I was glad to have my parents to sit with me. Lamb 2 just can't help himself with selfies when he is given a camera!

Christmas Eve

I bought a skirt for $2.64 including tax at Christopher and Banks after all my coupons. I couldn't believe it really worked. Unfortunately they had very few skirts for sale in the whole store. I found a basic grey skirt in my size that I love. Another unexpected blessing for me while Ram is in school!

I don't have any photos to post here, but a few days after Christmas we went over to a friend's house to decorate gingerbread cookies. The mom was so organized and a fun time was had by all. Lamb 1 took pictures, mostly of the babies at the party, instead of decorating cookies. Lamb 2 and 3 decorated a cookie, ate the toppings, and then decorated it again. They did this with about 3 cookies each.

After the gingerbread party we went to eat lunch at Chik-Fil-A. The Lambs got a gift card as present from a church member. I thought that was a great present for preteens. Lamb 1 and 3 were happy to order whatever they wanted and still had $ left on their $10 gift card. Lamb 2 ordered everything he wanted and needed us to pay a couple more dollars. That's the way it usually goes-Lamb 1 saves his money, Lamb 2 spends whatever money he has, and Lamb 3 spends some of his money. They were glad to order what they wanted instead of being limited like we usually do when the whole family goes-(water or lemonade, no dessert).

Chik-Fil-A was really crowded-what was I thinking to go to lunch during Christmas vacation? So the Lambs wanted to get out of there as soon as possible, but I made them pose for a picture outside. 

Grandma spoils our boys so much that we don't buy them very much for Christmas, just small stocking treats for the 12 days of Christmas. I thought this Lego chemist was pretty cool so I ordered it. The company made a mistake in advertising this set, so after it arrived I got an e-mail that they would refund my money. So they ended up getting this set for free.

And that completes our 2017 Review. Happy New Year!

Fall Vacation Day 9-September 13-Part 1

Our last day in Fort Wayne was a fun day. First my dad and I took the Lambs to the Fort Wayne Zoo. Here are some of the photos from the day.

I have photos in this jeep when I was little and went to the Fort Wayne zoo. They were too expensive to maintain so our Lambs never got to ride in them. They sure have fun pretending to drive them. Everyone needed a turn to pretend to drive so Grandpa got a good break on the bench.
I also took a lot of photos at the drinking fountain shaped like a lion because I drank out of that fountain when I was little, but the photos of the Lambs didn't turn out very well.

Lamb 2

My 3 joeys
I wonder how many children have had their photo taken in this kangaroo pouch?

Lamb 3

This photo was a big deal because it is the first time Lamb 1 was brave enough to pet/brush/get this close to a goat.

The Lambs were anxious to ride the carousel so this was the best photo I could get. Children below the yellow line in height are free. I'm pretty sure that Lamb 1 was short enough to ride the carousel free the last time we went to the zoo, 2 years ago. This will probably be the last time that Lamb 2 is short enough to be free.

While I was on the carousel the lens protector fell off my camera and I chased it while the carousel was going. I didn't have time to examine my camera at the zoo with 3 active Lambs. I was worried about it until I had time to look that it was just the lens protector, not the lens. That's the problem with taking a nice camera to some place like the zoo.

After a fun day at the zoo then my mom, sister, and I took the Lambs to a local splash pad. Lamb 1 and 2 had a great time. Lamb 3 was more interested in the playground than the splash pad. That was ok because we had enough adults to watch all the Lambs. I was exhausted after all we did that day.

More photos of my family and the final days of our vacation to come next week.

Our new camera

Last week when I was visiting with a friend, she reminded me that I never blogged about our new camera. Our computer was down when we received it and I never got back to blogging about it.
Ram's parents had some money from when Ram's mom's parents died and from when Ram's younger brother died. They wanted to do something for us that would be a nice memory with some of this money.
When Ram's parents were here at Thanksgiving, I asked if I could practice taking photos with Ram's dad's camera to see if I liked it for us to purchase a similar one. Ram's dad joked that maybe he needed to upgrade and give us his camera. After thinking about it some more, he decided he didn't want to upgrade, he liked his camera. Oh well, we just had to shop some more for a camera. We were still at the thinking about buying a camera stage, not actually at the shopping stage.
Ram's dad is extremely busy at work and travels a lot. He worked a long time online shopping for a camera for us using some of the money I mentioned. He did this all between Thanksgiving and Christmas. As you can see from the photo, he thought of everything that we could need! He bought us a huge camera bag. Our anniversary is December 29 and the camera arrived on our anniversary day. He bought us a camera that was perfect for us a new photographers-can take great photos but not so complicated that we can't figure it out!
He bought us a Canon EOS Rebel T1i. He bought a nice book to go with it. I have tried to read a few pages a day with the camera around my neck and try out different settings as I read about it. I did really well when we first got the camera, but recently I haven't made time to play with my camera.
We had a terrible time getting the CD that came with the camera to load onto our computer. We gave up for several weeks. I had taken a lot of photos, but we couldn't download them onto our computer. I gave up taking photos with the new camera for a few weeks when we couldn't download them. Finally we tried again and it worked!
I have a lot to learn as I never had a nice camera in my life. Before Lamb 1 was born, I think the most I ever paid for a camera was $25! I am looking forward to summer and being able to take the Lambs to a local park and taking lots of photos.
Of course, Ram's parents only requirement to give us this camera was to make sure we share photos with them! I'm a few months behind on going through photos, deleting the awful ones, getting rid of red eye on the ones that need it, and sending the good ones to Snapfish. That project will have to wait until I'm done getting our tax information ready for our tax preparer.
We are so thankful to Ram's parents for this anniversary gift. It meant even more to me (as someone who knows nothing about buying cameras) that Ram's dad took time out of his very busy schedule at work to order everything we need for this camera (bag, cleaning supplies, nice manual, and the camera and lens).
Next, I think I'm going to ask for this for my birthday!
We have been keeping the camera in Ram's office. A few weeks ago, Lamb 3 came to me and brought me the new camera. I just about had a heart attack and carefully put it away. I guess we need to look for a new place for the camera now that Lamb 3 knows how to open the sliding door in the living room to get to Ram's office!

Wordless Wednesday-Photos from our new camera

I plan to do a post about my new camera soon. We had extreme technical difficulties and we finally figured out how to download photos from our camera. Here's some of the first photos I took with the new camera. It will take me awhile to finish reading the manual and learn about the features of my camera. I love this camera and I am so grateful to Ram's parents for giving it to us as an anniversary present. It will take me awhile to get caught up posting photos from both cameras!

I'm back...after 18 days, but who's counting?

*Warning: Long post after no computer!
I was making a comment on Angie's blog on December 19 when the phone rang. After I answered the phone and relayed the message to Ram, the computer was dead. I yelled at the boys for "pushing buttons" but they responded they did not do it and if anyone did it was Lamb 3. Lamb 3 wasn't even in the same room. When I tried to restart the computer it acted like it would fire up and then said "going to sleep". Viruses have been nasty in this area so I assumed it was a virus. We had been recommended a man 15 miles away to fix computers. 12/19 we couldn't reach this man. 12/20 was a really busy day at our churches, but Ram found time to drop off the computer. The man realized it was important to us to have a computer because Ram is a pastor. After a few days he reported that it wasn't a virus and everything was still there. We had backed everything up at Thanksgiving so we weren't extremely worried about losing anything valuable, but after crashing a computer a few years ago we know that it is a pain to reenter info in. So this was a relief that it wasn't a virus. The fix it man asked for a few more days to figure out what was wrong. We were hoping to have the computer back by Christmas. Then we had a blizzard and there was no way to pick up the computer even if it was repaired. After Christmas we found out he needed to order a part that had broken and he was waiting on the shipping company which was being slow because of the holidays. A part had broken that caused the fan to not work that caused the computer to shut down instead of overheating. I still can't understand how a part can break inside your computer when you don't move the computer. We started our daily phone calls to check if the part was here yet. Finally the man had the idea on 1/5 that he could temporarily fix the computer and when the part came in (he had to reorder the part because it never arrived) we'll take the computer back to him to be fixed permanently. I don't know why he didn't do that from the beginning but none of us expected it to take so long. While he waited on the part he cleaned up our computer and defraged it and everything because computers DO NOT like to be shut down the way ours was. So we are in good shape on our computer again.
Ram was nice enough to go pick up the computer last night for me before he left for a trip (more on that later). I spent last night skimming our 350 e-mails and responding to a few of them. On tonight's agenda after the Lambs go to bed is to read some of the many blog posts I missed.

It is an understatement to say it was terrible to be without a computer or internet. If you don't live as rural as we do, there is no way you could understand. It wasn't just the "fun" part of not reading blogs. We gave up TV and had no internet and when the weather is bad we can't get local radio stations inside the house. Over Christmas we had a blizzard and we had no way to get weather info. We live 7 miles from the library and they are open very little hours because of budget and open even less over the holidays. We don't know anyone in our town of 113 that has internet that we know well enough to let us borrow. Ram has an ancient computer to write his sermons on but it hasn't had internet for over 7 years on it and it wasn't worth the slow connection or chance of virus or downloading all the updates. Being without computer didn't bother Ram that much. He just read more books. When I said I was going crazy, he reminded me of all the women in this area that raised more children than I am without a computer. But I think when you don't have something (or even know it exists) that you don't miss something as much as someone that has it and loses it.
I had read e-mail and blogs and made a few comments and even pre-posted one more blog post the night before our computer broke. So I wasn't behind on that before this all started. But my problems already began on 12/19. My mom had e-mailed me a few recipes for the potluck the next day and I hadn't printed them out so I had to make something else for the potluck. Ram gets his prayers for church by e-mail and he hadn't printed any of those out in advance. Thankfully Ram had already e-mailed all the Christmas bulletins to the secretaries. Thankfully my dad is a pastor and he printed the prayers out and snail mailed them to Ram. There were a few church members that didn't realize our e-mail was down and e-mailed us questions or announcements instead of calling us. I had to answer them last night that we never received those e-mails. I had mailed a lot of Christmas presents and other items before our computer broke and I had no idea if people had received them and some of those people I didn't even have phone numbers for. I'm sure everyone with computer problems says this, but I regretted not doing some things before our computer broke and the whole time the computer was down I said to myself, "If I only would have known the computer was going to break I would have done....before it broke." We haven't started our Christmas letter or sent any Christmas cards without a computer. I had planned to order a few things online and get some sales and I missed all that. Oh well, there will be sales again. My parents were nice enough to keep a watch on a few blogs to find out that Kristy is having a boy and Pam didn't have her twin girls yet. I called them almost daily to get updates. Thanks mom and dad for doing this.

Much happened while our computer was down. I list a few of the highlights here and hopefully I can still post more about some of these in later posts.
*We had a blizzard and all church services were canceled on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I remember being sick on Christmas Eve once but I still went to church even though I didn't feel well. So this was the first time in my life that I didn't attend several services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Remember my post complaining about dreading Christmas Eve at our tri-parish? It ended up not mattering because none of that happened. It was so strange to stay home from church and all our presents were opened before 8am on Christmas Day. It was a very relaxing Christmas as a family. I even had time to start reading many of the books I got for Christmas! Even though it was relaxing, I hope I never have to go another Christmas in my life without going to church.
*Our one church rescheduled the Christmas Eve program to New Year's Eve. So we still had a rushed New Year's Eve to have the Lambs in the Christmas Eve program at one church and then make it to church at the second church for New Year's Eve service. The Lambs did well and said their lines loudly and sang well too. I'm so proud of them, especially shy Lamb 1!
*Because of weather one church canceled on Dec. 27, but the other two churches had church. Even with the cold wind chill, all 3 churches had church on Jan. 3.
*We celebrated our 8th anniversary on December 29. The roads were clear so we took a family trip to Sioux Falls to eat out and shop. We did it all in one day and got home very late. We were tired after that, but had a good day as a family.
*Ram's parents gave us a new camera for an anniversary present. I have been trying to read a little of the book with my camera in hands and trying out some features daily. Ram could care less about cameras, but I am very excited. I'll do a whole post about my new camera.
*My parents had furnace troubles and their house could have burned down on Christmas Eve. Thankfully my sister was home and insisted that my dad call the repair man when she heard a strange sound. That sound wasn't a big deal, but the repair man found something else that was. My dad didn't want to pay a repair bill until he heard how serious it was. Then he gladly paid the bill and was even glad that he had stayed home from church to meet the repair man.
*A family friend of Ram's family died and we heard the news on New Years Eve. Ram flew home today, will attend the funeral tomorrow, and will fly home on Friday. Please keep the Baker family (leaves behind a wife, 6 kids and their spouses, several grandkids) in your prayers. Please keep Ram's safety and the weather for flying in your prayers. Please keep me in your prayers as I am here in MN with 3 boys during another blizzard. The man that died was a second father to Ram as he spent much of high school at their house with his best friend. I will post more about this on another post.

Yesterday and Camera Advice Wanted

(Sorry, I meant to post this tomorrow (Monday), but I forgot to set it for tomorrow! When the post says yesterday, it means Sunday!)
We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day in the 60's yesterday. The Lambs were well enough to go to church and Sunday School. We had a meltdown because I wouldn't allow them to shake hands at the door with all the sickness going around. I had warned of that on the way to church, but I guess we didn't listen. It was good to be back at church after missing two of the past 3 Sundays. In the afternoon we went to a birthday party for a church member that was 80. They brought leftover cake over for us afterwards. The Lambs are looking forward to more cake! Ram took Lamb 1 and 3 outside for a little with the beautiful weather. They brought the tomato cages inside. We still have a little more yard work tasks to do so I hope we are blessed with a few more nice days. Snow is predicted for later this week, so we'll see.

I need advice for purchasing a digital camera. Ram's dad bought us our first digital camera when I was pregnant with Lamb 1. It broke a few days after Lamb 2 was born. Then we bought a Canon Powershot. I was happy with this camera until recently. We went to a wedding this summer and the lady that I asked to take pictures said it was really slow reaction time. I thought it just needed new batteries (it did). But since June I have noticed that she was right, it has a slower and slower reaction time even with new batteries. Having a slow reaction time when you have little Lambs is not a good thing. Especially when you want to take a picture of all 3 Lambs! I think the camera is slowly dying.
We are not rushing out to buy a new camera since ours still works, but we are beginning shopping for one. One thing I do not want is a slim camera-I would rather have a fatter camera to have something for stability without a tripod. Canon Rebels have been highly recommended but I'm not sure I'm ready to spend that much money. I've never had a camera with different lenses and I'm kind of hesitant as an amateur photographer. I'm just looking for a camera that will take nice photos of our Lambs, I don't want to be a professional photographer! I hope you readers can help us in our camera search with some advice about what you have and what you like about your camera! So here's my questions:
1. What kind of a camera do you have and would you recommend it? Does it fit my criteria to not be too slim?
2. If you have a Canon Rebel, is it worth the money?
3. Where did you purchase your camera-especially online sites that you would recommend?
TIA!