The Long Awaited Christmas Blog

Wow, Where to start?! Most of my family came up on Tuesday before Christmas and the fun started. We had lunch in the dining hall, got settled in the cabins, then headed up to Joshua to hang out and have dinner. The kids played in the snow and in the big open spaces of the Great room and Joshua dining room. We enjoyed each other's company and looked forward to having Josh and Heather and Jeremy show up. Then, the snow started falling, and falling and falling. Everyone had made it for Christmas day, where we had a fantastic breakfast, opened gifts, played, had a wonderful lunch, played some more, had a nice dinner, then the kids acted out the Christmas story while I read it and we had a time of sharing. Because of the weather, we had moved everyone to either Joshua or the lower cabin, so as we cleaned things up and were getting ready to take off for the night, the power went out. This is not uncommon in a storm, so Rich went to start the generater at the cabin. Everyone headed home and planned on meeting for breakfast at 8:30 so Jeremy could get on the road at a decent time. Well, at our house, we slept just fine and about 8am went to pick up the crew from the cabin. Rich went in and then came back out and said they were all sick. So we went up to see the Joshua crew to see if anyone up there was sick, well, no one was, so we began to brainstorm. It must be something with the cabin, for everyone there to be so sick, but no one else. Clearly not food poisoning like we had initially thought. Rich and I headed to the cabin to help out, when I walked in, everyone was strewn across the house, laying on the floor, huddled in blankets, with bowls near by, no one could stand, they all looked so miserable. I tried to make everyone comfortable the best I could while cleaning things up, and Rich went to seek help and get a CO detector. When he brought it in, it went off immediatly so we had everyone crawl to the open door and windows to get some fresh air. Rich returned again with help and the news that we really needed everyone to go to the infimary and probably down to Fresno to get checked out. So we began to get coats and boots and get people down the steep, snow covered stairs in their foggy state. Most everyone had some time on the oxygen in the infirmiry and then a couple went down in the ambulance and everyone else road down with Rich or Dad to the hospital. Only the ones with remaining symptoms went in, and the rest either came back up or hung at Rob's house to rest and wait for the 3 to get released. Everyone was back up at around 10:30pm when we decided to have a little birthday party for Josiah, (my nephew, some birthday so far!). Then we settled in for the night, cleaned up in the morning and everyone left just as they had planned. Whew! What an adventure, what a crazy, memorable Christmas! Everyone says that they had a fun time, despite the almost dying, and that they would even come back to Hume Lake again sometime. Such troopers! I loved seeing every single one of them, only wished Jonathan's family could have made it, and that I had taken more pictures!

The Cold Brings Colds

This week was full of fun, snow, and a couple colds. We started the week with a ton of snow, which is beautiful and quite cold, it has been below freezing daily, so no walks for us. We are all terrain, but not all weather, moms! But it gave us a chance to play in the snow. Ellie was not much for sledding, but she loved using my snowballer to make snowballs and throw them! Jaron, he didn't love it as much. Then Tuesday was our Program Christmas "Party" down in Fresno. So we dropped the kids at the Sees house and went to dinner with the Program department and then headed to a minor league hockey game-Go Falcons! It was a good learning experience, I think they must have a fight quota they have to meet, because within the first couple minutes they had two fights, which seemed to come out of nowhere, but then that was it, the rest of the time, they just played hockey. Weird. But we got some good broom hockey ideas, which is really our sport. Well, that morning the kids had woken up with runny noses, but Erin said to still bring them, and they were good for her, but at around 11pm poor Ellie started waking up like every hour. The crazy part is, she was staying upstairs and we were staying down, so she would walk in the pitch dark all the way down to our room each time. At about 5am I decided to just stay and sleep with her. Good decision, we finally got a couple hours of sleep in a row. Wednesday, we did some shopping and errands and then headed back up to the chillyness. The kiddos are getting better it seems and we just had a fun evening where Rich pulled out his guitar and we sang together. First Ellie had her microphone and would do her best to sing along, even if she didn't know the song, then she switched it out for her guitar, so she could rock with dad! So Cute!

Joshua Events

This Tuesday was the Joshua formal Christmas Party, where everyone gets all dressed up for dinner and they come in to a nicely decorated dining hall and then they are served Pizza! It is really fun. Then after dinner, all the Pause families are invited up to help build GingerBread "houses", as has been tradition for several years. But last year we decided to add an "Ugly Christmas Sweater" competion, Caroling, and a Story read by Nathan Pearsey, (He has a great reading voice), while the staff judges the gingerbreads. As a staff we put together a Wildwood scape to remember the fire that the Joshua student started. It was quite a masterpiece. We had a helicopter above dropping "water" and everything! I hope to have some cute pictures of the dress nice portion soon from someone else's camera, but I hope you enjoy these.

Then on Wednesday was a regular monthly theme dinner. The theme was How the Grinch Stole Christmas. So Ellie and I dressed as Whos. She just wore jammies and had some funky hair and I went a little different direction. All to say, it's been a busy, but fun, couple of days!

Random Facts

Not much to say, really, but I thought I'd try to jot something down. I'm loving my house decorated for Christmas! Jaron has successfully drank out of a cup with a straw and a sippy cup a couple times now. And it was with formula and he didn't spit it out on purpose or scream at me like I was giving him poison. (Which is what would happen in the past) So there is hope yet, that I can leave the child for more than 4 hours at some point! Yeah! Ellie got dressed by herself today without even being asked so that was exciting. I put together little Christmas Smore packages for some of my friends that I am excited to hand out. And I've finished my Christmas letter, I just need to print it and mail it. (If you think I might need your address, please e-mail it to me) The floor is covered with pretend food, but I am noticing that some of it is seperated into color groups, cute. The kids are napping and I should too, but then again, I "should" do a lot of other things too. The daily dilemna! Okay, I'm off, sorry, no pictures, just an update of randomness.

Tractor Parade!

Reedly is a little town outside of Fresno. It's a farming town, and every year they have a parade for Christmas where the tractors are all dressed with lights and decorations. We have been wanting to go for the last couple years, but it has never worked out until this year. We met a bunch of people for dinner at this little mexican place, then headed over to the parade. It was pretty fun, highlights were the bus, the mini bus, and this cool thing that only had two wheels. Ellie's friend, Lily, was there, so she loved that. Rich wants to join next year with the weapons carrier.

Back Home

I know, I know, it's been forever, but I've been out of town for two weeks and am still trying to catch my breath. To recap the two weeks, we went to Mexico with the Joshua students, which went mostly good, except for, uh, Jaron not sleeping, Jaron getting a rash, Two students getting injured and being rushed to San Diego's emergecy rooms, where one of them had to have surgery on his head!, and the Baja 1000 taking out one of the jumps at the beginning of the race. But, we did eat some amazing carne asada tacos daily, got a ton of work done at the Ranch and were not attacked by the drug cartel! Then we sent off the students with the other staff and our family stayed in San Diego for the next week. We stayed with Rich's parents, but did get to have a hang-out/birthday party at my mom's which was nice to see everyone. Thanksgiving was nice and fairly low key with the Ferreira side, then Friday we got to go shopping with no kids and go on a date to dinner and a movie with no kids all in the same day! Thank You Grammy Moo! Saturday, we headed home, picking up a truck for Hume in Temecula and picking up Rich's Grandma in Santa Clarita to bring her to be the Catalyst at Joshua for the next two weeks. Jaron only cried for like half the trip up, so that was fun. So, we got back Saturday night, Sunday tried to unpack as well as put up Christmas decorations, then did the nursery at church. Monday I took Jaron to the Doctor to see if he had an ear infection or something, but he checked out fine. (which is good of course, but it would kind of be nice to have an explanation for the screaming and pulling at his ear and what not, but, it's really better that he is fine) Tuesday I got back to walking with the mom's, then cleaned and baked for Bible study Tueday night. This morning we had our WON Wednesday, which is a monthly get together with mom's of young kids with coffee, a speaker, and small group discussion. Tonight is the Hume Family Christmas party. I am a judge for the bake off and other food entry competition. Tomorrow, we go down the hill again to get a Christmas tree and to go to a tractor show with the Joshua staff. Then I think Friday my friends might have a birthday party for me. Whew! So you can see why I haven't had too much time to blog. Oh, did I mention that Hume got an all new phone system so we haven't had phones or consistant internet. If you need our new number, please e-mail my gmail account, which is ferreirafour@gmail.com and I will reply from that, because my regular hume account is not working at the moment. Love You All- Thank you to the faithful readers of this! Oh, so the pictures are of bath time at Grammy's and Thanksgiving at the Ferreira's (Rich's aunt and uncle) both Jaron and Ellie loved the dog, she was so good with them.