Merry Christmas!

We love this time of year. The setting up of the tree, the food, and the happy feelings all remind of Christmas and its divine purpose. We want each one of you to know how much we love you. You wouldn't be viewing our blog if you weren't some of our favorite people. Thanks for all you do for our family. We hope you have a great Christmas!

The time has come!

Yeppers, the time has finally arrived to see the movie Twilight! Savannah and I are Twilight freaks and we loved the movie. I agree with the other reviews I have heard that they needed to develop the characters more... but you are squeezing a 498 page book into a 2 hour movie. I thought it was a great addition to the books, so much so that I have seen it 3 times. I even got David to go with me once (on his birthday no less!!) I think he wanted to check out Edward and measure up the competition. I think he really just liked the cars. (Vampires love to drive fast!)

Jonah You Rock! (Thanks to Savannah)

Here is the awesome news for our family. All the elementary children had an assignment at school to write about their favorite holiday memory. Jonah wrote about an experience where Santa had ripped his coat on our fire place and left a piece of his Santa suit hanging on the fireplace guard. After reading it over, Savannah offered to help him "flower" it up a bit. She did a great job. So great, that Jonah's essay won for his school. He was then put in the overall Michigan drawing. And yes... He won! He gets to say a line on the air for Radio Disney AM 910 in Detroit. He was able to ride in the holiday parade with Miss Oakland County (I am sure it was his favorite part) and two players from the Detroit Shock Womens NBA basketball team in the horse and carriage. He also won a Nintendo Wii gaming system. He was so excited and so was his dad. I will say he really earned this though. The parade day was at best 20 degrees outside with snow and blowing wind. He was a frozen Popsicle and so was his dad. I would say he worked for that free game system. Savannah was the first to play it since she was the brains behind the operation. I asked Jonah if he thought Miss Oakland County was pretty and he said "I guess, she was really sparkly". How fun is that! You can see Jonah's picture with the Shock Basketball players at www.wnba.com/shock under the Holiday Parade pictures.

FANTASTIC JOB ABIGAIL!

Abigail and her team took first place for her cheerleading competition. We are very proud of her. They now get to go on to a regional competition in Kalamazoo. They did a cheer and a dance routine. The dance routine was adorable. Abigail really did a great job shaking her pom poms (as well as other things)! She is sooooo yummy!

So you think Jonah can dance?

For the school talent show we copied the evolution of dance from the internet and Jonah did it. It was a huge hit and he really rocked it! I am having trouble getting it on the blog but we put it on you tube. Go to you tube and type in Jonah evo of dance. You will see him. It is about 4 minutes long but it will keep you laughing. If you look closely in the middle of the performance you can see him mouth "I messed up" It is precious. That really loud scream is the proud daddy. I had difficulty hearing for days after that.

Spootacular Halloween Fun!

Here are the costumes that made the cut for the Walker children. In keeping with the Walker tradition we did have one sick child, every holiday we have at least one sicky. She only threw up once so we had her go to school for the parade and keep trick or treating (two throw-ups would have solidified staying home... but just one-no way). We didn't want her to miss her first time at the school doing this as an actual student.

We had a lot of fun and are still eating way too much candy.

Hills and Trails... Oh My! 1/2 marathon

HILLS AND TRAILS...OH MY!!!

Well I thought I would write on my latest running experience. It is very difficult in Michigan to find a run on a Saturday. I felt strongly that we shouldn't use the sabbath for events like these. The good news is we found one. It was local and we thought we would give it a try. The description of the course said it would be hilly and challenging with some trail running. I figured it wouldn't be record time for me and my running buddies but we would do it. Things started off good. After about 3 miles we made a turn into what they call "trail running" I was not prepared. You couldn't put both of your feet together at the same time on this trail. Not to mention the hills (Mountains) we had to climb. So I pressed forward on this trail. I jumped over mud, rocks lakes and just yucky stuff. Once I would get to the top of the hill I realized I would have to go down and that was challenging. Anyone listening to me would have had a great chuckle out of me. The whole time I was saying "oh crap! Oh No! Oh Crap! It was funny. Then I did a LeeAnne. I realized I hadn't seen a mile marker in some time. This race was small so you weren't running in packs. My two friends and I are different paces so we weren't together. I realized I was alone with the exception of a couple in front of me. When the man stopped running and declared "I think we are lost" I just about cried. I knew I had been running a while and I had a bad feeling he was right. Well we ran for a bit more thinking. We were thirsty, hot and somehow we needed to find our way out of these woods. We did only to find about 15 other runners standing at the clearance lost too. It was comical. Somehow we missed the arrows. I think it was poorly marked and it was the officiators fault, but I will let it go. So by the time we found road I ran over the mileage and was exhausted. Oh yeah and the description of the race said the last 3 miles were down hill. WRONG! The only mile that was down hill was the last. I crawled across that finish line. What was worse is my one girlfriend behind me got even more lost. An hour later we sent someone to look for her and she had to be brouhgt in on the fire truck. It really stunk! Here we trained for our end of season event and we tanked it. Oh well next time I think I will stay away from courses with trails and hills in the description and I will bring a whistle in case I get lost. Thanks Treva and Shelly for being fantastic!

Start of school is off! They all seem to love it so far. Abby hasn't even shed a tear. I think I have done enough for both of us. I wasn't prepared for the emotions of Madeline going to Middle school. She rides the school bus with the high schoolers-I don't love that! She is still my little girl, yeah right! I think when they are big enough to wear your clothes, shoes and everything else they are no longer little. As you will see there aren't too many picutres of Madeline starting school. She gets up when its still dark out, it is insane. She is on the bus by 6:30. We are trying to adjust. I thought I was a morning person, this is proving me wrong.

Twilight

I was a little disappointed with Breaking Dawn. It wasn't bad-but not great either. I need more Edward perspective. I am nervous for the movie. I want to love it-I'm just not sure I will. Who would think that we could be so obsesses with such things..... Just for the record I did not go out at midnight to buy the book. But for the record the only reason I didn't was because I was camping with my family. I might have to do that for the movie though.

Summer is ending--how sad!

We have had soooo much fun this summer. I am sad to see the children go back to school. Savannah is excited because she is the oldest in her school now. Abby is excited to start "real" school. Madeline is nervous to enter middle school, we are having difficulty getting the combination locker open. Jonah just plain out doesn't want to go back. He can't think of one reason he likes school-after much discussion he finnally admitted he likes recess. I am looking forward to my house staying clean for more than 10 minutes. Why is that? You clean it and then you leave the room and it is no longer clean. Do you think they purposefully mess it up?

Well here are some cute Lake Michigan photos. We went to Michigan Adventures theme park and then to Lake Michigan. We had soooooooooooooooo much fun.

I forgot the picture of our family wall. Oops! Also, the kids were sad I didn't include a picture of Crush, the cat. So here you go!

Fun in the summer time

We had some great fun so far this summer. We were able to go with friends to Lewiston for a great camping weekend. Then we went with David's mom to Utah, no we didn't take our van, and we kept every trucker very entertained with singing and dancing from the children. We even figured out how to use a gum wrapper to fix a blown fuse on the DVD player. Then we went to Traverse city to see fireworks and the Blue Angels air show. It was fun. Abby covered her ears most of the time but I think she had fun too. We are looking forward to playing at home for a while and trying to grow our grass from replacing our septic. I don't know if starring at it will help, but I think I am going to try. It looks so sad back there. I will update with some photos soon. I am still learning all this.

Well a lot has been going on in our household. We will attach some pictures for you to see. First, Jonah has glasses. I was so distraught to cover up those beautiful blue eyes-but the kid needs to see. Second, Madeline is leaving elementary school and Abigail is entering. They just approved all day Kindergarten for her next year. I am so happy for her and so sad for myself. Lastly, All three of the older children participated in the school talent show. They Rocked! We would show video but we accidently taped over it. We are waiting for the school video and then we will post it. It is great! It is very entertaining. Jonah's is a hoot! They all worked very hard and it showed.

I just love the fact that they love to be in a crowd and perform. They are so amazing!

Also, I will attach pictures of the physical changes to our house. We put all three girls in one room and built loft beds. They turned out great. We had from a great friend of ours and we couldn't be happier with the turnout. So, this means Jonah has his own room. Yes, I know this is unfair to the girls-I have heard it all. But that is the way it is for a single boy in a family of 4 girls.

In addition I created this fantastic family wall that I just love! The black piece of furniture is one of a kind. My friend and I create it and built it, ok she built it and I held-sanded-painted. I just think it finishes our room off. I am learning a lot about making furniture between the beds and this piece. I realize just how much work it is. It has been tons of fun though. I love the results!