Follow the Co-pays and the Prescriptions to the Harper Home!

Monday~About one hour after dropping Helen off at Mother's Day Out, I got a call from her teacher that she had thrown up. I picked her up and we ended up at the pediatrician that afternoon. Double ear-infection. Prescription for an anti-biotic.
Tuesday~Since I had to cancel the doctor appointment that I had made for myself on Monday morning to have him look at my eye, I made another one for Tuesday morning. I have pink-eye! They gave me a prescription, but Marilyn gave me some prescription eye drops that are taking care of it!
Wednesday~Beckett had been complaining since Tuesday afternoon that it hurt to swallow. I thought he sounded like he had strep. After a trip to the pediatrician and a strep test, no strep....just a bad cold. We left the pediatrician and headed back to my doctor because my cold just wasn't feeling better and I thought it might be a sinus infection. I was right. Sinus and ear infections. Prescriptions for de-congestant and anti-biotic.

Four co-pays and four prescriptions later and we are all headed toward recovery. It has been an interesting three days at the Harper Hullabaloo!

Bernese Mountain Dog

OK, funny story that I just had to share! Back in October we went to the Orvis store in Pigeon Forge so that Sean could spend some of his birthday money on a new reel. Beckett and Helen both found these very cute stuffed dogs and they really wanted them. They were totally sad when we told them that we were not going to spend Orvis prices on a stuffed dog! (I think they were at least $35.00!) Helen was especially pitiful! (See picture below!) Anyway, one of the dogs that they had picked out was a bernese mountain dog. (See other picture.) So, here is the funny part. Today we had Christmas music playing and Feliz Navidad came on the radio. Helen came through singing along, and at the appropriate time, when the chorus came on, she sang, "bernese mountain dog" instead of "feliz navidad"! It was too funny! I'm putting the song on here so you can try it for yourself! It fits perfectly! Pretty clever!

A special friend has returned.....

We came home tonight from Waynesville, North Carolina after a great visit with our family and found that our favorite elf, Buddy was back! Buddy came last year after Nana and Papa brought him to us and we began a new tradition! There is a book called "The Elf on the Shelf" and each family who has an elf gets to give him a special name. The elf then begins to help Santa by flying home to the North Pole each night to let him know how the Harper children are behaving! Beckett and Helen named our elf "Buddy"! He shows up after Thanksgiving and he will be with us until Santa comes on Christmas Eve! Each day when he returns to our home, he will find a different place to sit so that he can keep a good eye on us! Tonight when we returned home, he was in a basket way up on top of a bookshelf! We are excited to have him back with us for the Christmas season!

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration with both sides of our family! Here are all of the Harper cousins eating lunch on Thanksgiving day!
We played a game of pin the pilgrim hat on the turkey and Beckett was WAY off!
A picture of Beckett when he removed his blindfold and saw where the hat was! Also a picture of Lillie with her Oreo turkey that we made with the kids! The next picture is of many of the girls as they were playing. I wanted to put this one because it was the only one with Marley! She was napping most of the time that we were there, so I didn't get any other pictures of her!

We traveled to North Carolina on Thursday afternoon to be with my side of the family. Here is a picture of most everyone playing a game of Trivial Pursuit...another fun tradition!

My aunt was asked to serve on an art commission for their town and they were given the task to find someone to create a sculpture. After a LOT of work, she was excited that they finally erected the sculpture about a month ago in downtown Waynesville! We went down to see it on Friday and took a lot of pictures! It is really a great piece of artwork and we are proud of Auntie Mame for all of her hard work to make it come together for their town!

Fantasy of Trees!

On Wednesday, Beckett, Helen and I went to the Fantasy of Trees with our friend Julie! We had never been before and probably would never have gone if it hadn't been for our friend Marilyn. Her class sponsored and decorated a tree this year and I helped her decorate it last Sunday afternoon. She received several free tickets to the event and gave some to us! It was so fun and helped us get excited about the upcoming Christmas holiday! I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures with Julie, but it was fun hanging out with her all day and we are so glad that she went with us! Beckett enjoyed the "tubs of fun" ride and Helen was all about the ballerinas! They have a stage where local dance companies put on special Christmas recitals! I see a possible performer in our future! She was mesmerized by all of the dancers from the very young to the teenagers. I enjoyed watching her watch them! The first picture you see is of Beckett and Helen with the "Tea Time in Tennessee" tree that I helped Marilyn decorate. The rest are just random pictures from the afternoon!

We are blessed to be able to share this Thanksgiving holiday with all of our family today! We will go to Sean's parent's house for lunch around noon and then after a few hours there we will head to Waynesville, NC to my aunt and uncle's home where we will be with my parents and my sister as well! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration with your loved ones!

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever!

Psalm 107:1

Fast Forward 12 Years!

Last Weekend at the Harper Hullabaloo

Late last Thursday night, Granbob and Grankaki came to spend the night with us. They stayed for a little while on Friday and visited with us. Here is a picture of Grankaki and the kids. She can really multi-task! She had a game of Dinosaur Monopoly going on with Beckett as she played baby dolls with Helen!

On Friday night we went to the Kirkland's home for our Homeschool Family Connection barbecue dinner. It was a fun night and a great time to connect and get to visit with other families in our church and community who are homeschooling their children! No pictures, but we had a great time! On Saturday night, our friends the Campions came over for dinner. They lived here and were in our Growth Group until last June when they moved back to south Florida. They were in town for a few days and spent some time with us on Saturday night. It was our first time to meet baby Caitlin and it was fun to catch up with JT, Stephanie and Jeff!

The next two pictures are from Sunday night. We have nine families who come to our home on Sunday evenings for Growth Group. If all nine families are present and they bring all of their children, we would have 22 kids ranging from 12 months old to 12 years old! (and a 4 month old, too!) I don't think all of the kids have been here at once, but this past Sunday night, we had 18 here! The first picture shows several of the kids eating some snacks. Every Sunday, each family brings some food to share and we spend our first few minutes of the evening eating and fellowshipping!
This second pic shows 14 children in our bedroom. Now that it is too cold to go outside, the kids stay in our three bedrooms and play or watch a movie while the adults have our discussion time. (We follow our sermon series at church and enjoy discussing ways to apply the the truths from our pastor's sermons to our lives.) It is hard to see them all, but here are 14 of the kids (and 2 that you can't see) getting ready to watch a movie! That doesn't always last for long. Ususally the younger ones end up in Helen and Beckett's rooms playing. Amazingly, this past Sunday night went pretty smoothly!
It is a blessing to have so many families in our home each Sunday night!

(I know that cross over our bed looks a little lonely! That is an "Uppercase Living" expression gone bad! If you aren't familiar with Uppercase Living, google it! They are really neat. I bought one at a party and when I put it on my wall, it didn't apply as neatly as they said it would. I had to remove part of it and now my cross looks really lonely! I have a plan to fix it and make the wall look better, just haven't gotten around to it yet!)

Beckett and Helen have been waiting for over a week for the "Elf Yourself" website to be ready! They discovered that it was up and running so we HAD to create our elves for Christmas 2008! Enjoy!