YES, I AM ALIVE!!!

Ok, you know you've been away from your blog too long when people start emailing you to ask if you are ok...Yes, I am ok, just swamped! I'll give a quick update to what I'm swamped with. Hopefully I'll have time to do a more detailed post with pictures and everything in the next few days.
We made our trip to North Dakota without a hitch. Drove through the night on the way up (I drove from 10:30 pm to 5:30 am with only one gas/restroom break around 3:30ish). The family in ND are all good, the nieces and nephews are all growing so fast! Little Addison gave Warren and I a first...this baby (8 months old) LOVES Warren, but hates me! I've never had a baby hate me before, I tried not to take it personally! Whenever I would try to hold her she would cry. But if Warren held her she laughed. If she was playing on the floor and Warren left the room, she cried...but when he returned she laughed! Go figure! I know I love the guy, but sheesh! Nick will be in the Middle East sometime next week, he went back to his post for final preparations. I'm sure his wife (not to mention the rest of the family) will miss him ALOT! There is a chance he will get leave again this summer...we're all hoping for that. Meanwhile, prayers for his continued safety are greatly appreciated.
Upon returning from ND, we had to get ready for Thanksgiving. Every year our church hosts a big Thanksgiving feast for the community. Each year we serve somewhere between 100-250. It is a free meal for anyone who wishes to attend. We even do deliveries to people who are home-bound. We also deliver meals to the county jail for the prisoners and the guards on duty (this year there were a record of 8 prisoners...we live in a very small community!). All the donations that are received for the meal are then given to the "Bread Basket."
Of course after Thanksgiving dinner was eaten and cleaned up...it was time to prepare for Black Friday!! This crazy day is one of Warren and my favorite! We LOVE getting up early and going to do our Christmas shopping all by ourselves. Finding all the great bargains, getting the perfect gifts for the kids...so much fun! Usually my parents come to stay for Thanksgiving (so they stay with the kiddos), but this year they could not...Dad is doing much better, he's at the rehab hospital now. They are working him pretty hard, making sure he gets a little stronger each day! Since we didn't have our 'built-in-babysitters, we made other arrangements. Two of our good friends/babysitters spent the night with us on Thursday so that way we could leave the kiddos all sleeping and go do our shopping!! We left the house at 3:30 am...YAWN! But we got pretty much everything we set out to get, and we had a great time doing it! We were home by 10:30 (yes, AM)...and ready for a nap! That afternoon the kiddos played on the Xbox and I laid on the couch pretty much unconscious!!!
I'm still getting ready for the big Christmas program, so much to do!!! I hope the kiddos are all working on their lines!! We get together tomorrow to run lines one more time, and then on Saturday we film some of it and take a bunch of pictures. It's going to be a lot of work, but fun! The night of the program will be a bunch of recitations about all that Jesus is, and the filmed parts will add so much to it. I'm so thankful that I have such a techy hubby!! Sometimes it drives me CRAZY, but I wouldn't be able to do this cool program without him!

Ok, not so quick, but this is what I've been up to...like I said, I'll try to post pics from Andrew's birthday and the trip to ND soon.
Thanks for worrying about me...but I am alive (for now!)

Christmas blessings to you all-
A