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I've taken about 1,000 pictures over the past week and have tons I could write about so I wanted to finish up with the last pictures I took before we came down to New Orleans. I'm really going to try next week to get all of my Christmas pictures up!

We got this great basketball goal from the 'boutique'. The boutique is this great store we have on the center. People donate used items to it much like you would to good will. Except everything in the store is free. So we can go whenever we want and pick up a toy, or a few extra shirts for the kids or just something random. It's a really neat ministry. I got this a few weeks ago and Caiah loves it. He will stand there and shoot baskets over and over. Orin plays with it some but really likes to get into it. This day he said that he was a Guinea Pig. His preschool class has one so I think this is where he got the idea.
I've been trying so hard to cut down on our grocery budget. I enjoy cooking, Damien enjoys eating what I cook and this leads to spending more money than I should (or that we have) on groceries. One of our biggest splurges is juice. Damien loves juice and wants something besides water with meals. So I'm trying to think of other options. One thing I've been stuck on the last few weeks is limeade. I LOVE it. I'm going to try lemonade too. I've also been brewing sweet ice tea. Maybe I can convince Damien that we can do less juice and more of these things. Unfortunately, all three of these drinks have TONS of sugar. So we may be going cheaper, but not as healthy. Maybe I can somehow find a good balance...
Since we don't do the whole 'Santa' thing for Christmas, the kids don't really have much of a concept of him besides the few things they've seen on TV. A few of the PBS shows they watch occasionally had a show about Christmas/Santa. So needless to say, they now have an idea of him, but it's definitely not the full picture. They've picked up on the fact that he comes at night when people sleep and that he says "Ho, ho, ho." I think that's about it. So this day they decided to bring their blankets into the den and pretend to sleep. They told me to go out of the room and then come in and say, "Ho, ho, ho." Then they would wake up and act really excited! It was actually pretty fun. Then they had to each take turns being Santa and come in and wake us up by saying, "Ho, ho, ho." Oh the little things that entertain children.
Orin reading to Micaiah. I LOVE it. This is a book that Damien's sister sent to them a year ago while she and her husband were in the Philippines. The kids are obsessed with the book. They have it completely memorized and even though C&R have been back for 6 months and we see them often, they still want to read it all of the time.