The Love of a Ward Family

I was thinking about the blessings of not having ornaments on your tree. First, there is nothing to box up at the end of the holiday. Lights off tree, tree outside. Perfect! Second, there is nothing to be worried about the kids breaking. Third, we don't have to consider placing certain ornaments low for certain reaching heights and certain ornaments higher for other heights. Then last night, there came a knock and some carolers at the door.

Shae held the door wide open and I circled around and what did I see? Many, many members of my ward family looking at me. They were singing, "We wish you a Merry Chrismas." I smiled and waved. How thoughtful I thought. Then two sisters came forward with their arms loaded. One sister, Brenda, said that as a family, we as sisters share in the happy times and when things fall down. She said we heard about your great fall of 2007 and wanted to do something about it. Each of the people now singing to me, had gone to their own homes, or purchased ornaments to share with me. They explained how I had touched each of their lives and that they wanted to show their gratitude. My eyes welled up with tears (they are now too -- I'm such a sap!). I thanked them so much, and started to cry. I hugged Brenda and Lou Anne and saw all of the faces I had brought meals to, visit taught, spent time with and thought about the Christmas spirit. This is what it is all about. Giving of ourselves to others. My ward family came together to give to me. I am so totally blessed. I hope you all feel the love this Christmas season. I know I have!!

Cookie Extravaganza and "The Great Fall"

April hosted her annual cookie exchange this last week. I love it! So many cookies, so little time.

On the less exciting side of life, we were having dinner last night and everyone heard a tremendous crash. We jumped up from the table to invesitgate the sound and found our lovely Christmas tree had fallen over. We had a 3% survival rate of the ornaments. The only group to have a high rate of survival was the Candy Cane grouping. Sadly, some of the most cherished ornaments were lost in "the great fall".

All that was left was a pile of broken ornaments, needles, and tears. Actually, the tears didn't pile up because we just had to laugh and clean it up. Turns out that the lower part of the trunk is totally rotten. We cut it off, reset the tree and are lucky enough to get to spend ANOTHER evening decorating the tree -- it is like a bonus.

The Christmas Parade

We had a great time with the 41st annual Starkville Christmas Parade. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with a group of MSU students thought April's Day One program who worked with the organizing committee. My group got to help advertise for the parade, put the line-up together, work with the television production, and assist in running the event.

April and kids arrived early to stake their claim on a veiwing area -- trust me, you have got to get there early. They then got to the three bands. Our favourite quote was from Shae as the third band went by: "Oh, I love these guys! they changed their outfits again!" Apparently we failed to let her know that there was more than one band in the parade -- not the same one three times.

Santa even made an appearance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Shae's own American Idol

Shae is at that age where she loves to sing . . . and dance. She can make up her own songs or she can sing the songs she learns in primary or school or . . . on the radio. Emoree and Bryton both have their own CD players that they listen to; Em likes to sing along and like all of us, sings a bit off key.
Shae is a total trip to watch so we thought you should all see this.

Bryton's 8th Birthday Party

Bryton had a swimming party for his birthday. A little late as Mom was in TX during his "real" birthday! He had 3 friends over and we built model cars, went swimming, lauched baby torpedos, lots of fun stuff! Here's a photo of his cake. I can verify. . . it tasted as good as it looked!

Pecans, pecans, pecans!

A quick story. We had been driving into our driveway for days hearing this, "pop, pop, pop" sound. We were very annoyed and vowed to get rid of our neighbor's tree that was dropping all these annoying "seeds" on the ground. As we contemplated tree removal, cutting, etc. our neighbor boy came over and picked one up off the ground. He told us that his Dad loved these things. April asked him how his Dad could love seeds. Anthony explained that they weren't seeds and cracked one under his shoe and handed April the nut. It turns out they were pecans! We were TOTALLY thrilled!

April went over to the neighbor's house and made sure it was allright to pick up the pecans on their side of the yard. So we started picking. The kids picked for days and days. Then we decided we'd picked enough. We had 24 pounds!!

Here are the steps we learned in the pecan process:

Step 1, Pick them all up. Children are awesome at this (the smaller the better) as they are closer to the ground. There are also several "pecan picker upper" contraptions you can buy at Lowe's but we did it by hand!

Step 2, Take the pecans and get them cracked at the pecan place ($0.40 per pound). We went to Peoples Pecans and the girls watched the pecan shelling from start to finish. It was awesome!

Step 3, Even though the pecans are shelled, you still have to spend hours sorting them because the entire shell is not blown off. This is time consuming, but can be tasty (especially if you eat lots while you sort -- we had to take Eric off this detail as we were losing the profits of our labor)!

Step 4, Sample the goods:

Step 5, Beg April to make some of her delicious Pumpkin Pecan Muffins and other delicacies!

Here are the photos to go with the earlier post by April.

Here is Bryton's Sweet Potato Circus Seal. Yes, that really is a sweet potato. He only added the tail, flippers and ball. cool eh?

Here is the Anne of Green Gables Project that Emoree created. She won her school-wide competition and we couldn't be more proud. She actually came up with all of the project on her own. Mom and Dad helped type and sew but that was it. Emoree is very artistic. I wonder where she gets it. . . .!

Heiselt Winners!

I realized the other day that you don't have to post a picture to post on the blog so here goes. Last week Emoree took 1st place in her school Book Fair competition. Not only did she take first place in the Historical Fiction category, but then her school decided that her poster (she did Anne of Green Gables as her book) would represent the school at the District competition. Emoree received a ribbon and a medal (pictures to come - sometime soon!). We are so proud!

Bryton also entered the Sweet Potato Invitational last week (I chalk this up to "only in Mississippi") where he had to create an object, animal, insect, etc. out of a sweet potato. So he created a seal. Yes, friends, I found myself finding black paint for my son to paint a potato. He then attached shells (painted black) for the fins and glued on a bouncy ball nose. He attached the seal to a shoebox lid (covered in blue paper of course to simulate the ocean) and he rocked! He won Honorable Mention and received a very large, lovely green ribbon (pictures to come).

Just wanted to let you know what winners my kiddies are! Oh, and I should mention Shae wins for being the cutest 4-year old on the planet who actually asks questions with the word "y'all" in it!

On to the next competition!!!

KNEX and Lego

The kids have discovered K-NEX and have had a great time building neat things -- Bryton has added them to his Lego repertoir.

New Store in Starkville!

We are so excited to have our own PigglyWiggly in Starkville! It isnot a great store but I love just saying that I shop atthe pigglywiggly.

Cute Girlies!

Eric took this picture a few weeks ago and we love it! We wanted to share with you how big our girls have gotten in the last little while. We already have a 10-year old and are quickly approaching the "tweens." Emoree's latest comment on everything Eric says is, "Oh, Dad." She is stunned at how cool we are as parents - NOT! Shae on the other hand, thinks we rock! Anyone else out there experiencing almost, pre-tween, angst? Oy vey!

Bryton's Design

Bryton's School - Overstreet Elementary - held a contest for a t-shirt design. Bryton created his design and Eric helped him on the computer. The third graders voted and Bryton's design tied for first place. You are looking at the back of the soon to be Overstreet t-shirt. Pretty cool! Does anyone know how to turn pictures? We are new to this blog thing . . . !

Em the ball girl

Emoree had the opportunity to be a ballgirl for the MSU LadyDawgs on Friday. Her coach set it up for her. He has been very impressed with her tenacity this season. She further impressed him with her skills of catching balls that left the field at the match. She causght a few in the air or on the fist bounce -- some came at her kind of hard too. He called her sticky hands. We are proud of our soccer Em!

The fruits of our labors.

These images are no where as artistic as those of Micah and Lizzie but, here are our first slices of watermelon from our garden. it was a very delicious melon although it was not huge. This variety grows round melons the size of a soccer ball. Shae could not understand why I did not pick out 'all those gross black things' -- meaning seeds. We have decided we are a seedless variety loving family. How do you buy seeds for seedless melons?

Muffins are warm lovin from the oven

April is a wonderful baker. I think her speciality is muffins. She and the kids enjoy trying new recipes, especially those from the Family Fun Magazine.

At Long Last

The time has come for the Heiselt family of Starkville, Mississippi to join the blogger world. We love looking at the blogs of family members and so wanted one of our own.
Mississippi is growing on us. We have lived here for a little over a year and have finally started painting the rooms in our home and we can find most of the streets in town. The kids, especially Bryton, have picked up a bit of the accent. The food is okay -- lots of frying -- although Shae still refuses to even consider grits (or "grease" as she call them). Actually, none of us will eat grits.
The kids are enjoying the school year and have made many new friends and are keeping older friendships alive. Soccer season started this week. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!