"Jesus, You are the reason that we celebrate Christmas"




It's hard to fit everything that we want to do inside one tiny month and still stop and remember why...

we make a manger scene to remember every year - maybe some year it will be fancy or more life-like, maybe some year we will figure out how to slow down and live December deliberately... but what if we never do?! What if it's always hectic and rushed?! What if we're always irritated at trying to fit too much into so little time?! Then we'll be glad that we started the phrase "it's all about the baby" when the kids were little and trying to figure out who Santa Claus is, and what presents they'd get. Even if we never really "get it", it's still... ALL ABOUT THE BABY! And frankly, isn't that a great picture of our lives? We try, sometimes we really pay attention and try, but that's no guarantee that we captured God's perspective or grasped His motives. The attempt is still refreshing.

With that, here is a glimpse into our reality of the Christmas season - and Aidan's birthday!


Here is the Town and Country we used while the insurance settled after the wreck - more importantly, on top of the minivan is our first ever Armstrong Christmas tree!! As a family we picked this fine evergreen and Daddy sawed it down and tied it up. We didn't head into the wilderness to find it because there was a handy U-Cut right here in Damascus.


Some day we shall have to write a book on Creative Ways to Make Money - here's one of the latest, but not our favorite: Buy clawfoot tubs off Craig's List and refinish them in our own shop and sell them for a profit. It's a good money-maker, if anyone's interested on learning how! Call (503)740-1755 to pre-order your instructional DVD now. (That would be idea #2 and less labor-intensive.)



Our new ride! A '99 Chevy Tahoe! We had a 3rd seat installed to fit our whole crew and then met a safety specialist at the local fire dept to make sure we were all buckled in as safely as possible. I learned a lot! and the specialist was very helpful and not critical of my past mistakes (which was nice) - actually ran into him at church later that night! Bonus!!



We have an annual tradition of making Gingerbread Houses - this year we teamed up to make two houses, Aidan and Mom vs. Camten and Dad, and a deluxe dog house from Shad. I didn't write "vs" by mistake either, it turned into a decorating contest! We demanded that our visitors choose the winner all throughout the season, and now I'm wondering why I even brought this up. Forget I mentioned anything. The middle one's the cutest by far, don't you think?!




Happy Birthday, Aidan!

We really woop up A-Bear's birthday so that he'll remember it after Christmas. He wanted a Cars theme, so he had a cool cake with Lightning McQueen and red balloons (and red candles, red ribbon, red sparklies if we count all the Christmas stuff everywhere, too, that totally fit in). This year we were happy to find him a cool ride with bumpin' speakers. Aidan loves speakers!! We have no idea where he got that.










We had a very nice, quiet visit with Grandpa and Grandma at their home on Christmas Eve. We were bringing quite the crowd all by ourselves, so it was nice to not be as overwhelming as we might have been. Even better, we got to have a great visit!! Camten had some one on one time with his Great-Grandma that he really enjoyed.




Here are a few highlights from our Christmas day...

Camten's first construction gift out of four!!



Trinity's first cell phone!







Cool head swag from Uncle Dwight and Aunt Kristi








Party time! at the chocolate fountain










I had to take a picture of turkey that turned out looking like it was off National Lampoons Christmas Vacation - mostly because I hope all my future turkeys look a whole lot better!!!!

WAIT!!! HOLD EVERYTHING!!!!

So, the last time our totally awesome blog was updated, we were sharing pumpkins?!

WHAT HAPPENED?!

Obviously, a lot! After Jeremy's birthday, Aidan had a Harvest Program in Kindergarten, we celebrated Camten's 3rd birthday, and then Thanksgiving... and then my birthday! and then I got in that t-bone wreck, so I got a new ride...


I am so not saying all that again, so I hope you got it all. If not, read my pix:




Jeremy's Birthday Party -










Aidan's Harvest Program -













Camten's Birthday Party -








New Dog, Diamond (with Dollar) -








Armstrong Family Thanksgiving -











Laura's Birthday -










Wrecked Windstar -









That's it for November, folks!!

Have a great day!

-The Armstrongs

Happy Dappy Pumpkin Days!!!

Here we present the Armstrong Family in Pumpkin:









Daddy's in the middle with the googly eyeballs, Trinity got to look the meanest since she can't say yet. Aidan wrote his name on his and Shad added ears! Camten opted for no touching his pumpkin with a knife (in the back), and Mom's the little, happy one.


At our house, pumpkins and excavating go hand in hand this year. We decided to fill in the pond in the back yard. Camten took a couple of swims this summer in the mucky mud. Trinity seems to be growing into a personality that might investigate the pond even more, and we don't want to take the chance for at least 2 years... to be safe. We have a great spring to tap off of in the future, and we found some exciting things at the bottom of the pond - we're guessing they slipped down the drain from our neighbor's pond, so that's where we ran them to as we found them: There were six 4in. goldfish in all colors and four crawdads!! Plus double the floating pond plants we'd thrown in - apparently, they multiply.

I snuck into Jeremy's shop and got a picture of his favorite project: '67 Camaro!! He's got it up on jacks this week and removed the rear end, having a one built. He cleaned up the entire underside of this future show piece, and undercoated it. Then he put the drilled and slotted disk brake system on the front, while it's so handily available. As I write this, he's painting the new 12 bolt rear end, getting it ready for installation...

Suki had a great birthday party!! It's so much fun to get together with family!! The kids all love Aunt Suki so much and how fun to help her blow out her candles! Camten has loved "castles" ever since! We found a home for one of our favorite kitties from Penny's babies - "Silver" is Suki's new best friend. I thought she'd follow her around the house and be a great study helper, since Su has so much school - sure enough!! But I did not guess the kitten would prefer to ride on her shoulder!! I wonder how that will work out when she's full grown?!









Shad discovered messaging on my computer - chatting with Suki, of course, and then Nana. Writing does have it's benefits! And so does spelling!!!! (I guess.)


He had this picture taken for show and tell at school. We are very proud of our 2nd grader! and our Kindergartener!!!! It's fun to get up in the morning now that there's 3 of us, and setting the clock back was a nice break, too. :-) Now the sun gets up with us, too!

One more thing - not only did Jon have a whopping birthday party too (I forgot my camara!!!!) He and Angie came back from Africa with tons of pictures and stories.








Now I just can't wait for Halloween and Jeremy's birthday party... and the next step with our Maaco endeavor!!!

"So, where's Dollar and who are you?" you ask. Good question. Why would I be taking pictures of myself? But if you must know, Aidan's great with the camera, too, although, he can't help taking a few "bonus" shots. You might want to see how I updated yesterday's blog, too. It just wasn't obvious about what car I thought was so cool, so I deleted the car show shot to clarify my point. Just wait, next posting will be ALL about my cool car - I didn't mention that my friend, Katey, also got a '64 Nova, oh yea, a wagon. So, we'll be fixing up matching rides (with mountains of help from our wonderful husbands, of course) over the next few... months? years? Hmmm... we'll have to see. Nothing worth doing well should be rushed, right?

Dollar wouldn't hold still - me either, for that matter. (See the cool dump truck up there?)

Nice picture, A-bear!! :-)

Someone also mentioned I might like to remember the days of diaper-changing... at first I was horrified - no thanks! but then I remembered how I do get a quiet moment with little people, who don't otherwise pause for anything! So, thanks, Kristi, you're right. And, check this out! I caught Camten smiling - he always runs from the camera! (Or maybe he's just running from Aidan, who was chasing him anyway?)

Time flies when you're having fun!!!!

I can't believe summer is over! No matter how we tried to squeaze everything in, there was so much more we could have done! We finished fixing up our property for sale, which was, perhaps, our most important project - Trinity's helping dad lay the sod in the front yard. The excavator has been moved to a new project site now, and every last detail is finished - including an offer on the house! :-) It's true! Hopefully next month I'll be taking pictures of new stuff we get out of the money from this sale!!!

It could happen!!



Trinity's growing into a beautiful, curly-haired, blond, dimpled, one year old. She has her favorite things to get into in every room of the house... and beyond! In Daddy's shop, it's his rolls of tape for masking and spray-painting. She wears them like bracelets. In the living room, she goes right to the remote, of course. In our bedroom she finds the cordless mouse, and takes off running. In the bathroom, she likes my drawer with lipstick and pretty girl things. In the other bathroom, she opens the door to the shower and climbs in to play (and get all wet!). In the kitchen she has two favorite options: the sandwich baggies or the cereal, which must be fascinating to dump out. She's helping Mom cook. The rest of the house is safe from her curiousity unless you are one of her brothers trying to play quietly, or a cat getting in a nap. The patio outside is her newest favorite place to play and explore under close observation, but first the cat food must be put out of reach, or it's our Princess's first order of business to spread it all over for kitty. There's nothing like being one year old!!!!


We "camped" in the back yard this year, my favorite way to "rough it"! We had roasted marshmellows, a pond, a tent, a cooler of drinks - it was beautiful! And then we went to bed in the house!! :-)


Our city had a Day at the Park and all 4 got to jump and play for a whole $5 - that's what I call fun for everybody!!! They had a dog show, too, so maybe next year we'll bring out our own award-winning Dollar. He came with us to a car show, and was quite a hit! We had fun trying to hold him, too, he's gotten so big! We made it to quite a few car shows this summer. I think that was our "family favorite thing to do."


Speaking of cars and totally cool... check out this work of art!!!

I think I refered to this '64 Chevy II Nova as "an old car that was too good of a deal to pass up" in my last blog. (I'm so sorry! I didn't mean it!) Unfortunately for my husband, I fell in love with it while it sat in the driveway waiting for the title before being resold for a profit. On the other hand, Jeremy now has a wife interested in car things like never before... I can't wait to fix this up and drive it everywhere!!! What have we gotten ourselves into?!

Since we love snakes around here, especially the Anaconda, we had to go see the Reptile Show at the Clackamas Library. You will be happy to hear that Anacondas do not make good pets. I was happy to find out! But they are so cool to look at and to watch other people hold!!


Our favorite fair is the Clark County Fair - close, but not too close, big, but not too big - plus they had a great reptile exhibit this year and we got to see yet another Anaconda. Of course. But that's not all!! They also had a GREAT crash up derby!!! Oh yea! So much smashing, and crashing and loud motors and dirt - it was practically paradise! We dived into the experience and ate cotton candy and hand-dipped corndogs for lunch! And then we got down to business... winning stuff! Actually, we only took home one stuffed animal this year. (Phew!) And we were SO happy that Nana could join us. That's two more eyes to keep track of everyone! One of my highlights was when Camten saw a car dealership set up and started walking around the cars admiring the rims and paint jobs thinking we had quite naturally come upon a classic car show. Did I mention the car shows were a family favorite?

Let's see... we garage-saled! Meaning we tried to sell our cool junk off. Hanging outside was fun, but what a lot of work for pennies!!!! And that reminds me that we had a great Summer Party with all my family, including Kristi up from Mexico... why didn't I take pictures of that? Oh, probably 'cause I was so tired from garage-saling!!

We went fishing with our friends, Darrell and Becca and baby Hannah! The boys watched carefully and learned a lot! Shad caught his first fish and Aidan was one fast catcher with the net! The Rainbow Trout farm is right next to the property we are selling, so it was actually a very convenient fish we caught. But since only Jeremy has ever really fished before and the rest of us were kinda freaking out over the hook and worm thing, it's probably good we went where we could see the swarms of fish in the water and the help at the farm prepared the fish for BBQing for us.



Unbelievably, that brings me to September and the first day of school! (Actually, I could go on and on about my "new" Chevy II if anyone's interested!) This year we have 2 catching the bus!! Shad's in 2nd and Aidan's in Kindergarten! They had a great first day, of course, it's Mom that was pacing and fussing, wondering where her boys could be for so long!! Well, me and Camten and Trinity, who suddenly had to play with each other for a change!!








Since nothing ever stays the same around here, I wonder what will happen next? Summer may be over, but something new is just getting started!