Christmas - Mitchell style

Future airport security officer???
Kallie practicing patience!

Cousins Ali and Andrew

Grandma Mitchell with her great-grandchildren

Grandsons Jim and Troy

Are you comfortable Ali?

Mom Mitchell and her grandchildren!

Mom Mitchell with her family(brothers Joel and Dan)

The family with Grandpa and Grandma Isherwood

Grandpa and Grandma Ish with grandkids and great-grandkids

After finishing a stay in MN, we headed to WI to Jim's side. Unfortunately, they didn't get as long of a visit as my side did. We were only there for the weekend. We enjoyed the time we didn spend though. We stayed at his mother's and had a family Christmas Friday night when we arrived. Sat. we visited with Jim's paternal grandmother and also saw relatives from his dad's side. We don't get to see them very often, so that was nice. The rest of the day Sat. was spent at Troy and Terry's (Jim's brother and sister-in-law). We had an enjoyable time there as well. Sun. morning we did a quick stop at the assisted living building were Jim's maternal grandparents live and did some pictures with them as well as with extended relatives from that side. Then we hit the road. Overall, it was a great Christmas and a wonderful time with family. Thanks everyone! We hope you all had a pleasant Christmas as well and were reminded of the amazing gift that was given to you in the birth of Jesus Christ. It's pretty humbling to think that He put himself in such a vulnerable state for me. May you be truly blessed with a wonderful 2009!

Christmas - Moore style

Kallie and cousin Hayley
Hayley, Kallie, and cousin Carley

Aunt Brittany getting to meet Liam for the first time.

Garrett and Micah - best cousins!

My family...please pardon the food display!

Kallie and Aunt Brittany

Kallie and Uncle Ron

"The Boys!"

Sisters - a.ka....Salt and Pepper!

Cousin Olivia, Cousin Meghan, and Kallie

Aunt Heather and new baby cousin Mataya

What a doll baby!

The grandkids...all 10 !

Everyone!....man there's a lot of us!

Granpa getting some help reading the story of Jesus's birth from the Bible.

Cousins Micah and Gabe!

The kids with Grandpa and Grandma Moore...oh, and Elmo in the background!

I wanted to get some pics on here from our trip north. We spent Mon.-Fri. last week in MN visiting my side. We left our house Sun. and took about 11 hours to get to Eau Claire...gotta love it when mother nature determines your arrival time! At least we made it safely though. Then Mon. we did the rest of the trip to my parents, with a quick detour through a couple suburbs in the Cities. Tuesday we spent doing family Christmas time, Wed. was spent at my aunts, Thursday we spent at my sisters, and Fri. morning we left. It went way too quickly and unfortunately we didn't even get time to see old friends during this trip. The kids did pretty well and enjoyed the time with family. Kallie shed some tears having to leave. She loves her relatives! Thanks to my family for a wonderful time! We love you all!

Museum pics and tidbits

Kallie and Isaac having fun in the comic book exhibit.

Kallie inside the dinosaur egg nest.

She got to play around with some puppets at the museum.

What do you see in there Kallie?

She loves riding in an elevator!

Doing some cooking in Mrs. Claus's kitchen!

Where do the days go????............. I have such good intentions of blogging more often than I do. Oh well. A couple of quick things....

Jim has officially accepted the position to take over the store in the Twin Cities. We will be MN residents once again. They have not given him an official start date yet, but it sounds like they will be shooting for next June. Please keep us in your prayers as we go through this transition. I have definitely had my ups and downs with this. One big up will be getting closer to my family. I am very overjoyed for that. We will be two hours away versus 12. The opposite end would be having to leave the home we've started here and leave behind the community we've met. We have enjoyed our run here in Indy. This will definitely always be a home to us. Our children were both born here. I will also be sad to let go of my job. It has been a grueling four years trying to land a premanent position, and this year I finally got it. The innermost part of me doesn't want to let it go now and have to start all over again, but I know it's for the better. I have just been a fortunate one to be able to say I enjoy going to work and enjoy the people I work with. I have to look past the part about the tremendous stack of papers I tend to have to grade!!!! We are placing it all in God's hands now as we think about trying to sell our house and buying a new one. We want to make sure we are doing things right and planting ourselves in a good community when we move. Lots more to think about when you have kids!

We also would love to have your prayers for Jim...once again....after some dr. visits he has found out that he dislocated his patella(knee cap) on one of his legs. He started having some pain and decided to go ahead and get it checked out. They think it may have been an old injury from high school soccer that has reaggrevated. AUGH!!!!! They have given him options of either surgery or therapy. I will keep you posted. I am HIGHLY considering packing him into a bubble for the rest of his life!!

We hope you are all well. Enjoy the pictures. They are from a recent trip Kallie and I made to the wonderful Children's Museum of Indianapolis with some friends.

Updates

Kallie was dying to eat up one of the turkey legs Jim had left after carving!

I am so bummed. I had videos of each of the kids and I can't seem to get them to load on here. AUGH! They were pretty precious too. So sorry. I will maybe keep trying. Let me know if anyone has any advice. I made them the same way I have done the other ones on here. I'm thinking it might be an issue of length. For some reason, if I take one that's over a minute, it doesn't cooperate for me. But if it's under that, I can usually get it to load. Oh well. I guess my pics will have to do.

The Mitchell news......

Let me fill you in on Jim, since his story seems to be the longest! First of all, he didn't get the position that he interviewed for. The other top contender was offered it. What they have done, though, is offered Jim the store that the guy who took the position currently runs. It is located in the Twin Cities. It is Bauer Built's top store. It isn't quite the promotion Jim was looking for, but it is definitely a move we're considering. Originally I was pretty excited to possibly be moving to WI, but now I might even be in the Cities! Pretty crazy. The next step is for Jim to go visit the store in a couple weeks and take a look at it and see if he feels this is the best move for him. I am basically just trusting that he'll know what's best for us and leave it at that. If I understood him correctly, this would put us back in MN by next June. WOW! So please keep that in your prayers. We have been looking at the area and trying to ask around about what suburbs might be nice for us.

As far as his health goes, we unfortunately didn't quite get the news we would have ultimately hoped for. His spinal tap did show some abnormalities, so the neurological opthomologist has offically diagnosed him with Benign Intermittent MS. Basically, what this means is that he has a mild case of MS that only flares up every once and a while. So, what we have said is that if there is an MS to have, this is the one! We are hoping that it will stay in the intermittent stage and not turn into progressive. We will also be praying that when the reoccurences do come, they will not increase in severity. Jim had an appointment last week to discuss treatment with the dr. and she has decided that she doesn't want him to do injections. Instead, she is going to try some steroid treatments with him. Mon., Tues., and Wed. he will head over to the hospital for an hour or so and receive steroid IVs. Then he follows that up with 2 weeks of steroid pills! They have forwarned him of the possibility of gaining weight during this time! He's not too excited about that! So anyway, we'll continue to let you know how it all goes.

The kids and I are doing pretty well. We have battled some different sicknesses around the house so I am ready for a healthy break! Liam is pulling himself up and is becoming quite active. He continues to think Kallie is the funniest person ever! So fun! My job continues to go well. I just wish I had more time to get things done while I'm there! I don't like having to bring my grading home. It doesn't help that when I have to give an assignment I'm giving it to 88 kids, so that means that I have 88 papers to grade....if they all turn it in! Not too fun when you're the language teacher, especially if it's time for us to write essays! But I enjoy it nonetheless.

Well, that's all from us. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. We spent the time alone, just the four if us, which was kind of nice since we're usually rushing to travel somewhere on holidays.

Love to all!

The Happenings

Time, man how it slips away! Sorry, I think I say something close to that in every entry. My bad! I feel like I actually have things to write about this time around, thankfully....and maybe unfortunately.

The kids...Liam has four teeth and is now working on 5 and 6 on top. I'm sure 7 and 8 aren't far behind at the rate he's going! He is an active boy that LOVES to crawl and laugh. He's so funny when he crawls with something in his hand. He always wants to. He is such a joyous baby, and for that we're very thankful. My favorite thing has to be going into his room in the mornings and seeing his first smile. I know that won't last so I'm taking it all in now! He had some GI testing done on the 23rd to see how things were digesting and see if there is anything that might be causing his reflux. They didn't find anything other than severe reflux. He made a comment that he seemed to digest pretty slowly. We will be taking him to see an actual GI doctor on the 17th.

Kallie just turned 4 on the 29th, and I like to say she's 4 going on 14! I love her to pieces, but she is sometimes a little more dramatic than I can handle! She has started being receptive of mommy playing "school" with her and is really starting to catch on. Hopefully she'll stick with it. We went up to WI to see Jim's side last weekend and did some birthday celebrations up there for her. It was a good time. She has really been into her Polly Pockets and Barbies lately. We'll see what happens when the boy toys start rolling into town! She has been pretty healthy. I took her to her 4 yr. well check and it was pretty comical. The nurse measured her height and then actually came and got her out of the room one more time to do it again because she thought she had it too high! Nope! Kallie is above the 97th percentile for her height. I think she was somewhere in the 42 in. range. I can't totally remember. She did pretty well at the appt. and I think she was excited that we were there for her and not Liam for once! Unbeknownst to me, though, she did have a sinus infection! Whoops! She didn't complain so I didn't think much of it I guess! Kallie enjoyed Halloween and, as you can see, wanted to be Tinkerbell. Pretty fun. Liam was our little Tigger, but I couldn't get the best part, the hood, to fit over his head! Oh well.

Jim...He went to see the neuro opthomologist a couple weeks back and had an interesting time. Supposedly this dr. was able to notice what she thought was a lesion on the MRI pics of his brain. She thought it was strange that the last dr. didn't see them because she normally has him read all of her other x-rays. So she was going to send it back to him for another read of the area. Meanwhile, they are going to put Jim through another spinal tap. He has to go for that on the 14th. Time will tell. We'll just keep our prayers going! He is currently in WI right now and will be in his promotion interview tomorrow , Tuesday. I'll keep you all posted as to how it all turns out.

Me..Well, I just basically keep busy with all of the above! School is going well and I seem to have a pretty good group this year. I did have an interesting adventure this morning, though, when I arrived to work and discovered that my modular classroom had been broken into, along with the three others. I'm pretty sure whoever did it was on a money mission. They didn't take any of the big stuff. My desk was basically a mess and my closet door was open. A couple of my students also had their desks searched through and stuff. I'm just thankful none of us were around when it happened. I'm sure whoever did this will probably get away with it. Don't people have consciences anymore?

Anyway, love to you all and thanks for checking in on us.