Merry Christmas!

Have a Merry Christmas everyone. To celebrate, here is a cheesey video of Jerek's most favorite Christmas song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3HC2Wq3Zsk
Enjoy!

More crochet

For the few people who have asked me, Here is a link to a good place to get patterns to crochet things. I have been making the "easy double crochet hat" but I modified it a bit. It is a really easy hat to make and doesn't take very long. www.crochetpatterncentral.com
Here is Tait modeling the hat I made him for Christmas. SHH. Don't tell him. It's a surprise.

A new hobby

My friend taught me how to crotchet yesterday. It is alot of fun. I made a hat today, but I think I did something wrong. It doesn't look like the picture on the pattern and it is too big. I had fun though. Rustin keeps asking me to make him a hat. I think I need to get a new pattern or smaller hook to make one small enough for him. I don't know enough about crotchet yet to know which one I need to change.
I should have learned this a few months ago and I could have made everyone a hat and scarf for Christmas. I am sure that would have been everyone's favorite present.=)

Tait on the move

Tait has started crawling last week. He is now getting into EVERYTHING! The rest of the boys waited til about 10 months to crawl. Tait on the other hand has 3 very rowdy brothers he has to keep up with. I was not ready for him to crawl and be mobile yet. With the first one you can't wait for them to crawl and hit all those milestones. By number 4, you wish they would wait a little while. =)

From Thanksgiving weekend

Wow ! It has been a long time since I last posted here. I finally got my pictures off the camera so here ya go. These were taken at Jerek's parents house. The boys are sitting at the "kid table" with their cousins.

And this is Daddy feeding Tait chocolate pie. Bad daddy! He is now ruined forever on eating healthy.=)
And this one was taken at a friends house Monday.Tait and Hannah are about 6 weeks apart.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we leave tomorrow to go see the fam for Turkey day. I don't really enjoy the late night driving but it will be a fun weekend for us. For some reason I have the feeling this will be a really good Thanksgiving. Not sure why. Hope I am right.

I will post some pics when we get back but for now enjoy a little Monica Turkey-linski.

mystery muffins

I stumbled along this article just now while searching for something else. No wonder these things taste so darn delicious. Everything that tastes good will eventually kill you.
http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives/document1adf.html

Poor Taiter

Tait has had a fever the last few days. Poor little guy. I think he got it from me though as I have been coughing all week. He might be teething but I see no signs of anything on his gums.
The hard part is he wants me to hold him constantly even while he sleeps. He isn't really taking naps and I can't really get anything done without him screaming his head off.
Jeshua has also decided that he is now scared of ghosts in his room. I try to tell him that ghosts aren't real but I am not very convincing apparently. He will dress in the hallway so he doesn't have to be in his room and he really doesn't like the door shut when he is in there. I have been praying with him and reminding him the Jesus is real and always with him and will help him not to be scared. I am at a loss how to help him at this point.
He is more than nervous. Last night I was doing some laundry and I told him to go put a clean blanket on his bed. He instantly panicked and almost passed out from crying so hard. (yeah my kids pass them selves out from crying) I ended up having to go upstairs with him and he was still in a big hurry to get out of the room once the blanket was put away.
Ahh the joys of being 4. Made up things seem so real.

500 alarm chili.

I made some chili tonight and had to improvise my recipe a bit. I usually make it with canned tomatoes that have the green chilies already in it. Well I ran out of those so I try to season it my self using some trusty old cayenne. It tasted good but was a bit too spicy. Was still yummy though.
Reminds me of when Jerek and I were first married. I made my first pot of chili all by myself. I was so proud of myself for making this ginormous pot of real texas chili. There was just one small problem. I didn't have any chili powder. I didn't know what cayenne was but I did have that. The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of chilipowder. Chili powder, Cayenne, they are all made of peppers. Same thing, right? Wrong! It was the hottest chili I ever tasted. In fact I think it was the only thing I tasted for a few hours after. Jerek and one of his friends ate several bowls of it and needless to say, they suffered horribly as it digested. I did too but not for the same reasons. = )
I now know the difference and I still have the same bottle of cayenne that I had then. That is how sparingly I now use it.

Let's try this on for size

Ok, so I am new to this. I can't promise frequent updates but here is a blog to keep everyone up to date on what goes on in the Hodge household.

I worry a bit as we lead pretty boring lives with not a lot of action and you may get bored reading the things I have to say. Consider yourself warned.

I will now attempt to add some pictures. Let's hope it works.
These are pictures of when we went to the pumpkin patch and the halloween costumres the kids wore. Oh, and a picture of Tait when he got out of the tub last night. He loves getting clean!