We wish you a Merry Christmas

Rachel's preschool class did some caroling at the New Haven Elementary school this week. It was a good thing there were two exact performances because Rachel would not sing the first time. When she saw that I had gum, she requested some. I, like all good moms, said "you can have some gum as soon as you sing!". Problem solved. I told her teacher, "I guess I am getting good at this bribery thing!"

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Well we are trying our best at the Nugent home, to get ready for the celebration of our wonderful Savior's birth. This year, December has had it's share of challenges and even though I am not working outside the home, I am feeling the time crunch more this year than ever.

Morgan had her winter recital this past Saturday. She did great. I was so proud of her. She played two French traditional tunes as duets with her buddy Kyle Knepper. They worked hard on these pieces and they played better than any other time they had practiced. Playing duets can be tricky, especially when you both have to get your timing and notes right. They did fabulous!


Morgan played at a recital hall at my alma matter-Oakland U.


These are the piano players; Kyle Knepper, Julia Knepper, Jenna Knepper and Morgan.

Morgan had just about had it with being serious. She is turning into quite a goof ball at times.

Hey Mrs. Carol, don't you want us to play piano for you also? This would be Tornado Knepper and Storm Nugent



We had our family Christmas cookie making night.




The newest addition to our family in these pictures is Jenni. She is living with us for a while. She is a youth ministry intern at the church. The girls LOVEEEEE Jenni. Not sure what is going to happen when she moves out.


We had been a little behind with our Advent wreath. But we were able to spend some time reflecting on how we are to prepare ourselves for the celebration of Jesus.

Hope you are getting some time to enjoy this December!

A Little bit of Randomness...

It has been a few weeks since I have updated the blog and thought today I might just update with a few random things occurring around here. We always have a really busy end of fall season with 4 out of 5 birthdays occurring within 3 weeks of each other. Last night we went and celebrated Mike's birthday. I was able to get a picture of some really great daddy's with their girls. I am partial to the one on the right!


A couple of weeks ago, when we had one of our first big frosts on the ground in the morning, Rachel woke up very excited. She wanted to go outside before the big girls went to school. She ran outside with her new umbrella, not sure why, and looked at the ground and said, "Hey mom, God put frosting on the grass".

I thought to myself, did she really say frosting? And then she reaches down and tried to taste it. I was cracking up!

Halloween 2009

Ok, so this is what I am doing with my extra hour tonight! Yeah, editing pictures and blogging.

We had a fun couple of days with Halloween activities. Starting with the girls' birthday costume party and rounding it out tonight with trick or treating and a fun "afterglow" at the Conkey's. For those outside of MI, tonight was a chilly one and some of the kids only made it around the big block. But, we still managed to pull in more candy than I would like to have hanging around my house (if you know what I mean for all of you M&M lovers out there).

Here are a few photos of our fun.

We were able to watch the girls in their Halloween parade at school. Notice, Morgan is wearing a different costume than what she would wear Halloween night. This is a long story about what is "acceptable" in 2nd and 3rd grade.

We have a 6 year tradition now of trick or treating with our friends in our subdivision. It has been fun watching the kids get older and more independent with trick or treating.




Pumpkin carving is always interesting. I think we did a little better with our faces this year than last.

October Birthday Celebrations

Harvest Celebration

Last Saturday we had a great day outside in some chilly Fall Michigan weather. The church had an outreach event. This event is great and we always have a nice time as a family. Pardon the lack of script and abundance of pictures this year. I am getting ready for the big birthday weekend (more to follow).

This was the scarecrow dress up station.

The very difficult corn maze.




Our friend, Becky Jo took this great shot of Nicole jumping off the haystack.



Friends waiting for our turn at the caramel apples.


This is always a favorite the donut on a string contest.


The candy find in the hay.

We had many laughs that day, that is what kept us WARM!

Catalyst '09

Mike and I were able to attend the Catalyst conference in Atlanta last week. This year's theme was "On your Mark". We went with the Timm's and Christian's for four days. Catalyst is a conference for "leaders", specifically church leaders. Mike had attended last year and really loved the conference, so I was excited to see what it was all about. I really can't start to explain how great this opportunity was. There were some phenomenal speakers and awesome worship. There were great interviews with people I have always wanted to hear and just a great experience to see that many people gathered together to learn how to be most effective for the Kingdom!

Here is a brief list of some of my favorites from the conference:
1. Matt Chandler
2. Worship lead by Steve Fee
3. Perry Noble
4. Interview with Tony Dungy and author Malcolm Gladwell
5. Bible teaching from Priscilla Shrier
6. Andy Stanley, Chuck Swindol, Rob Bell, Dave Ramsey and Francis Chan.

The concourse of the facility(think the Palace) was lined with Christian para-organizations that had booths set up so you could browse during breaks. Wow, there are some amazing organizations out there doing the work of God(it helped that they were giving away freebies).

I personally came away from this conference with so much and would recommend it for anyone. I am very thankful for the opportunity to go for myself and the time away with Mike and good friends(oh yeah and the weather was great!).



The emcee's were always pulling some crazy stunt to introduce the speakers. This was one of my favorites, just before Tony Dungy spoke, they had a little league football team come up on stage with full pads/helmets on. Earlier in the day they had placed a little plastic football on each seat, remember 13,000 people. When the little league team came out they instructed us to throw the footballs at the stage. It was wild. Those little guys were ducking for cover and trying their best to pick the balls up and throw them back to the crowd. If you look close enough in the picture below you can see a couple of balls being thrown.


We had one afternoon of free time. So we decided to go to Stone Mountain. This is just what it sounds like, a park dedicated to a huge stone mountain with a big Civil War connection. So we hiked up the mountain and at the top is a little museum. You can take the skylift up, but what is the fun in that? This was a beautiful day. And the view of Atlanta from the top was pretty clear.


At one point, this truck comes down the mountain and we are stunned. This is a very steep mountain. The funny thing was the driver must have done this a couple of times because to pass the time(slow descent) he was reading a magazine.




At the bottom of the mountain was another museum and where you catch the skylift.






Can you see the Atlanta skyline in the background?

There is a carving on the mountain of three confederate army generals. I remeber one as General Lee, I forgot the other two. This is an amazing site. These pictures do not show the size at all. One of the generals heads is like 30 feet tall. We saw an actual size replica of one of the stars on the general's collars and they were about 4 feet by 4 feet. WOW!