the hair!

last week tania wanted her hair cut. 

and when i say cut.. i mean more like.. chopped. 

she had been growing her hair out for around a year and never said a word about it to anyone.

 the whole time she was doing it, she had a motive. not to have long beautiful hair, but to be able to cut it and donate it to locks of love. 

and that is just how she is. she has a wonderful heart and loves to help other people. she also loves to stay in the background and go unrecognized even when she does a good deed. i love that about her. so many of our kids will do something helpful for someone or do a good deed, but then they are quick to tell everyone how good they are because of their deeds. 

not tania. she has a great deal of self-less-ness (if that's a word...) she does it simply because she wants to help. she doesn't do it for the attention. not for the praise. because it's in her heart. <3 Lord, keep her heart that way. and make ours the same. 

so karla sharpened the scissors, and the adventure started...

 she was still smiling at this point..

 look at that beautiful hair! AND IT'S THICK!!

 apparently jaqui wasn't quite sure about the situation right here...

 or here... lol

 we had to make like 7 or 8 ponytails to cut off because it was so thick my awesome scissors wouldn't cut through it! (note for the christmas lists: left handed hair cutting scissors from sallys!!!)

 yaneli wasn't feeling too good about the situation either... seems to be a running theme here, wouldn't you say? :-]

 still scared...

 and then i cut it off! 

 a few of the ponytails...

 she was scared when she realized just how short it was going to be. 10" is a loooooooong ponytail to cut off, that's for sure.

 then everyone had to play with it... a gotee i guess...?

 first view in the mirror... almost tears... and then all smiles after wards!

 karla taking pictures of herself.

 hair extensions

 karla kissing yane

she put her hair up so you couldn't see it, but it was ADORABLE! and she ended up being very happy with it, although it was quite an adjustment. i'm just glad she didn't actually cry. i would have felt HORRIBLE if she regretted it. i told her i was so happy she was willing to do something like donate it to locks of love because some lady like my mom who has cancer would be able to have gorgeous hair because she was willing. :-] 

cookies!

 i said lots of stuff has happened in my last post. so here's some of the stuff :-]

i had a family from church send me a little christmas package with some cookie baking stuff. 

so on a lazy saturday afternoon we attempted to make some sugar cookies at the girl's house. :-]

sarah, me, and carissa 

 lupita helped us out for awhile.

 gorgeous, isn't she? you can pray for Lupita to grow in her walk with Christ and for His love to wash her from the inside out.

 the frostings

 alicia and gisel came over to help us decorate the cookies because by the time the cookies were ready to be frosted none of our girls wanted to help anymore. 

 gisel :-]

 some of our christmas creations..

 yaneli joined in to help gisel once she saw it was the 'cool thing' to be doing at the moment haha

 perhaps the most gaudy cookies ever created? :-] they tasted good though!

it was a wonderful afternoon of baking. 

thanks billiam & anna for the goodies! i LOVE getting snail mail! :-]

long time no blog :-]

so since i posted last time lots has happened. :-] 

lots of good things. a few thing have happened that i could have lived without, but such is live, right? we keep on keeping on, and God keeps on giving. 

i made it back to mexico safe and sound after some much needed R&R. 

sarah, sharla, and i at chilli's in peoria.

i have zero other pictures of my friends. i don't know what my deal was, but i seriously was lacking on camera moments apparently. lol.

after getting back south of the border i moved my stuff back home for a week, and then back to campus for another week. :-] gotta love living out of a laundry basket. i'm helping heidi & geo with their kiddos now because jenna is home for a little R&R. extra prayers are much appreciated as we're dealing with a few unique situations with the kiddos. also, geo leaves on saturday to go home leaving heidi and i with 7 kid. [insert:HUGE HUGE HUGE need for prayer here]

yesterday i babysat for joe and denise while they took jenna to the states. they've got 3 very well behaved kids that i enjoyed caring for SO much! it was a fun afternoon. 

 we took a road trip to my house so i could get my laundry basket of clothes for the week, and then ran by the accountant's office so i could chit chat with him for a few minutes. every time we stopped the car the kids had to take turns in the shot gun seat. which means we had to undo seat belts and then re-do them which is quite the task for little joel here. he was ecstatic to be in the front finally! we did oldest to youngest so he was last. 

 the girls in the back. gisel & alicia. 

and today i'm at the coffee shop!

drinking a grown-up drink (a raspberry carmel steamer) instead of a kid smoothie. :-] working away mind you not, just taking a few minutes to update this thing. our internet hasn't been the greatest on campus because had some serious rain for 2 days in a row and all the phone lines have been affected. so in order to get payroll done, i had to come here. 

shucks! who would want to spend their day in a coffee shop working!?! sounds just terrible doesn't it? :-]

christmas card time!

i think the last 2 or 3 years i've asked people for their address for christmas cards.

it seems every year i get a system down something happens...

i lose my memory stick with the addresses.

i lose my hardrive that has the addresses.

i lose the excel file that i had nicely placed on my desktop. {still confused about where that one went to...}

it's just inevitable!

this year i may try entering them in my gmail account. 

we'll see if i have the time...

so once again... i'm asking for mailing address if you'd like a christmas card. :-]

jarrinrabe@gmail.com or you can facebook message me it! 

thanksgivings and babies!!

on my birthday i had thanksgiving at my dad's house. we had grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. it was a lovely day. after hanging out for awhile, and when the sun was perfect lighting, we headed outside and my cousin kylie took some family pictures for us... let's just say that it was quite interesting with us 4 and the dogs. ayaya. lol 

we moved and moved and moved emily's butt before she would finally stay put! lol

after about the first 10ish pictures, we realized that dad looked awkwarddddddd. what on earth was he trying to do with those hands? :-] haha

so after telling him to do something different with his hands, he decided that choking me would be a good position. :-] lol that only lasted for 2 pictures before we moved to a different position.

this one was our christmas card i think...

the sister and the boyfriend. hopefully he'll put this on his fb profile pictures instead of his TRUCK! hint, hint, nick!

my dad's parents and us girls. 

i believe kylie cracked a joke about an exploding cat and we all cracked up at this moment. :-]

on monday i got to go to tuscola to visit the  triplets! they were all sleeping when i got there, but it wasn't too long before they all woke up. 

left to right: jackson, ava, connor

i was SO excited to hold all of them at the same time :-]

ava who is a spitting image of her mother -- i can hardly believe how much she looks like kristen!

jackson

connor

on saturday we had thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family. it was a relaxing afternoon to just hang out and chit chat. 

2 of my favorite boys - jesse and michael 

in the last few years we've started playing poker after we're done eating. after being accused time after time after time of stealing our uncle's money, whitney went to the dollar general (gotta love small town hick-ness: no walmart) and bought a poker set! so now we play with chips instead of all their change and no one gets accused of stealing their money :-] win win situation haha

mom & lee

my favorite boys again :-]

the brother and sister

michael, mom, uncle rog, and alex

sisters <3

oh i missed him soooooo much. he's almost too big to hold like that now!

papaw with all his kiddos. rog, doug, terry, and mom

then we tried to do a family picture of us.... well it was interesting too. we couldn't get everyone to look at the camera at the same time! lol

this was the best one i think and alex still has that funny look on her face because she was tickling jesse's foot haha

he is just music to my heart. :-]