Our 10Th Anniversary Trip

Hey all! We are just about ready for our trip now and I wanted to leave you with our itineraries in case we crash on one of the 12 or 13 flights we will have in store for us. OK we are flying from Chicago to St. Louis to LA to Sydney to Cairns (the great barriar reef) we are there for three days and then to Ayers Rock and Alice Springs for a day each and then back to Sydney for three days to Melbourne for two and then we fly to New Zealand and we will be in Christchurch, Queenstown, some smaller towns and Aukland for a total of five days. We leave Thursday for our trip, but we may be going to Chicago on Wednesday night depending on the weather. In case we don't see any of you before the trip - have a happy Thanksgiving! We love you all!

The Roath Family Christmas Exchange List

Names: Who you buy for:
Vickie- Kelly wants mixing bowls
Mike- Emily
Carrie- Cate
Lee- Chris
TJ- Vickie wants candles from Yankee candles Orange/mango or Christmas
scents or Bath and Body Works gift card
Meghan- Mike wants either a gift card to Home Depot or Texas Roadhouse
Jeff- Carrie wants a cardigan sweater size small any color
Kelly- Lee wants i tunes gift card or Frank LLoyd Wright calendar (@ the
mall)
Rick- John
Lynn- Jeff didn't request anything, but like video games and movies (Best
Buy Maybe?)
Chris- Lynn wants gift card to Sephora, Borders or fresh scented candles
Cate- Rick wants a gift card to Outback, Red Lobster or size M hoodie
Emily- Meghan Wants a gift card to Old Navy or Borders
John- TJ wants a gift gird to Old Navy or Borders

OK guys - if you haven't gotten back to me by now, I had to get this posted, so I can go on my trip and I won't be back until the middle of December. If John isn't going to be at Christmas then just let Mike or Carrie know and we'll adjust the draw. I won't see many of you for Christmas, so have a merry one and eat lots of turkey for me - love you guys!

My Craft Shows

Hey all - I wrote about my craft show and about my business on my Whimsical Creations blog, so if you want, you can click on my blog to the left of this post to find out how I did. It's been a while since I updated on the family, so here goes. Natalie just cut her 9Th tooth yesterday and 10Th tooth today, which to some may seem like no big deal, but for her it's huge! Most toddlers have their full set of 16 closer to 13 or 14 months, but Natalie is almost 19 months and she eats more than any child her age and can barely chew her food! We joked that for Halloween she was our Jack-O-Lantern. We are so happy for her. She is speaking small sentences now, but you really have to know her to understand her. It's cute though to finally have her communicating with us. I just wish she would stop her whining! This weekend she finally started watching TV. Bella at one year-old would sit and watch almost an entire episode of Sesame Street, but Natty just realized the TV does more than turn on and off and it was cute to witness. Bella was watching cartoons and Nat walked past the TV and then stopped, sat down, then layed down and put her hands behind her head and watched the rest of the show. I couldn't believe my eyes. This week we finally had to put a lock on the pantry doors. All day long she cries because she is hungry and if I don't feed her every half hour or sooner, she brings me cans and boxes from the pantry to let me know what she wants. I was getting so frustrated. I hate locks on the cabinets, but it had to be done. The other cute thing that happened in the last month was Natalie wanting to hold hands with Bella when we pick her up from pre-school. It brought tears to my eyes. Bella has been getting ready for her Christmas pageant at school and she has a speaking part that she's practicing and I can't wait to see it. She started Awana this fall as well and she is now in the cubbies class. It focuses on the kids learning Bible verses and she gets patches on her vest if she learns enough verses. She got three already and I'm really surprised at her memory. She retains the ones she has already learned and gets ready for new ones. I was never great at memorizing, so I'm pretty proud of her! She still loves school and her best friend Isabelle and she'll be in her first ballet class this winter. She talks about that a lot. We leave for our Australia trip in one week and I'm already worried that I'm going to miss the girls too much to enjoy myself. Please pray for our safety and for the the girls. Please pray for my friend Shannon who will be caring for the girls - she'll need it - they are so busy!

Halloween 2008

Hello to all the friends and family who tune in to read about our crazy family! We had a great Halloween at the combs household. Bella had her Fall Harvest party at school on Friday and I helped out with that. The kids were so cute. Thanks Shannon for watching Natalie Jane for me, so I could attend. Bella was so excited that she couldn't sleep during nap time, but she was still in a good mood for trick - or - treating. Natty on the other hand was a bear. She didn't want to pose for pictures in her costume and she wanted me to hold her the whole night. She did pretty good when we walked around the neighborhood. Thanks Aunti Shannon for coming with us - you made Bella's night. She was so proud to have you there. Both girls had so much candy it was falling out of their buckets! We walked for almost two hours. I did get to hand out candy for 10 minutes or so and it was nice to actually be in a neighborhood this year. I was pretty happy about that. This past weekend I did my first craft show and made out pretty well. This Saturday is the next one, so please pray that it goes even better than the last one. I'm even getting orders off of my blog store, so thank you for all who have been shopping - I really appreciate it. We leave for our trip in 18 days. Please pray that I'm not too anxious about flying for so long. I'm not worried about the sitting for 18 hours, but I am worried about crashing to my death. I don't want to orphan me sweet girls. I don't usually worry like this, but I would like to actually look forward to my 10 year anniversary without anxiety.