Silent Night...

All is calm.

GingerBread House

Here are my tips for successful gingerbread house decorating.

#1. DISTRACTION: You must distract the little one. Luke was given Mia's Leapster, and that kept him busy for a good 15 minutes.
#2. ALL IN ONE GINGERBREAD HOUSE KIT: What a great invention. No hassle on my part. The kids know what they have to work with. They just need to use their imaginations to make it look special.
#3. A GREAT LEADER: In this case, Mia was a great leader. She and Cole worked together to make the house look ultra charming.



Distraction only works for so long. Luke discovered the yummy house. Mia and Cole did a great job making it look beautiful, and the house lasted a good 12 hours, before Luke pulled it off the counter the next morning and ate half of it. Ahhh, Christmas memories.

Little Miss and Mr. Christmas

Mia performed in the winter academy showcase last week. They performed a play based on the popular 1970's series of books about Little Miss and Mr.

Mia was Little Miss Helpful, which totally fits her true personality. She had lots of lines and did a great job memorizing them. I was so proud of her. Here's a photo of Mia and her drama teacher before her evening performance.
And here are some photos during the show.

Tree Trimming

Last night the kids decorated the tree. And they did the whole thing by themselves. Well, most of it. I had to hang my hand painted ornaments from Great Aunt Betty, but they did the rest. It was so fun watching them, especially Luke. You can see he really got into it.


Cole doesn't look excited in any of the pictures, but he actually had a great time. I think he was just concentrating on making sure the ornaments were evenly spaced.
Mia wanted to show off her Disneyland ornament from last year.

Cole, trying to look cool.

Thanksgiving 2009

So our holiday week started off with a bang. The day after arriving in Utah we woke up to this. It was the first time in 5 years that I scraped snow and ICE off of my car. (Don't tell anyone, but I kind of enjoyed it.)Going to Drew's home town for a few days was WONDERFUL! The kids loved spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, and riding on the mule and horse walker. The high light of my trip there was having a wonderful Thanksgiving eve dinner with Dixie. No chaos... just thankfulness. I loved it.
On Thanksgiving morning we drove out to Jill and Brock's house. It was fun setting the tables.
The girls exchanged lots of secrets... that is, in the few moments they weren't arguing.

And Mom watched over us, monitoring our fabulous cooking skills.
The deep fried turkey was Juicy! And Brock can carve a turkey in no time at all. It's actually quite a show... watching him at work.

Leave it to me to forget to take pictures during the dinner. I did the same thing last year. But here is a photo of most of us before we headed to bed. Thanks Jill and Brock. We had a great time.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Chandra brought her kids down for a Halloween Visit. We had such a wonderful time. We took this photo right before we headed out trick-or-treating. Happy Halloween!

Halloween Party...For the Big Kids

Our Awesome friends, the Allreds, threw a great halloween party for the grown-ups. Our costume.... Mobsters, of course. We just had to get back to our LV roots.

So here we are.... Boopsie (on the left), Sticky Fingers (in the middle), and me... I'm The Needle. Isn't make believe fun???

And I just have to post all the other great costumes. Here's Amelia Earhart, and her husband, a 1970's cop (or in my mind, a cast member from the Beastie Boys video "Sabotage")
CSI, and her "Knock-Out" husband
Wendy and Colonel Sanders (AKA our Hosts)
The Doctor and the knocked-up nurse
Jack and Jill, with a broken crown and black eyes
The pirates
The fantasy
Audrey Hepburn and the King himself... Elvis
Candidates for "Best Costume"... Mit Romney and Sarah Palin
Medusa in her custom dress (made by her daughter) and the man she turned to stone
Best Costume winners, Ghostbuster and the DoughBoy
Snow White and Gumpy
A roll reversal, FBI agent and pregnant Mom
Woopie and the Cowgirl
After a yummy dinner and lots of laughs, we played several games. One of them was a doughnut eating contest. Notice in the first picture, the man of stone is not opposed to eating off the ground. Some people will do anything to win. :)


This one makes me laugh so hard, every time I see it.
OUR WINNER, who nearly gagged on the string, the stone man.
What a fun night! Thanks Allreds.