Still a big kid...

So I know that I loved Christmas, but this is crazy! I couldn't sleep last night, in anticipation for the day. And now, at 7:22 I'm the only one up and about. It's Christmas People, wake up already!

It's pretty bad that I'm going to go wake up the kids in about 5 minutes!

Cookies for Santa

Chocolate Chip Cookies with sprinkles for Santa and family.
Tyler colored the tags and Cody wrote their names, click the picture to see it better.

Being a busy little elf, I was able to get everything wrapped last night, even with the 10pm battery run because I way underestimated how many we actually needed.

Tonight we will sprinkle the reindeer food on the lawn (oatmeal with glitter), read The Night Before Christmas, plate the cookies for Santa and probably watch one of the million Christmas shows on TV.

Happy Christmas!

Almost Christmas!

According to the advent calendar, we have two more doors to open, including the last one on Christmas morning. The presents are wrapped, I finished up the last of the Christmas crafts last night, so we've had a relaxing day, notice the sweat pants.

We finished up the reindeer antlers from Ty's class on Fri. We ended up taking this one home because he wasn't having any part of us trace his hands or measure his head in class. Teacher Kathy was awesome and sent us home with extra paper so we could make one for Cody, too.

After that, we watched Cars and I read from a book online for a while. (Guilty pleasure, reading the unreleased Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyers) Then during nap time I readied the tree for presents by moving the train to the side and sweeping one last time. Thanks to Gma & Pa D. we have a full tree, without Santa's help! So let the torture begin!



The boys helped me place all the presents, there previous home was on the bed in the office. So far so good, only a few moments of present counting, but they are doing good.

I still have to make some gift tags from Santa, then do his wrapping. Tomorrow we plan to make chocolate chip cookies, maybe a playdate in the morning, and more relaxing in preparation for Thurs' excitement!

If we don't talk or see you before then, Happy Christmas to all!

Finished Stick Horses...

Holy crap, did I really just make Stick Horses?

These are totally brag worthy in my book, I saw them in one of my Christmas books and had to give it a go. Luckily FIL can cut wood into shaped pieces, the main part of the horse, the rest was simple sewing.

Tyler's

Cody's

Only one more project to finish! YAY!!!!

After the holidays are over, I'll work on floor pillows for the boys. It was supposed to be a Christmas present, but with the finger accident the other day, I lost too much time on them. They will still have plenty under the tree, from us and the Big man.

Packaged and Ready for Delivery...

A good portion of the late afternoon was spent boxing up cookies and getting the bags ready for delivery. We are headed out tonight for a couple of stops, then the majority will be tomorrow. Yay, something else checked off the list!

Hmmm, homemade goodness...

I will finish the stick horses tonight, it's an easy goal that I must obtain!

They picked me!

So about a month ago I found this website. She has tons of cute kid/mommy stuff, constant giveaways and lots of neat ideas. I've been entering contests every week, without really thinking I would actually get chosen as a winner. But it happened, and email in my box this am for this contest. I am SO Excited! Ty needs some new shoes as he only wants to wear his Crocs, but they are getting a little small and are not good winter/rain shoes. He has a super cute pair of low top Converse, but he doesn't really like them.

So which ones do you like? Need them to be versatile for every day, but if someone else is buy them, I'm all for cute! I like Hampus in Beige, the Jimmy in white, Joakim anything but red, Martin in Navy, Sam in Blue or Brown, and maybe a pair of slippers. These are the kind of things we would never buy, so it's fun to get to shop. There is one store, kinda local, that carries them, so we may try to go there to get a good fit.

Can't wait! Braggidy, brag, brag....

UGH!

Gosh, damn, son-of-a-monkey, freaking rotary cutter bit me! (Here) The damn thing is a circular razor blade for cutting fabric, finally getting around to making floor pillows for the boys, one of their xmas gifts. It really hurts, bled a lot, and I'm scared to see how deep it really is, right across the top of my middle finger, nicking my ring finger too. Luckily, FIL was here (water heater day) so he helped me get it patched back up.

Damn-it! Hopefully I can still get some things done later.


Can't be a totally bad day though, coupon for a free Starbucks came in the mail. Guess where we're stopping in the morning?!?

Pretzels are done...

This was my kitchen most of yesterday, 3 batches of these were done.

Mmmm, fresh, chocolate pretzels...

All packaged and ready for delivery.

I use Almond Brick in chocolate and vanilla, found in the baking isle, usually on the top shelf. Heat in the microwave as directed on the back of the package, then I added about 1 tbls of Crisco for every 3-4 pieces, to thin it out for drizzling. They are Yummy!

Keith took in a plate to work today and they were gone by 8:45.

Okay, back to the crafty cave....

No More Monkeys Jumpin' on the Bed

Finally! I caught Tyler singing, with Cody too. He's constantly singing, usually Old McDonald, but I'm never fast or sneaky enough to catch him. I need to get a mini voice recorder for the car because that's where the magic really happens.

Anyway, tonight the boys were in their reading spot behind the couch and I was able to sneak away for the camera, then sneak back and catch them in action. It's kinda dark, but you can hear them really well.

The stockings were hung.....

Among a ton of Christmas projects and baking, I've finally started to finish some things up.

This past weekend/1st half of the week project was finished last night, stockings for the new family additions/newly married folk. I discovered last time I made a bunch that it's easier to do them all at once, get a rhythm down and go for it. So here are the finish products....

I'm feeling better about the project list, still a little stressed, but it's coming together. I'm going to work on some dipped/drizzled pretzels while Cody's at school today and see how that process goes. If it's too big a hassle, I'll cut that part out of the goody bags, no stress!


On the home front, we are getting a new water heater tomorrow! Yay for the new home warranty! This is what it's been doing...


Luckily we caught it before it did any damage to our stuff, just a few empty moving boxes were wet on the bottom.

Only two more days of school before the holiday break!

Almost a check...

I can almost check off baking from my list! YAY ME!

Last week I baked 18 loaves plus a bundt pan of poppy seed bread. Today I baked 5 batches of spritz & 4 batches of Peanut Butter cookies, and mixed together a rice mix to hand out (12lbs of rice plus 10 cups of different seasons).

Still to finish are the dipped pretzels.

Then all the goodies for our gift bags will be complete.


On the list of stuff that sounds good is a batch of fudge and Chocolate Chip cookies for Santa that we'll bake on Christmas eve.


I'm tired and am off to work on some sewing stuff.

Weekend with my Brother....

My brother and his fiance came down for the weekend for a quick visit. They also brought their puppy Sam, who is the cutest thing I've seen in a while! (I didn't get any pictures though, bad camera mommy!)

They came in Fri evening and we headed out for pizza. Then Sat morning, after pancakes, we opened gifts to and from them. The boys were excited to open a few because I've been wrapping things up to send to Boise and they almost couldn't handle the packages just sitting!

"Mom, quit taking pictures so we can open the presents!"

Wrapping paper starts to fly!

Helping Danna...

Playing with the new K'Nex, the favorite right now.

Saturday afternoon we headed down to Old Fair Oaks for the Christmas celebration, bmx show, parade, and tree lighting. We arrived just in time to catch Santa before he headed off for the parade, he was a creepy Santa, but the boys have been asking to go to the mall, so now we might not have to.

Tyler's, not so sure about this, kinda smile. (But no tears, YAY!) He walked right up to him as well, Cody said he had to go first.

Cody sitting with Santa, he even talked to him, said he wants a puppy.
He's getting one, just not a real one.

After seeing Santa it was time to go get our spot for the parade. It started out with the firetrucks, police and motorcycles.

The boys watching the parade.

Parade was complete with all the honorary people and pageant queens.

The BV high school band.

More pageant queens on a really old fire truck. He saw the boys with their ears covered and turned of the siren, awesome!

Then came the boys scouts, 4-H and the girl scouts.

After all the dancing girls, cars, weird clubs (Tall people and Sci-fi bunch), Santa finished the parade in his golf cart.

We didn't stay for the tree lighting because it was too cold and the boys were getting grumpy. After getting home and having dinner, we headed back out to go walk through Dovewood Ct. It's a crazy cul-de-sac with every house having a different theme, decked out like you wouldn't believe. Way cool and always a lot of fun.

Busy, Busy week....

We survived what felt like a marathon week! My brother and his fiance are heading into town Fri night, so I've had lots of things to get done before they arrived, plus school and normal daily junk.

I switched work days with Jen this week so she could recoup from the AC/DC concert and not have to go to preschool the next day. My traded job was to bake a life size gingerbread kid with the kids at school. It was a intimidating, monster project, but turned out well. We made a triple batch of gingerbread dough, the kids helped with this part. We then traced the smallest kid in the class for our template. Next we rolled out the dough on one of the long tables, put the cutout of our shorty and cut it out. Then we cut it into large sections and baked it. From there my job was over.
Teacher Debbie has a story about the gingerbaby that runs away, so that was part of the fun. She took the pieces, wrapped in paper, and hid them around. Then the kids had to find it, puzzle it back together, then they made smaller pieces and the kids decorated their piece. Cody really enjoyed all this.

Other than that I've been a busy bee in my office, working on Christmas crafts for the Boise side of things, cleaning the house, and getting ready for the weekend. Should be a fun weekend and it's always nice to see family from the north!

Wish us luck, we get to have their puppy sleep over as well. But he's very used to sleeping and hanging out in his kennel, so all should be well.

Advent Calendar

I love the idea of the advent/count down calendars for Christmas. A friend of mine always had the chocolate ones , and I think there were a couple of years we convinced mom to get one for us too. We also grew up with a hanging felt tree, everyday we would put on another ornament, waiting for the the big day to arrive.

Last year my mom found us this calender and new we had to have it:

It's awesome! Every day I can fill it with a little treat for the boys, they had a blast doing it last year for the week we had it. I found a mini cars set with 36 pieces and started from there so on the first day they will open up to this:

They will also get this mat and storage case that came with the set.

It will be fun for them to build the set throughout the month, that includes more cars, airplanes, trees, and signs, and barriers.

Also in the box are a few days of M&M's, their absolute favorite!

Keychains for their backpacks.

Also a couple of small ornaments for their little tree, camera died before I could get pictures.

I was excited to see these kind of calendar boxes at Target last week, they are smaller though. I think they were fairly inexpensive so that if you have multiple children you could get one for each one, making it easier to fill. Especially easy for the girls, using jewelry and mini nail polish/lip balms.

Thanks again Mom, we love it!


Another Advent Calendar idea found here. Super cute and cheap!

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

YAY, our house has become a Christmas wonderland! Love this time of year. Here's most everything, missing a few wreaths and such, but you get the idea. I've lost some shelf space in the move, so I'm learning how to decorate all over again! Watch out, lots of pictures, mainly for my record keeping and so my Mom can see!

Dining area walls and the boy's little tree, they decorated it all by themselves!

It's really hard to get a good picture of the front of our house all lit up, probably just my camera being lame as always. But you get the idea.

Nascar Santa is on the roof this year, because he just didn't fit in with the deer scene.

My other favorite thing about this time of year is driving the boys around in the evening and listening to them get excited about the lights. Tyler says "That one is decorated!" saying ever syllable of the word, too cute!

Oh Christmas Tree.....

Today was the big beginning of the Christmas season, going to cut our tree. We make a morning out of it and gather as many family members that can come. We headed up to Apple Hill and stopped at Rainbow for apple donuts, because you can't go to Apple Hill without stopping! Then headed over to Robert's Tree Farm. We've gone here a couple of years now, they have great prices, and are always friendly.

Getting our measuring pole and saw.

That's November in Nor Cali!

Searching through..

Busy with Aunt Virginia...

They were having a great time running up and down the rows.

After going here and there, we finally found it!

Timber!

Waiting for everyone else to find their tree.

And down the hill we went...

Cody helping Uncle Eli with their tree.

Yep, he's in shorts and a t-shirt, it's almost December!

We got the monster inside and went to set it upright, too tall! So we lobbed about a foot off the top. We over estimated our ceilings just a hair.

There she is, all set up and lighted. Decorations come tomorrow.