Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas.






Santa just came to our house! Natalie's gifts are in red and Bryce's are in Green. It looks like she's getting more, but Bryce's gifts are all tiny. The cradle was made for me by my Grandpa about 20 years ago. I am passing it on to Natalie with new homemade baby bedding.

Blah

I don't know what's up with me. I haven't been my usual cheerful self lately. I love love this time of the year, but I can't seem to enjoy it as much right now. I seem to get cranky super fast and and I am so weepy.

I did have loads of fun at our 2nd annual Christmas cookie exchange last night. It definitely put me in a much better mood. The cookies I made were fantastic!

I got them from Parenting Magazine. Here's a link. They are worth the trouble.
http://www.parenting.com/recipes-article/Recipes/Desserts/Million-Dollar-Caramel-Cookies

I also made these. They are good, but not as good as the others.
http://www.parenting.com/recipes-article/Recipes/Desserts/Smookies

I've been around..

I just don't have much to say.

We went to see Sugar Plum Fairy at the Children's Theater on Sunday. So very cute! The kids loved it and Nate and I loved and it was cheap to see. I am thinking about getting a season pass so we can go to all the plays.

Bryce learned how to ride his bike this weekend as well! He was so happy. My parents are going to surprise him with a new bike for Christmas since his old one was way too small for him.

Oh and we did go see Christmas lights. Natalie loved them. They were most definitely AWESOME!

Awesome!

That's Natalie's new word. Everything is awesome. It's so cute. We drove through our neighborhood tonight looking at the Christmas lights and every single lit house was "Awesome!"

I can't wait to take her to see Christmas lights at the park. It's really going to be awesome.

I am pleased to announce...

that I got 3 cute pictures of the kids and have ordered my Christmas cards. WOOHOO!

And my Christmas village is up. It's all lighted and pretty. :)

And I hung my wreath that I made.

Unfortunately, I now have to clean up my living room, put another layer of mod podge on my Christmas coasters and wrap some more books. We have a tradition at our house that we unwrap a book every night from Dec 1-23. I leave the Night Before Christmas unwrapped so we don't accidently choose it before the 24th.

Sunday morning

I love Sunday mornings. Everyone is sleeping so it's so peaceful right now.

I just got the stocking stuffers out and did a test run on the kids' stockings. I had to make sure I had bought enough stocking stuffers. I like my stockings to be overflowing and the stuff spilling out of them. They were filled to the top but I still need to get Bryce a drawing pad and Natalie a new Care Bears coloring book. I also may throw in a few more art supplies. We can never have enough at that this house. That should make them overflowing. :)

Now I am trying to decide what kind of pancakes to make. We have a tradition that every Sunday I make pancakes and it's hardly ever just regular pancakes. I made cinnamon banana pancakes last Sunday. They were pretty good. I am thinking we may have chocolate chip pancakes. It's the beginning of the Christmas season so we should have something fun, right?

Speaking of which I need to get working on the rest of my Christmas decorations. We got the tree up on Thanksgiving night, but we still have our village to put up. Nate swears he's going to make a side table today to put it on. We shall see. That's if he doesn't sleep until noon and waste half the day away, because he also needs to get outside and finish putting the lights on our house.

My biggest goal for today though is to get my Christmas card picture. I have to order the cards by tonight so I can use a 30% off coupon code that expires today. I have a plan so we'll see if it works. I think I am going to try this morning after their bellies are full. Surely they'll cooperate, right??

I am so tired

And yet I can't sleep. I just got out of bed after laying there for 30 minutes. I feel like I am going to pass out at any second, but the minute I get into bed my mind starts thinking about a hundred different things.

But since I couldn't sleep I found a new blog I am liking. It's all about cooking. Mommy's Kitchen
Of course, that's right up my alley so I'll be pouring over it tonight while I am not sleeping.

4 generations of girls!

My grandma is visiting from St. Louis and tonight everyone came over for dinner-lasanga, homemade bread, and vanilla cream pie!

Here's a picture of all us girlies. Unfortunately, the lighting in my house is not good so it came out dark and blurry. We'll try again on Thanksgiving at my mom's house.

2 things...

I finished our felt Christmas Tree Advent calendar. I think it's pretty good. The orange round thing is not a pumpkin, though. It's suppose to be an ornament.


And 2nd! I cut about 5 inches or more off of Natalie's hair! She loves it and so do I. No more knots!

It's been a bit of a quiet week..

Not much to talk about this week. I am trying desperately to keep the house picked up because my Grandma is coming for a visit from Friday until the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Woohoo!

Nate and I have been making crafts after the kids go to bed. Last night he made a bag hanger. I have lots of reuseable shopping bags and other bags that were cluttering our laundry room so he put together a board with knobs for me. Then he painted it. I think it looks pretty good.

I've been working on an Advent Calendar. I made a felt Christmas tree and now I am making felt ornaments for each from Dec 1-24. I've got 8 more ornaments to make. Nate helped me make a couple so I am hoping he'll help me on the last few.

I've also been making more Happy Holidays signs. I've finished 2 and I've got 4 more started. They are going to be small little presents for Bryce's music and pe teachers, the crossing guard at his school, and a couple of other people.

I'll post pictures when I am done.

Somewhat of a photo session

Nate got out the camera the other night and here is a small sample of what he got. Nothing great, but the pictures are a little interesting.

Natalie's first pose:

Then some sort of kissy puckered lip face:

Then Bryce decides he needs to pose:
Oh wait, Natalie has to jump on and join him again. I actually like this one, but the camera flash is in the background.

And well since Bryce laid down Natalie decided to lay down. I hope this doesn't mean she's going to pose for a male magazine in the future.

Thanks Amber!

My new friend, Amber, is a crafter. She makes and sells bow holders, tutus, and more. Well, she made a sign very similar to this and she told me how to do it so I did! Thank you Amber for helping to become more crafty.

Fallen Leaves

We went to Little River Park to play in the leaves. It's one of most favorite fall activities. We had to hurry, though, a big hail storm was about to come. We left right before the storm hit.

Chasing after a squirrel.

There he is!

Peek-a-Boo!

Letterboxing

A couple of weekends ago we went Letterboxing again. This time our adventure took us to Draper Lake. I wish I would have made Nate stop while we were driving there. The tree leaves were a brilliant shade of red. I love fall!

We found the letterbox rather quickly, but Bryce still had fun on the treasure hunt. Natalie fell asleep in the car so she missed all the fun.

After letterboxing we decided to stop by the new park over at Draper since we were so close to it. Natalie woke up for that. =) It's a very nice park, but quite small so we didn't stay too long.

We ended up going to the welcome center park in Midwest City. The kids love that one, but since it's so far away we don't go all that often.

The lovely voting line

It took me an hour and a half to vote. We had to stand outside in the 50 mph winds for that entire time. Okay, so they weren't really 50mph, but it sure as heck felt like it.

Natalie was an angel, though. She was so well behaved and even the other people around me commented about it. Makes me feel like a good momma.

But now I have done my civic duty so all is good.

Halloween Fun!

We've had a quite a week with Halloween Festivities. We carved pumpkins on Wednesday night. Natalie's official thought on that was "EEEEWWW!"

On Thursday night some area high schools put on Halloween carnivals. We started off at one school but it was way too crowded. Thankfully, the other school we went to was not crowded at all. The kids had a wonderful time and the teens working it did a great job.

And of course, last night was trick or treating! Natalie got quite good at saying trick or treat and thank you. They made out pretty good, too, since my neighborhood doesn't seem to have a whole lot of kids at least back the section we live at.




Here's her eewwy face.

Our finished product: a pirate, Scooby Doo pirate, and two faces.

It's a shame they didn't light up that well. We used fake candles and they don't glow as bright. In person they looked good, though.

Here's the kids at the first school we went to. We ended up turning around and leaving!

Getting ready to trick or treat!

Isn't he the cutest Harry Potter ever?

Sick day

Bryce has a cold so I had him stay home today from school to get some rest. It was such a dreary morning so all of us laid around on the couch until mid morning. After a while the kids got restless so we decided to make a couple of halloween crafts and decorate the sugar cookies we made yesterday.

The kids made a mummy out of popsicle sticks. If you look closely you can see the popsicle stick body of Natalie's mummy.


We used toilet paper to wrap the mummy. Here's the finish products.



Then we put blobs of paint into the middle of a paper. We folded the paper up and squished the paint. When we opened the paint back up we got some nice ghost blobs. Bryce made a skinny white ghost and Natalie made a fat purple ghost. As soon as the paint dries we'll add eyes to the ghosts.

And finally the kids decorated their cookies and ate several!

Pumpkin Patch

Every year we go to TG Farms pumpkin patch and again (like the Tulsa Zoo) we take the same pictures every year. :) This year we brought Aunt Kelly with us.

Unfortunately, this year the How Tall this Fall sign was off a few inches. Nate is exactly 6 feet tall and this has him more at 6 foot 2 inches.

Kelly and Bryce on the hayride and the kids were standing on top of the haybale slides.

The kids led us through the corn maze!

Natalie was filthy by the time we left. If you look closely you can see all the dirt around her mouth.