A very Merry Christmas

Well the Christmas season started out rough with Braden being sick. Christmas Eve he was running a fever so we called to let Mike's family know that we were going to be staying home. No one was happy with that decision so we at the last minute we decided to make a quick appearance. Our quick appearance last a few hours but we all seemed to have fun and we've had no word about anyone else getting sick.

Ashlyn is no going by Hannah Montana most of the time. Santa brought her a drum set and a Hannah Montana microphone. Nan and Greg decked her out earlier this month with a Hannah Montana dress up set and Nana and Papa gave her the Hannah MOntana guitar. We've been very entertained this week.

I think I picked out the worse picture of Braden to post. He got the huge Nutcracker, a robot bank, several sets of legos, and a Clue Jr game from Santa. I think his favorite gift was a Space Fighter Robot that Ashlyn picked out for him. It walks and may be the loudest toy ever made.

I hope all my friends in real life and cyber world had a great holiday too!

Florida Christmas

We went to look at Christmas lights Saturday night. I didn't have many pictures turn out. Christmas lights are so hard to photograph. Anyways here is one of the few pictures that turned out and I thought it was very appropriate for a Florida Christmas.

Today is sunny warm but we're not enjoying the great weather. Braden is sick. He got sick late last night. We were hoping that he just over did the cookies but he got sick again today. So he was sick on this birthday and now Christmas. I hope tomorrow he's feeling better and can enjoy Christmas.

Marshmallow Monday

We didn't make any muffins for Muffin Monday today but instead we are making these yummy treats. Nothing says holidays like large amounts of sugar and chocolate!

We made these a few days ago for Braden to take to school. They are cheap, quick, and not that messy. Braden made most of them all by himself. He had a little trouble rolling them in the sprinkles but he was able to do the rest without any help.

You need: large marshmallows, stick pretzels, chocolate ( I bought a bowl of Baker's Dipping Chocolate. It doesn't get more simple than that. You pop it in the microwave for a minute and start dipping. If you have left you can but the lid back on and store it in the refrigerator for later.) and sprinkles of course.

Braden starting pushing the pretzel sticks into the marshmallows while I melted the chocolate and then we dipped them into it and rolled them in the sprinkles. TA DA! Yummy snacks for the holidays.

They would be really great to pair with some hot cocoa mix and give as a gift.

Gift Tags

Jennifer at MBI posted a challenge to use scraps of wrapping paper to make tags for your gifts. Well, I tried but I just couldn't get the wrapping paper and my cardstock scraps to work together. So I just made some tags with my cardstock and pattern paper scraps instead.

If you take a look at the top picture of Randy's picture, you'll see the paper is all wrinkled. Braden did that. He said it made it special wrapping paper. We wrapped Uncle Randy's and Mrs. Sudhoff, his teacher, in the special paper. The longer I look at the more I like it. I think it would look really cute with a burlap ribbon and bow. You know a weathered on purpose look.

It's A Girl!

With all the excitement and pictures from the cruise, I forgot to tell you that our new baby is a girl! She's 6 weeks old and a total doll. She's a catahula/german shepherd/shar-Pei mix. She looks like a shar-pei with little wrinkles instead of deep ones that pure breed shar-Pei has.

So far things have been going really well. She was an outside doggie before coming to our house. Everything in the house has scared her at least once-tv, dishwasher, vacuum.....! But she's starting to come around and claim this place as her own.

We stopped on the way home from the port Monday to pick her up. We really wanted it to be a surprise though. So Mike used his god given ninja skills to sneak her into the car, keep her quiet in the car, and then sneak her into the house and under the tree.

The amazing part is that both kids were surprised. Ashlyn went to sleep in the car so that helped and Braden was so tired that he didn't catch on. I told them I wanted them to pose for a picture by the Christmas tree when we got home. While they were doing their best "Cheez", Mike came in the back door and put her under the tree.

They both looked at her for a minute like they thought she was some kind of toy dog. After a few seconds Braden's eyes got big and he yelled "its a dog!". He's been in love ever since that moment.

It's taking Ashlyn a little more time to warm up to her. Ashlyn loves her name, Ariel the little mermaid puppy or Ariel for short. Ariel is a little hyper for Ashlyn. Ashlyn wants to sit and pet her and Ariel wants to wrestle and play tug-a-war with Ashlyn's hair. Once she gets a little older and mellows out a little, I think Ashlyn will be more fond of her.

Pirate Parade

The kids finished their first cruise with a pirate parade around the ship. It would have been my favorite part of the cruise if they hadn't participated in the talent show. The talent show was just to hard beat though. It was my favorite part.

Day 3 --Day at Sea

Day three of our cruise was planned to be our beach day at Coco Cay but the weather turned on us. So instead of kayaking and building sandcastle we spent the day at sea. The ship had tons of stuff planned to try to keep us entertained. My favorite had to the be kids talent show.

Both Ashlyn and Braden participated. Ashlyn's class did a group dance which she finished with "Thank You Thank You" and blowing kisses to the crowd. She got a gold medal (everyone did) for her wonderful performance.

Braden's class didn't do a group thing. Some kids did gymnastics. Several did hula hoop tricks and a couple sang. Braden's first choice was to be a clown but since I couldn't make a small clown car for him to use....yes he really did want me to whip that up during lunch.... he settled for telling a few jokes.

His jokes were : "Why did the rooster cross the road?" "To Prove he wasn't a chicken!"

A Jason Tidwell original "Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?" "No! They're pretty good hiders!"

And then he finished it off with a classic knock knock joke.

Day 2 -Nassau

Our first port of call in the Bahamas was Nassau. The rest of our group went on another tour but Mike and I decided that the Fort & Pirates Tour would be the best one for the kids. Braden seemed to really enjoy it. Ashlyn was too tired to give it a real chance.

The tour was a driving tour and it was quite the experience. I only saw one street with traffic signals. The rest of the time the drivers would honk and go at intersections. I quickly realized that I needed to look out my window and not pay attention to the driving.

The best part of the day was the pirate museum at the end of the tour. It was really neat. Braden loved it and actually retained some of the information that we learned on tour-- (pirates would eat rats while out to sea, a lot of pirates did keep parrots but they didn't make people walk the plank).

We visited 2 different forts during the first half of the tour. Ashlyn and I missed the second one because she was napping in the bus. Braden and Mike really enjoyed the second one. It had different rooms to visit the first fort only had some canons on display.

Life On The Sea

Life on the sea is a GREAT place to be!!! We got back this morning from our first cruise. We went on a 3 night cruise to the Bahamas. It was so much fun even though the weather turned on us and our second port of call was canceled.

Our first day was rough. We boarded at noon and the activities for the kids didn't start until 8pm. That was a long time to entertain 2 little kids. We learned quickly that our closet (I mean stateroom) was not the place to hang out. So we went up to the 12th deck to hang out even though it was cool outside. We were so excited that we didn't even notice.

I have a lot more pictures to share but I'm too tired from my vacation right now.

Face to face

Last weekend Santa was at our local Wal-Mart store. I thought that Braden would say something about him not being the real Santa since he had a wig and beard instead of the real thing but he didn't even notice.

I did notice that this will be the last year that Braden sits on Santa's lap. He was way to big. Next year he will have to stand next to him. I snapped a few pictures of them talking to him but Wal-Mart took pictures and printed them for FREE. I love FREE! Their pictures were a lot better than mine because of the angle.

Ashlyn asked for a talking Darby and Braden asked for.....a dancing nutcracker....WHAT? He wrote out a 4 page letter for Santa but he didn't ask for anything on it. He asked for a dancing nutcracker.

Good Luck Santa! :)

Santa Letters

Last weekend we went to Macy's to mail our letters to Santa. Our store had a cute little set up with a desk and some paper and pencils next to the mail box. Braden saw the commercial a few weeks ago and said "That mailbox goes straight to Santa. We have to go there Mom." So we did and they mailed a copy of their letters to the big guy. (I stashed the originals away.)

On Braden's list this year was Star War Legos, Funkeys, Tech Deck Dudes, Planet Heroes, and lots of surprises. Ashlyn asked for the Talking Darby, Barbie styling Head, a boy Barbie doll, and all the Sleeping Beauty items ever made.

Icing Wars

My mom and her husband Greg came down for the weekend for an early Christmas. Mom had a wonderful plan in hand. We had a gingerbread house decorating contest. The boys vs the girls. It was so much fun. I think our house was the best but the judging (Braden) favored the boys house.

It was a lot of fun. It was cheap (less than $10 for each kit) and it was a fun and messy way to spend the evening.

still decorating

We bought a few new things for the yard last weekend. Braden picked out the purple penguin and Ashlyn picked out the giant ornament. She surprised us with that one. They had a Santa and a Snowman but she went with the ornament.

Traditions

Every family has traditions. One of our traditions came to be because I insisted that we have plain matching stockings. Mike hates them. So to compromise, a few years ago we started buying a new ornament to hang on our stocking to make them more personal.

We bought this year's ornaments at Old Town Pottery (one of my all time favorite stores!) over the weekend. Ashlyn picked out several ornaments before she finally settled on the glass angel.

She did demand a new stocking this year. I bought these 4 stockings when she was just a baby. Braden decided which color went each person. Ashlyn has had the green stocking the past 3 years but she was not happy this year when I unpacked it. She threw it down and demanded a pink one. Since we didn't have a pink one she settled with the white.
Mike hasn't changed his ornament in several years. He likes his charger Santa so he's been hanging on to it.

I picked out a new clay Santa. I like clay Santa ornaments. The first year Mike and I were married we had no ornaments and no money. I found some packs of ornaments at a dollar store and that's where the collection began. I try to pick up a few every year and of course I always pick out a clay Santa for my stocking ornament every year.

As much as I love clay Santa, Braden love nutcrackers! He begs for new ones to play with every year. So I was not surprised at all when he picked out this nutcracker for his stocking ornament.

Oh Christmas Tree!

Earlier this week we broke our normal tradition and put our Christmas tree up before Thanksgiving. Our tradition has been to decorate the Friday after Thanksgiving but we just couldn't wait it out this year.

It was a pretty quick process this year. Our tree has been set up with it's 1100 lights in the corner of our garage all year. We covered it with this blue moving blanket thingies to keep it somewhat clean. I was so scared that a strand of lights would not light after a year in the garage but each little light is twinkling.

Our tree has the same assortment of clay Santas, homemade gingerbread men, white plastic snowflakes and red balls every year. We lost a lot of our red ornaments last year so I replaced them. Braden decided to do a little extra decorating on his own. He added batman stickers to each red ball and all kinds of pictures and toys to it.