Christmas

Our house could pass for a toy store now. My kids got so many gifts that it is really obscene. Ashlyn's favorite gift was Khi-lan (or however you spell that) doll that talks and moves. Santa brought that one for her. Braden's favorite gift of the night was Tech Deck Dudes. He has asked for them for two years and finally he got some. Mike's grandmother got him a big playset and Mike's parents got him 3 or 4 dudes to play with it and then Santa brought 2 more dudes. I think he has around 13 of them now.

My favorite gift that Braden received was Superhero Chutes and Ladders. We have played that silly game over and over again. My favortie gift that Ashlyn received was her Tinker Bell sweat suit becuase it's cold here this week!

Hope everyone had a merry merry merry Christmas.

All Plugged Up.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Traditions

We have a few family traditions that we look forward to every year. One is going to Macy's and mailing our letters to Santa. Another is picking out our stocking ornaments. Every year we buy a new ornament for our tree. We started doing it a few years ago because if I picked out all the ornaments we would have a tree full of red balls and clay Santas.

Ashlyn, in true princess fashion, picked an Ariel the Little Mermaid snow glob ornament for her stocking.

Big surprise that I picked another clay Santa for my stocking ornament.

Last year Mike's cousin bought him this LT ornament. So he was very happy to use it this year on his stocking.

We wanted to get a dog or puppy ornament for Ariel's stocking but the two stores we went to didn't have any. Of course now I see them everywhere. So the kids settled with a reindeer to decorate her stocking.

Braden has quite the nutcracker collection going. We already have a couple ornaments on the tree and he has his nutcrackers in his room year around. This years nutcracker is covered with glitter. It looks pretty at night when the Christmas lights shine on it.

Another Christmas tradition for us is gingerbread ornaments. They are super easy to make. The dough is made of applesauce, ground cinnamon, and a tiny touch of good ole' fashion white glue. Super simple and the kids love lOVE LOVE making it. I pour all the stuff in the ziplock bag and let them mush it around until a ball of yummy smelling dough forms.

fa la la la

With Christmas comes Christmas programs and concerts. Ashlyn's class sang "Must Be Santa" but I think that most of the audience would agree that Ashlyn sang the song while the rest of the class chimed in as back up. She nearly fell of the stage a few times because she was so animated. Silly girl.

Braden's class sang "Jingle Bells" and " Jolly Old Santa Nick" at his concert. I had a hard time seeing him. The bad part about being the tallest kid in your grade is that you always get stuck in the back. He didn't care. He was just happy to wear something other than his school uniform for a day.

Christmas with Nan & Greg

We started celebrating Christmas a few weeks early. My mom and Greg came for their annual December visit. It was a very yucky cold raining weekend. The rain did hold off for a few hours for the Christmas parade. The kids and the dog are always so happy when their here and so sad when they leave.

ummmmmm.

Sometimes there are no words to explain......

Star Athletes

Baseball is offically over! I think the whole family was ready for it end. Braden had games 3 nights a week and Ashlyn had a practice one night a week and a game on Saturdays. That's a lot of baseball.

Braden got his trophy at a team pizza party Thursday night and then Ashlyn got her's Saturday a league picnic. They both are very proud of their trophies and I'm very proud of them for playing.

More Halloween

This year Ashlyn decided very early that she wanted to be Dorothy from the Wizard of oz. We bought her costume early in September at Wal-Mart.

Braden took a little longer to decide. He briefly wanted to be a zombie, a vampire, and a few other things. Finally I convinced him to be a mummy but in true Braden style he had to put a twist on it. So he asked for a pharoh hat to go with it.

The mummy part was easy- an old tee shirt and shorts, an off white bed sheet, and big bottle of tacky glue! The hat took me a little longer to figure out and I didn't actually make it until the night before but it must have turned out ok because Braden was happy with it. I just cut up a stretchy blue shirt and glued it onto a piece of cardboard and added some gold glitter.

All in all Braden's costume took me about $6 and 10 hours to make. Ten hours to make and he wore it for a wopping 3 hours. Oh well, he looked cute.

Halloween time

Braden was able to dress up at school this year BUT they had to dress as a favorite storybook character. Braden wanted to be Peter pan but the costume i made looked a little more like a Robin Hood so we went with that.

Ashlyn didn't get to go to school on Halloween because we were fighting head lice. She missed out on her first school party and she was really cute in her Dorthy costume.

Puppy Party

Once i had a little puppy and now we have a huge 80 pound dog. Ariel turned one year old November 3. She's a good dog. If we could just convince her that she's not a lap dog, life would be good.

More cakes

It has been a busy month for cakes in our family. I made my in-laws a cake, Braden a huge robot cake, And then I finished it off with a German Chocolate Cake. Yummy. I can't wait to start the next class.

Happy Birthday Braden

Braden's 7. I hate it. Seven sounds so "big" boyish. It's sad that he has grown up so fast. This year's theme was robots. I decided to make the cake and it was quite the task. It took me all day but Braden loved it so it was all worth it. It was dark chocolate cake with banana buttercream icing.

It's always stressful wondering if any kids will come but we had a good turn out. Two kids from his class, 1 girl from tutoring, and 2 boys from boy scouts came. After adding in little brothers and sisters we had a house full--10 kids not counting those who live here. We had kids in every room of the house. It was GREAT.

Cub Scout

Braden is a cub scout. Other than washing the uniform, I'm clueless about the whole thing. Mike has taken full responsibility for this activity. They have already had their first camp out and from the pictures and the stories Braden had a great time.

He earned his archery and target belt loop. It's probably a good thing that I didn't go because I don't know if my nerves would have let me arm Braden with a bb gun or a bow and arrow. That just has ER written all over it. He did it without medical attention need so I guess he wasn't half bad.

Swing Batter

We have our first week of baseball game under our belts. Ashlyn only likes to bat. She is really cute too. The batting helmet is so big that she looks like a bobble head at bat.

She's not that in to fielding but there is only one boy on her team that is into it. I think at one time every player had a parent on the field with them herding them out of the outfield or tearing them away from their sandcastle masterpieces. It was really fun to watch them play. You never know what a 4 year is going to do.

Braden had a blast at his first game. I was worried but he jumped in and enjoyed himself. He spent some time on the pitchers mound and behind the plate. We are living baseball right now. Braden has games on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday and practice on Wednesday night. So four days a week he's busy and Ashlyn has practice on Tuesday and games on Saturdays.

We don't even like baseball.

cake

Mike signed me up for a cake decorating as an anniversary present. I think I've made 5 cakes so far but I haven't taken a picture of all of them.

So far in class I've learned:
1. icing taste better when you don't know what is in it.
2. icing is really a pain to clean off of bowls, spoons, etc.
3. making icing without a mixer is great for sculpting arms and eating icing is great for filling in saddlebags.

I only have 2 weeks in my beginner class. I'm planning on make Braden's birthday cake. I hope I can pull it off because if it's not perfect Braden WILL tell me.