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.