can anyone tell me....

does this look like a nap to you???

one week till we're off!

...to Portland that is!

Today's to-do's

• take down Christmas tree
• pack away Christmas decorations
• laundry (when do I ever NOT have laundry on my list???)
• pack away baby bottles ('cuz they've only been sitting in the cupboard unused for two whole months already... it's not like I don't need the room in my kitchen cupboards or anything...)
• start organizing lists for our trip

Savannah really has just been cracking me up lately. Maybe it's just me, but it's getting harder and harder to keep a straight face during conversations with her. And it's not even always funny ha-ha kind of stuff... it's sometimes just funny how a three-year-old's mind works.
Here is a conversation from this morning:

I came into the toyroom to play with her, sat down on the floor and immediately she brought a book over.
"Will you read this to me, Mom?"

"I came in here cuz I thought we could play for awhile before Sawyer gets up. Don't you want to play something?"

"Well, reading IS playing Mom." (like, duh!)

So we read, and when we were done she moved on to her kitchen:
"What do you want me to make you to eat? Do you want a sandwich or some toast?"

"I'd like some chocolate cake please."

"Mo-om, cake is not for eating. Cake is for after eating."

"Oh, sorry."

"Now would you like a sandwich or some toast."

"I would like some French Toast please."

"Um... I can't french my toast. I don't think I have any frenchies. I can't make you french toast without frenchies today Mom. Would you like a sandwich?"



p.s. Happy 30th Birthday to Ryan King!!!
Wish we were there with you to celebrate!

Did you know I have a stamp?

Savannah's been all about her babies lately. She's been spending everyday playing with her new Cabbage Patch Kids (who knew when they were the must haves that Christmas almost 25 years ago
*25 years ago!!!* that they'd still be around and all over the place now for my kids?!). Just now today, she noticed that the bigger Kid is wearing "panties" and that she can take them off. And then when she pulled them down she saw the famous signature on her bum. I watched her look at it for a minute, apparently trying to figure out why the heck there would be writing on a babies bottom. Then she turns to me, shows me her bare baby and says, "Look, Mommy, my baby has a stamp just like you do!"
(let me just mention my "stamp" is not on my bum just like hers... it's on my lower back)


This kid makes me laugh every day.

SJ is back

Okay, time for some quotes.

First, I wanted to share a quote from the movie we watched the other night, The Last Kiss. It's not like a famous movie quote or a funny quip, or anything like that... it's just something that really stood out to me and I loved what it was saying.

"I do love her."

"Stop talking about love… every asshole in the world says he loves somebody."

"But it’s true-"

"It means nothing! What you feel only matters to you.
It’s what you do; how you treat the people you say you love; that’s what matters."

And now for the first SJ quotes of 2007...

noticing it was a cloudy night and she couldn't see any stars out, only the moon, she told me
"It's just a mooney night out tonight, Mom."

she didn't finish all of her oatmeal for breakfast and I told her she was going to be hungry later.
her reply:
"I'm okay Mom. I will just have a snack this afternoon at 3, after 2."

and for some reason she's taken to calling her little brother "my little yeti"
please tell me where that came from ?!? (anyone who doesn't know; a yeti is like a bigfoot, sasquatch, abomidable snow man, etc.)


Also thought I'd throw in a few other funny things from SJ's vocab.
We've realized that Savannah uses a few new homophones (including some that don't really exist):

• She thinks Tuesday is two's-day. You know how she sometimes uses sign language with her words while she's talking? She quite often holds up the umber 2 while saying "I go to school on Tuesdays".
• She adimantly tells us that even though we may not have shoes or socks on, people can't have bear feet (barefeet).
• I know there are a couple more of these that I'm blanking on...

And she often forgets how to pronounce certain words, usually new words that she hasn't heard much. She'll say three or four (or five) different versions of the word before we have to offer up the correct pronunciation for her. If she's hesitantly saying....

• spart... spurt... spat... What she's really trying to think of is Sprite.
• mash... marm... mushmeal... mushroom... What she's really trying to think of is marshmallow.
• orby... orangement... orgament... What she's really trying to think of is ornament.

Okay, I've gotta get off the computer and get busy today. I need to start packing away the Christmas decorations. Savannah just asked me yesterday if we were keeping our Christmas tree forever. I guess that means it's time to take it down.
I'm not really looking forward to putting away the decorations. Our house is going to look so bare (and I mean bare, not bear)! We've never really got up much regular decor in our house, at least the living room and dining room, since moving in. Because we didn't get around to painting till this fall (and the dining room not until last week!) we haven't really decorated the rooms yet. And then the holiday decorations came out, so it looked normal and lived in. Now it's going to look so bare because we're used to things being on the mantle and the walls and things. Wish I had the budget for a little interior decorating!

And I really, really don't want to get out of my pajamas today, but I have got to go to the store and grab a couple of things. We are comletely out of Kleenex around here and all three of us still have yucky noses. We're going to run out of toilet paper too if I don't buy more Kleenex soon. I think it's supposed to be warm(er) and sunny again today so we should probably try to spend some time outside at some point. Maybe we'll actually go to the park. We'll see exactly how motivated I am today...

Out to Lunch

Savannah has been dying to go visit Ryan at work ever since we moved here. That was something we did quite regularly back in Oregon... even when he worked an hour away we probably made it out there once every other month or more. When we moved down to Salem and the trip to his lab was down to just over thirty minutes, we probably had lunch dates at least every other week. Savannah loved hanging out at his desk and playing with his "toys" and seeing his coworkers and everyonce in awhile we arranged lunch with his cube-mate and his family, which included Savannah's friends Ben and Julia.

I'm not sure why we've never made it out to have lunch with Ryan in the past 7 months that he's had this job. I've only been to Kalamazoo twice since we moved out here and those were both just driving through on the way to Lake Michigan. (Okay, that may not be surprising for some who live here and never go to Kzoo anyway... I mean it is an hour drive. But back in Oregon, after moving down to Salem, we made the hour drive up to Portland at least twice a week. Ryan has always had a long commute and we've always traipsed all over the place, from one side of Portland to the other like an hour on the road was no big deal.)

Anyway, Savannah has always asked why we don't see her daddy's work. I guess partly it's because they don't allow children in the actual lab, and Ryan's desk is now in with all the lab stuff so we can't even go in to see where he works. Visitors are only allowed on the first floor. All we can do is eat lunch with him in the Pfizer cafeteria. Which seems like a long way to go for that.
But I knew she really wanted to do this, so since we have no school or Porter this week, I decided we might as well go for it.

When I told Savannah this morning that we were going to Kalamazoo to have lunch with Daddy, you should have seen her face light up! She was so excited all morning. We had a nice drive out and a quick lunch in the cafeteria with lots of visits from the other people that are part of Ryan's department. I hadn't met anyone from Pfizer yet, so that was nice. After lunch and a quick drive around downtown Kalamazoo, we headed home but stopped in Battle Creek to go to the mall. The kids had a blast for over an hour playing on the indoor "playground" climbing and sliding and running around on the soft stuff. I forget how much I love those indoor soft playgrounds for the kids and just sitting on the side benches hanging out with the other moms just watching the kids run in circles. Oh how I wish they had something like that here in Jackson!

So we had a great day, the kids had so much fun and were so tired out I think they were asleep in record time tonight!

Check it out

Look here. (you can also find it over in the lefthand sidebar from now on)
These are a couple of my "resolutions" for the new year.

Along those lines I also would like to

• learn a bit of real recreational "photography" (probably somewhat limited to whether we can get a new camera or not)
• take more pictures and do more journaling for the "everyday" stuff of life. I really want to capture and put into words my children's personalities and the funny stuff they do in this brief moment called childhood... not just the big events and occasions such as holidays, "firsts" and things of that nature.

As for real tangible new year's resolutions, I've narrowed it down to

• getting our Anniversary Memories book up to date before our next Anniversary
• finishing Sawyer's first year scrapbook
• finish both kids birthday scrapbooks
• have my house mostly cleaned and picked up (should I start with not trashed and ease my way up?) EACH DAY when Ryan comes home from work
• keeping in better touch with distant friends and family. I am not a phone person, I'm horrible and returning phone calls, and it's easy for me to let this blog do my talking and just do a little email here and there (which is so much more convenient for me with the kids running around and the time difference between here and the west coast...). But I need to remember that's not how everyone works and I need to make more of an effort.

This is the first year I've made any sort of resolutions at all for years. I'm just not the sit down and spell out your goals type. I just keep things rolling around in my head. But this year I want to be very intentional on some things like these, so I thought I would actually take the time to write them down. We have others like some spiritual goals and family goals and some obvious ones like find a church family and get involved in a small group... (yeah, I know it's about time. But believe me it's not due to a lack of trying on our part!! um... how many churches have we been to in this city?)
I think it's always neat to sit back and take a minute in prayer and reflection of the past year and where we've been and how far we've come (or not come in some instances) and what should or could be in store for the year ahead.

Okay, I'm off to snuggle on the comfy couch downstairs with my husband and watch a movie.
Good night!

The Dinner Party

I printed out a menu for everyone with all the foods and their meanings, but I don' know how to scan it and get the image onto the laptop upstairs, so I'll try to get that on here later. Here was my original list.

We had a great time. Great food, great friends (we missed everyone who couldn't be there!); great time! We ate till we were more than stuffed and then played games and chatted the evening away.

Here are a couple more quick shots... I didn't take nearly enough pictures and I'm kicking myself for it. I just get so busy talking or playing games (or eating) that I don't get the camera out.
That's gonna have to be my New Year's resolution... more pictures of the gatherings we have with friends!

here's Donny playing with the camera remote








and the little boys lounging around



Hope you had a great Celebration this year!

2006 In Review

This has been floating around on emails and blogs the last couple of days and I thought it was kind of fun so I'm joining in.
Here's a rundown of what our year looked like...

JANUARY
1. Did you have a new year's resolution this past year and were you able to keep it/them?: I don't think I really had any... none that I remember anyway, so that better mean I didn't make any!
2. Who kissed you at midnight?: Ryan, at the beach house
3. Did it snow where you live?: yes, it snowed a couple days in January, but never stuck around
5. Have you ever been to Times Square to watch the ball drop?: No
Highlights: one of our last trips to Grampa Bob's beach house :(

FEBRUARY
1. Who was your valentine?: Ryan of course
2. What did your valentine get you?: a weekend away in Seattle (and a trip to IKEA!!)
3. When you were little, did you buy valentines for your whole class?: Yes, don't you have to?
Highlights: our trip to Seattle and Ryan interviewing in MI

MARCH
1. Are you Irish? I think I'm pretty much a little of everything
2. Did you wear green on St. Patty's Day?: No, and I believe that was the first year ever that I didn't... I just completely spaced it
3. What did you do for St. Patty's Day?: Nada
Highlights: birthdays, Ryan's trip to MI

APRIL
1. Do you like the rain?: I usually don't mind it... I love the smell of rain in the summer. I just don't like the grey dreary days when you don't see the sun for days at a time.
2. Did you play an April Fool's joke on anyone this year?: don't think so
3. What was the best joke ever played on you? hmmm... nothing comes to mind
4. Did you get tons of candy on Easter?: Of course we had lots of candy around with the Easter Bunny having to visit our two kids!
Highlights: our househunting trip to MI, Savannah's third birthday, meeting baby Callum

MAY
1. What's your favorite kind of flower?: tulips
2. Do you like the spring? yes, cuz I know summer's coming!
3. Finish the phrase: "April showers bring...": I'm unoriginal... "May flowers".
4. What would you think of as a spring color?: green
Highlights: MOVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY, our 4th wedding anniversary

JUNE
1. What year did you graduate from school?: Highschool- 1994
2. Any weddings this year? nope
Highlights: Holly and Taegen visiting, spending time working on the house

JULY
1. What did you do on the 4th of July? We had friends up from out of town for the weekend, and then I spent the morning of the 3rd of July in the ER with kidney stones. On the 4th, we were going to go to the park for fireworks and festival stuff, but we ended up staying home and catching glimpses of the fireworks over the tops of the trees in our neighborhood. I know... how boring are we?
2. Did you go on any vacations during this month?: No vacations, but we took our first trip to the "beach" in Michigan. We spent the day in Holland on Lake Michigan.
Highlights: The Malones and the Laughlins visit, my parents and gramma visit, spending time working on the house

AUGUST
1. Did you do anything special to end off your summer?: well we took one last camping trip, but that was in September
2: What was your favorite summer memory of '06?: probably the day we spent at the beach in Holland. Also when the Malones and Laughlins came up for a visit.
3. Did you go swimming a lot in the summer?: in the wading pool in our backyard? yes. real swimming in a big pool or the lake? not nearly enough
4. Did you go to the beach a lot?: just twice :(
Highlights: Ryan's birthday

SEPTEMBER
1. Did you attend school/college in '06?: no
2. Who is/was your favorite teacher?: My second grade teacher, Ms. Kauffman. I idolized her!
3. Did you like fall better than summer?: it's a refreshing change, but I'm always so sad to see summer go!
Highlights: Camping (both in our backyard and at the lake!), Jenn and Greg visiting, and Savannah starting preschool

OCTOBER
1. What did you dress up like this year? a mom chaperoning trick or treaters. oh wait- does that not count?
2. What was your favorite Halloween costume ever?: the first year we were married I was a black cat and Ryan was a skunk (you know, as in Pepe Le Pue and the little black kitty he's always trying to win over). My costume was black cat ears, a fitted black top, a short black skirt that I pinned a tail to, and black tights and heels. I think the only reason I consider that my favorite costume is because I looked good! That was back when I was thin... *sigh*. I would never be caught dead in that costume now! HAHA!!
3. What's your favorite candy?: hmmm.... that's a hard one... whoppers? reeses mini cups?
Highlights: my parents visiting


NOVEMBER
1. Whose house did you go to for Thanksgiving?: The Happy Huff House
2. Do you like stuffing?: love it!
3. What are you thankful for?: my family, my husband, my kids, friends, and the many blessings in my life!
Highlights: Sawyer's first birthday, our first real "holiday" on our own without family

DECEMBER
1. Do you celebrate Christmas?: yes - love Christmas!
2. Have you ever been kissed under mistletoe?: yes, I once had a big Christmas party and had mistletoe everywhere!!! A few years ago Ryan got a gag gift of a sprig of mistletoe attached to a headband. He thought that was the best thing ever... that joke never gets old!
3. Did you get what you wanted this year for Christmas?: yes, the excitement of my kids Christmas morning was better than I imagined
4. What's the best present you ever got for Christmas?: diamond earrings
5 Do you like cold weather?: yes, only if there's snow
Highlights: birthdays, our first Christmas in our new house

Bonus Question: How would you rate your year on a scale of 1-10?:
7 - overall a good year, but there were some rough moments as well - I'm really looking forward to 2007!!!!!


What would the highlights of your year be?

Happy 2007!!!

Wow... I really cannot believe that number. Weren't we just celebrating 2000???

So I've got lots to do today, but I wanted to squeeze in a quick hello since I feel like I've been absent for a while.
We're having a big New Years dinner party this afternoon with some friends, and I'm so excited! Ryan and had been talking the last couple of years about how we really wanted to have one holiday that was more of a "friend" holiday where every year we gather together and have a big ol' dinner with lots of friends. Since no one ever does much for New Year's, we thought that would be a good one to pick. So we're trying to start a tradition here. Ultimately I'm thinking it will be so neat to look back years from now and remember who was here with us each year, how the group has changed, how things have changed (including the kids!) and things like that. I just thought it would be nice to have the same "background" for those memories and host a fun dinner every year.

Our menu consists of good wishes for the new year...

• Shrimp Martinis seafood stands for good luck and shrimp specifically signify a year filled with laughter
• Vegetables with Arugula Broth green foods like arugula and spinach mark growth and wealth
• Grilled Pork Chops with Garlic Mashed Potatoes pork is considered good luck and symbolizes "moving forward" since pigs root and push forward. Also, traditionally, a family that owned a pig would be eating "high on the hog" for the whole year. Interesting note- they say main courses to avoid for a symbolic New Year menu are chicken because then you would be scratching around all year like a chicken scratches around for food, and fish because your money might swim away like a fish, and especially lobster because they move backwards.
  
• Cornbread I think the saying in the south goes "peas for pennies, greens for dollars, cornbread for gold"

and for dessert

• Champaigne Shooters champaigne (or in our case non-alcoholic sparkling juice) just to celebrate mixed with sorbet
• Gingersnaps ginger reprsents a sharp mind and intelligence and cookies mean sweetness of nature and a good disposition

also I'm going to do some sort of centerpiece incorporating oranges (gold and wealth), peanuts (hope and luck for the birth of children in the coming year- that one's for you Leslie!) and red candies (good health and good luck).

I've got to get busy though; I still have to run to the store this morning.
I'll try and remember to get lots of pictures and I'll post them later...
maybe with some more reflections on the past and the coming year once I have some time to actually sit down and think about those things! We spent the last three days up at the cottage hanging out and playing lots of games... and I spent the last three days fighting off (not very successfully) this horrible cold. I was miserable last night, but I'm feeling much better today except for the headache I can't get rid of. So after our dinner today, I'm looking forward to just relaxing and resting up and enjoying looking ahead to our New Year.

Have a wonderful first day of 2007 everyone!!

Happy Wishes

Just wanted to send Happy Birthday Wishes to Dr. Dave and also Little Miss Ellie. Hope you each enjoy your day today!!!

Also, belated Birthday Wishes to a couple little kiddos... David K. and Benjamin had a birthday last Tuesday. We were thinking of you!

And last but not least, Happy Anniversary to Mike and Kasey! Hope you guys take time to celebrate each other today... we love you and miss you!

Reservations are made...

Savannah, Sawyer and I are making a trip back to Portland in January.
So excited to see family and friends we haven't seen since we left. And the ones we have seen. It'll be nice to be back.
Not so excited about making the flight by myself with both the kids. And with Sawyer on my lap the whole time. I'm kinda scared of that kid on a plane. He is just all about NOT doing what I want him to do right now. And very into screaming and yelling about it. I'm really hoping some of that subsides in the next few weeks or I may be looking into tranquilizers for him. (I'm just kidding. Mostly.)

We made a trip (here to Michigan for Don and Katie's wedding actually) with Savannah when she was almost just the same age, just over a year old, and it was a piece of cake. She was happy to play on our laps and read books and just hang out and be mellow for the whole plane ride. I keep thinking that is so not how it's going to be with the SawMan! That kid cannot sit still to save his life. Heaven help us!!!

Ughhh...

Normally I don't go into any detail when it comes to any senseless drama I'm wading through with friends or family on this blog... actually I keep thinking I should start another one that no one I know knows about just to vent about things that may put people (including my husband at times) who read our blog here on the defensive. I didn't realize how much I missed keeping a journal until I started writing this blog, and sometimes it's hard not to just spill everything like I would in my writing journals.
Anyway, tonight I had a conversation that just has me all worked up. One of those situations again where I go over and over and over it in my mind trying to go over all the angles of it to see what I did wrong or what I could have done different. Only I didn't really do anything wrong. But I have such a problem leaving it at that when someone is upset at me or hurt and blaming me. So as this is all running through my head, I've been dwelling on it all night, and I have all sorts of urges (since Ryan is sick of hearing about it at this point)... to call someone or email or vent somehow, so I picked this option. But now Ryan is reading over my shoulder saying "I don't think you should do this...". So I won't go into the detail I started out wanting to. But it just makes me want to pull my hair out and say I thought we moved away from family drama.
Ughhh. Happy Holidays, indeed.

Christmas pics, take two...

...here are some of the pictures from Christmas day.


Before the kids woke up...
















Here's Sawyer checking out his stocking goodies...
They got kind of a slow start on the presents... Savannah was just all about her stocking and they both were content to play with the couple of presents that Santa left out.





The scooter was the fave...













with the igloo/tent coming in a close second.






Savannah was pretty cute with her presents; she would open each one, and usually yell out a big "thank you (whoever) for the (whatever)" -apparently she thought if she yelled loud enough they would hear her three time zones away. Then if it was a toy, she would leave it out, but if it was clothing or shoes or the pillow she got for her bed, she ran to her room to put it away and "save it for later".
Sawyer opened most of his presents pretty well, but it took a lot of work to get him to focus, as he was happy to just wander around checking everything out. He pretty much just went from his tent, to the scooter, to the little table, and then made the rounds again. Tent, scooter, table. Once he opened a new set of bouncy balls though, he was all over that! A soccer ball, basketball and football, what more could a boy want? I think we wasted our time on all the other presents!





Oh, Sawyer's other favorite gift was a plate, fork and spoon set. He carried that around wherever he went, but most of the time he sat at the table with it and pretended to eat. Then, of course the good big sister that she is, Savannah (also adorned in one of her favorite gifts... one of three new pink tu-tu's!) got him a snack to put on his plate and Sawyer had found his spot for the morning!






Savannah took a picture of mommy and daddy...
(after four tries resulting in shots of our knees and/or the floor)






And then we started a tradition of making homemade donuts. Savannah had a blast.
Sawyer missed the fun because he went down for a nap, but Savannah and I cut the donuts, Ryan stuck them in the deep fryer, then we sprinkled some with powdered sugar, some with cinnamon sugar, and dipped some in chocolate for Savannah to then cover with candy sprinkles. So yummy!





Here's how much of our morning was spent... talking to the web cam. Yes, my crazy parents were up at some crazy hour on the west coast so they could watch our Christmas morning "live".





Like I said before, it was definitely different not spending the holidays with our families. I really wish some of them (or all of them) could have made it out here to be with us spending our first Christmas in our new house. It made it just a little bit harder that Dan and Holly ended up being able to be home with the families for Christmas. Everyone was talking about how fun it was to see Taegen and do all the holiday stuff with her and how fun it would have been to have all the kids together, and it made me a little sad that our kids couldn't be with their families for all that. We had such a fun day spending time together here and relaxing, and it was so nice to not have to go anywhere or have three different houses to visit. But there is a lot to be said about spending the holidays with lots more family. We'll see what next year holds.

Christmas pics, part one

Sorry, I will probably end up with a ton of pictures on here since it's the quickest way to share them with the families. I will try to keep myself in check... actually we didn't really take all that many pictures Christmas morning. Between the webcam and the video camera and still needing to actually help and direct the kids, snapping photos kind of took the backseat. But here's some of what we did get.
First, on Christmas eve I was trying to get some pictures of the kids together, but that was pretty much impossible with Sawyer not staying in one place for more than 2 seconds and niether one of them ever looking at me (a whole family picture was even more impossible... by that point Sawyer was yelling, pitching fits and Savannah was whining and I just gave up). Here are my attempts with the kids...










We were getting nowhere outside, as Sawyer just wanted to run around. And except for our ugly back steps, it was super sunny and bright so there was really no good place to get a picture. So we headed inside and tried sitting them in the chair together...














We tried sitting in front of the tree....








(this is Savannah actually having to hold Sawyer in place)






Then I resorted to presents to get Sawyer to stay there...






(so much for my visions of our photographs being about the "togetherness" rather than the sparkle and fascination with the material things, haha! I guess toddlers really aren't interested in the togetherness yet...)





























And even that only lasted all of two minutes...
Sawyer is definitely a little boy on the go!







Here is Savannah showing off her gingerbread reindeer cookies and gingerbread house...

Waiting for Santa...

Savannah's first letter to Santa...







"To Santa a(nd) (M)rs. Claus
(from) Savannah

Merry
Christmas.
Rudolph,
We have
lights."
Savannah Morrison
age 3 1/2

Merry Christmas To All!

I'm sure I'll be around posting some of our holiday stuff as it comes along, but until then, Merry, Merry Christmas everyone... I hope you enjoy your holiday, and that you are blessed with your gifts and your giving, your meals and your treats, and especially your friends and your family
this weekend as you celebrate!

It's Christmas Eve...

Ryan and I are supposed to take turns sleeping in this long holiday weekend. Not sure why I'm feeling so generous with letting him sleep... he sleeps in for a bit pretty much every weekend. I'm more often than not the one up with the kids (awake by 6:30) out of bed at 7. Then, by either the kids coming in to bug him enough or by him sensing I'm getting more and more frustrated with the seventh morning in a row of having the kids by myself... he usually rolls out of bed by about 8:30 or so. But here's where we differ; 8:30 IS my idea of sleeping in... heck, I'm happy if I can sleep till 7:30. But Ryan's idea of sleeping in is not getting up till noon. And that does not usually fit in with my idea of how I want to be spending my weekend... alone with the kids like every other day of the week.
So today is supposed to be his day to "sleep in" by his terms. Obviously, we'll be up early tomorrow on Christmas morning with the kids, but then Tuesday is supposed to be my turn to sleep in. Only in order for me to sleep even a fraction of what he would in the morning, I'm going to have to take some unisom and sleep downstairs in the guest room all by myself so I can't hear the kids in the morning. We'll see if that really happens.

So I thought I should get up early this morning and get some stuff done before the kids are up and out of bed. Savannah of course, has been awake for like an hour already. We're going to need some naps today!

We enjoyed a nice, laid-back day yesterday. We had Don, Katie and Little Donnie over for brunch yesterday (mmmm... biscuits and gravy.... and we used the hot chocolate pot, Holly. That thing was awesome! Thanks!) to get together for Christmas. It was nice to hang out a bit. We don't get to see the Huffs nearly as much as we expected we would when we moved out here, so it was just nice to take some time to just relax with them and let the kids play and everything.




Todays agenda consists of baking, cooking and more baking.
We're going to have our big Christmas eve dinner before we go to a Christmas eve service this evening, so we'll be getting things ready for that, plus I'm hoping to get some gingerbread cookies baked, gingerbread muffins, Savannah and Ryan are making a gingerbread house, and I want to get some of my favorite Christmas cookies done, Chocolate Crinkles. Oh, and also a pie for dessert tonight. I had big plans of making all this yummy stuff this year... I found so many great and different fudge recipes, peppermint bark, and plenty of Christmas cookies. But between running out of time to make some of that for gifts, and not enough people around to eat it all here, I have to pick and choose our favorites and we're doing it all in one day! Here's a bit of pretty much the only baking we've done so far this season... we frosted and stacked star shaped cookies to make a Christmas trees for our neighbors. Savannah loved this project and of course we had to make some extra stars for us!

So after church tonight we'll come home and each open our one present (new Christmas jammies) before the kids go to bed, and then we don't have much to do this evening after that... I have everything wrapped and ready to go except for putting together the big toys from Santa. Savannah's getting a long awaited scooter and we have a table and chair set for thier playroom and a little pop-up tent for Sawyer. Then we'll stuff the stockings, sprinkle the tree with some tinsel, and I'm planning on hitting the pillow quite early tonight, as I'm sure we'll be up bright and early tomorrow.

Christmas day the plan is to open our presents and lounge around all day. We'll never get out of our pajamas, make some homemade donuts when we get hungry mid-morning, and then spend the day playing and napping and snacking on our candy, donuts and leftover ham.

Later on next week I think we may head up north to the Huff's cottage. First I thought Ryan and Don were just talking about going up there if there was snow for the sleds, but now Ryan's thinking he wants to go regardless of the weather, just to get out of town. So we'll probably head up there Friday, possibly even Thursday night and come home late Saturday or Sunday. On Monday we invited friends over for a big New Years Day dinner. We invited the whole like six people we know here, as well as some friends from out of town. Not sure who's coming yet, as I've heard no RSVP's, but I'm sure someone will show up. If not, we'll be having another feast all to ourselves I guess!

So that's what the next week looks like for us... kind of kicked back and relaxed, but with some fun stuff thrown in there and lots of family time together. The perfect Holiday week!

All is bright...

As in a bright, bright, sunshiney day. Yesterday and today both have been beautiful warm sunny days. That weather is great and all, but um... what about a little snow? Christmas is only four days away and not a flurry in the forecast. Bummer.
At least the kids have been able to get outside and play in all the sunshine...

And here are just a couple of silly shots from the other day...
(thanks gramma for the early christmas present... Sawyer puts it to good use)

And as promised, the pictures from last night...

Can you tell the difference in her expression here? This was after THE TOOT. (see previous post if you didn't catch that story...)

And of course, the Santa pics...




















This is how Sawyer was looking at Santa pretty much the whole time. I couldn't really tell what he was thinking; just fascinated with the bearded man I guess.