Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Christmas Day Chaos

Christmas Day was awesome. Fun, exciting and relaxing all at the same time. We stayed in our PJs all day and just spent time together playing with toys. At one point the kids all disappeared into various corners of the house to play and Darrin and I were left sitting in a pile of Legos, fighting over the pieces to the fire station we were building "together".

Darrin made us a prime rib for dinner and I'm pretty sure that that is going to be our new go-to holiday meal. That was some good meat right there. We had other eats too but I can't seem to remember what they were because all I can think about is prime rib. The only thing better than prime rib on Christmas is left over prime rib the day after...and the day after that.

Something is wrong with this blog situation and I can only load one picture at a time. Each picture takes about fifteen minutes to load and since I (surprisingly) don't sit in front of my computer all day every day, this has taken three days to finish. So here are some of our Christmas pictures. Please excuse the quality, I was using my point and shoot camera because my other camera's memory card is still full of wedding photos from two weeks ago.


Doobie's "big present" was this sweet drum set. It is awesome. It is also completely adorable. He is going to take after his Uncle JR someday.


Jordy is very into being a "little mommy" these days. I never thought this day would come but she absolutely loves to follow me around and help me do dishes and laundry. We have to call her "mommy Jordy" or "little mommy" when she is in mommy mode. So her big present was this kitchen. She hasn't stopped cooking for us since.


The big Star Wars fan of the house received this incredibly intricate Battle Walker. It holds a multitude of Star Wars guys, it shoots things and it makes all sorts of cool sound effects. Someone was VERY EXCITED about it. Jake was too. :)


All my little artists received lots of fun art stuff for Christmas. Coloring books, finger paints, crayons, pens and MORE! If you've never used Color Wonder coloring supplies, you are missing out. They are amazing. They are regular coloring pens that only color on the special color books. They also never dry out no matter how long you leave the lids off. And we found some color wonder finger paints too. No mess. Just fun. HELLO!


The Lego pile. Awesome.


Figuring out how to transform our new Transformers.


I have three little puzzle finatics in this house. I LOVE PUZZLES!

I hope everyone out there had a wonderful, blessed and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Twas the Night Before...

After the candlelight service at church, we all came home and tried to prepare for sleep. I remember how impossible that was when I was little so I was surprised at how fast even Jakey zonked out once we finally got them in bed. First though, we had to do some serious stuff...like reading the Christmas story and putting out goodies for Santa.


Jake is studying this very intently.


Jake, setting out the cookies they all made for Santa. Having watched each of them meticulously decorating, licking their fingers, sneezing on everything and even taking bites out of some of the cookies, we didn't blame Santa for not actually eating any of them. Instead, he crumbled some up on a plate and the rest mysteriously disappeared.


Jordy bringing in the mug of milk.


Doobie bringing up the rear with a plate of carrots for the reindeer.


The spread. Two seconds after it was all laid out, Jake moved everything off to the side so that Santa wouldn't step on it when he came down the chimney.


SO EXCITED!

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Christmas Eve 2009



Could it have taken me any longer to post the rest of our Christmas updates? I have tried for days, (DAYS, I say!) to upload these pictures but they would not load. So I'm trying it one by one.

This is Christmas Eve at church. We attended the candelight service and Jake and Jordan sat in the service with us. They love the candle part.




Bugaroo, looking all adorable and stuff.


Doobie cheesing it up and showing the other kids how it's done.


Bubba, always camera ready.


Bros


Sweet little Munchkins

Apron Project

This year I decided to make December more hectic by starting an apron project. The genius idea was to sew aprons for my friends for Christmas. I fell in love with this particular pattern when I saw it online so I tracked it down on ebay. Then I went to JoAnn Fabrics and was severely disappointed in the fabric selection there. The only fabrics I liked were home decor (dry clean only) designs. With a little research, I tracked down a store in town that specialized in designer apparel fabrics.

I picked out three fabrics for each reversable apron and went home to start sewing. The project was a little larger than I anticipated. Each apron took me about about eight times longer to create than I expected. Inevitably, I ran out of time. So here we are a few days past Christmas and some aprons still aren't finished. They will be though. Eventually.

Here are the ones I DID manage to complete.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Cinnamin Rolls

Thanks to my sister in law, Raychel, Darrin's mom and I (mostly her) got it in our heads that we were going to make cinnamin rolls for Christmas. LOTS OF THEM.

Suddenly I want a Kitchenaid mixer.


Doobie, pouring the sugar.


Bubba, pouring the milk


Bugaroo, pouring the oil (all over Grandma's hand)


HOURS later, Bubba prepping the rolling area.


Kneading the dough.


Rolling the dough AND watching TV at the same time.


After some rolling and more rolling, pouring some stuff on and then more rolling and then some cuttting. Pretty in the pans. Lots and lots of pans.


Frosting and eating.

Thanks to Grandma Diana for taking this project on. I promised to help but I SO did not help. I took a few pictures and I stepped in a little at the end, but mostly she slaved away in the kitchen for hours and hours. I was too wrapped up in editing the photos from my very first wedding shoot. They are pretty spiffy by the way.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Jake's Christmas Concert

This past week Bubba participated in his school's elementary Christmas concert. It was so fun to see him up on stage, very seriously singing his way through the program. On the very first note he put his hands up to start directing the music and then hurried to put them down again, looking around to see if anyone noticed. He sang each song and then gasped for breath at the end of every one, sometimes with a hand clutch to his heart as though he could barely contain his exhaustion. Seriously, it was killing me. I laughed until I cried.


Can you see him? He's the little handsome dude in the front row with the white shirt and plaid tie.


Here's a closeup after the show. He did so great!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Jaycob's Art

Everyday after school I go through Jake's backpack and unload all his school work from the day. Today I found this bit of art.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Snow Princess


We have had some interesting ice fog over the past few days and the frost coating all the tree branches is beautiful to look at. And so is my little snow princess, posing for me after church this morning.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Christmas Around the House

Just a bits of festive-ness around the house.


The advent calendar that I bought at Target last year.


The wreath I made at GAL time last month.


The bow tree topper I learned to make on You Tube a couple of weeks ago.


The giant ornaments that were just calling my name at Costco this year.


The stockings that my sweet friend Lucy made me (twice because the first set got ruined) for my birthday last year.


The ceramic nativity scene that I painted in high school.

The New Christmas Tree

The kids were so excited to help decorate the tree. I tortured them for a couple of days before I let them at it though. The tree was up, but I hadn't dug out our boxes of decorations yet. When the time finally came, they attacked their job with gusto. As usual the bottom third of the tree was thoroughly bedazzled. Jake finally realized this year that the top was being ignored so he improvised a ladder and set to work. Josh got frustrated early on so he didn't help much. He just couldn't understand why things didn't just stick to the tree when he threw them at it.





I am definitely an official fan of the skinny tree. It's amazing how little room this thing requires compared to our old monster. I likey.

Winter Wonderland

Currently it is too cold to enjoy the snow but over the last couple weeks we have spent some time outside. Well, I haven't...I hate the snow, but everyone else has. I managed to drag myself out long enough to snap a couple pictures though.


I'm pretty sure this is more fun than work.


Jordan likes to lay down and get sprayed by the snow blower.


Doobie prefers to wait on the porch until all snow blowing is complete.


The masterpiece. They named it Uncle JC. Whatever.


Heading into the house for some warm chocolate. Because hot chocolate is too hot.

Friday, December 04, 2009

Favorite Book(s) of 2009

I'm cruising right along at forgetting to post an entry for the So Long 2009 Challenge. Unfortunately, you won't get to hear about my favorite article of the year for yesterday's assignment. It was likely scrapbook related anyway and you wouldn't care. Today I get to tell you about the best book I read this year.

I read A LOT. I adore books. I usually start a new one every 36 to 48 hours. I love a lot of books but there are actually two series that I read this year that sucked me in completely.

The first is a series that I read for the first time a couple of years ago. In anticipation of the 7th book being released, I reread them all this summer. The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon is epic. I mean that very literally because each book is over 900 pages long and there are so many vibrant characters, plot twists that provoke intense anticipation, intrigue, mystery and details so, well... detailed that it just sucks you in completely. I found myself staying up until 2 or 3 in morning because I couldn' put them down. This series is historical fiction/fantansy that spans the milenia of sixteenth century Scotland during the Jacobite rebellion all the way through twentieth century World War II. Accidental time travel is the fantasy element. The series is written in first person (for the most part) and for some reason that style of writing has the ability to really draw me into the story. I think that is the main reason that I adore my second series as well.

Twilight

Stop groaning. I realize that the sheer popularity of the book should make me hate it automatically but I don't work that way. I loved these books before the movies came out and before Rpatz and Taylor were taking their shirts off onscreen. Not that I mind, but still.

A love story gets me every time and both of these series have a love story so captivating that they transend both time and imagination, respectively.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Thanksgiving



This year for Thanksgiving, we did the usual...dinner at home with ham instead of turkey, lots of cranberry sauce from a can (because I have to eat one all by myself), stuffing from a box (because I don't understand stuffing and I don't have a turkey to stuff it in anyway), assorted other food groups and of course, homemade pumpkin pie.



Grandma Diana spent the day with us of course as did our Korean friends, Mrs. Kong and her daughter Jaeyoung. After our feast, we gathered around the table for a rousing game of UNO with our batman UNO cards.



Uno was followed by some Christmas cartoons where Jordan promptly fell into a food coma.



Josh too.



Darrin bought me a new Christmas tree this year because I've been using my crummy burned out one for several years now. I begged and pleaded and it finally paid off. The kids helped open the box, then promptly abandoned the assembly task in favor of popping the bubble wrap.




Jaeyoung took over camera duty while I worked on the tree and that is how I made it into a picture this year. Sort of. That's me next to the tree. See me? I'm camouflaged. I'm a ninja.





Happy Thanksgiving!