When Maeli was born she brought along a 'little' something to occupy her siblings so she could have some one on one time with mom. She's so thoughtful! :)



My kids are loving this GeoTrax train set. It keeps them busy for hours, everyday! LOVE IT! And it keeps Dad busy too! Not sure who is having more fun, actually!

Anyway, we decided to do a little something with our new train set.



Train set + Christmas Trees = LOTS OF FUN!!


Our Train set is seriously HUGER than our Trees! FOR REAL!! :)



Oh, and it doesn't hurt that it wears them out!

Christmas Love

I was looking through my month of pictures and found this gem!



We put Winni's HUGE bow in Maeli's hair, and it stayed! It almost looks like a hat! I love it! I hope her hair stays, at least for a little while.

This little girl LOVES to help with her baby sister! She wants to hold her all the time and will even burp her for me. I'm so impressed with her baby handling goodness. I just have to keep reminding her that she can't stand up!



This little man kinda likes Maeli, too! Anytime he sees her he has to give her a kiss and asks to hold her. If he sees me without her he is all questions about where she is and with who and why!



And, we finally pulled out our plethora of Christmas decorations. It took all of about 10 minutes to decorate. Someday I'll add to the collection, but I'd like to make the decorations, so it might take some time. Oh well!!



Good News!! So far, the trees have only fallen over once. yeah!!

Black Friday

So, instead of getting up at the awful crack of dawn to save a few bucks, I decided to shop online at midnight instead! Well, it sounded like a good idea. Anyway, I went online before 'go time' and found the things I wanted/needed. Some stores don't start their midnight sale until 12 Central Standard Time, so I had to wait until 1. That was OK and all cause I was hungry anyway...

So, 1 AM hits and I start shopping away. Apparently, so did everyone else! I could not get Kohl's.com to work! It was killing me. Finally, by 3 AM I had all 13 items in my cart. I went to check out and 1 item had sold out. So, I tried to remove it from my cart and it didn't work. I had to keep refreshing the screen, but the site was too overloaded. Finally, at 440 I opened a new window and was able to find my stuff again. However, another thing was sold out. BUMMER! By 5 AM I was even more poor, and tired! So, I finally went to bed. My kids were up by 730 and we were in the car, heading home, by 9. Did I tell you I'm tired today??

Of course we couldn't just drive straight home. First, we stopped for some HORRIBLE breakfast. We decided to go to Burger King so we could be quick, and cause I've always enjoyed their french toast sticks and little cinnamon rolls. Not so much anymore. They were blah!! I'm also a Hot Chocolate lover, so I had to get one. Can I tell you how disappointed I was when they handed me this??



For real?? Did you know Swiss Miss is almost ALWAYS on sale. You can get a box of 10 envelopes for $1. FOR REAL! Oh, and it takes 1 packet/every 6 oz of water. Pretty sure that cup holds more than 6 oz. So, I proceeded to pour out at least 1/2 of the water and MIX MY OWN HOT CHOCOLATE! I'm really not a snob, but really? I paid how much for this? Let's just say McDonald's breakfast and their gourmet hot chocolate are going to put Burger King out of business all by themselves! FOR REAL! Just a tip to BK, had you mixed the hot chocolate for me, with the right ratio of water/powder I wouldn't have known how sad of a hot chocolate I was getting. You know, Hot Chocolate is consumed by more than just 12 and unders, just FYI! I'M STILL HUNGRY! And, I've got a full day of shopping for things I didn't know I needed!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Today started out with an exciting Turkey Bowl.



What was so exciting?? Walter caught the ball!



He actually did really well. He caught the ball a few times, took some good hits, and even ran a touch down! He definitely earned his Thanksgiving feast!

While he was running around screaming like a girl, we were in the car watching a movie.



Well, some of us were watching a movie, some were watching football, and some were too busy on their I-Pod to notice the rest of the world around them!



We got to spend Thanksgiving with The Gardner's. Davis is my mother's cousin. We sure are lucky to have the so close, well 1 1/2 away, but that's close out here in the middle of nowhere!

So, after the Turkey Bowl at the church (45 min away) we continued on (45 min) to their house. We had a great time!





Julie, remember when Gardner's came to visit us way back when and brought their bagillion kids?? OK, just 9 kids, but one of those kids made up for the rest of the bagillion. He climbed Mark's book shelf and drank his Japanese Coke? Yeah, some things never change!!



But, my kids love Trevor! He is lots of fun!

We decided that since we were in 'the big city' we would stay the night so we could get in on the Black Friday shopping. It was nice to just hang out and enjoy ourselves today. Instead of rushing off to get home. The Gardner's are fun! Crazy, but fun!

Britta be gone...

So, back in the day when Walter and I were 'just friends' he dated another girl! I won't go into too much detail, because I'm really not trying to remind my husband of how lucky he is that I've blocked that out of my memory....

Anyway, her name was Britta. She was a sous chef at The Lion House. She would supply Walter with Lion House rolls, which I totally appreciated! I ate a lot of those! So, I decided that the only way to get rid of her was to make her rolls. Honestly, that was the only reason he liked her...I'm sure! This was 6 1/2 years ago. Since then I have been trying to replace her, via her rolls. While she is long gone, I can finally say so is our need for her rolls. Because our Thanksgiving miracle this year was that I got the rolls right! Woo hoo!!

Here is their beautiful-ness...



And they even look right





The were soooo good! I also made Raspberry Honey Butter to go along with them. Let's just say the first batch of rolls ended up being devoured, so I had to make more. MMmmm MMmmmmm GOOD!! So, we can finally cut our ties to Britta, even though we haven't seen her in 6 years, and enjoy life again. I might even pull out our Britta water filter again. OK, let's be honest! I haven't really had a problem with that one. While it is named Britta, it eats the gross stuff out of the water so I don't have to. Somehow that makes me feel better about myself! :)

And, for the disturbing picture of the day...



Winni 'snuck' down the stairs with this and 'hid' in it so we wouldn't know that she was out of her bed. Hmmmm....kinda funny, kinda not. I put the container back away, in the top of my closet!

Sleep Deprived

Today Grady is still fighting naps...



until he loses! Pardon the backdrop, but he didn't want me to hold him. He wanted to sit on the floor and lean against my chair. What a ham!