baking with gramma

(click on the above collage for a better view)

we hope that you all had a blessed and happy thanksgiving! as i mentioned in a previous post, we have so much for which to be thankful!!! we had a great time with gramma and grampi. they came over on thursday and we cooked, cooked and cooked some more. well, the girls did. the men went out and played golf. anyway, we had a fabulous turkey! we got the special deal turkey (55 cents/lb). it was good, but it sure wasn't pretty by the time we finished cooking it! we all got a good laugh looking at it. :) after dinner, we sat outside by our outdoor fireplace and then retired indoors to watch football. the kiddos crashed after their pumpkin pie and we adults followed pretty soon afterwards. today tyler and grampi played golf...tyler actually played from 9am to 6pm. grampi played for a while and then came home to catch up on some football action. anyway, while they were away, brooke, scott, gramma and i baked lots and lots of cookies!!!!! it was such fun and a tradition that i hope to keep with my kids. they really enjoyed helping. scott really loves to be in the kitchen! it surprised me because usually i can't keep him in the house. he's our outside boy. anyway, gramma and grampi left this evening and now we are headed out to a neighbor's for a little get-together.

tomorrow.....it's tree decorating. and with that, i'll leave you a sneak peek of our tree and also of how i found the kids last sunday morning as they decorated their small trees.....

moms

i found this on another blog and thought all you other moms out there might enjoy it. i makes me realize why i seem to stay so busy!!! :)

scott and kole rock out!

scott and kole have formed a 2 man band! :) they had a ball rocking out. kole got a drum set for his birthday and the boys love it! all they need is brooke on the mic and they will be good!!! stephanie sent these to me and i loved them, so i had to share them with you.

we have just been trying to keep up around here. it seems like we have something everyday, which is normal for everyone with kids. one thing that we have accomplished is that i have really limited the t.v. thankfully, my kids don't even seem to miss it. they went without t.v. for over a week. we go on walks every afternoon, which they love. on tuesday we got snow flurries when we were walking and they thought that was the greatest thing ever!!! it's cold here and sure feels like Christmas. i even got out my tree today to test it out....it's the first artificial tree we have ever had and i wanted to see what it looked like. it's nice....1 strand of lights don't work, but since we have 1000 lights on the tree, it's not too bad. i got it for a great deal after Christmas last year, so i'm not complaining.

we are gearing up for thanksgiving and can't wait to fill or bellies with some good food! the day-after-thanksgiving, mom, brooke and i are going to bake lots and lots of cookies. we are starting a new tradition and i am so excited! i always remember nema's cheese straws, spritz cookies and gingerbread men during the holidays, so it will be nice to start that with brooke. i'm sure i'll have pics to post. meanwhile, tyler and scott will go out and play golf. grampi will be in the middle of a shutdown with work, so he will probably have to leave after the feast.... :(

hope that you all have a wonderful thanksgiving week. we all have so much for which to be thankful!!!!!

baby, it's cold inside!

**update: our heater is now working....it was just a short or something! yippee!!! :)

well, we knew that moving into an "old" house (by our standards, that is anything that is not brand-new), we would be risking having to replace certain things. first to go was the roof. not too big of a deal since insurance covered it. now...however....our heater is not working. brrr! it's 61 degrees in here right now. this morning, when i woke up.....well, we won't even go there. i was about to start convulsing once my feet hit the floor. it was that cold! thankfully we have another unit for the upstairs, so the kids stayed toasty warm during the night. what a shock they had once they came down the stairs!!! :P anyway, someone is here right now trying to figure out the problem. my guess....our 14 year old heater has kicked the bucket. the verdict is still out......

we had a great weekend filled with b'day party fun. friday was kole's b'day. he turned 5 and his party was at jump zone. it's a great place filled with bouncehouses, slides, etc. scott has talked about it constantly! i'll put up some pics when i get some from stephanie. saturday, it was time for ashley's 5th b'day celebration at omega gymnastics. the kids ran and played.....they were spoiled with tons of fun!!! poor tyler was home sick....he completely lost his voice. it's starting to come back today and he's on the mend. hopefully the rest of us will escape the "funk."

i signed our family up for our first "fun run." it's a 5K run here in town and it's on dec 20th. it will be cold, but it will be super-festive. it's a reindeer run in memory of ryan who passed away at the age of 18 from cancer. so, it's for a good cause, plus it will be good to show the kids that exercise can be super-fun! although, by mile 3...i'm not sure that they will feel that way. oh well, we all will get t-shirts and reindeer ears to wear during the race. i'm so excited! :)

that's about all that is happening here. just wanted to fill you all in on the happenings. i'll post new pics when i take some! hope that you all have a great week!!!!!!!!!!!

jen and ava's visit

my dear friend jen and her daughter ava came to visit us! we were thrilled to have them and truly enjoyed their time with us! :) jen and i were able to go to the holly day fair and even had a girl's day out at target where we got a little Christmas shopping done. tyler was so sweet to keep the kiddos for us. thanks, tyler! anyway, i posted some pics of the kiddos loving some krispy kreme and also loving some leaf piles! we had amazing weather here and brooke, scott and ava took full advantage of it. thanks for coming to visit us, jen and ava!!! we love you guys so much!!!!!!!

brooke's awards ceremony

brooke's school had their first awards ceremony for the year. the first graders performed skits to teach the kindergarteners and pre-k students their ABC's and also some nursery rhymes. brooke was the zebra and taught about the letter "z." she did a fabulous job of ennunciating and speaking clearly. i was so proud of her! most of you know that brooke is in speech therapy and so i was thrilled when i was able to clearly understand her during the skit. she even galloped like a zebra! it was too cute!!! :) she got her perfect attendance award and also her advanced reader award. we were so happy and are so blessed by our sweet girl!

kimie's surprise party

tyler was so sweet to give me a big surprise party on saturday (a day early). he invited our baywood neighborhood friends over and had cake and they sang to me! how fun! :) he gave me a nice shadow box with my half-marathon pics, bib number and medal framed in it. i'm not one to do things like that, so he did it for me. it's really neat! :) gloria and jean gave me that cute snowman decoration that you see in the collage. (click on the collage to better view the pics.) after the b'day party, there was a big neighborhood halloween party. it's quite something to see and we all had lots of fun. thanks to my mom and dad for keeping the kids for us so that tyler could play in the golf tournament and so i could attend the party and have the next day to myself. what bliss!!!!!!!! thank you tyler for being so sweet and for all you did to make my birthday extra-special... love you!

halloween 2008

the kiddos had a great halloween! brooke was an angel and scott was a t-rex. thanks to kole for letting scott borrow his costume!!! we had so many trick-or-treaters that i was out of candy by 7:30....and i bought enough for 5oo kids. it's nuts!!! our kids got some great candy and had a wonderful time, as always. :) now, we're gearing up for thanksgiving. happy fall, ya'll!!!

scott's fall festival

scott had a great time at his fall festival! i had a great time watching him. i know that this is his last year of pre-school and want to be a part of everything!!! if you click on the collage above, you will be able to see the pics a little bit better. his class was divided up into 2 groups, so the pic you see of his class is really just half of it. anyway, enjoy! i'll post halloween pics soon!!!

onslow beach (camp lejeune)

(click on above collage for an up-close look)

we spent a great weekend at camp lejuene mcb in jacksonville, nc. it was a great time had by all! we rented a cabin by the beach and it was great!!! the kids especially loved it because there was a ladder that led to a loft and that is where the kiddos slept. they referred to it as their "secret loft." it was super-windy on friday night and tyler thinks that the only thing that kept our cabin on the groud was our body weight. LOL!!! saturday was really, really windy and cold on the beach, but once we drove into town, it was beautiful. we visited some of the sights on camp lejeune and then visited the beiruit memorial. sunday was a great day spent on the beach with sun and sand. the kids swam in the ocean....but it was too cold for me. we had a great time and hope to visit again soon.