Deck the Halls

Today we spent most of the day decorating for Christmas.

We inherited a new Christmas tree this year, and we decided to upgrade to LED lights as well.

It looks great!  Bright.  But great!

The kids helped decorate by making Christmas trees and snowmen with Legos.

While we were busy working, our elf on a shelf showed up on the door step.

We named him Jingle.

He communicates with Santa on a daily basis.

I think the whole idea freaked Andrew out a little.

After everything was done, we had chocolate fondue for dessert.

Our kids LOVED it.

They called it “fundue.” 

And fun it was!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. We survived but not without some memorable disasters along the way :)  Thought it’d be funny to document them.

1. The pumpkin pies cooked at the wrong temp and were very well done when we got them out.
2. At the first carving attempt the turkey was still raw and had to go back in the oven for a good hour and a half longer.
3. We steamed the sweet potatoes and the water in the bottom pot ran dry for a while and the pan burned pretty bad. It stunk, but good ol’ stainless steel…it was not ruined.

But after all that, everything ended up being fine. The turkey surprisingly wasn’t too dry, the sweet potatoes were divine, and the green bean casserole was awesome.

We had a wonderful time with family and friends.

Our family has so much to be thankful for, and I’m glad we have a time of year to focus on our blessings.

November

This post will be random.  Just warning you.

This month has been rather boring.  Seriously. I think I’ve taken maybe 12 pictures…half of which Darrin took today.

It snowed today.  We got maybe a 1/16 of an inch, but school was cancelled anyway.  Gotta love snow in Oregon.  I had big plans to get lots done today in preparation for our Thanksgiving guests.  But my kids have been whiny and demanding.  Luckily we invited some friends over, and now they are playing nicely, and I am….blogging.  haha.

My sisters are coming to our house for Thanksgiving, and we are excited.  We will have 15 people in all over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Hopefully everything turns out.  I bought a 25 pound turkey at Winco for $5.56.  Pretty cheap, huh?  Do you think that’s enough turkey?  I hope so.

My b-day is tomorrow.  Yep last year of my 20’s!  I should do something crazy this coming year.  Any ideas?  For my birthday I want to take the kids to see the new Tangled movie and go to Marie Callender’s for dinner.  Can I tell you how much I LOVE their chicken pot pie??  It’s like warm, creamy,  comfort in your belly.  And the double cream lemon pie is good too

My Christmas cards, picture, and letter is all done.  I’m just waiting to send them out.  I feel so accomplished to have them done before Thanksgiving.  Yay me!

Some exciting things that have happened in November are:

I potty trained Luke.  This is now a diaper free house.  Sad, I know.

We took down the crib.  Moved Josh into his own room and moved Luke to the bunk bed with Andrew.  So far it’s working out pretty well.  Except I need to pay someone to hang the crib in the garage for me.  Any takers??

Well, I think that’s about all the random stuff I can tell you right now.  Hopefully I won’t wait another whole month before posting again.

Love to all!