Christmas Decorations 2011

My theme this year was simple…  we have a whole closet dedicated to Christmas decorations and we only put out a few choice ones.  I love how simple it is and how beautiful.

No train this year… my idea.  The kids rebelled a little, but quickly forgot about it. 

My little boot tree for my desk.

 

The reason for the season.

Our bit of fun.  Mom got me this years ago and he is still hanging in there.  He does spend most of Christmas deflated on the ground by Spencer’s room, but ever now and then the kids will plug him in and beat him up a bit.

I think this was his first year with us.  A little trip down memory lane with this cute little girl.  Taken 12/8/2005- the year Tyler was born.

 

Our family room little tree and stockings etc.  On the mantle- too small to see from here is my collection of nativities.  I keep getting small ones as gifts each year and so I put them on display in one place this year.  The gifts under the tree downstairs holds our advent- a Christmas book each day of December.  We are also doing a Jesus Chain in the upstairs living room- learning a story of Jesus each day of December.  (Well to be honest that one started on like the 5th!) 

My favorite little snowman.  Elaine made this for me one year.

The pizza the kids and I made for dinner the night we decorated. 

I also have been busy making batch after batch of  this:

Homemade caramel corn.  We packaged it like this for teachers this year.  We’ll also do some more this week for neighbors.  We have 17 teachers this year so it was a LOT of popcorn.  I think when all was said and done I made 14 quarts of popcorn.  (Spencer’s IEP team is 14 people alone!)  We had to eat some too of course.

Tyler’s 6th birthday

Tyler turned 6 on November 23rd this year- the day before Thanksgiving. He was born the day before Thanksgiving 6 years ago so it was kind of special.

It was a kid party year- we try to do kid parties every other year- saves my sanity a little- and we went bowling! It was fabulous. No mess to clean up, great food, fun for the kids and the best part was we got unlimited bowling!

(the little boy in green didn’t want to get his picture taken)

He wanted superman cupcakes so I ordered these fun blue cupcakes and some superman rings on amazon and presto! Superman cupcakes! Talk about easy. The added bonus was that all of the kids had blue teeth and lips for the rest of the party. I’m sure their parents were thrilled!

Sammie and Spencer came and this is Sammie with her doughnut. She’s such a trooper about having alternate snacks and treats.

I love how excited he got over a ball. I love little boys.

We all were home the day of his birthday for Thanksgiving break so we went to lunch at Pizza Hut buffet and opened presents. We dug out the birthday hat they all laughed at when they bought it for me. I think the joke’s on them though. I’ve saved it for everyone’s birthday! I think I’ll loose it again though in time for mine in March.

Cupcakes again- but these Sammie could eat. They were yummy too! Sammie helped decorate them and Tyler picked out the Buzz candle.

From Sammie. This kid LOVES power rangers. Especially Power Rangers Mystic Force. (whatever that is) I refuse to waste brain power on it.

We celebrated again with family in Jacksonville. It was a HUGE birthday week!

11/11/11

We had a little party to celebrate the fun date of 11/11/11.  I even got to make a big wish at 11:11 am.  (complete coincidence, but fun anyway!)

We didn’t play Uno like I’d planned, but other than that we did everything on our list. 

We had cupcakes with candles and everyone made a wish.  They were egg free, but the kids thought they were still really yummy.

(these pictures are post cupcakes… didn’t want to ruin Spencer’s snack!)

Then we played a "You are #1” game where each person got a poster board square and wrote what they liked about themselves then passed it around until everyone at the table had said something they liked about you.  They LOVED this game.  It was so neat to see what they wrote on each other’s papers.  Silly things, but fun and serious things as well. 

Seeing the big kids help the non readers with their words and thoughts was so sweet.

I made them pose with their posters. Of course.

 

Then we colored American flags wrote thank you on them to mail to the local VFW.   We talked about how we need to be thankful for our freedoms and what the VFW was all about. 

I hope the kids will remember our 11/11/11 party for a long time and the importance of this special day.

School Pictures and Better Pictures

I am always torn about school pictures. They are expensive, but it beats having to drag them to another studio. My main concern with them though is that they are not always great.

Some years they have been wonderful. This year just so so. Same for last year.

Don’t even get me started on the crying pictures of Spencer that grace his student ID each year at middle school. (They never believe me when I tell them they just HAVE to get his face… not him looking at the camera, not him smiling etc) Next year I’m submitting a picture and if the school doesn’t like it tough.

Here’s this year’s- I got this funny picture idea from 71 toes.

Ignore the 1/2 eaten cereal bar on the couch. I interrupted his breakfast to take this photo.

Sammie’s is pretty, but didn’t capture her quite right.

I think I did better.

I still can’t get over how grown up she looks in these pictures.

Remember this picture of Spencer? It sits on our piano. The close ups of Sammie and Tyler will be replacing the school pictures soon.

Park Trip

We met some family at the park on a recent trip to Jacksonville.  The kids were off on the 4th of Nov. for a teacher development day so we went to see my Dad.  My Aunt Linda came up from Winchester too so that was good and we got to see some of Thomas’ family and my brother and his family as well as my cousin who had just had surgery!  Whew!  Talk about throwing as much into a 24 hour period as possible!

I love to take pictures at the park- all of that pretty natural light. 

Halloween 2011

I know the holidays are going to be hard without my mom to share them with. I know that. I didn’t expect Halloween to be hard though for some reason- I am not a huge fan of Halloween and we never did much with my parents for the holiday. Boy, was I wrong. I got through the actual day ok, but the leading up to and after were difficult. My “down in the dumps” feeling was probably made worse because of the crazy amounts of chocolate I eat every Halloween. That sugar crash sure didn’t help!

The kids had a great time though, as usual. We had a ton of costume choices at home this year so rather than the painstaking search and hunt for the perfect costume we decided to let the kids pick from what we already owned. I think they chose really cute costumes.

This one was mine when I was about 2 years older than Sammie. She can barely fit into it now so we thought we better dig it out this year. It’s a Korean dress my mother got when we lived in Japan when I was a girl. She looked great in it.

Tyler was Mr. Fantastic or “Stretch” as he would tell anyone who asked. Loved that it didn’t come with a mask.

Here’s a close up of the hair- the best part according to Tyler- we spray painted his hair white on the sides.

I couldn’t seem to get a good one of our Karate Kid by himself, but here’s a few groups pictures with Spencer trying to run off…

I went to the little kids school Halloween parade- super cute costumes this year:

As much as I could do without Halloween each year- this parade is a pretty cute way to celebrate it.