'Twas the Night Before Christmas

This year, as usual, we crammed our Christmas Eve with fun activities. We baked up a storm, as we do every Christmas Eve...we like to give Santa fresh cookies. We also celebrated Christmas at Gammy's house in the evening, opened 1 gift, wrote our letter to Santa, made a snack, and headed of excitedly (an exhausted) to bed.

We made chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and cupcakes (beautifully decorated by the master chefs themselves) for gammy's house and for Santa.

Later, when we got to Gammy's house, we were surrounded in gifts. Our Gammy spoils all of us rotten, even the adults. She got way too many gifts this year, but no one seemed to mind.











Gammy and Gampy got Kendall the Mrs. Goodsbee dollhouse (the ONLY thing she wanted really, really badly). Natalie got karaoke machine and she is in love with it. Nolan played with his Brobee silly head doll that Gammy and Gampy got him all night.












Christmas at Gammy and Gampy's is the best. We got to see Aunt Teresa, Uncle Dennis, Gammy, Gampy, and our Aunt Dani. We opened all of our gifts, ate some snacks and desserts, and spent a nice evening together. We headed home at bedtime to prepare for Santa's arrival, Santa was on his way!!!





















When we arrived home, Mommy and Daddy has set 1 gift aside for each child to open on Christmas Eve. This year, like every year, they each got a new set of pajamas. We like to look our best when Santa's coming to our house. The kids wore their new pj's and we put Nolan to bed. The girls wrote a note to Santa (Natalie wrote it this year, and at the end put a disclaimer about any "mispeld" words), we got a plate ready for Santa, and decided to leave him warm cocoa this year.


We all went to bed so that Santa could work his magic...

The Spirit of Giving

This morning, all of the 3rd graders in Natalie's school gathered in the cafeteria along with many parent volunteers and teachers to make a special holiday gift. With the spirit of giving in mind, the 3rd graders worked hard to make special dog treats to be donated to our local SPCA. The children wanted to make sure that the dogs there would have special treats this holiday season.












The children were split up into teams of 5. Natalie had all of her good friends on her team. They took turns measuring and adding the ingredients. They mixed whole wheat flour, bacon bits, beef bullion, garlic powder, powdered milk, and wheat germ together. The cafeteria donated their bacon grease from the morning, and the teachers added that to the mix (it was pretty stinky). Then, Natalie added the egg without getting any of the shell in it. The children mixed the ingredients, and added a little water. Ultimately, most of the children decided it was easier to mix with their hands.










They rolled out their dog treat dough and cut out Christmas shapes with cookie cutters. There ended up being about 5 large trays of dog treats.










Each of the children on Natalie's team took the end of their dough and made their own special treat without a cookie cutter. Natalie made a dog bone. The children really enjoyed making the dog treats and worked very well together. It was a very fun and heart-warming project for everyone involved.

FACEinHOLE

Create your own FACEinHOLE

An After School Photo Shoot

Here are some random pictures that the girls and I took after school. The girls love using the camera, and our pictures turned out very nice.

"Mommy and Kendall"

Photographs taken by: Natalie

"Kendall and Natalie with Angel Bear"

Photograph taken by: Mom

Mom and Natalie

Photographs taken by: Kendall

Nolan is wearing a Dora backpack and playing his drum with a Linkin' Log


Another cute picture of "Mommy's Little Hero" from the other day

Silly Girls

Oh, Christmas Tree!

We did it!!! Today, we got our first REAL Christmas tree. This year we left the artificial tree in storage and went for a real tree, and we LOVE it!!!








Our good friends Shannon and Stan came to help us get our tree. They brought their truck to make things easier (the Cavalier has been very good to us, but we weren't sure anyone would want to tie a tree to it...). Considering the whipping wind and freezing temperatures, the boys (Dad and Nolan are sick) stayed in and watched football while Nolan napped.

The girls (Natalie, Kendall, Shannon, and Mom) picked out a tree by ourselves. The girls even got free teddy bears! We easily found what we thought would be the perfect tree for our house. We were right, it was absolutely PERFECT!!!

The guys brought in the tree and got it set up in the tree stand. Daddy and Mom set up the lights and pearls (yes, I said pearls) and dad put new hooks in all of the ornaments that needed them.

The girls had a blast hanging their ornaments. They tried to space them out the best they could by theme and color. It took quite a bit of planning and rearranging. They did a great job.

The girls always enjoy finding their special Christmas ornaments from past years. Here were each of their favorite ornaments. Both of Natalie's have her name on them and were given to her as gifts, and Kendall made her ornaments in school. We even found a rocking horse ornament that Daddy made in preschool.

When the girls were finished, Mom put the angel on top, and our tree was complete.

When Nolan woke up, Kendall was happy to show him the tree. He was very interested. He spent the rest of the day playing by the tree and talking to the ornaments with his toys. He loves the Sponge Bob Squarepants, Patrick Starr (from Spongebob) and the Strawberry Shortcake ornaments the best.

We had a very nice day getting our Christmas tree. We had fun with our friends Shannon and Stan, and we all think that our tree looks AWESOME!!!

P.S. Look Left

Gradually, as I have been playing around on Blogger, I have figured a few fun little things out. There a links to my friend Jenn's blogspot (MyBabyNichols) and my sister Teresa and Dennis's blogspot ("The HALLway"). Also, I added a poll (feel free to vote). The picture is of our wreath. It's exciting for us because we got a new door (and window) last month. Our old door had a window on one side, so a wreath looked funny. Our new door has a nice window in the middle, perfect for a wreath!
We appreciate the small things...

A Fairly Odd Child

Nolan is a pretty silly kid. Seeing as he has 2 older sisters, naturally, he has had a strong desire to play dress up like they do. His real clothes are different in all 3 pictures because these are 3 different days. However, each time he chose the same outfit to dress up in. Natalie told him to start wearing it backwards and it would be more "manly".

I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to start collecting some pictures to show his girlfriends later in life.

Please note: Nolan spends the majority of his time playing with trucks and cars and little boy toys...he certainly acts like a boy, even in his sister's dress-up clothes.

When "say cheese" means "cross your eyes"

Night, Night...

...until tomorrow my silly boy