Ornaments & traditions

I love christmas ornaments. I can just sit and stare at our tree for hours, looking at each ornament, thinking about the story it might have behind it, or thinking of a memory it is linked to. We have such a wonderful collection of ornaments. Alan has one from his grandfather with a picture of the Alamo on it that is dated 1978. I have ones that I grew up with. The kids add one each year that they hand pick out, and then there are the homemade ones. I can't decide which are my favorite....


the ornaments from my childood that my mom let me take with me when I grew up and moved out....




our favorite characters all over the tree, everything from Strawberry Shortcake, Star Wars, Dora, and Bevo the Texas Longhorns Mascot, and everything in between!








the kids' homemade ornaments, I still have ones that the boys made in preschool!




my picture frame ornaments, I have one for every year since the kids have been alive, they decorate the tree like a 3D scrapbook of the kids growing up.




our family ornaments.....




The kids "baby's 1st Christmas" ornaments....



I love them all!!









My mom always had Christmas stuffed animals and toys that stayed under the tree during the Christmas season, and I guess I just took that tradition and kept it as my own. I always have our Christmas animals under the tree. I buy the yearly one that wal-mart puts out with the date on it to add each year, and then I get other odds and ends like Frosty and the Grinch here and there as the years go by. I have quite a collection now! They also deter the kids from snooping into the presents, since they all sit on the gifts and I would notice if they moved them. :)

Go Elf Yourself

So Office Max has this application, Elf Yourself. You upload pics of yourself and suddenly you are an elf doing all kinds of funny dances. You can check out The Little Family's mad elf dance skills here:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

If you go to this address:
http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/sHjp21EY9uqXtl1w

and click on the "try another dance" button on the left, you can make us do other dances. The Hip hop one is pretty darn funny. Roman likes the singing one the best.

So now, go Elf yourself! :)

North Pole City

Wednesday before Thanksgiving we went to North Pole City to see Santa (and if I had a scanner, hint hint Alan, I would scan the Santa pics for all to see) ;) My friend Lori and her kids Mariah and Sam met us up there, it was lots of fun.





Starla rode the train (she actually rode it twice!). Roman was so sad to discover that this year he is too tall to ride it. Last year when we went it was out of order, so he missed his last opportunity. Poor guy. :)



I LOVE this place. I love the decorations and all the elves tucked away, and the little houses, and the magic of it all. I'm in love with the magic of Christmas, so this store makes me feel like a little kid again. :) I take the kids each year to buy a new ornament for that year, and it's sooo much fun walking around, looking at the hundred of ornaments and picking out that perfect one for this year. :)













I want a little christmas village! They have some of the neatest things in their little village room. I keep telling Alan year after year that he should get me one piece each year as a Christmas gift, and then by the time the kids are old enough not to break my stuff, I will have a whole village! But he hasn't yet started. I'm starting to learn that instead of asking for something for years, maybe I should just buy it myself, lol.



Lori holds up Starla to get a better view!

Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving we went to The North Pole City, but that will be another blog so that this one isn't too much of a novel, lol.

I always try to make the pies and desserts the day before as well, so that's what we did. Bourbon's buddy Stewie (really Stuart, but he goes by Stew, and I call him Stewie) from down the street spent the night with us the night before and then spent the whole day with us, so he got to help. First we made the turkey sugar cookies.











Then it was pie time!

Last year each boy made a pie, which is what I had planned for this year, but Bourbon was too busy playing with Stew and didn't want to join in on the pie making fun. So Roman just helped me make both pies. Starla came to check out what we were doing every now and again, and helped stir once or twice, but she wasn't too interested in the process!





Pumpkin chocolate swirl pie and Chocolate Bourbon pecan pie. Yum! (I made Bourbon sweet potatoes too. I like to put a little Bourbon into everything, hee hee)



Bourbon had gone to his dad's wednesday night to do Thanksgiving lunch with his family, and then came back at about 3pm on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving morning was a peaceful and lazy time of watching the parade! Which was nice! We didn't have our Thanksgiving meal until 5pm. So I started cooking at 3pm. My parents brought the turkey, so I didn't have to spend all that time cooking that! So it was a rather relaxing day, which it usually isnt!

Jamie ended up having too much painting to do with her move and didn't get to come, and my friend Lori was swamped and behind on her student teaching stuff, so she didn't come, so it was just my parents and us. But it was a wonderful Thanksgiving meal.


Can you tell Starla had just gotten up from her nap, her eyes are all swollen! EVen though I put her to bed at her normal nap time of 1pm, she actually didn't go to sleep until about 3pm, so we got her up at 5pm to eat dinner, and she was CRANKY! She was mad!!








Then the kids stayed the night with my mom so I could do my Black friday shopping. Jamie was in the process of moving out of her apartment, and just stayed up all night to join me as my line holder, which of course cuts my time at each store in half! She's awesome. We went to Toys-r-us at 4am, was out of there at a few minutes after 5am, then hit up Wal-mart. We were in there from 5:30-7:30, the entire time Jamie was in line! It was crazy there, much worse than toys-r-us (of course toys-r-us opened at midnight, so we missed most of the chaos there!), then we made a quick pit stop at my house, then went to Target and we were there until about 9am or so, then went to Panera Bread for breakfast. I went home and wrapped presents non-stop from 11am-2pm!!! But I am just about done with all my christmas shopping and wrapping, so it was worth it. :)


It's my tradition to put up the tree and decorations the day after Thanksgiving. The kids get so excited with each ornament that I unwrap from newspaper, hoping it's their turn when I am handing out their favorite ones. Last year, we did it when Starla took a nap, she went to sleep and woke up and it was done! So this year was the first real year she got to help. Now we shall see how hard it will be to keep her hands off the ornaments and presents.....

Thanksgiving crafts

We are getting ready for a pretty low key Thanksgiving here at the Little house. We decided not to do anything big, or go anywhere. My parents, Jamie and my friend Lori & her daughter are all coming over for dinner. The menu is planned, the shopping is done. The kids and I will be making pies on Wednesday. Bourbon will be gone Wednesday evening to his dad's for the holiday, and coming back late afternoon on Thursday, so we won't have our dinner until like 5pm. So the day will be spent laid back, I won't have to be up at 6am cooking, missing the parade like every Thanksgiving. I can lounge around in PJs and watch the Parade, woo hoo!! I figure I will make cinnamon rolls or something like that for breakfast, and then have a variety of appetizers and such to munch on throughout the day, not a real meal, to that we will be prepared to have a large dinner.

I'm trying to think of some small, easy thanksgiving crafts to do though, maybe place markings, or centerpieces for dinner. We will have an adults table and a kids table to decorate. Even if I am doing simple, I have to make it look pretty. :)

We had like 30 people over the year before last, and 6 tables set up, which was crazy. The kids and I made 4 of these guys for the tables.



But the only thing was that no one ate them, and we were left with a ton of fruit! So I don't think we will do it this year.


We will be making these cookies again this year, easy and fun! The kids like decorating them.



We did fingerprint turkey place cards one year, and a thankful tree. We might do something like that for this year. Something simple, yet fun for the kids, to make memories and make the holiday more meaningful.

Starla's class had a thankful tree bulletin board up at their open house last week. Each kid had a leaf with what they were thankful for on it. Starla's said "time with mom". Ahhhhh. Hers was about the only one with more than one word on it. :)

Starla's Open House

Starla's mother day out program is at a church. They had an open house, with a little program on thursday. Starla was in a pew 2 rows in front of us during the show, she was much more interested in turning around and talking to us.....














Starla on stage





Starla in her classroom.










Starla's little bulletin board figure





This is Daniel. His mom asked if she could take a picture of Starla because Daniel talks about her all the time, lol. I said he looks like a mini Ron Weasley (from Harry Potter). He's quite funny, you will notice in the video....







Here's Starla's class performing their two songs. The first one was "If you're happy and you know it" Animal style, and the second one was "Great big giant spider" (instead of itsy bitsy spider). The 2 boys you will notice, take their animal antics a bit far, which makes one little girl greatly upset. They stop the show, remove her and one of the offending boys (Daniel from above) and start again. Starla never stops "scratching her fur" during the break, lol. The roaring boy, Ian, CRACKED me up. Hee hee.

Puzzled

Starla loves the new floor puzzle we got from the Early Birds program. She will put it together, take it apart, put it together, take it apart...... lol

Pics of randomness

Here are some recent pics


All 3 kiddos had a dentist appointment over the weekend, no cavities for anyone, woo hoo!






Playing at the park















Roman's new haircut





Starla playing with her smurfs




Roman building his hogwarts castle set he got for his birthday




I just got done with my Teacher Work Sample to be turned into my Supervisor during his last visit to my school tomorrow. This is the unit I've been working on, and the work sample is about 30 pages or more of work I've been doing all semester. I am SOOOOO glad I am totally done with it and it will be out of my hands and into his tomorrow! Woo hoo!! I only have 11 more days of student teaching left, 2 days this week, 2 days next week, then a regular 5 day week, and another 2 day week. I graduate at UCO on Sat. Dec 12th at 10am! Yeah!