Bedtime Birthday

Pink bunny slippers on a birthday cake? It works pretty well if your party is a trip to the movies to see "Bedtime Stories" with friends!

First, pizza and wings in the Rave movie room...

With friends and of course a cousin or two...

Then blow out your candles!It's great to be twelve and have wonderful friends. Everyone gave Kai beautiful gifts.But Mommy and Daddy surprised her with a lime green iPod!Not to mention, how fun is it to wear your pajamas to the movie theater? A few friends forgot (or decided not to) but many turned up in pj bottoms at least!Happy Birthday, Kairi! I hope you had fun!

Christmas Redux

It's not Hannah's year to be with us for Christmas, so the day after Christmas, we did it again! This time, Hannah got most of the presents, naturally. But Faith managed to score this adorable fairy outfit! Now that the rest of their cousins live so close, even though we see Hannah about the same amount of time as we did when they lived in New York, it feels like longer to my kids, so they were off the wall trying to catch up the rest of the night. So much love to smoosh into a week!

Christmas Chaos

What can I say about Christmas? There were presents.... And there were cheeseheads...

And there were more presents...

And there was the big surprise... We're going to Disney!!

And there were MORE presents...

And there was eating...

And more eating...

Lots more eating...

And don't forget dessert!

And there were board games...

And more eating (while playing board games!)

And then, just like that, it was over. Merry Christmas!

The Night Before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
Every creature was busy, (Right down to the mouse!) The children were trying to hold to a pose,
And show off all of their cute Christmas clothes,

The oldest (a vision in satin and lace),

Had a beautiful smile adorning her face,

While the little ones looked at each other with awe,

At the beautiful child that both of them saw,

Even the boy child was dressed up - oh my!

How cute is that little suit, hanky and tie?

But on to the presents the kids quickly flew,

With presents from Grandma and Aunt Cyndy, too.

Then off to the church where each child played their part,

And played and sang with all of their heart.

'Cause Christmas is more than presents and clothes,

It's the birth of our Savior, as even Faith knows!

Then it was time for our homeward bound drives,

To hang up the stockings before Santa arrives,

A plate of cookies was left by the tree,

Then off to bed with giggles and glee!

(My profoundest apologies to the author of the real poem. I couldn't resist, cheesy as it was...)

Gingerbread Men

What do you do when you've been making cookies all day, and then your cousins come over so that their dad and your dad can watch football? Make more cookies, of course!First, Aunt Jenn puts on the icing...

Then you put on the candy... Tada! A gingerbread man!

Of course, if you're older, you can do your own icing...

Or just eat all the candy trees...But one way or another...

Everyone will make a masterpiece!

Visions of Sugarplums

A snow day on Friday gave us a headstart on a weekend of baking, baking, and more baking!

Our new recipe this year was Raspberry Stars.

They involve butter cookie dough, raspberry jam, and anise icing.

I ended up making three more batches of these to feed the voracious appetite of my friends and family! Needless to say, they're a keeper!

We also found a new recipe for paint-on sugar cookie icing.

Nicky liked to paint his cookies wild colors.

Kairi was more traditional.

I loved the way this Santa of mine turned out. All together, though, I think they were the best looking sugar cookies we ever made!

They dried nice and hard, too, so we were able to stack them in tins for the kids teachers with all of the other cookies we made. What else did we make? Well...

Here's what's left AFTER we filled nine cookie tins, plus two big trays for my work and Scott's! Cyndy, Faith, and Juli came over for a little while Saturday morning and helped with the reindeer and peanut blossoms. Kai worked on the Hello Dollies. And I made the double decker peanut butter fudge, although I ended up making two more batches of that as well! Nick and Scott made some delicious LOOKING peppermint brownies, but they must have missed a step because they wouldn't bake and just stayed runny, which was really too bad, since there weren't any more peppermint chips at the store. We never did get to the Candy Cane cookies, or the traditional fudge. But no one was complaining!