Merry Christmas!!

We had a very lovely Christmas. This has been our first year at home since Addy was a very little baby. We really liked the idea of staying home and having Santa come to our house. Addy, of course, has been anxiously awaiting this day. She has asked Santa and Elfie (our Elf on the Shelf) several times for a few gifts: a kitchen and Cat in the Hat books (Dr. Seuss books). Since she has been a very good girl and big sister, Santa delivered! She was so excited on Christmas morning. She picked every present to open, handed it to it's owner (or kept it if it was hers or Luke's) and had a blast opening! We loved some of her comments, "oh I've always wanted one of these," or "wow, that is a big ol kitchen!" Santa was up very late the night before, and both Jeff and I are still recovering from lack of sleep this week! We had a delicious breakfast, a delicious turkey dinner with all the fixins, and topped off the day with the best chocolate cake ever for Jesus' birthday. We woke up this morning to over a foot of snow and are staying home for the day. Merry Christmas everyone!!

The kids opened these matching PJ's on Christmas eve, they have adorable reindeer on the feet

The tree before all the unwrapping. Some people say I'm mean mommy for only getting 3 presents for our kids on Christmas. But, as you can see, everyone buys them so many things that it would be silly to get them more!

Addy's new baby carrier for her Bitty Baby. She also got a crib for her and matching PJ's that she can wear with her doll!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas Town

Christmas Town is Busch Gardens all decked out for Christmas-- and it is stunning! We had the best time a few days before Christmas walking around. They open the park at night and close most of the rides. They have neat Christmas shows all over, festive food, lights EVERYWHERE, Christmas markets, and Christmas music. Mimi and Papa are staying with us this week so we thought it would be a perfect time to go! This December has been very cold, but we were lucky with good weather the night we went. The kids loved the shows! Addy was in a mood to not look at the camera, but we still took a few pictures:

Cookies, Cookies, and more Cookies

This has been a busy weekend and week for us! I hosted a cookie exchange party on Monday night, and Addy had been asking to make a gingerbread house for quite some time. I thought we would make one over the weekend and use it as a centerpiece (fingers were crossed that it looked halfway decent and wouldn't fall apart). The theme was going to be perfect since my invitations for the party were gingerbread men. We then made some yummy gingerbread men, decorated, and hung them from the chandelier in the dining room. Baking gingerbread is honestly the best smelling aroma a home can have. We also made gingerbread lollipops and even made 2 more different cookie recipes! The exchange was a hit, I even gave out a few prizes and we ended up with some delicious cookies. I made boxes for everyone to take their cookies home. To top if off, I went to another cookie exchange last night. I came home with another 4 dozen cookies. Can we say happy husband and happy Addy?

Boxes to take, all of them had different center stickers. Only have mine to show:

Aren't these pretty? I found these on a blog I love and gave my friend Kelly the recipe to make. They are very easy and really pretty. She won prettiest cookie! Here is a link to the recipe:

http://glorioustreats.blogspot.com/2010/12/candy-cane-hearts.html

WAY too many cookies. I plan on freezing most of these tonight.

Ugly Sweater Party

So we had our annual ugly sweater party this weekend! It was a blast like always. This year was a little different. We decided to keep the party small mainly because the guest list would have been way too many people and would never fit in our house. Since we were in charge of hosting our dinner group for December, we thought it would be a great idea to do our sweater party for our small group! WAY too much fun!! We had a delicious dinner of beef burgundy. We played the married couple's game (Jeff and I won!) and thanks to my dad for making up the questions. We also did a white elephant gift exchange which is always hilarious.

Here are pictures of the guys:

Girls being silly:

Eating a delicious pear dessert and unwrapping presents

The wannabe winner (real winner is Rafic, in the gold sweater complete with shoulder pads):

And how cool was it that it SNOWED during the party!! We woke up to this light dusting:

Luke's first meal!

Luke had his 6 month appointment the other day, and the pediatrician told us it was probably a good idea to start solids (he is quite a big boy!). I was kind of dreading it because I remember how time consuming it is to feed babies!!! We started with sweet potatoes on Friday, just one meal a day at dinner. He's not as good of an eater as Addy was. He had a little trouble staying focused and didn't want to open his mouth very much. This could be quite a learning process for some weeks! Tomorrow I'll be making him some super porridge :) Basically, brown rice cereal. Let's hope it goes down a little better!

Addy wanted in on the fun!