Christmas Baking

On Tuesday, I mixed up the dough for 7 of the 8 items we'll be baking/making for Christmas. Today we baked a new one for us: Gingerbread Tree Sandwiches. I got the recipe from Simple & Delicious. Aren't they cute?


Then we put together Rudolph Treats which required no baking. :) I got this recipe from the same magazine.

3rd Sunday Advent

This seems to be a DVD Christmas! The gift this week was two DVDs: Up and Madagascar 2. I LOVED the movie Up. I cried through the beginning and the end. It is a must-see in my book!

2nd Sunday in Advent

Looks like this is going to be a DVD Advent! This week's family gift was two Veggie Tales DVDs:
St. Nicholas...


...and Noah's Umbrella.

Miscellaneous Photos from Thanksgiving Weekend

Kim took so many great photos that I needed a separate post for some of them.

My sweet Landon is so happy to have someone to play Risk with!


Carys and Erin


Chase's modeling shots (why does she do this to her hair?)






I'm not sure what Gerren is doing with my china!


Carys adores Matt...


...and Erin.


Carys shows off the Princess necklace Miss Kim bought for her at Target.


Thanks for the great pictures, Kim.

1st Sunday in Advent

I'm behind in Christmas planning this year. It was tough to plan when there is no money for Christmas. Greg has been unable to find a full-time job since being laid off in August. My parents blessed us with a check to "do Christmas" with, so I had to start planning at the last minute. :) I read on my friend Kate's blog about the Advent Calendar on DVD. We have been through the Jotham's Journey books so many times, and Carys is really too little to get into them yet. So, we decided to try this DVD for this year. So far, we are enjoying it. So, the gift for family gift for the first Sunday in Advent was this DVD and the second one as well, which we will use next year.

Thanksgiving

I am way behind on these important holiday posts, but sometimes I'm just too busy living to blog about it. LOL!

I have hundreds of great pictures from this Thanksgiving, thanks to my friend Kim, who does a much better job of taking pictures than I do. Before she headed back to NC, I took the card out of her camera, put it in my card reader, and copied the pictures onto my computer. Thanks, Kim! The only hard part is going to be choosing which pictures to post here. :)

We had a fabulous holiday. The Miskiewiczs arrived from NC around 11:00pm on Wednesday evening. We stayed up awhile talking, of course, but finally headed to bed. Greg got up before 5:00am to be at work by 6:00, so he could leave by 2:00pm. That left me to do all the work on Thursday. Of course, I prepared everything in advance and froze it. So, it was simply a matter of defrosting and cooking. Not too bad!

We usually eat at 4:00pm, so there's plenty of time during the day to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, play Risk...



and Apples to Apples...


and whatever other fun game is popular with the kids that year. (This is the 11th year out of the last 12 that our families have had Thanksgiving together.)

I can't believe Gerren let Kim take pictures of him. He never wants me to take any pictures.


Miss Kim fixed Carys's hair, and Carys played with playdough.


When Greg got home, he was assigned the job of carving the turkey, as usual.


We had all our favorites: turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes of some sort, corn casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry salad, rolls.


Greg was making jokes while Kim was trying to take pictures.


This picture actually turned out pretty good anyway.


Greg also got to clean up! He had some help from Kim, too (and maybe some others - I didn't help at all). :)


Dave played Chase's guitar a bit. Looks a little small for him, huh?


After we had cleaned up and rested for awhile, we went back for dessert which always includes pumpkin pie. Sometimes we have pecan pie or apple pie. But this year we had pecan pie cheesecake. Whatever we have for dessert, whipped cream is a must!

Landon


Matt (graduating 12/09 from NC State with a dual major in Electrical and Computer Engineering - will begin working on his doctorate in January)


On Friday, I hit Walmart at 5:30am for a few things. I didn't want any of the big ticket items, so I didn't fight the crowds at 5:00am. Upon arriving home, I made pumpkin pancakes, fried apples and sausage for breakfast.


Then the girls headed for Ocala for a little shopping. The only shopping the boys did was on the computer. In fact, a room full of laptops was the norm of the two days!


Leftovers were on the menu for lunch. Then the boys played frisbee golf at the park. We enjoyed homemade pizza and another game of Risk that evening.


The two days went by way too quickly, and Dave, Kim, Matt, and Erin headed home Saturday morning.

I'll put some miscellaneous photos that I just couldn't pass up in the next post.

The Santa Saga Continues

If you haven't read the previous post, "Conversation with Carys", you must read it first or this post won't make sense.

I am sick! I have an awful cold, the first in a couple of years. So, last night I was lying in bed watching Meet the Santas on the Hallmark Channel. The basis of the story is this: Santa is retiring, and his son is taking over. However, he has to get married before Christmas because he needs a Mrs. Claus to help him. He's engaged and getting married on Christmas Eve, but his fiancee is worried about what it will take to be Mrs. Claus. In the meantime, he's having to do all of Santa's jobs AND Mrs. Claus's jobs.

Carys comes in and sits on the bed with me to watch part of this show. Nick is stressed out and telling his fiancee, "Do you know what I was doing last night? I was making cookies for the elves. The children give cookies to Ssnta, and Santa gives cookies to the elves."

Carys gets up on her knees, crosses her arms, turns to look at me, and says, "See, Mom. I told you Santa made cookies!"

I started laughing so loud that the big kids came running from the living room to see what was so funny. :)