Angels we have heard...last night.

Last night we attended our very first children's program. It was not the longest program ever, it lasted 20 minutes and we waited 45 minutes for it to begin. But it was the best program that I have ever attended. Mainly, because my kids were in it. They sang about 7 songs, all as a story was being told of a very special tree that was being decorated. You'll have to excuse the pictures. As I'm sure most of the other parents were attending their children's first program, they were also very rude and I couldn' t get many good pictures. I do have a very good mental image though, and that's what counts...right?!

C's class started the whole thing off by singing "Jingle Bells." You can see that he spotted us right away and did NOT take his eyes off of us the entire time.

They had only been practicing for 2 weeks (The teacher said 2 weeks, but I think longer. I know my kids were singing the songs many more weeks before in the car on the way home), but they sounded so great. 2 year olds all the way to 5 year olds!

They not only sang the songs, but they did motions with them as well. It was great!

Miss M's class were the bear family, so of course they wore their bear ears so we all knew who they were. Here she is walking in. She hadn't noticed us yet, but like C, once she did her eyes didn't stray from us. Except to look for C, she had to make sure she knew where he was and what he was doing the whole time.

Now she's found us!

This is her watching to make sure the tree that was being decorated was done correctly. I am willing to bet, that if someone had put a decoration in the wrong place, she'd have let them know!

This was also the reason that Miss M had to watch C. She knew that he was playing the roll of Joseph during "Away in a Manger" and she wanted to make sure he was dressed just right.

He was. He did such a fantastic job. He sang the song and did the motions. He was the best Joseph that I've ever seen.

This was also a very special honor since he and Mary were the only one's chosen to dress up for the program. We're proud of you buddy!

Here is the finished product. The tree is all decorated with a star, Shinny Pinecones, Hollyberries, Chunks of Cheese, and Sparkling Lights.

One of the songs that the kids sang was "Go Tell It On The Mountain." I love hearing Miss M sing this song because she learned me something new. Did you know that we have been referring to Jesus the wrong way?! Yep, we sure have. He is not Jesus Christ, he is Jesus Prist. And in the song, just so you know, "Jesus Prist is born!" and she sings it so enthusiasticlly that you actually start to believe her!

The kids loved practicing for the program as well as putting it on. In fact, in the car on the way home from school today, Miss M said "Mama, we didn't go to the stage to practice today :(" I had to tell her that they wouldn't be anymore since the program was over. It made her sad.

Then she realized that Santa is comming tonight and she got over it :)
Speaking of, we do indeed have Santa comming tonight. Since we spend Christmas with family, we choose to celebrate Christmas early for two reasons.

1. We don't have as many toys to load into the truck. and

2. The kids can enjoy their stash from Santa and us for a while, and then enjoy the rest of their goodies when they get them at Christmas from everyone else.

I think that we are all prepared for the big guys arrival. We wrote him letters letting him know what we want him to bring us, we baked him LOTS of cookies and have the plate and cup sitting out (as well as a brand new gallon of milk ready for him), and we are making reindeer food for the reindeer (duh) as soon as they get up from the naps that they are NOT taking.

We have all of our presents bought and wrapped. AND the stocking are hung from the chimney entertainment center with care. Since we don't have a fireplace we can't very well hang the stockings from it, so our entertainment center will have to do. Actually, we've hung them here for a few years, minus the last two since we had fireplaces in the last two houses, and I quite missed them hanging here. I've come to realize that they look quite nice on the entertainment center.

I also have breakfast ready to go for the morning. I love to make something special Christmas morning and this year I am making Stuffed Sticky Rolls...a Paula recipe. I can't wait to try them!

Santa...get your belly ready for some yummy good cookies!

Presents...HERE WE COME!

Deck the halls...

I wanted to put up pictures of the house all decorated for Christmas. We've had a lot of fun getting it all out and finding a new place for everything. Since we seem to move every year, we are always finding new places to display our Christmas stuff. I'll warn you, there are a LOT of pictures in this post (I think I counted 23). There are also pictures of the upstairs and kids bathroom since I haven't put them on here yet. I just re-did the kids bathroom to take out all of the palm tree stuff and make it more fun. I can't paint the walls, but the things that I added, help to make it fun. So without further ado (sp?) here is our home tour...

R put all of the lights on the house. It looks so nice at night. We were the first house done in our part of the neighborhood:)

Here is a little village I have in the guest room. I love villages and have them all over. This one got a little banged up in the move to Houston when a box of my Christmas stuff was dropped on it's way up to the attic. But, these houses made it with only minor chunking, so I think they are ok to put out.

Here is the kids bathroom. I choose to go with teal and dark brown. Their shower curtain has green and grey in it as well.

Here is the other side of the bathroom.

This is C's dresser. My mom just got the kids these small nativities. The kids love them and play with them. As you can see, we also finally got his shelf fixed from the move!!

Each of the kids have a tree in their room. This year I let them decorate them alone. Most of the ornaments are in one location, but they look good. This is C's.

Here is M's tree and nativity.

We put some other decorations on her bookshelf. The kids love the little people with mommy, daddy, and Chases pictures in them.

Here is her nightstand with some Island of Misfit toys.

This was our first tree when we got married. We had it on a table in our apartment. When we got "big" and bought our house a year later, we upgraded the tree. But I still put it out. This year it's in the entry hallway by the door, so you can see it outside. I think next year I'll have to put colored lights on it because the kids really want colored lights on something, and this is the only thing I'm willing to put them on. It has a lot of our older ornaments on it as well as ornaments that the kids have made us over the years.

Like I said, I LOVE villages. Here is my Dept. 56 How the Grinch Stole Christmas village. I love this village and it is always on this table in the hallway. It's so colorful, fun, and whimsical.

Here is our dinning room. Since we don't actually eat at the dinning room table - EVER - I put our good nativity on it. We also have our big village in here, so no little hands touch it.

My mom got us the Willow Tree nativity a few years ago and has been adding the new pices since. I really like this nativity. She also found the "stable" that we have and I think that it all looks so good together. R's grandmother from Germany (Omi) gave us the hand made cloth that is under it as well.

Here is one end of the village. I have it on a long couch table, and could not fit it all in the picture. Most of the houses are Dep. 56 snow village from R's grandma (Mimi) and the rest are some small houses that I've acquired over time. I believe, when I put them up, I counted 33 houses on this table.

Here is the other end of the table. It's fun to look at and get lost in pretending that you live in the little village. I love how it turned out this year!

Here is our living room. We rearranged the furniture to fit the tree into the corner.

This is the hall with the niche leading into our bedroom. I put my angel, small nativity (I guess I have a lot of these as well) and reindeer here.

These reindeer were my mom's when I was little. The legs and antlers come off of them so they are easy to store and I have always loved them. I'm so glad that they get to represent in my house :)

Here is an angel my dad gave me a few years ago. I thought that she went great here becuase the light from the niche lit her up like an angel should be :)

Here is my small nativity. I love how small and cute it is!

My entertainment center is the home of my nutcracker collection as well as our stockings.

Here is my nutcracker collection. I belive that I counted 23 of them.

Closer of our tree. It's a faux pre-lit one. We've had it for 5 years now and still love it. More this year since we got it to light the first time we tried ;)

Our kitchenette table. This is where we eat every meal. I got the center peace a few years ago, from R's work Christmas party. It's fun and sparkly.

And the kitchen. I have my carosel on one end and light up snow man on the other end with other random items throughout the rest of the bar.

This is what the upstairs looks like. I didn't decorate it much since we don't come up here all that often. Plus I wanted to really do up the downstairs. If we stay here for a longer period of time, I'll have to get more Christmas stuff to put up here. We also don't have the walls full of things, we may put our shelves with family pictures on the wall with the windows. The first door that you see on the right (the open one) is the full bathroom. The second door is the closet full of toys, believe me you don't want to see in there! We have all of our video games hooked up up here (except the PS 2). We have the first Nintendo, Sega, the kids V-motion game, VHS, DVD players, and bumpin sound system. R can actually make the house move when this thing is really going! This is also our pull out couch, in the rare case we have lots of people here, they can have their own room and bathroom.

Here is the other end of the room. It is our office area. The lovely rose colored chair was left here by the people before us. We moved it up stairs when we moved in (it was in the master) and the kids really enjoy sitting in it. They also have their desk area up here.

When you walk up the stairs (just to the right of the wall) there is a little cut out. We put the little table and light here.

Hope you have enjoyed this tour of our house. It's a great house that is very cozy and we are really enjoying it here.

Merry Christmas to y'all and Happy New Year!

Wasselfest

Well, the more we live in our quaint little town, the more we like it. So far we've been to the largest county fair in Texas (tiny), Wurstfest (great beer and sausage), and we just attended our first Wasselfest. In case you don't know what wassel is I'll explain. It's pretty much warm apple cider with lots of spices in it. Many people add different liquors as well. Wasselfest had a mixture of both alcholic and non-alcholic. They shut down all of the streets leading to downtown and a lot of the little shops stayed open for browsing and to hand out wine, cheese and crackers and wassel. I think that there were about 50 different stands where you wait in line for a cup, the size of a shot glass. Then they wanted you to rate the different stands. At the end of the night, a winner was awarded. The whole thing was free, which really suprised us. It was a great night to have it, the weather was cool and brisk. Who would want to sample a bunch of warm wassel in 70 degree weather.

We met up with a group of people that we've been hanging out with occasionally. The munchkins in the picture are our neighbors and friends that we've made. Our neighbor girls are the two on the end in the pink jacket and striped scarf. They come over to play often, and C and M have really become buddies with them.

There was a live nativity in the center of the square. It was neat to see. Off to the side was a real lamb as well. The kids loved to see it, but the poor thing was so scared, I felt really bad for it.

There's a big Christmas tree in the center of town as well and we (meaning I) thought it'd make a great family picture.

We got to the end of one of the streets and what to our wondering eyes should appear? But a life size santa and the local HOG chapter (that's Harley Owners Group, for those of you not a HOG). Well, of course when you see a santa riding a Harley you simply must have your picture taken with him and tell him what it is you want for Christmas. So that is what our little group of kiddos did. As you can see Miss M was THRILLED to be near him. She did decide he was ok to tell her Christmas wish to a little later on and after all of the other kids had done so and were able to tell the tale. I'm not sure if she decided he was ok because the other kids did it, or because she figured if she didn't tell him she may not get any presents come Christmas morning. Either way. I also must note, down here in what I consider Southern Texas, our santa was hispanic, which is new for us :)

Our town square is so pretty year 'round, but with all of the lights up, it is beautiful. This picture does not do it justice, but you can see that they go all out.

And here is the court house. It is AMAZING! There are lights all over this thing! Come visit when you have a chance. It is a fun, party, but family inviting town. We are anxious to see what else it has to offer us.

Thanksgiving and Christmas decorating!

We got back from our Florida vacation the day before Thanksgiving. Since we live so far from our families, we've been doing Thanksgiving for the past 6 years (minus last year) and I really missed it. We had it all. I had planned on a ham for dinner since I don't like turkey, but when I went to buy the ham I got a turkey for free! We ended up having Ham, Green Bean casserole, Cream Corn casserole, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Stuffing, Cranberry jelly, homemade Bread, Pumpkin Pie and homemade Whip Cream. All was homemade except the stuffing because you just can't beat Stove Top Stuffing! On a side note, I went to make the pumpkin pie filling and my recipe called for sweatened condensed milk. My mom, being the pie maker of the family, told me that I was supposed to use evaporated milk. So, I listened to her and used the evaporated milk then continued to follow the recipe. BUT the recipe did NOT call for sugar because of the sweatened condensed milk. Needless to say the pie was AWFUL! Next time I either follow the recipe or let mom do the entire pie :)

Here we are having homemade whip cream. You can't make whip cream without licking the beaters.

This was Thanksgiving dinner. It was the first time we used the dinning room. The kids had a Thanksgiving feast at school the day before and made their pilgram hats that they insisted on wearing. But after the picture they were taken off pretty quickly.

A tradition that we started our first year of marriage is to decorate for Christmas right after Thanksgiving dinner. So, as soon as we finished we started to decorate. This is what our tree looks like. I just realized that I don't have pictures of any of the other decorations, I'll post them later this week. It was a good thing that we decorated because my mom stayed with us a couple of extra days so that we could celebrate Christmas with her since she is going to Argentina right after Christmas.

Here is C playing with his helocopter transformer and new stool that he got. He LOVES Transformers and Bakugon's. He has never seen either and doesn't really know what they are but he loves that the transformers change and he loves Bakugon's because he buddy from Cincinnati played with them.

Here is M with her new coffee maker. Most of our family has to drink at least a cup of coffee in the morning and we love Starbucks so M thought that this was a great present. She has made me more Mocha Frappicchinos then I have ever had before in my life.

These are just a couple of good pictures that I thought I'd put up. I was trying to get some pics for our Christmas cards.

Here they are looking like they love eachother. This is a very rare shot. But one that I am seeing more and more as they get older!

Florida Vacation

The week before Thanksgiving we went on couples vacation with R's mom, dad, brother, and sisiter-in-law to Florida. It was our first vacation away from the kids since we'd had them. It was a lot of fun and we got to do a lot, but also did a lot of relaxing. The kids were at home with my mom going to school and having fun with her.

Here are all of the girls on the first day of vacation. We travled on R's mom and dad's boat.

Here are the guys. Remember, it was the first day, I promise, they did tan those bellies :)

As we were travling, we went down the intercoastal. At one point, we had a dolphin play in the wake of the boat. It was so close that we were worried it'd get hit by the props. It also jumped at one point and got us wet! It was amazing!

In Venice, we used the marina bicycles to get around the town. It was so much fun! Here we all are.

We rode through a park full of these big trees, so we had to climb one and take a pic. Of course my husband is the only one "monkeying" around!

This was on Cabbage Key where we had lunch the second day. It was a beautiful setting. Just a word of caution though...if you ever go there for lunch...DO NOT HAVE THE TAP WATER! It's NASTY!

This was for the kids. The resort that we stayed at for most of the week was totally decked out for Christmas. It was beautiful and we wished we could have seen ALL of the lights light up that they had out. I'm not sure I've ever seen so many lights in one place. Unfortunatly, the transformers blew the second day we were there and we were out of power for over a day. But it was so nice outside, that we spent pretty much the whole time outside.

The sunsets were Amazing. This is just one of many that I have pics of.

Here are all of the "kids."

So the day that the power was out, we decided to rent mopeds so that we could get to another island that did have power. They were SO much fun. We didn't want to return them the next day.

One of the nights we went to the Mad Hatter for dinner. It was such good food and had an amazing view. We went there for sunset and the windows were huge. It was a great dinner.

On the last day, the surf finally got a little rough. Most of the time we were there, there were no waves to play in. But on the last day, they started to roll. We went out and played in them for about an hour. We had so much fun letting them toss us around.

R and I went back to the marina before we left for home and while we were there, we saw this manatee hanging out. At one point he was so close to the pier that I could have touched him. He was so neat to see. There was moss growing all over his back and you could see a couple of spots where a boat prop had hit him. They are great creatures.