Merry Christmas

From our family to yours... Merry Christmas!

O Little Town...

A few weeks ago, a local church hosted their annual "Walk Through Bethlehem." We have been a few times, but missed last year. This was the first time that the boys "got it" and really enjoyed the event. The church did an OUTSTANDING job of presenting Bethlehem. The members were clothed perfectly and maintained character to perfection! There were about 20 booths to see as you wound through the streets of Bethlehem. It was hard to narrow it down to our one favorite thing, so we decided to list our top 10!

#10 Seeing a Wise Man and getting gold from him. Rylan ( of course) wanted green. So he picked the very last necklace on the man's arm!

#9 Touching real, live Bible times animals...sheep, donkeys and camels.


#8 Seeing the BEST sheep herder ever! She was in Kim's first grade class several years ago. She's still one of my favorite kids to have taught! :)
#7 Playing instruments and singing on a rug
#6 Eating Bethlehem food...here's some candy.
and pomegranates. We also ate some goat cheese.
#5 Seeing a Bible times bookstore! Here we got to make some papyrus and see how they would write scrolls. We also each got a mini Schema complete with Hebrew and English. (For those of you who know me well know that I LOVE the learn the Greek and Hebrew meanings so Bible words, so this was right up my alley too!)

#4 Seeing a Bible times Wal*greens! We got to smash herbs to be medicine.

#3 Seeing a Roman soldier complete with sword, helmet and shield! Check out Macy's face!
#2 Making stuff! We made rope...
and clay pots...
and used Bible times tools like this ax!

#1 Seeing Baby Jesus laying in a manger! When we got to Baby Jesus, it was well past his bedtime and his mama was rocking him to soothe his tears, so no photo. But Mary, Joseph and Jesus were all in a stable with a manger and lots of hay!

Thanks to our sweet friends for sharing in this great experience!

Thank you Daddy!

Jason got a claim in Santa Fe, NM a few weeks ago. There is a delightful Christmas shop on the Plaza and Jason did a little shopping while he was in town. This year the boys have become slightly obsessed with all this Charl*ieBrown or Rud*olph. When Jason saw these two ornaments, he knew two little three year olds that would LOVE them!

To Jacob

To Rylan


Thank you Daddy! :)

What great Good Mail!

In the middle of December, we got the BEST good mail from Granny Nelda. Look what has been cradling our sweet little heads at bedtime this month! Thank you Granny Nelda!!!!

Only on the Texas Coast

this was us...today... December 21. Who says it is cold? Not here...in fact, I made the boys wear long sleeve shirts! Only on the Texas coast! :)

What's that outside???

A few weeks ago, the friendly weatherman got us all in a frenzy by predicting a practical blizzard here on the Gulf Coast. We were ready for some snowman making and were super excited to see the flakes falling from the sky. Finally the moment arrived... and Jacob stood and tried to catch flakes on his mittens.

Rylan ran like crazy!
Then 15 minutes later it was hot and sunny. The weatherman (shockingly) freaked out and the blizzard did not even stick enough to write on the car... Oh well, maybe next year!

Letter Time

This was the first year for the boys to write a letter to Santa. We actually did this on December 1, but I am late posting it. They had been talking about Santa for days and already knew exactly what they wanted to ask him to bring this year. So I got some Christmas-y stationary and they got busy!

Jacob asked for Cranky the crane, a basketball hoop to be like Dirk, and Lady the train.

Rylan traced his hand over most of the page. He did eventually color some of the shapes along hte border. He asked for Cranky the Crane, Spencer the train and Toby's windmill.

In case you child is not obsessed with Thom*as the Trai*n, everything on both lists (except for the basketball hoop) are Thom*as things. I think that Santa will be bringing a part of Sodor to our house this year! :)

You're a mean one...

Mr. Grinch! After the ICE exhibit, the boys obsession with the Grin*ch has not stopped growing. One day after reading the book, they asked for a G project. So I went back to my teacher stash and found this guy. I only had one extra copy, so we got to do a team project today.

Do you have BINGO markers? If not, go to a dollar store and invest. Not only are they perfect for dot crafts, but you can use them as a mess-free paintbrush too! Rylan chose green, his absolute favorite color along with brown, and Jacob chose red. We looked at the movie cover and figured out which parts were each color and then the boys got busy!

After all the painting was done, it was time for the "fluffies."

Ta-da! Here is our family Grin*ch! He hangs by the dinner table and the boys LOVE him.

Craft Time

Here is another BIG HIT from my favorite website. All you need is a tree shape cut out of a brown paper bag, a disposable fork, green paint and red paint. The boys had SOOOO much fun using a fork to paint!!! They laughed for the first 3-4 minutes because we make such a big deal out of eating with a fork and I think at first they thought I had lost my mind telling them to paint with a fork! After the green part dried they used the fingers and the red paint to make ball fingerprint ornaments. I forgot to take a photo of the finished product. It was a super fun project! Happy crafting! :)

Fun Day With Friends

While Jason and Troy were away at work, Heather and I were a little depressed that it was going to be a "regular" Saturday...you know, the non-December Fun kind of Saturday. The husbands don't want to miss any big fun, and we wanted to create some small fun that they would be OK missing. So we decided to head over to our favorite lunch stop and who should we see? This guy...

That's right...we are at the world's greatest fast food restaurant LIVE with their mascot dressed as Santa. To my 3 year olds, life does not get much better than "Santa Cow." Rylan declared that he was going to make the Santa Cow extra happy by eating all of his chicken! After our lunch date with Macy and Reid we went back to our house to do a little Christmas-y baking. Reid and Jacob were totally into swords, basketballs and rolling on the ground together. Macy and Rylan were totally into baking our gingerbread men and worked together wonderfully in the kitchen.
After mixing the dough, they rolled it and started cutting out the little g-men.
And Macy put them into the oven. We were careful not to peek for fear of one popping out at us!!!
For batch number 2, Jacob was ready to get his fingers dirty. He did a super job rolling more dough.
After they FINALLY cooled, the decorating began. It was simple - white icing and red hots, but to our kids it was perfect.
Even the 13 year old liked this part! :)
And to think all this fun started with this...
San*dra L* ee would be proud! In fact, opening the package made me have another great realization... Sometimes I get so caught up in things being "just so" or "from sctatch" that I miss the whole meaning. Today, a simple mix brought loads of fun and joy to 4 kids and even though it was kind of thrown together this morning, the point of making a memory happened and the kids did not care that the moms did not slave over the plans for hours. So I encourage you, just have fun and don't get caught up in being "perfect." (By the way, I'm mostly talking to myself!)

On another note - Heather always kids me because I have a Kit8chenAid mixer that is a decoration on my counter. When I bake cookies, I always mix by hand and don't use the mixer. What do you do? Am I the only mix with a spoon girl left? These were made with both the mixer and the spoon and I have to say, the mixer was quite quicker! :)

Thanks to Popa...

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Stop whatever you are doing. Print this recipe then go make them!!! My adorable 88 year old grandpa still clips recipes for me to try from the newspaper. This one was clipped yesterday and sounded too yummy to resist for more than 24 hours. It is DELICIOUS!!!! They are slightly better warm, but still worth EVERY point cold! Enjoy!

Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars

1 1/3 C flour

½ butter, softened

¾ C sugar (divided use)

¾ C light corn syrup

2 eggs

2 Tbsp. Flour

½ tsp vanilla

1 C chopped pecans

1 C chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. In medium mixing bowl, combine flour, butter and ¼ C sugar. Beat at low speed until crumbly. Press into the bottom of a 9x9 baking dish. Bake for 18 minutes or until golden.

In separate bowl, combine corn syrup, ½ C sugar, eggs, flour and vanilla. Beat at medium speed until well combined. Stir in pecans by hand.

Sprinkle chocolate chips over hot crust. Pour filling over chips and crust. Continue baking for 35 minutes or until set. Cut into bars.

The Big 3-3

Over the last month Jason and I have both celebrated our birthdays. I'm having trouble uploading the photos from Jason's, so I'll start with my BD. We were up in Dallas and began the morning with a delicious hot breakfast cooked by my father-in-law with "extra BD bacon." (He knows me too well!!!) Then Jason, the boys and I went to visit the most precious lady in the world, Evelyn. She will be 100 on 12/9 and was my great-aunt Ruthie's best friend. Visiting with Evelyn is like reading your Bible and seeing the Proverbs 31 lady in front of you.

After our visit, we met up with Mark and Martha for lunch at my fave - the Che*secake Factory. Jason had never eaten Godiva...now he has at least had a taste. It was wonderful!!

Then we stumbled across a VB STORE! A whole store devoted to VB!!! AND, they give you $20 off on your BD!!! So I got a new Wristlet in purple punch and was tickled pink!
It turned out to be a great day! Now for Jason's day of fun...

Grinch--y Christmas kick-off!

For Thanksgiving we went to DFW to spend time with Jason's family. It was so nice to get Jacob and Rylan together with thier cousin, Evan. They played and played! We also shared a lovely meal on Thursday. Then Saturday we went to the Gay*lord Texan and saw the Grinch ICE exhibit. It was so neat!!! They keep it at 9 degrees and give you a parka to stay warm. The ice sculptures were fabulous...I cannot say how cool they were! The boys LOVED seeing the story brought to life.
If you live in DFW, it would be a fun event. It was a little expensive and the wait was HORRIFIC. We waited in line for 3 hours while HOLDING the boys - no benches! Once you got to your time slot line it was about an hour of wiggling until you finally got to the ice. The ice part took us about 35 minutes. I would go first thing in the morning and avoid the long lines.

More fun to come!

Touchy Feely Box

This is another idea from my favorite website! It was super easy, cheap and fun! All I bought was a bag of black beans and a bag of barley. This was a great way to work on fine motor skill development and the boys did not even know it! :)

To make - pour the beans and barley into a plastic container. Then hide several small plastic toys in the beans. Kids dig for them and you will love hearing all the squeals! I hid spider rings with the ring cut off, spider pencil toppers, 2 small plastic bats and 2 bat rings with the ring cut off. All of that stuff was in my teacher stash, but you could easily find at a dollar store for any theme.

Then the boys dug in!!!


After they found all the critters, we had a math lesson! First we sorted the critters into a pile of spiders and a pile of bats. Then we took the pile of spiders and sorted by color. Once again, they did not even know they were learning! I love that!!!
We did the entire activity several times and have repeated it about once a day since then!

Happy Halloween!

This is all you need to a night of Halloween fun!
Jason was super excited about carving the pumpkin. It was the first time we have carved with the boys. The last two years they have just painted a pumpkin, but this was the year to begin carving!
Jacob and Rylan were both very captivated by the pumpkin and the big knife!
Rylan was not too sure about the "slimys" inside the pumpkin.
But he quickly discovered that it was fun!!!
Now it is Jacob's turn...
Then Jason drew on the face...
After about 30 seconds of each boy with the little tiny carving knife, they were done. The novelity did not last long. Jason did a great job though! And Rylan and Jacob were proud too! :)
Ta-da!
Costume photos to come...