Twas The Night Before Christmas

Hallmarks of the Holiday

We love to do holiday baking and Gingerbread House making at our house every Christmas.

Bobby and I did a lot of baking one Monday. We made gingerbread men, turtle, mint cookies, chocolate fudge and white cranberry fudge. 

Winnie helped me decorate the gingerbread men. For Family Home Evening we wrapped up 15 holiday plates of goodies and delivered them to our neighbors and friends. We should have made many more plates. There are a lot of people that we love that we missed.

 We had our cousins over one day and put together gingerbread houses. We had a total of 10 houses made!

My Christmas Angel

a Cello and a Violin

Hannah started playing the cello this year. All 6th graders start to play an instrument and Hannah wanted to do something besides the violin so she chose the cello.

She tried out for the district honors orchestra playing the violin and was accepted! She was one of the only two accepted from Ravenwood. I am proud of my girl!

Here she is at her 6th grade winter concert.

Here she is at her Christmas violin recital.

Santa 2012

Bobby was not excited to see Santa this year.

Baby It's Cold Out There!

It's is soooo cold this year!

Hannah Immigrates to America

Hannah's 6th grade class is studying immigration. It is a big unit and involves a lot of work for both parents and students. One of the assignments is to assume the identity of a fictitious immigrant. Hannah chose Eavleen Reagan an immigrant from Ireland. 

One of the assignments was to create a realistic journal that fit the time period. I showed Hannah how to cover a three ring binder with fabric and the she embroidered an "E" for the cover.

Here is one of her pages. She decided to tea stain all of her paper. Her journal was awesome and she spent a lot of time on it. She received "A", but lost points because it was a three ring binder. Seriously!

Hannah and her friend "Mika" during the Immigration Simulation. It was pretty neat they had a morning where everyone dressed up as their immigrant and went through customs and a health inspection. Afterwards everyone brought in a dish from their country. Hannah brought Irish cheese and crackers.

Hannah begged me to come and help out. I finally decided to come at the last minute and I am glad I did. I dressed up as a Lithuanian immigrant and spoke Lithuanian to all the child so they would feel disoriented and nervous. It was awesome.

Office Party

Here are some pictures from the office Christmas party this year. It was brilliant as usual and I was utterly wasted by the time the party started as usual. I am particularly proud of he broccoli Christmas tree I made and the 16 Christmas stockings I sewed for all the kids.

O Christmas Tree

On Saturday we cut down our Christmas tree. We waited for the perfect day and it was. The temperature had warmed up from a -15 to a warm 15 degrees. Just as we cut our tree the snow started to fall and then continued to fall for several hours leaving us with about 5 inches of fresh snow! Lovely day.

I love you Mamma

Bobby has started to say "I love you". 

He says it a lot.

I know he means it.
Each time he says. "I love you mamma" my heart swells.
 I bottle up that feeling and tuck it away to save...and remember.

I love him too.

Jack at 11 Months

Jack Facts:

Weighs 20 pounds
Finally has three teeth
Army crawls everywhere
Loves to do "yoga" especially plank and down dog
Pulls to standing
Sleeps in mom's closet.
Loooooves to nurse....especially in the night
Takes long naps
Loves to wrestle with Bobby
Falls down the stairs
Says mamma, hi, dad, and night night
Loves his family

Thanksgiving 2012

Our Thanksgiving was filled with many fun events. Here are pictures of a few.

The night before Thanksgiving our family participated in a "Turkey Trot" at the school. I was a 1 k in the FREEZING cold 5 degree weather. It was cold but fun and our whole family participated. Bobby made this hat to wear during the trot.

We had dinner with Nana and Papa and the Bundy family.

Here is a picture of Jack's very first Thanksgiving dinner...delicious!

After dinner a few of us went out to help Papa cut the Christmas tree. 

Bobby really enjoyed running the chainsaw....kidding!

Here is a picture of our November artwork. Actually Winnie did all of it except for the hand print turkey that is in the top right hand side of the window. Bobby made the hand print turkey.

This is the gratitude turkey that was in the office this year. We had over 100 feathers. It looked awesome!