Cookies for Santa

This evening, Emily and I made Christmas cookies for Santa. We made snowmen, Christmas trees and stockings.

We rolled the extra dough into balls. And the dipped them into red or green sugar.

We decorated the cooled shapes with red icing, colored sugar, cinnamon dots and other goodies.
We finally got them all decorated.So proud of our hard work.
They're so pretty.

And SO good.

Hurry to our house, Santa.

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A Christmas Dress and a Delicious Cake

This morning, we went to church. Emily wore her (other) Christmas dress. I never know the proper protocol for holiday-wear. Is it the Sunday before the holiday or the Sunday nearest the holiday? Anyway, this is a picture of Emily in her Christmas dress. It has an empire waist and a fairly long skirt on it.

After church, we went to Outback Steakhouse to celebrate my birthday with Mike's family.

My cake was soooooooo yummy. It was a marble cake with lots of buttercream frosting. Mike did GOOD on this one! And .. even better .. we have plenty of leftovers. :)

Anyway, we all had a good time visiting and celebrating at lunch.

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Emily's Christmas Party

Yesterday, I went to Emily's Christmas Party at her preschool. Everyone brought something for the lunch. They had lots of good food.

Finger PB&J's, chips, veggies and dip, fresh fruit, Christmas tree cakes, fruit snacks, CapriSun to drink, etc ...

All her friends were there ... Gracie, Emily, Jackson and Grant. Her teachers, Mrs. Debbie and Mrs. Edith.

More of her friends ... Lundyn and her mom and Jackson.

Overheard in the car today ...

Emily: "Daddy, don't let Santa Claus take my Mama's jewelry."

Daddy: "Santa won't take Mama's jewelry."

Emily: "Daddy, don't let him take it. It's my Mama's jewelry."

Daddy: "Santa doesn't steal. He won't take Mama's jewelry. He'll just come to our house and put our presents under the tree and then leave."

Emily: "Don't let him take Mama's jewelry, Daddy"

Daddy: "Okay, I won't let him take it."

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Emily's Christmas Program

Update #4: I also uploaded a new "White Christmas" video on the post from earlier this week. Click here to go see it. (The second video on that post is the new one.)

Update #3: A couple pictures posted at the bottom.

Update #2: Wait! I found a fourth video! It's also posted below. :)

Update #1: Revised to all ALL THREE videos are posted now.

We went to Emily's Christmas Program last night at her preschool. The kids all did really good. I got several short videos of her group, but I'm STILL having a hard time uploading them. I re-started the video recording every 30 seconds, but I guess the file size is still too large. *disappointed*

Okay the videos are posted now. Emily is the third little girl from the left with the dress that's black on top and white on bottom with a red bow. The little girl to the left of Emily is her "best friend" Lundyn. The boy to the right of Emily is one of our Cubbies kids, Jackson.

I also got a couple pictures from last night.

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She's Dreaming of a White Christmas

Okay I finally got one of Emily's videos posted. It's much shorter than the one I wanted, but I could not get the good one to upload. The other one was about a minute long and soooo cute. She's sitting in front of Heather's Christmas tree. I hope I can get some more video at her program tomorrow night. I'll just have to remember to keep it SHORT. I hope you enjoy!

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Unpacked, Organized and Decorated

Emily and I had a fun weekend with Heather and Stephen. I think we all did a good job getting things unpacked, organized and decorated. Here is our weekend in pictures.

We unpacked a lot of wedding gifts.

Emily helped take the tags off the napkin rings. Looks like she's really trying hard, eh? Emily did a lot of playing with Stephen. She watches him a lot. And Emily did a lot of hiding in alllll of Aunt Heather's closets.And we colored in a new Crayola Color Wonder book. And we organized all kinds of things and them into clear plastic containers.

And we unpacked lots of boxes and bags.

Mom got picked to climb the ladder to put decorations on top of the kitchen cabinets.

One morning, Stephen cooked us pancakes for breakfast ...

... while his little friend watched and played nearby.

This is Heather's mantle that we (not me) decorated.Stephen helped hang this large picture on the wall in the living room. This is part the decorating that we did in the kitchen .. umm, minus the bright yellow ladder. And another part of the kitchen.
Well there were several other things that are not pictured, but you get the idea. We hated to have to leave. And somewhere between their house and ours, I lost a hubcap off my car. Argh!!! Hate it when things like that happen!

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You're Invited!

You're invited to:

Emily's Christmas Program

When: Thursday, December 18, 7pm

Where: Email me for location!

This is Emily's Christmas program with her preschool class. We'd love to see you all there. It should be an exciting time of singing and cuteness and more! Contact me for more details.

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Getting Settled

Mom and Emily and I are staying with Heather and Stephen this weekend. We're going to help them get unpacked and settled into their new house. We've already gotten started on the kitchen. Their dishwasher takes sooooo long to wash a load so we're keeping it running a bunch.

I need to sneak some before and after pictures of one of the spare bedrooms. Our goal is to get that room unpacked and organized enough that I can sleep in there tomorrow night instead of on the couch. I've slept on Heather's couch before so I know I'll sleep fine. Actually, I might have the better deal since Grandmother has Emily sleeping in her room. Oh, and did I mention that we forgot Emily's doll Stephanie? Yep, Stephanie is spending the weekend with Nanny. Emily was upset when she first realized that Stephanie wasn't with us in the car, but she went to sleep fine without her tonight. Whew! Disaster avoided.

I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

To Mike: I hope you're staying out of the present closet while we're gone. Santa is watching!

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Ebates

Have you ever heard of EBATES.COM? You can find discounts and coupons at some of your favorite retailers AND you get up to 25% cash back for shopping online. You can find a lot of your favorite sites like Barnes & Nobles.com, Dell.com, Target.com, Gap.com, Macys.com, Overstock.com, and on and on.

It works kinda like this ... you get $5 in your account just for signing up and then you search for a store or a product on EBATES.COM. You click on the store to go to their website and just shop as usual. If you make a purchase, EBATES.COM will credit your account. Every three months, they'll send you a check if you have more than $5.01 in your account.

This Monday, they're having a Cyber Monday II promotion where a lot of stores will have Double Cash Back. So what are you waiting for? Sign up and go shopping! It's FREE and it's easy!

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Tree Trimmings

Since so many of you asked about the weird black tracks in the picture of our Christmas tree in the post earlier this week ...

Okay so maybe nobody asked about it, but surely some of you were at least a little bit curious?

Well the tracks are for our new Christmas Train. It was a total pain to get the tracks up into the tree, but the train is really cute. Emily likes to run it around the tracks every night.

Here's another picture of the train engine and the cars.

And this is an ice cream cone ornament that Emily picked out. It's very pretty and glittery.

The ornament on the right is one of my new snowman ornaments. The one on the left is Emily's first Christmas ornament. It has a little memory booklet inside it that is completely blank. ;) As usual. ;)
We also have a whole set of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ornaments. This is the little Rudolph ornament.

We have lots of other ornaments, but those are the ones featured tonight. You'll have to stay tuned to see more of our Christmas decorations.

Until next time ...

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Not Me, Christmas Tree

Well, it's Not Me! Monday. I didn't participate last week so I'm trying really hard to think of something that I DIDN'T do this week.

Hmmmm .....

Ummm ...

*thinks*

Ahhh ...

Lets see ...

I ...

Uhhh ...

*ponders*

Okay I got one ...

• I did not make a pecan pie on Saturday night that turned out yucky.

• I did not make another pecan pie on Sunday afternoon that also turned out yucky.

• I am so. not. done making pecan pies.

Oh, Christmas Tree

On Saturday afternoon, we went to North Pole City to look for a new angel to go on top of our new pre-lit Christmas tree. They had lots of ornaments, fully decorated trees, Christmas village pieces, trains, bells, nutcrackers, stuffed toys, stars, Santas, snowmen, and of course angels.

They had small angels, very big angels, angels on stands, and angel tree toppers. They didn't have anything that just grabbed me, but I picked the best one they had.

This is our pretty little angel. She lights up.

On Sunday afternoon, we got out the tree trimmings and let Emily put the decorations on the tree. As you can see, they all went in one spot. I did go back and move them around after she was done with it.

We also put out some of the other decorations including this Frosty the Snowman that sings and dances. Emily doesn't like him at first, but she eventually warms up to him.

I didn't end up with a picture of our full (re)decorated Christmas tree and I want to show you some of our other Christmas things over the next few days. Hope I can find time to take some more pictures. I don't know about you, but I always have to either move all the unsightly "stuff" out of the pictures or crop the "stuff" out after the fact. It's more time consuming than you'd think!

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We're back!

We've been busy this week getting back into the routine of our life after a fun trip to Arkansas for Thanksgiving. We got some Christmas shopping done on Black Friday, got our family pictures taken, had a bon fire and more.

Our little family

Emily and her cousin, Tyler

A special note to my family and friends:

I would love to go to the Point of Grace holiday concert for my upcoming birthday!

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