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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Family Fun, So Many Reasons to be Thankful

Our family fun started last night with my dad's "birthday party". His birthday was actually a couple days ago, but we were not able to see him until last night. So he opened his gift from us last night. We got him a couple country music CD's. Earlier at supper, Emily told him that we got him a clock radio. I don't know where she got that, but we didn't get him a clock radio. I told him maybe it was his Christmas present. Hmmm ...

Then after that, we did a lot of prep work for Thanksgiving dinner. We set out a lot of the ingredients we would need for everything we were going to make. After we were done, we put the PJ's on the kids and then read a couple books and went to bed. This picture is Tyler and Emily reading in Grandmother and Grandaddy's bed.

And then Carter joined for a picture too. He was very interested in Emily's hair when we first got there. Emily didn't even seem to mind.

This morning, we got up early and started cooking. Dad smoked two turkey breasts and a ham. We had all kinds of dressing and vegetables and salads and monkey bread. *YUM* And I made a couple chocolate pies, a pecan pie, and a new recipe - Black Bottom Cheesecake Pecan Pie. I'm not sure if that's the official name, but that's basically what it was.

Here's a picture of the chocolate pies. They were soooo good, as usual. (There are only two pies even though it looks like four.)

And here's a picture of the pecan pie (right) and the Cheesecake Pecan pie (left). The cheesecake pie wasn't technically supposed to look like that. It was suposed to have the pecans on the top instead of town in the middle of the pie. I'm not sure what I did wrong. It tasted good anyway though.And my aunt brought a yummy chocolate cake. It was soooo rich! Sorry I didn't get pictures of the rest of the food. I was kinda late on this one.Then the family came over and we had a good time visiting and EATING. I'm pretty sure nobody went home hungry this time.

And after lunch, we sat around visiting some more. This is my brother and Carter hanging out on the couch. What a handsome little boy!

Then Emily got to hold Carter. She was so excited. It was hard to get a good picture of the two of them. He looked so big sitting in Emily's lap.

We've had a really fun day visting and play with everyone. I didn't do such a good job getting pictures of everything. I have been practicing recording some short movies with my camera. I'm going to try to post one on here tomorrow I think. Mike and I are going over to Shreveport tomorrow to see what's new over there. Mike has never been to Louisiana and I haven't been there in years. It will be nice to get away and do something together.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

More pictures later ... time to start cooking!

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Prayer Request for FIL and "Tidbits"

I'm coming to you guys with a prayer request tonight for my father-in-law. He went to the doctor today and found out that he has pneumonia. He's been sick a lot this fall and just can't seem to get over this "mess". So please lift him up in your prayers tonight

"Tidbits"

• I got my hair cut this afternoon and it's SHORT. Well, my hair is always short but it's shorter than usual. My stylist was cracking me up with a story about how she wished she had long hair and what she would do with it. We won't go there on this wholesome blog.

• I was outside watering my fall flowers this afternoon and the mail carrier drove all the way up to our house to deliver a package. By "all the way" I mean he literally drove up into our yard and pulled right up beside me. He never comes up to our house! If it doesn't fit in the mailbox, he either leaves it on the side of the road beside the mailbox or takes it back to the post office.

• I was totally excited to see that my cuz Martha posted a comment on my blog the other day! I totally didn't even know she was reading it. I hope to be able to see her family and the new grandbaby this weekend when we're "home" for Thanksgiving!!

• I hurt my car this morning on my way to work. D'Oh! I hate that! Don't worry, nobody was hurt.

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Sweet Treats

This weekend, I did all my cooking for Thanksgiving.

I always make some awesome homemade cracker jacks. They are sooooooo buttery and yummy. Emily was a bit fascinated by the popcorn air popper. I used like three batches of popcorn so she got to check it out quite a bit. (You'll have to excuse all the junk on the counter in this picture!)

And here are the cracker jacks cooling on the table. Mike says they "talk" when they come out of the oven.I made soooo much popcorn. It covered the dining table and filled four gallon size zip lock bags. Yum! Look Dad! This is what I'm bringing to your house!

I also made some white chocolate covered pretzels at Mike's request. I usually make these at Christmas, but ... I "sacrificed" and made them early. I was going to make something else, but oh well. Boy are they tasty!

Sweet or not, what's your favorite dish at Thanksgiving?

My favorite dish is sweet potatoes ... prepared any way .. with marshmallows or without, candied or not, pecans on top or not ... in a pie, on a plate or in a bowl. Yummy yummy yummy!

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Not Me! Monday and an Open Letter to MckMama

Well, it's Not Me! Monday yet again. Lets just dive right in ...

• I did not wake up thinking that I was not going to participate in Not Me! Monday this week. I'm just too tired and busy and besides, nothing noteworthy has happened in the Not Me! department lately anyway.

• I am not totally blown away by all the hits my blog has received as a result of the shoutout from MckMama. My blog did not get over 1000 hits before noon today. Wow! Wow! Wow!

• I did not tell my three-year-old child that the policeman was going to come knock on our door if she didn't stop screaming and crying. I did not use that line because I'd used it before and it worked. It did not work this time too. I do not promise I won't use it again.

An Open Letter to MckMama

Heeeeeeeeeey MckMama! Thank you so much for the honorable mention on your Small Fryday Contest. I'm glad you liked the post with all the links on it. I will admit (even without the cover of a Not Me! Monday) that seeing all the extra hits on my blog is almost as good as getting a real prize. I am also proud to say that my blog post has created some additional attention for the String of Pearls organization's website. (Also interestingly, I noticed that lots of people clicked out to the link where I mentioned that your kids have real names. I think many of your blog readers must be the curious sort.)

I just wanted you to know that I admire the way you put your faith out there for your blog readers to see. This was clearly demonstrated by the way you handled yourself and your family while dealing with the life-threatening condition that your son, MckMuffin, battled before he was even born. God is using your life story and your blog for great things. That is evident by the ginormous blog following that your story has created.

Over the past few weeks, I have begun to feel like God has led me to create this blog for a purpose greater than the obvious. My blog was originally created to help us keep in touch with our out-of-state family. But I think God will use this blog for great things! Sometimes I wish I knew what was in store for me, but it will all be done in God's perfect timing.

In closing, I would just like to thank you for being an example, a shining light in the darkness. I am still praying for you and your sweet family.

Love in Christ,

Jennifer

P.S. Feel free to link to my blog any time. ha ha

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Small Fryday Contest

Updated: Wow! I am blown away to be mentioned on MckMama's blog. And I am slightly embarrassed that I fully believed she would never visit my blog. (Otherwise, I probably would have left out that last paragraph in the original post!) Anyway, I hope you'll stick around and check out my Not Me! Monday posts and find out what's been going on with us. (Sorry, couldn't resist a little link action there.)

Original Post: One of the first blogs I started following was MckMama's My Charming Kids blog. MckMama is a Christian lady who lives somewhere in the central time zone and is mother to FOUR small but adorable children. She's very industrious. She's into baby wearing, baby food making, cloth diapering, and she has a lot of ultra cool, organic, earth-friendly ideas for kids. And even with many small children, she has time to take them to the community center and the children's museum and swimming and on and on! She's also got her own photography business. She's even kind enough to give photography lessons to all her blog readers. Besides all that, she's humble enough to admit that she's not perfect and God is not finished with her yet. She's also the wonderful host(ess?) of Not Me! Monday.

This weekend, MckMama is hosting a contest in honor of her (only) daughter, Small Fry. (That's her blog nickname, not her real name.) To enter, all we have to do is write a post on our blog and link back to MckMama's blog. If I'm picked, I could win a custom blog header and some other neat stuff. If you haven't already, you should stop by and check her out. You won't be disappointed. Also, take a minute to check out a very worthy cause: String of Pearls.

Heeeeeeeeeey MckMama! How's that for linking back to your blog?!?? Yeah man, I know you love all those links. (Note to the blog newbies: All those underlined words are links. You could actually click on them to go to different posts or blogs or websites ... if you wanted to do that.) Anyway, MckMama ... I'll bet I've got more links than any of your other bloggie friends! Yeah, I'm a lovin me some links. Mr. Linky ain't got nothin on me now! Haha. (Okay okay, MckMama doesn't really read my blog, but if she did I hope she'd be impressed with all the links. I spent a lot of time finding just the right posts to use.)

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Emily's Thanksgiving Feast

Today was Emily's Thanksgiving Feast at preschool. Her class was the Indians and another class was the Pilgrims. They all came together for a nice Thanksgiving Feast, provided by the parents.

They had all kinds of good food. Emily's Nanny made petite pumpkin pies with Cool Whip for the class.

This is Jackson .. one of Emily's classmates and one of my Cubbies kids.
Quite a few parents came to help out with the party

We had a room full of fun.

Emily said this little guy's name is Grant. He was running around the table after he got done eating. Yes, the lady in the green shirt is the teacher and she was telling him to stop. Slightly too slow, obviously. If you're Grant's mom, this is pretty much what he was doing after lunch. Don't worry, I don't think Grant's mom will be reading my blog any time soon.

This little girl in green was twirling around in circles ... the other little boy in the background played the piano for us. In other words, it was a really nice party.

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Christmas Songs

I realize that it's too early for this discussion, but ...

The last couple years since Emily has been big enough to know what's going on around this time of year, I've realized that I can't remember all the words to the Christmas songs that I once knew. For the last 15 years or more, I've had little reason to sing Christmas songs. It's not that I didn't like Christmas, but I think teenagers and young adults have little reason to sing Christmas songs. I'd say that most Christmas songs are sung by kids and parents of young kids.

Mike and Emily and I were riding home from Madison's party the other night and we started singing our favorite Christmas songs. Well, I tried to sing the 12 Days of Christmas, but I couldn't remember what was on some day. And then after I sang the 10th day, I totally thought I was done. Luckily, Mike remembered what went on all the days and so he helped me sing it. Actually, I was unsure of at least a few of the words on most of the songs I tried to sing. How sad!

I have been looking for a Christmas Song Book that has some simple sheet music and the words to a lot of my favorite songs. We had a book like that when I was a girl. I remember trying to peck out some of the songs on the piano. I was never good, but it was fun. So far, I have not been able to find what I'm looking for. Do any of you have a good Christmas Song Book or know of one that you could recommend?

Be sure to check out the Christmas shopping poll on the sidebar! I voted "Yes!"

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What do you see?

What details do you notice in this picture? Take a closer look and then post what you see in the comments. (You can click on the picture to make it bigger.)

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Love it or Leave it - Steam 'n Mash Potatoes

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the frozen mashed potatoes by Ore Ida.


Well, we tried them last night with my burned roast. (Yes, we ate it anyway.) I followed the packaged directions and nuked the potatoes in the bag for 10 minutes and then let it stand for two minutes. Then I poured the contents of the bag into my favorite mixing bowl and added butter, salt and milk then mixed/mashed them as usual. I noticed the consistency was a little different than my normal mashed potatoes. But the taste was pretty good.

If I made a batch of these and a batch of my regular mashed potatoes for a side-by-side taste test, would you be able to tell which one was my regular potatoes?

Mike: Yes!
Me: Yes!
Emily: Mama, can I have a cookie with my mashed potatoes?

The Verdict: Love it! (Well, not love it, but like it and would buy it again.)

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Happy Birthday Madison!

Tonight, we celebrated Madison's 9th birthday at Mazzios pizza. It was buffet night and the place was totally packed! There were even people standing around waiting for tables and the manager brought a bench from the lobby to one of the tables to give people more places to sit. Our party of about 20 people had enough tables, but we were split up. Half of us sat near the front of the restaurant and the others had to sit in the back. We still had a good time visiting with everyone though.

We got Madison a box set of Boxcar Children books and a book light. I think she will enjoy the books. I remember reading those books when I was a kid and I saw that they are still writing more books in the series.

The three girls had a good time tonight, as usual. They seem to like to copycat each other. Seeing them together is almost like a stairstep effect because they are all about three years apart. Madison just turned 9, Sarah just turned 6 and Emily is 3. They are fun to watch.

Well, here are some pictures from tonight. The boys are Madison's cousins on the other side. They also have a four-month-old brother who is not pictured. He was being very sweet though. Just sat in the stroller kicking his feet and sucking on his tongue.

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