It's Christmas time again!!

The day after Thanksgiving we always put up decorations and that is what we did again this year. I had some problems with my Christmas tree though. I plugged in the bottom section(of course it is fake) and the bottom lights didn't work. I kept asking Dan if we should go get a new one but of course it wasn't the smartest thing to do. Then I thought I could just take off the strand that is not working or it turned out to be 3 strands but of course they are built into the tree. So the last thing I could think of was I had a strand of icicle lights that the middle was out on so I wrapped them around the tree and put the dead ones in the back. Now I have a big clump of lights on the back of my tree but it has lights. Then we started to decorate and it didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would be. During this process we managed to only break one bulb but it did shatter all over the place.

Bailey putting her things on the bottom level.

I guess I can do this with my eyes closed.

Bria pointing to her things she put on.

Thanksgiving feast!

Bria got to have a Thanksgiving feast at school for kindergarten. All the kids got to dress up in either an indian or a pilgrim. Bria decided she was going to be a pilgrim. There was a lot of food, they had meat and cheeses, rolls, fruit, muffins, and all sorts of things. Bailey and I went there for part of it to see what it was like and Bailey jumped right in and made herself feel at home with her big sister.

Bria in her cute pilgrim outfit she made

50th Birthday Surprise!!

The kids in my family (Jessica) decided that we were going to throw my parents a surprise party for there 50th birthdays. My dads was in September and my moms is in December so we had the party on November 22. It was a lot of fun we had way to much food and cake. My sister made a really cool slide show and timeline of the last 50 years of my parents life and just life in general.

When my parents came in finally, we had a hard time getting them back to the house, anyway when they came in they had no idea what it was for. They thought it was Syd's friends being funny but then they saw there friends. I guess we should have had something there to say what it was for. My poor dad thought for the first part of the party that it was just for my mom and he felt bad that he didn't help out, but then soon realized that it was for him as well. It turned out to be a lot of fun and I hope everyone else had fun that came.

All the food and the timeline on the wall


My beautiful cake!


My parents walking in being surprised!

Buffalo Bills attire!

The kids and I decided we were going to surprise our Dad and put on our Buffalo gear for him for the Monday Night football game. I guess they are not on Monday nights very often. I thought we looked good.

Don't we look GOOD!

Burning Down the House!

A while ago I almost burnt my house down. Our toaster is not working properly and I was cooking lunch for the girls and went to go look on the computer for a recipe that I wanted all forgeting that I had stuck a piece of toast in the toaster. While I was in there Bria yelled mom your toast! I ran out of the den and my whole house was filled with smoke. It was a lesson to show the kids that smoke really does rise. It took days to get the smell out. I can still smell it on my cupboards.

This is the toast that almost took my house away!

The darndest things kids say!

I wish I carried around a video camera all of the time just in case there was something funny I wanted to catch on video. Well the other night was one of those times. We were over at my parents surprise birthday party and we were getting ready to leave and Bailey was giving my Dad (grandpa) a hug goodbye and then started naming the different things on your face. She said chin, cheek, eye and then nose, but then she stopped leaned back a little and pointed to his nose again and said BIG nose. It was the funniest thing I had heard in a long time. I thought that this would be a good thing to write down for later use.

Halloween Night

During the day we went over to Dan's work and went trick or treating. We also got to see for the first time where he works. So that started off the candy pile. Then we had Grandma and Grandpa VanZandt and the Ashby's come over and we all went Trick or Treating. It was a lot of fun. The girls had a blast. They had so much candy that they didn't want to hold their bags anymore. We just went around the neighborhood to some houses. This was the nicest night there has ever been for Halloween that I can remember. It was so warm, all we needed was a little jacket. It made it much more enjoyable. When the girls got home they had so much candy that Bailey said her tummy hurt. Then after all the eating they fell asleep so fast. It was a fun Halloween night.

My cute little girls all dressed up.


All of the trick or treaters there was a bunny, a poodle, Minnie Mouse and Cinderella

After getting home from trick or treating counting all the candy