Christmas Decorating

It's a tradition in our house to decorate for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving, so, in keeping with tradition, we decorated last weekend!  It was alot of fun, I love Christmas and all the decorations look so festive and lovely.  :-)

After setting up the tree and fluffing out all the branches Mark sat down and tested all the strings of lights.  We had a lot of dead bulbs that he had to replace.  Fortunately we bought extra bulbs last year.  All the kids tried to "help".

Then Mark hung all the lights and garland.  Finally, I unwrapped all the ornaments and handed them off to everyone to hang on the tree.  Needless to say, the ornaments are a little heavy on the bottom!

Here it is! 

Thanksgiving 2011

Each year for Thanksgiving we go to either my parents or Mark's, alternating years.  This year was our year to go to Mark's parents house.  All of Mark's family was there, it was a great time of food and fellowship.  And, I actually took some pictures!  For some reason at Mark's parents house I always forget, but this year I made myself take a few, Yay!

Since it is so rare to get all the family together we took a picture of all the grandkids, 15 all together!  Quite a houseful! 5 boys, 10 girls.  All the kids did great for the picture except Micah, he was not a happy camper.  :-(

The kids ate their Thanksgiving meal on picnic tables in the kitchen.

All of the adults ate their meal in the dining room.   Look at all that food!!!

And after all that food we all sat and relaxed.  My mother-in-law and I had cups of tea together. :-)  It was a wonderful day!

Christmas Tree for the Dollhouse!

I Love Christmas!  And since I love it so much, I knew I had to have a Christmas tree for the dollhouse.  After looking around a bit for a tree here in town and scouring the internet for ideas I finally found one at Michaels.  It is made for a Christmas village and is a smidge tall but I love it!  I bought the mini christmas lights with it as well.  They were both on sale for 50% off, yay!  I made the tree skirt from a piece of felt, it's not what I want permanently but it will get me by for this season.  I also made the silver garland by stringing tiny clear seed beads onto a long piece of thread.  I apologize for the pictures, I have not been able to figure out how to take good pictures of mini's yet.

Christmas tree outside the house with the lights off.

And with the lights on...

And finally, in the dollhouse!  So pretty!

Emmaline's Birthday Party!

On Sunday we celebrated Emmaline's 6th Birthday with a "princess-flower" party, Emmaline's choice.  :-)  It ended up being mostly princess but I did use some flowers to decorate. 

Almost all of both my family and Mark's was able to come, as well as some friends so it was a large turnout.  We turned the garage into a play area for the kids, which kept most of them contained.  The first thing we did was face painting, I made some face paint earlier in the week and used it to paint a picture on one cheek of each of the kids that wanted it done.  While I was working on one kids face the other kids colored pictures and played with some toys that I had out.

Coloring sheets and crayons

Face painting area

 After we finished up with those activities we moved on to the cake.  I made a Barbie doll cake, I found the idea on line and then made it from there.  Emmaline loved it!  I also made cupcakes, decorated with pink frosting and white flowers just like the barbie dress. 

 

 

 

We finished up the party by opening Emmaline's gifts.  She had such a good time and is already talking about next years party!

Kids Day

Sorry I didn't post last week, I had company over in the afternoon when I normally post so I elected not to put anything up.

We don't celebrate Halloween but instead do "kids day".  We carve pumpkins, eat candy and play games.  Here are some pics.

All the kids had a pumpkin which they helped clean out.  Then they told Mark what they wanted on it and he drew it on the pumpkin and carved it for them.

Here are the finished pumpkins.  From left to right:  Elijah's - turtle, Emmaline's - person holding a flower, Josiah - airplane, Jeremiah - train, Micah - car.

Sorry to make this post so short but 3 of the kids are sick, throwing up, and I am also sick so I will need to get back to taking care of them and trying to take it easy myself.

Another Birthday Party!

On Sunday we celebrated my Dad's Birthday with my family at my parent's house.  It was a wonderful time of fellowship and fun!

First Snow!!!

Last week we got our first snow!  We got a couple of inches of very wet snow.  The kids wanted to play outside but then once they realized how cold it was they wanted right back in the house.  Ha!

Shop Move

This past weekend we spent 2 days moving Mark's shop to a new building.  Our lease was up on our original shop so we looked around a bit and located a shop a bit closer to our house, with an office, and a big bathroom, and bigger area for working on cars, all for $400 LESS a month!

We had to move 6 cars from one shop to the other, 2 were running but not drivable, and the rest had to be pushed.  It was quite a lot of work getting them from one place to the other.  Then, of course, there was all the tools and miscellaneous stuff, (LOTS of miscellaneous stuff...).  We stayed up till almost midnight 2 nights getting everything moved.  I'm so glad it's all done, now we just have to get started on getting settled into the new shop... :-)

Our new shop

Getting one of the cars moved in...

And unpacking some of the miscellaneous stuff.  The kids were a big help.  :-)