Baking with Grandma

My mom and dad came to stay for a week right before Christmas. Mom, Erin, and her friend H. decided to make sugar cookies!!

Yummy!!

After clean up! (I love the boots.)

Here we have a miscellaneous collection of things we've done over the past few weeks.

  Above is the putting up of the Christmas tree. We try to wait til after Lance's birthday to 'begin' celebrating Christmas. Below is the HUGE pile of wood. For the first time we ordered a cord of wood so we could have a fire through most of the winter. Nice...

Chad let me open my birthday present early! It was a new lens for my camera! I took the photo below of Chad with the new lens on it. It takes fantastic people pics (although the one below is too dark). I can't wait to fiddle with it. Maybe Erin will pose for me.

Dance Class

Chad and I attended dance lessons at church tonight. It was a BLAST! I was not very good but we learned some basics and it was fun. (Waltz, foxtrot, cha cha, and the swing)

                       



Lance's Birthday

Lance just had a Birthday!

A BIG box of LEGOS!!

Playing with presents is a family affair!

The legos are a huge hit...Chad and the kids played with them ALL day for the rest of the day and the 3 or 4 days after that!!



Erin's Birthday

Erin just had a Birthday!

I designed and sewed a 'crayon wallet' for Erin to carry around her drawing supplies. It turned out pretty well. I'll need to tweak it a bit if I ever remake one but she likes it!

The boys were NOT excited about a working microphone...they are not fans of her singing.

The chocolate cake fell apart coming out of the pans but it tasted great anyway!





Happy Birthday Baby!!

Grey's First Concert!!

Thursday the 17th of November was Grey's first band concert! It's amazing the progress that can be made in just 3 months. Grey plays the French Horn and we are very proud of him!!

His name is at the bottom of the 3rd row:

The man in the orange shirt is the assistant band director.

It was VERY crowded!

The man in the background is the head band director.

Each section in the band got to play a 'solo' within the main song.

After the 6th grade preformed they sat in the bleachers while the 7th graders did their concert.

It was a great concert and afterwords we all went out for icecream. It was a fantastic family evening!

the Christmas Card Photo Shoot

So I FINALLY got my camera back and we were able to drive around town on Sunday afternoon and get some pics for the Christmas cards. It was COLD but at least most of the snow had melted off. (I'm not including the picture for the actual card...you'll just have to wait!)

This is my favorite...

the First Real Snow of the Season

So we had our first real snow this week. Several snowmen were built and destroyed. (Death by Halloween Sword...it was messy.)



Yep...grapes and a baby carrot!