Sydney's Birthday (and a tooth fairy pillow)

This past Monday was Sydney's birthday, and we went up to my parents' house to have a family party and spend the week with them. My mom's birthday was yesterday, so we were able to spend the day with her as well. We just returned today for the weekend, because the kids have their Christmas program on Sunday night and a rehearsal tomorrow morning.

When I took Sydney shopping to pick out her birthday decorations, she said that she wanted Strawberry Shortcake stuff. Well, as we walked through the party section of Wal-mart, she spotted some snowman plates with coordinating napkins that had polka dots (Soooo Cute!) and decided that she wanted that. It's a good thing she found (and liked) these first, because the "kid's section" of party decorations did not have Strawberry Shortcake. Well, we proceeded to pick out balloons and stuff and found that Wal-mart only has one brand of balloons now. Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they used to carry a wider variety of balloons. Anyway, we got some blue and white balloons that matched Sydney's snowman theme.

Well, we will NOT be buying these balloons again! Apparently, Larissa is now allergic to yet another thing. Look what blowing up balloons did to her...

I asked her if she could smile for me...here's her attempt...

We don't know if the balloons had latex or what and if that's what she's allergic to, but her face blew up like a balloon (no pun intended). She was pretty miserable for the rest of the day and even into the next day.

My niece, Kelly, decorated a banner for Sydney's party. I thought that was really sweet of her and that she did a great job on it.


Sydney chose a carrot cake for her birthday cake. The cream cheese frosting looks like it was melting off of the cake, but it wasn't. =) It just wasn't as thick as a regular frosting for some reason, but it tasted great!


We used to just get those number candles for the girls' birthdays, but for the last few years, they've been requesting the individual candles. Sydney had a hard time getting all of them blown out at once. Here's attempt number one...

Here's attempt number two...

That last one just doesn't want to be blown out....

Finally...she got it! =)

Licking the icing off of the candles is a MUST and is sooo much fun! =)

Here's all the cousins. You can see the snowman plates and dotted napkins on the table...they were sooo cute! =)

Among Sydney's presents was a new outfit that Alyx helped to pick out for Sydney. It was a Hello Kitty shirt with some khaki pants. This was one of my favorites, so that's why I'm highlighting it. =) I thought it was really cute, because the picture on the front was in reverse on the back side of the shirt. Here she is right after she opened it...


Here she is the next day, modeling the front and back of her new outfit. I know...her hair is hanging in her face. She really doesn't like for me to put anything in it, but sometimes I just have to make her, because I get tired of not being able to see both of her eyes all the time. =)



On a side note, I just recently finished Sydney's tooth fairy pillow. She was thrilled with it and is now excitedly awaiting her first loose tooth. =) She chose the same type of yarn that Larissa did, so it's very fuzzy and difficult to make out the tooth fairy angel on the front. They love them, and that's all that matters. =)

Our Christmas Trees

We have been blessed over the years to have been given (artificial) Christmas trees by both of our parents....We've never had to buy one! =) Since we've had two-story houses for the last 3 or 4 years, we've been putting our "regular" Christmas tree downstairs in the living area and a Christmas tree upstairs for the kids...they LOVE this! Here's some pictures of them in front of "their" tree. It has teddy bears, blocks, Disney-themed bells, sleds and other various hand-made ornaments.

Here's our family picture in front of the Christmas tree that is downstairs.

We took a lot of pictures and the kids were getting pretty sick of it. =)

Sydney was the most patient, but even she gave up after a while. =)

Baby update

For those of you who aren't on Facebook (and missed my update there), I had a doctor's appointment this week, and the doctor was able to find the baby's heartbeat! =) He said it sounds great! My first sonogram is scheduled for January 6th, and they should be able to tell the baby's gender (if the baby cooperates). We were "on the fence" early on in the pregnancy as to whether or not we wanted to know ahead of time, but now, we are all just too curious and will definitely try to find out. =)

I'll keep you updated...

Planets

Did you see Venus and Jupiter earlier this week? That was pretty cool. It was hard to get a good picture, though, because there were a lot of clouds in the sky. Here's the best one out of all the ones I took.


I wish I could have gotten a closer view of it, but every time I zoomed in on it, it got too blurry. =( I guess that's why I need a DSLR, huh? Oh, well, it was still pretty awesome.

Thanksgiving

We were able to go up to my parents' house Wednesday evening, spent all day Thursday with the fam, and then had to leave Friday afternoon to do a little moving before the BIG move on Saturday.

Even though we only had a couple of days with my family, we really enjoyed the time that we did have. While we waited for "Thanksgiving Dinner," my dad gathered the kids in the family room and told them some stories from some books that he's had for many, many years. I remember reading from them when I was a kid. They are stories about jungle animals that teach morals to young kids. He was able to remember quite a few of them and really entertained the kids. Here are some pictures from "story time." =)

My dad really gets into the stories with motions and character voices. He's the best! =)

Mom and I usually go all out decorating the tables for dinner, but there just wasn't time this year. We were too busy with food preparation, and that's more important to us. =) Mom did a great job substituting sugars and oils in her recipes. She made some pie crust dough for two apple pies and a mince meat pie. We usually just use the jar of mince meat to put in the pie, but it's full of stuff that is not good for us. So, Mom found a recipe that had better ingredients, and the pie turned out great! Jason worked on the crust and made leaves and berries out of the extra dough to put on top of the pie. Look how pretty!


Does anyone else like mince meat pie? I'll have to get the recipe from my mom and post it. We top it with what we call "hard sauce." We leave out the ingredient that makes it "hard." =) It's basically a confectioner's sugar frosting. We found a confectioner's sugar made from evaporated cane juice that worked perfectly. We'll definitely be repeating this recipe for Christmas.

I hope you all had a great holiday with your friends and family.

The move and the new house

Here's the understatement of the year: "I've been busy!" I'm so far behind in blogging and have so many things to share, so I'm just going to do my best to fill you all in as soon as I can. For those who hadn't heard (since my last blog entry), we were not able to get possession of the house until last Tuesday, so we didn't actually move until this past Saturday. The move went as smoothly as it could have, and there were minimal "tragedies/casualties." =)

I'm very pleased at how quickly our house is getting into a functioning order. Last night Jason helped me put my desk area together and set up my computer and printer. I'm very excited, because the bonus room that is upstairs is going to house my desk, Jason's desk, the school stuff, and the kids toys and books. =) We have an awesome view of the natural lake behind our house from this room, too. Check it out...

This one was actually taken through the window.

Yes, that's an island in the middle of the water.

These were taken at sunset last night.

As always, God's timing was PERFECT! We were not as ready as we thought we were two Saturdays ago, so we are very thankful that it didn't work out until this past weekend. We were initially concerned that with it being the Saturday after Thanksgiving we wouldn't have anyone to help us, but we ended up having more guys help us than we would have had the previous Saturday. There were right around 15 adults and 5 children (yes, the kids carried stuff, too.) helping us with the move. We are so blessed to have such an awesome group of friends in our church. I hope we can still call them friends after this move. (We have some monster furniture.) =} Seriously, though, we really appreciate all of you who came out to help us and those of you who were unable to help but prayed for us and the move. We couldn't have done it without you...You're the best! =)

Here are some shots of the house in case you're curious. You'll have to overlook the mess of boxes everywhere, but a least it will give you an idea of what it looks like.

This is the entryway with a living room/dining room on the right.

The dining room

This is the view into the family room from the entryway.

The family room with sliding glass doors to the back porch, door to the master bedroom, and stairs to the bonus room.

The view of the kitchen from the breakfast room. The living/dining room is through the arched entry on the left. The family room is on the right. The arch on the right leads to 2 bedrooms and a bathroom.

The breakfast room. Laundry room is on the right.

The laundry room.

You know me...I have to take pictures of flowers and plants, so here are a couple of pictures of what is already existing in my yard. If you can identify the little cluster of pink flowers in the first picture, I'd love to know what they are.



After the move on Saturday, my friend, Peggy, and her boys kept me company while I waited for the cable guy. The kids had a blast out back. There was a nice breeze, so they were able to fly the kites. Here are some pictures...