by Brooke on December 30, 2011
*I’m going to try and update with our Christmas pictures and then we will see if I can blog better in 2012! *
One of our favorite family Christmas traditions is to go to “Breakfast with Santa” at the Grand America with Grandma Wendy and Grandpa Russ. The kids get all spiffied up in their new Christmas outfits and we all feast on a YUMMY breakfast buffet.
When we’re sufficiently stuffed we get to have pictures taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus—they are the real deal, folks!!
Haylie was so excited that she ran up to Santa with a huge grin on her face–no tears this year!
Annie wanted a Jessie and Bullseye set (from Toy Story 2).
Brandon’s dream was to get an ipod touch.
Haylie asked for a Lala Loopsy doll.
Did Santa come through on their wishes?!?!? Stay tuned to find out!
The Grand America is all decked out this time of year, with gorgeous trees and displays all over. This was one of my favorite trees, I love those handblown glass ornaments! They looked just like balloons. This was such a fun (and delicious!) way to kick off December–we love Breakfast with Santa!!
by Brooke on November 8, 2011
Each year we carve pumpkins and each year I wonder why we don’t just paint the pumpkins—nobody loves scooping out the “guts”! But in the end it’s worth it when we light the candles and see how cool they look on the front porch (and when we eat roasted pumpkin seeds later on).
Everyone designs their own pumpkin and it’s always fun to see what the kids come up with. Here is Haylie sketching out what she wanted her pumpkin to look like. She wanted it to be a flower, like this:
I think she approved.
Brandon requested a Harry Potter theme, and with Jaden’s help they created this:
Awesome!
Annie wanted her pumpkin to have a surprised face, so this is how hers turned out:
I love the eyelashes and we used the flower from Haylie’s pumpkin as an accessory!
We ran out of time to carve Jaden’s that afternoon (I hurried and carved his later). And for some odd reason, the pumpkin I chose at the patch was petrified or something, because it was hard as a rock and we couldn’t even make a dent in it with the knife. I had to drill off the top to scoop out the seeds, but after that I got sick of it and stopped! Oh well! Just my luck!
Ooooh, but here are the pumpkins all lit up at night:
After we were done with the pumpkins, Jaden went mountain biking so the kids and I made a simple Halloween treat: Spider Oreos.
Double Stuffed Oreos. Twizzler Pull ‘N Peels. M&M’s. (And a little bit of frosting to make it all stick together). Done!
Our favorite part was eating them when we were done. Yum!