Christmas Eve

The stocking are hung by the chimney with care, the clothes are ironed, the pork

loin is stuffed, the chocolate chip cookie pie is in the oven,

and the cat is snuggled all nice under the tree.

Guess we're ready for Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of you!  I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Postcard Friendship Friday #82

Yay!  I finally got time to post a postcard for Postcard Friendship Friday. 

As always, hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

I bought this postcard at an antique shop in Hannibal MO this spring when we were there.  There's nothing written on the back, but someone wrote 1912 at the top on the front.  I wonder if that's the year its from.  Printed on the back is "printed in Germany".   I don't know if you can tell from the scan or not, but the pictures are raised.  Its a very pretty card.

Wordful Wednesday with Santa!

Claire is really growing up fast.  She's 9 already and although she know the truth about Jolly Old St. Nick, she still wanted to take a picture with him this year. 

I'm glad.  This mommy isn't quite ready for her to grow up just yet!!

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Parenting by Dummies.

Wordless Wednesday is hosted by Angry Julie Monday

Christmas Cookies

'Tis that time of year when we all fire up the oven and make those wonderful Christmas cookies!

At our house, everyone gets to choose a cookie that they want me to make.  I've already made Claire's snickerdoodles and Nathan's White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies.  I've also made sugar cookies for a book club Christmas party.  This weekend I made Chris' selection: 

Ranger Cookies...

And for gifts for Chris' co-workers, the librarian and the mailman, I made Chocolate Crinkles today...

I'm probably going to be dreaming of these things tonight!  I made over 150 of them!

I still have my cookies to make.  I think I want Toffee Bars this year.  I may wait until after Christmas to make them though.  Maybe for New Years.  I think we need a break with no cookies in the house to tempt us!

What is your favorite Christmas cookie?



Catching up

I have been crazy busy lately!  I've totally neglected my blog.  I will think of a good post and have it all perfect in my head and then I won't have the time to actually go to the blog and post it!  We have a week and a half left of school before the break...I'm so ready!

Here's a little of what we've been up to.  We repainted and added shelves to the laudry room, but I just realized I never took after pictures...oh well, I'll get that done one day!  I've also been baking a lot of cookies and still have more to bake!  My husband's birthday is also coming up and we are hosting 2 different Christmas parties for various kids' groups at our house.  We've already attended one Christmas party and have another coming us this weekend.  Also, on the agenda is confirmation volunteer hours and retreats that my son has to do, a birthday party, and, as always, school  and gymnastics!

My husband is taking a few days off around Christmas so we are going to start that little vacation with a trip to a local theater to see "Scrooge".  Hopefully, we'll get a chance to go look at Christmas lights...and put ours up!  Its been cold and rainy so Chris and Nathan haven't been able to get out there and put them up.

My son's art class made ornaments for a tree that is displayed at the local art library.  The ornaments are books that are covered in famous works of art.  They turned out very cute.  The chain and topper and made from recycled book pages.

And it wouldn't be Christmas without our annual trip to paint Christmas ornaments!  Here are the kids creations from this year...

It is cold here now so I've got to snuggle with the cat every once in a while!

Speaking of the cat, she thinks we put the Christmas tree up just for her to lay under!

She wasn't very happy once I put the gifts under there, but I left her a spot. :)

My favorite thing about Christmas time is wrapping presents.  I love to wrap presents!

My least favorite would be shopping for those presents!

What about you?  What's your favorite and least favorite things about this time of year?

Wordful Wednesday: Going Baroque!

We went to the Kimbell art museum in Fort Worth the other day for a Homeschool workshop on Caravaggio.  They had a Baroque dress up station that the kids had a lot of fun with...

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Seven clown circus.

Wordful Wednesday

This is Claire as St. Helena at our Saints Party this year.

She carved a pumpkin with symbols for St. Helena too.



She was very excited when she won first place in her age group for the pumpkin carving contest!

And, fittingly enough, she won a cross!

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Parenting by Dummies.

Postcard Friendship Friday #82

This is an oversized postcard that I got from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.  Its an untitled work by Erick Swenson.  I don't quite know why, but I like it! :)

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Wordful/Wordless Wednesday

 Halloween fun!

Wednesday blogs and link ups: 

sevenclowncircus

Focusedonthemagic

Postcard Friendship Friday #81

Just in time for Halloween, here is a postcard I got at Disneyland of the Haunted Mansion.

If you ever go to Disneyland or Disney World make sure to go on this ride.  It is so cool!

I don't know how they do it, but they have ghosts and really cool special effects!

This last picture is one that I snapped of the mansion while we were there.  Every Halloween (and I think Christmas) they decorate it with the Nightmare before Christmas theme.  They change up the ride inside too.  I actually prefer the original ride, but it was neat to see what all they did for the holidays.

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Nine!

Today was my daughter's 9th birthday.

She had a great day in school and played with her friends.  We went out for dinner to a local Italian restaurant and had chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake for dessert!!

Can't believe its been 9 years already.  My husband and I told her the other night that we weren't going to allow her to turn nine.  She just smiled and said, "you can't stop me!"

I'm posting this from the laptop and blogger is not cooperating with me, but below is her picture from today as well as a few from over the years.

Wordless Wednesday

A Wordless Wednesday look inside the new Little Mermaid Ride at California Adventure Park...

Time Flies!

I'm joining the Tiggerific Blog hop today.

Hop on over to Magical Mouse Schoolhouse if you want to join in!

My last post was my 500th post. Wow! I thought time goes by so fast. Then, I was looking through our recent Disneyland Vacation photos and I REALLY thought that!!

This is a picture of my kids in the Hollywood Backlot area at California Adventure park the first time we went to Disneyland in 2006...

Same area just a couple weeks ago...

Meeting Minnie in 2006...

 

And earlier this month...

My son is taller than Minnie!!!

Where does the time go?

Postcard Friendship Friday #80

We just returned from Disneyland so guess what my PFF post is about today?? :)

I actually had a hard time finding good post cards there.  I guess not that many people buy them anymore.  Every shop I went into (and they have a LOT of shops!) carried basically the same ones with the castle and the main Mickey and Friends characters.  The morning we were leaving I looked around the shop in our hotel and found this one...It was what I was looking for all along!  It shows a little bit of everything.  Looking at it now makes me want to go back!  And if this isn't enough Disney for you, you can scroll down and see pics from our trip too. ;)

Here is a parting shot from the It's a small world ride.  On the way out they have a wall of postcards.

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Wordless Wednesday

I'm joining Focused on the Magic for a Disney Wordless Wednesday today.  The theme is celebrations.

What better way to celebrate your 9th birthday than at Disneyland???

Other Wordless Wednesday fun you might enjoy:

Serendipity is Sweet

Magical Mouse Schoolhouse

Angry Julie Monday

My Super Happy Disney Vacation Post!

It's been a while since I blogged.  We were busy visiting the happiest place on earth!

We flew out to California last Tuesday.  The Southwest pilots were great.  They let the kids explore the cockpit before we took off...

When we got in we headed to Angels Stadium to watch our AL West Champion Texas Rangers

play the Angels.  It was fun and we won!

We stayed at the Paradise Pier hotel.  This was the view from our room...

Our first day in the park we rode the new Little Mermaid Ride and Claire's favorite...Toy Story Mania!

This trip was an early birthday celebration for Claire so she wore a birthday button to the parks.  A cast member in Innoventions was talking to her about her visit on our 2nd day there.  He asked if she had to wait in any lines and she said yes.  So, since she was wearing the birthday button he gave her a special "fast pass" to any ride she wanted!  She chose Toy Story Mania again, which was good because its very popular and usually has a line so we probably wouldn't have had the chance to ride it again. :)

On Triton's carousel...

At our meet and greet with Chip and Dale...



Claire loves meeting the characters.  (me too!)



As an early birthday present I took Claire to a princess lunch.

It was very good...and look at that dessert platter!!



Me in front of the castle. :)



And no vacation is complete without a trip to a Build a Bear.  Claire chose to get Disney clothes for her existing animals instead of getting a new animal.  She's getting a little collection of these backpacks though...she has one from the St. Louis Zoo and now a Downtown Disney one.

We've been to Disney parks twice now and we've never ridden Splash mountain...primarily because I don't like rides with big drops or getting wet!  Well, Nathan has been bugging me since we went to Disney World about it so I gave in and we rode it, but I stuck HIM in the front!  I think I cured him...He doesn't really want to go on it again!  Look at the look on his face as we're about to drop! :)

Heading out to the parks on our last day.  This was taken in our hotel.

Another meet and greet.  Claire LOVED the characters so much!!!  She wanted to take them

home with her.  She would hug and hug them and not want to leave. :)

We also ate lots of yummy food!

They are all ready for Halloween so the villians are out in the park.  I dared Nathan to run up to the Queen of Hearts yelling "Queen of Hearts!  Queen of Hearts!  You're my favorite!"  Since he is a teenage boy who would do most anything for junk food he agreed to do it if I bought him a churro!

The Queen thought he was nuts, but it was really funny!



 And I made good on my promise and bought him that churro!

Nathan got to build his own car at Ridemakerz in Downtown Disney..



The morning we left we had a character breakfast at our hotel.  Since Claire had on the birthday button they brought out a special mickey cake and sang to her with Daisy.  She LOVED that!!

Well, that's probably more than you wanted to know about our vacation so I'll stop posting pictures for now.  Of course, I'll probably post more tomorrow! :)

Tiggerific Tuesday is hosted by Magical Mouse Schoolhouse.