Adult Christmas Party

Our holiday season started off with a fun annual adult Christmas party complete with games, a white elephant exchange, yummy food, karaoke, and lots of catching up with friends.
One of the games, a "Minute To Win It" game where you had to pick a bag up off the floor using only your teeth and nothing but your feet could touch the ground. I'm pleased to say I got all the bags including the one that was only an inch and a half high!

Another game where I raced Trent and we had to swing a banana tied from our waist to move two oranges from one side of the room across the finish line on the other side of the room. Thanks to my awesome hip action, I totally beat Trent. A little karaoke is always fun!

What we won in the gift exchange, a package of Bump-It's for me and the second season of Alf on dvd--which the girls have already watched and is a new favorite of Mikayla's! Such a fun time at the party!

I Pledd Alleesance To Da Fwag...

Quite a lot of words for such a little thing! I think it's cute that they say the Pledge of Allegiance in Megan's preschool class everyday. Of course she has no idea what the words mean, but hearing her say the word "indivisible" just makes my day!

Happy Thanksgiving to You!

Wow, don't they look excited to be dressed up?! Our three littest pilgrim and Indians.
Chloe with baby Bridget.

That's right, we're hardcore around here. Even dress up for the turkey carving.

And to answer the age-old question of what will I be this year? I went for classic, easy, but cute. Yeah, a simple Indian frock over my clothes. Cop-out? Maybe. But the feathers are legit.

The gang's all here! We were lucky to have Grandma and Grandpa Brown join us this year too! Lots of fun with everyone around.

And for some reason, there's gotta be a silly one!

Tim, Michelle, and Bryson at the dinner table.

IDK.

Just because it makes me smile. Hope your day was grand and full of thanks for all we have been given.

My T-Shirt Refashion

I took a basic v-neck Old Navy shirt of Mikayla's that she'd almost grown out of and cut it from the middle of the v-neck down to the bottom of the shirt. I cut 2 1-inch strips off the bottom of shirt and sewed those together to make one really long 1-inch strip.

Sewed a gathering stitch down the length and well, gathered it.

I pressed and hemmed the bottom of the shirt and the middle. Then I arranged my long ruffle snake around the neck and cascading down the shirt a bit. And then pinned it. A lot.

I really wanted to make sure that ruffle wasn't going anywhere!

Using the same color thread, I merely stitched the thing down along the new neckline and added a hook and eye closure in the front of the new cardigan.
Voila! I think it may just be cuter than before!

Either that or my model just makes it look that way! Now go try this! I made one for me too! It's like the 15-minute shirt-to-cardigan that is super easy and ruffle-y and fun!

Big Sister Helper

With Trent working at night and having night-time hospital shifts, he's gone about 5 nights a week, which leaves me to put 3 girlies to bed by myself. Some nights there's crying and yelling. Sometimes from them. Sometimes from me. But, tonight, after I was done reading to Megan and tucking her in, I came out into the front room to find this. What a good big sister helper, reading to her baby sister and helping drink her nighttime bottle.

What gladness filled my heart. For yes, tonight there are no tears. There is no yelling. We are all happy. And that makes for a pretty good night.

Speaking In Tongues

Mikayla lisps much more without her front teeth and sometimes her words even sound funny to her. This morning getting ready to brush her teeth she said, "I'm trying to twitht thith!....Whoa....Did I just speak Japanese?!" We were laughing so hard!

Toothless

Seriously?! Another tooth?! That's 2 in one week folks. That means my poor gap-toothed, vampire-fanged, 6 yr old will be lisping for quite some time now! The funniest part about it is that she is SOO excited to be able to actually sing, "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth." How cute is that? Does not even care that by only having her incisors sticking out on the top row she looks like some character out of a vampire flick.
Her vampire impersonation!

This of course called for another visit from a certain fairy-dust sprinkling, tooth collecting, winged woman. In the morning we asked Mikayla if she had indeed come. Megan piped up and said, "Yes, the Tooth Fairy came. Last night she came in our room and woke me up and asked if it was me or Mikay-da that lost a tooth. I told her 'Mikay-da' and went back to sleep. So, I'm tired today because she woke me up."

Really. One of the first children to meet the Tooth Fairy and you give a one-word answer before crashing into your pillow again? Thanks a lot Megan.

So I asked Mikayla what she's going to do with all the money she's been getting from the Tooth Fairy. I mean, that's a dollar a week, the Tooth Fairy's liable to go broke at this rate. She thought for a second and then said, "I'm going to save all my dollars. Then, when I'm an adult, I can use them all to buy furniture." I was expecting her to spend it on a slurpee. Boy, I was way off.

The Freakin' Diamond Castle

We were out on a date last week, a bucket of balls at the driving range and then dinner. On our way to pick up the kids, Trent sings:

"Can't go back, so we gotta go on, we'll stick together, stayin' strong, 'cuz we're gonna' find it!..."

"Um, Honey?..." I said.

"Aw, that's from freakin' Barbie's Diamond Castle isn't it?! Dang it!" moaned Trent.

Yes, yet again one more thing that you wouldn't get to enjoy if you had boys honey.

Mischief Maker

We had to have a talk with the girls about NOT leaving any Halloween candy lying around after this.
I couldn't take it away from her. Because after all, when she's not making mischief and getting into EVERYthing... she looks like this. Could YOU take a sucker away from a face like that? Didn't think so.

Baby-Faced

My dad came to my water aerobics class a few weeks ago. I've been teaching for over 2 years now, so it was fun to have him come and see what I do. He jumped in and acted like he'd been doing it for years. About halfway through the class, one of the other guys swam over to him and said, "So, are you her boyfriend?" while pointing to me up on the deck.

My dad laughed and said, "Uh, no. No, I'm her dad!" The guy looked shocked and said, "Well what did you do? Have her when you were 12?! There's no way you could be her dad!" He again laughed and said he was and that he had 3 other children and 5 grandchildren. They both got a good laugh out of it.

For a few years now, people have thought that he and I are together when we go out somewhere. He's quite baby-faced, only 51, and has not a single gray hair on his head. He loves it. I get a little weirded out by it. I don't necessarily want to look like a young gold-digger going for a much older man. I keep reminding him this won't last forever. One day, he'll have to age.

After the middle-aged woman in the front row of my class heard that the newcomer was my dad, she said, "Oh darn. He's good looking, I was hoping he was new!" Okay. Ew.

I Have No Words...

Our Costumes!

One of my favorite things about the Halloween costumes this year was that the girls came up with their costume ideas completely on their own! And I loved their choices--extra bonus! Mikayla saw "How To Train Your Dragon" and wanted to be a viking girl. Her whole outfit was hand-me-down items from a few people and then I bought a blond wig from Wal-Mart and braided it and got a viking hat from the dollar section at Target. You don't get much cheaper than that for a costume! I think she looked great too! The wig just makes the outfit!

Our little viking and tooth fairy. Megan wanted everyone to know she was not just a fairy, but a TOOTH fairy. We affixed a tooth on the end of her wand to help people figure it out too. It's kind of funny, one girl was super warm and the other was super cold!

A murse(our male nurse daddy), and a cute little witch. Though, she kept tossing the hat off so she was more a ballerina than anything!

Our whole family before the church Trunk-or-Treat.

Excited girls getting candy.

Buzz Lightyear and a viking.

Me, Kendra, Sydney, Charlie, Kate, and Dagny. These little guys didn't really know what was going on or why we were all walking around in the dark collecting candy from the trunks of cars! It was a fun night!

Happy Halloweeny!

We got together with some friends on Halloween and had an awfully gross dinner. We had a puking pumpkin, green breadstick witches' fingers,

beating hearts, monster eyeballs,

spider web dip,

and bloody baked rats! It was disgusting. But quite fun! The kids were squeamish about how things looked or the names they were given and pretty much just held out until dessert!

We played the donut on a string game, it never gets old! The little kids went first and it was so funny to watch them spinning around trying to chomp the donut out of the air.

Megan very obediently kept her arms behind her back the ENTIRE time--I was impressed.
Then, the big kids took a crack at it!

I think there isn't much that is more entertaining in life than watching your kid get smacked in the face by a powdered sugar pastry.

Success!

Cute little friends.

Then, the adults took a turn! Who do you think won?
The picture says it all. And we have already agreed to not discuss any cheating that may or may not have occurred.

Yeah, you betcha we raced too! If only I had the capacity to shove an entire donut in my mouth at once like my husband... one can only dream... maybe someday...

Then the guys took each other on!

After all the donut spewing, chewing, and sticking to the roofs of our mouths, I think it'll be a long time till I eat another donut again.

Unless it's a maple bar, but I digress...