Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas to everyone!  I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday.

 

We had a great time at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Rhonda got us all up early to have breakfast and open presents.

 

 

Santa brought Lilly a rocking horse and William a digital light designer.  They both loved them!

We opened a few small gifts and then decided to eat breakfast before opening anymore.  Will wanted to wear his Christmas glasses through breakfast, but then decided not to when he realized everything looked green.

Estelle tried to sneak a few presents while we were waiting to eat.

Grandpa bought a Merri-Okie microphone that made you sound like an elf.  It was a hit with the kids.

After breakfast we opened everything.  Lilly got a lot of toys and a new sleeping bag from the Grandparents that she loved.  Will got games, a superhero cape, and an MP3 music player.

The kids spent the rest of the day playing with everything.  Lilly liked riding her new horse and making it neigh.  Will liked playing with his light designer and the Butterfly-in-a-jar toy that he got.  It has a toy butterfly in it that flaps around when you tap the top.

Christmas Decorating and Snow

We managed to get the Christmas decorations up at our house over the last couple of weekends.

 

 

 

William and I also made some crafts.  These are "stained glass" Christmas lights.  We used clear plastic bottles, tissue paper, and white glue to create the effect.  Once they dried I put a battery powered light in them to make them kid safe.

 

 

We had a ton of snow last weekend so we decided to build a snowman at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

 

 

 

 

The kids also had fun sledding down the little hill in the back yard.

 

Afterward William and Lilly helped Grandma make dinner and some Christmas cookies.

Thanksgiving 2012

Wow, November flew by this year!  Here were some of the highlights.

 

Erin has been on a mission to win big money from the local radio stations this year in order to help with her home renovations.  She managed to win a free turkey from the oldies station and was entered as a finalist for $1000.  In order to win the money the finalists had to meet at a local mall one Saturday to catapult turkeys across the parking lot.  The person who could fling the turkey the farthest got the money.  The catapult was built buy a group of high school kids as part of a science competition.

 

Here's the catapult.

 

Here are the students that built it.

 

Here's the catapult in action.  This isn't Erin's throw.  This was the best shot that I got of the thing in action.  Most of the other shots came out blurred.  It was fast!

 

Erin had the farthest shot for a while, but then someone else shot further.  We didn't stay to see who won because it was cold.

 

This is William and Paul watching the turkeys fly.

 

Lilly wasn't as impressed.  She took a nap during it all.

 

We had a great Thanksgiving.  William and I made decorations for the house.  He helped me make this thankfulness wreath for our front door.  We wrote something that we were thankful for on each feather and pinned it to the wreath.

 

We spent the actual holiday at Grandma Nina's house.  She made a great meal and we all had a good time.  Lilly wore her new turkey dress for the occasion.  This was the only shot that I could get of it.  She didn't want to stand still for long.

Halloween 2012

Happy Halloween!

 

We had a great holiday this year.  I loved having a bigger porch and yard to decorate.  Here are the highlights.

 

Bob bought me a bunch of assorted gourds to use as decorations and one large warty pumpkin.  So, I painted them to look like spooky characters.  We had 2 witches, a Frankenstein's monster, a bat, a UFO, and a spiders web on the table out front.

 

 

I also bought a couple of large pumpkins to decorate.  I used full page labels to make templates and then spray painted over them.  When I peeled the labels off it left orange designs.  I also used a couple more small gourds to make a ghost and an alien.

William wanted to paint his own pumpkin.  He did an awesome job!

I bought some tombstones for the front yard.

This is what it all looked like from the street.

 

Close up of the porch.

 

William and I also made some salt dough ornaments as a craft project one day last week. I found this tree at the store and thought that it would be a perfect way to display our handy work.

 

Grandma and Grandpa decided to come to our house and take the kids trick-or-treating.  When Grandma got there Lilly wanted to try on her witches hat.

 

Once we had our dinner (pizza) Will and Lilly got their costumes on and were ready to get going.  They managed to stay put long enough for me to get some pictures.

Paul, Mom and Dad took the kids out while I handed out candy at our house.  I couldn't believe how many kids we had.  I ran out of candy and had to turn off all the lights at 8 PM!  Next year I'll need to make sure that I get at least double what we had this time.