Wishes do come true...

Christmas 2016

6:16:00 AM

The holiday season always starts off with Elfie making a grand return at Thanksgiving. This little guy and I have a love/hate relationship. All year, I pin ideas and get so excited for his return. Then the time comes for him to be here and he usually ends up in a non exciting location...like hanging from the lock. I believe he was hanging from the clock three times this year. "He must really like telling time?"

Grandma got Parker a new winter coat. Of course, she had to show it off to everyone at church.

This years Holiday PJ choice was reindeer, which is fitting considering last year we were Santa's. We all put our reindeer jammies on and went to look at Christmas lights. When we drove through at Andy's Ice Cream the lady in the drive thru probably thought Drew and I were crazy.

One of my favorite things we did this Christmas was go see Porter's play at Ms. Jane's. Since Porter is in pre-school now, this year he had a holiday show. I video taped the entire show, so I currently do not have any pictures, but here he is on Polar Express day. I think it is safe to say...Porter loves Ms. Jane's!!

Christmas Eve with the Gumm's and the Rapp's continued this year at Lake Weatherby. We all (or most) families wear matching PJ's. Here is Parker and I in front of the lake.

Christmas Eve Service

Before Porter went to sleep he was stalling, so he had to put up the nativity scene for Santa. This kid had some pretty good questions about Santa like: "How is Santa going to get through the glass on our fire place?" or "Are you going to put the dogs outside so they don't bark when Santa comes?" It is only a matter of time before the magic of Santa is over for this little one.

Santa's hard work is done.

Christmas morning traditions include: eating monkey bread, opening presents, and watching the Disney World parade. Oh and playing with our toys!!

Later in the day we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to celebrate.

Family Photo ideas

Fall Family Photos 2016

5:47:00 AM

My mom did our family photos at my in-laws land. I was pretty excited about how well they all turned out.

Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

5:16:00 PM

Ingredients:

Cake/crust

1 box of yellow cake mix

1 stick of butter melted

1 egg

Filling

3 eggs

1/2 stick butter melted

1 package cream cheese softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 can of pumpkin

2 cups powdered sugar

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Grease 9x11 pan (I use glass.)

3. Mix cake ingredients in mixer.

4. Pat into the bottom of the glass pan and set aside.

5. Mix all ingredients for filling together in mixer.

6. Pour on top of crust in pan.

7. Bake for 45 minutes. Check middle with fork.

Important to not over cook.

Here are my little helpers. Our thanksgiving traditions.

This is my adapted Paula Dean recipe, I do not use as much butter as the original recipe. Still tastes great!!!!

Branson

Branson on a whim

2:18:00 PM

Last weekend I received a coupon in the mail to Silver Dollar City for $40 for the entire day. I already have a pass, but I currently did not have any free passes for Drew. When I saw this on Friday night I mentioned it to Drew, but didn't think too much of it. The next morning we were getting ready to run our errands and I said "We should go to Branson today!" (Not thinking he would ever say yes...) He said "Let's do it." To make things even more spontaneous his parents decided to go with us. We drove down around 1pm and got there around 5pm. Checked into our hotel. I was unsure if the after 7pm next day free rule would work with our coupons, but we tried and it did! We were able to go Saturday night and all day Sunday. This was a blessing, because the time on Google stated the park opened at 10am on Sunday and it did not open until 1pm.

This was the first day of the season for Christmas lights, so when we arrived the parade had just ended and it seemed like mass chaos. Once the crowd cleared out, most people went home and we had the park to ourselves.

Only a few pictures from the weekend, but it was a blast spending time with family. If you go to Silver Dollar City through the Holidays I would suggest you ride the train! I'm pretty sure I cried.

Halloween

2016 Halloween

12:27:00 AM

This year we had multiple opportunities to trick or treat. The kids love to play dress up so we have many costumes to choose from.

Friday night Parker refused to wear the Minnie Mouse costume we had. (Funny because she loves MeMe right now.) Anyways she wanted to be a baseball player and so did Porter. Can't tell you how many people thought Parker was a boy but I still thought she was cute!

Saturday we went to a carnival at a local church. Parker decided to wear batgirl and Porter wore the fireman costume he bought with his own money, because we already had an astronaut costume.