Thanksgiving, Christmas decorating & the "oatmeal Pro"

We've had another busy week (Surprise, right?!) or few weeks now I guess since I've been meaning to get this posted for what seems like forever. We had our anniversary, my dads birthday, Thanksgiving, decorated for Christmas... and we have Andrews parents in town until early next week. It seems like work has been crazy busy lately too for some reason... I really was anticipating a slow end to the year to be able to play a little catch up, but I was definitely incorrect on that.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family at my parents... and then we go to family friends of ours after dinner for desserts and drinks every year, so we did that.
Since my dads birthday was the day before Thanksgiving... we wound up celebrating (or atleast doing the cake and presents part) on Thanksgiving because he worked and golfed on his actual bday.
My kids L.O.V.E birthday cake. Any kind of cake that has candles to blow out. Sometimes we do multiple takes on blowing out the candles... and occasionally they end up getting re-lit a few times. But they love it.

Helping Pop blow out his candles. By the way, per the birthday boys request, my mom made the BEST banana cake with homemade chocolate frosting - YUM. I'm not a big banana person, but it was such a dense, moist, really good cake.

lickin' the icing off of the candles

anxiously waiting for cake

I was checking on Emma and I peeked into the dining room, where she was talking to these little ceramic pilgrim Thanksgiving decorations that my mom has on the table and I guess they are praying, so Emma decided to join them. It was adorable. So I snuck up on her and took a picture. I had to try to zoom a little.

a prayer circle. :-)

Mimi and Emma snuggled up on the couch reading a book later that night.



We also decorated for Christmas this weekend

Bottom left is what I decided to do for the kitchen table centerpiece. I usually fill that glass (Vase? Square glass container? whatever it is) with something each season - leaves for fall, cherries or wicker balls in the summer, etc...) But Christmas is by far my favorite. The sparkles come out! (Or should I say, it's when sparkles are acceptable.)

And the candle... I'm usually a vanilla/cinnamon/caramel/sweet candle person - but this one is really good! And, since we have a fake tree (I know.... talk my husband about that. I'd be up for it.) this candle makes the whole downstairs smell like a real tree. Best of both worlds! No pine needle mess, but you get the smell. Although speaking of candles, if you are a Yankee Candle person and you do not have 'North Pole' I highly suggest that you get one. Now. It smells like candycane and vanilla. I'm a little obsessed with Yankee Candles... and Andrew doesn't like the fact that an entire cabinet has to be dedicated to store them, but I do think they are the best, and they're worth it. I've also recently gotten into the tumblers with the double wick, they burn a little faster but if you are a person that isn't home all day long and don't have an hour to wait for the candle to begin to smell up the room, the double wick gets it goin' fast.

Moving on....

It was fun to decorate this year and have the kids really into it. (Slightly on the stressful side at times when they didn't understand the difference between decoration and TOY, but still, better than not having them involved.) and I was able to get a few cute pictures out of it too.

Mr. Snowman, hangin out on the couch.... watching all of the decorating craziness.

Daddy helped them pick out the ornaments that they couldn't break. This year (and last actually) I wound up temporarily replacing my fragile ornaments with non-breakables. Because no matter what we do to get them to stay away from the tree, they just can't help themselves. So I've actually been finding ornaments in their toy bins - upstairs. Again, not understanding they are not their toys.

holding up the ornament with their Santa picture from their 1st Christmas!  (I love that we are beginning to collect a lot of sentimental, or meaningful ornaments for the tree.)

concentrating very hard to put the ornament (or as she would say, 'lantern' on the tree.)

Playing with a little photo editing. I think that picture of Emma is so beautiful.... Just totally captures the moment.

As we were decorating Emma would go up to everything and say 'Awww it looks so perfect! beautiful!'

Our Tree!

I honestly would keep a Christmas tree up and lit year round if I could. This morning I woke up before everyone and sat in the family room with just the Christmas tree lights on.... and it was beautiful.

Emma is quite our little artist, But unfortunately it's not always on paper.

This was her artwork on the guest bathroom cabinet....

(She found the bathtub crayons and decided to do this masterpiece mural real quick. Good thing is that they wipe off easily.) But, I woke up in the middle of the night and went in there and was half awake when I saw it and I was hysterical. It looks like the face on the right has it's mouth zippered shut (Andrew thinks it looks disturbing) and then the other red one is a smiley face sun.

My project last week was to make these 'hot chocolate dippers' - candy canes with a chocolate dipped marshmallow on the end and decorated with sprinkles.

Last Christmas I made cake balls - but I think I just may attempt cake pops this year! Or not... maybe I'll stick with cake balls. We'll see.

But I think I'll do Christmas baking with the munchkins this weekend.

The other morning Drew asked me for oatmeal, and as I was finishing making it (ya know.... because instant oatmeal is so labor intensive to make) Drew said "mom... you make oatmeal like a pro!!" I thought that was pretty funny. No idea where that came from.