Over the river and through the woods....

To Grandma's house we went! And after 16 hours on the road we made it to Grandma's house :-) We drove to Georgia last week to visit Nathan's parents for Christmas. The drive there went surprisingly well (besides hitting almost stop dead traffic for about an hour it was really smooth). The girls did great, there was minor whining from Evie, but not a peep from Hannah (she's the world's best traveler!). When we finally arrived at 3 am EST both Grandma and Grandad were both awake to meet us and help us get the girls in (thanks for waiting up for us!)! We were glad to finally be there and after getting a tour of our deluxe accommodations (they were great!) we went to bed. The girls were up before 9 am....you're probably thinking of course, they got plenty of sleep, they slept in the car, all kids sleep in the car. Wrong, Evie slept a total of maybe three hours, and Hannah had been up from about 1 am on looking at Atlanta as we drove through. So much for sleep! But even with a general lack of sleep the entire time we were there the girls did pretty well. Speaking of lack of sleep...I'll write more later on our trip and hopefully share lots of pictures, but for now it is bed time. I hope everyone had a delightful Christmas!!!!

did I hear that right?

We had the radio on this morning and I heard the weather forecast......it's supposed to be eighty degrees tomorrow, yes 80 for the high! I confirmed with Nathan and then asked what month it is....that's just crazy! Fortunately, I just looked at the forecast for GA and there is a possibility of snow there on Christmas :-)

K is for king and other school updates

Last week we did the letter K and I focused on kindness, but we also talked about kings and made some crowns. Hannah cut hers out on her own!

For "I" day we had a field trip! We took the girls to a park to look for fish, because everyone knows the study of fish is ichthyology right? :-)

It was a bit chilly and really windy, so we weren't able to see any fish :-( But Niki took Hannah and Ally to the pet store to observe some fish while I took Evie to get some half and half, because really, what better thing is there to eat for the letter i than ice cream? After the fish observation we made some home made ice cream. Yum!

Now we're taking a couple weeks off of school, but we're looking forward to starting again after the new year!

Christmas Tree

Last week Hannah asked if we could put up a Christmas tree, I wasn't going to, as we'll be in GA for Christmas, but since she asked.....I really didn't have a good reason not to have one up. Saturday we put it up...

First things first, turning on the Christmas music and exploring the boxes.


That's great that you're taking the picture, but could I get a little help here please?

Both girls enjoyed helping put ornaments on the tree

And some cookies with Daddy afterward (he wanted to do hot chocolate, but I remembered giving Evie chocolate late at night was a bad idea :-) )

And here they are ready for church on Sunday :-)

Jingle Bells

a walk through Bethlehem

Yesterday night we took the kids to a walk through of Bethlehem that a local church had. The girls said they had fun, although I don't think Hannah said more than a dozen words the whole time we were there. Bethlehem was quite a busy place, there were Roman guards, which Evie was scared of.

A wedding celebration, you can see the bride in the center of the photo below.

Animals to see and pet, there were sheep, goats, a donkey and camel. My girls thought they were all nice to look at, but didn't want to touch any of them. They also found the way the camel chewed to be very amusing. :-)

Once we got inside the city (ie in the church building) there was even more to see and do, and it was a bit warmer

Here the girls are looking at some lamps

Evie is helping drill a hole, Hannah took a turn as well

Here is Hannah grinding some wheat to make flour

And of course there was a stable with Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and a shepherd happened to be there when we were as well.

The fudge is coming!

The past four days have been busy. I made 42.5 (at least) pounds of fudge! We send goody packages to my family every year for Christmas and this year we made 9 different types of fudge. Would you like to know the flavors? Of course you would :-)
Chocolate Mint
Rocky Road
White Chocolate with M&Ms
Chocolate
Chocolate Walnut
Chocolate Bacon
Tuxedo (a layer of chocolate, layer of white chocolate with oreo on top)
Chocolate Peanut Butter
Chocolate Orange

Don't those sound yummy? If you're in the are and want to stop by feel free, we have tons of left overs! And yes, the bacon does actually taste ok. If you don't believe I'm insane enough to make 40+ pounds of fudge then you obviously don't know me very well :-) But here are some photos for proof.

Here they are, don't they look yummy?

All packaged up

17 boxes in all

And here's what the kitchen looked like at 1 am Saturday after we finally finished packaging everything :-)

My beat up kids

Hannah has a black eye. I think this is her first black eye, she also has a scrap (or scraper as Evie would say) under her eye. The black eye came from crashing into Ally at school yesterday, we were playing with a jump rope (it was J day) and they collided, at least I think that's where it came from. I have no idea where the scrap came from.....Evie has a bruise on her cheek. Evie normally has lots of bruises, they're not normally on her face. She fell into something and hit her cheek. Here are some pictures from tonight, you can see they both did it to the right side.

cake ball craziness

Sunday night Nathan decided he had to make cake balls after having one at church. That evening he made two beautiful cakes, one white and one chocolate. It was a shame they were being turned into cake balls because they really looked nearly perfect. He didn't have time to finish them Sunday, so we finished them up last night.

Nathan did pretty much all the work. I just made the frosting and decorated some of them.

As Nathan was making them he said "I can't wait until our kids think this is normal" this - being baking insanity!

Oh yeah, I also rolled the balls, don't they look like donut-holes?

Don't they look yummy? And that's not even all of them. We made over 60 of them, four different kinds, white chocolate with white cake, white chocolate with chocolate cake, chocolate with chocolate cake and chocolate with white cake :-)

Santa Claus

Yesterday we went to the library to see Santa Claus. They have him come every year, you bring your camera and get a picture and it's free. I thought the girls would be interested in it this year, as they have been quiet excited about an animated Santa Claus that is in an advent calendar my parents got them. I asked them yesterday if they wanted to go and Hannah was all for it. Evie wasn't so sure, but we went anyway. We met Daddy at the library after work for it. The girls really enjoyed seeing Santa, but wouldn't get within six feet of him. That is kind of what I expected, but I think they had fun anyway. No photo with the kids, but here is Santa :-)

Growing up

Evie's growing up way faster than Hannah did, I'm sure that fairly common among second children, but it has resulted in lots of amusement for me. The other day Evie opened the refrigerator, took out the pitcher of gatorade, pulled a chair over to the counter to climb up on to the counter and get a cup out and then put the cup in the pitcher to get gatorade in it. She is also starting to show a strong preference as to what she wears, as you may have noticed in the Spa Day post :-) Well a few days after she picked out a striped shirt and I chose some jeans for her, apparently the jeans weren't cool enough, so she put on a poke-a-dot skirt over them. At one point she had a flower hoodie on as well, but I didn't get a picture of that and this is the only picture I got of her in her strips and poke-a-dots.

why Nathan really wanted a gas stove top

Last night Nathan had out marshmallows, chocolate and gram crackers. On the gram cracker box is the directions for making smores' and so he reads and says oh, we need a campfire, then I read it and saw it said grill as well, his eyes light up and he puts a marshmallow on a fondue skewer, turns on one of the burners and says "why didn't we get a gas stove top years ago"

Eating a steeple

We went to the library to and stopped in the used book store afterward, no good books, but there were free Hershey kisses. The lady manning the table asked if the girls may have one and I said it was fine. We get out side and Hannah is eating it and turns to me and says "I'm just eating the steeple off it" after biting of the tip :-)

A spa day with Daddy

This morning Daddy had some fun with the girls, since they had been running around on the cold title all morning in bare feet he got out the foot bath and gave them a spa treatment. Hannah didn't want the bubbles, so she just got a bucket of warm water for her feet. Evie on the other hand loved the bubbles and would have left her feet in the bath all day! The girls enjoyed the foot bath, foot lotion and pedicure from Daddy!

a cold day

The low last night was in the mid thirties. This prompted the first use of heat for the season, but I don't think we'll need it again for a few days. The girls were a little chilly, as we are working on making them northerners by keeping the heat at 62 during the day and 60 at night. Don't worry, the high today is in the mid 60s. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be 72 and on Monday 79! The girls won't freeze, we'll see how long we last with the heat at 62, I'm thinking none of our friends will want to visit, but maybe other people like the cold too? Of course we can turn it up if needed, we do have central heat ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Today started out a bit crazy:

This is what my kitchen looked like at 9:30 am. Yes, there are two ranges in my kitchen, neither of which were hooked up (more on that in this post), my husband was in bed still, as he had been up to the wee hours of the morning trying to mount the anti tip bracket for the new range and five minutes after I took this picture James, Sarah and Andrew showed up! The only plus was all the dishes were clean, as I had managed to do them after breakfast.

Within two hours the kitchen looked like this, turkey in the oven, rolls made, counters in much better shape.

However the old range wasn't quiet where it should be yet. Although that got moved to the garage before lunch. After lunch there was a little more food prep and nap time for all! Ok, not quiet all, James and Nathan went to Wal-Mart, but the rest of us enjoyed a much needed nap!

Niki, Tom and Ally showed up around 4 pm and my girls were still sleeping, Sarah was feeding Andrew and Ally decided to join her with a couple other friends :-)

The girls woke up and then it was dinner time!

Way, way, way more food than we needed, but it was all good and everyone got lots of leftovers!

Everyone enjoying their meal :-)

Hannah decided she wanted to try the "chicken on a stick" like Uncle James had, so he gave it to her, she took a bite and wasn't very impressed so she gave it right back.

After dinner while clean up was going on Nathan helped entertain the girls

But apparently Andrew was not impressed with his entertainment.

Then we ate some pie, which I forgot to take a picture of, we had chocolate (which yes, I gave Evie at 7 pm!), key-lime and pecan.
And well Sarah entertained all four kids the adults had some great conversation!

We just wanted to give her practice for a few years down the road :-)

Then the girls helped entertain Andrew when he was done eat.

And this is the current state of my kitchen, the dishes in the dishwasher are clean and only the dessert dishes are left to clean, not too bad for the end of the day.