My Lovies

I have many Loves-of-my-Life.
And we enjoy celebrating the love (sounds like a 70's thing) every day
 but we go "all out" on
February 14th
Valentine's Day!

The girls set the table with heart-y things.

This year they made a little bear holding a heart with each person's name on it.

Cute!

We also have a "Red/Pink Dinner"

This years menu was Shrimp Alfredo, pink fruit salad, beer bread (which was neither red or pink but it was yummy) and for a drink, Raspberry Dazzler

The 3 Musketeer Sisters

and Hudson's helpers with the dessert.

Maggie prepping the main dish

Hudson and his helpers prepping

The Dessert

De-lish!

Each person gets a $5 gift

Even Grandma Great got a gift.

Her favorite...

CHOCOLATE!

You can see she was pretty happy about that.

This fruit dessert was the perfect Grand Finale to a fun evening.

I Love my

LOVIES!

A Few More

Christmas Traditions

Attending 

The Candlelight Christmas

at 

This is the Place Monument Park

(2nd annual)

This year we went with my brother and his family.

Very Fun and very, very cold.

Singing with the street carolers

 "Mountain Man" warming by the woodburning stove

Jacob and Weston

Signing the "nice" list.

Caleb was the only one to sign the "naughty" list.  

:-)

A live Nativity

Petting the livestock

Learning to Doe-see-Doe (sp? - no idea!)

A round of Hot Chocolate to warm us up.

STRINGING POPCORN

Another fun activity and I just love how the strands add to our Christmas tree.

We were able to accomplish many strands with just a few finger pricks

Ouch! Those hurt.

Dani Rae and Weston

Maggie, friend Olivia and Elizabeth 

Abbi and Maggie

Me, Baby and Dani Rae

After Christmas, we throw the strands of popcorn on our trees outside 

and enjoy watching the birds peck away at them. 

(a little after-Christmas treat for the birdies)

AND

singing Christmas hymns for/with the church body.

Moving On

to Christmas!!

(2010)

Seriously? Yes, seriously.

I just have to share a few things about this years Christmas before I actually start posting about present day activities. I do appreciate your patience.

A Favorite Christmas Tradition:

Making Buttermilk Sugar Cookies

(oh yum!) 

It's a fun (and tasty) project from start to finish...

rolling out the dough

cutting out Christmas shapes

baking

frosting and designing each cookie

adding the finishing touches - sprinkles, colored sugar, candies etc

and finally...
eating them!

And once you eat one - there is no stopping until the plate is empty.

(talk about a "sugar high"- whew!)

We still have not quite decided whether we like the cookie dough or the finished product better.

We will try to figure that one out next year :-)

"Hanging in there"

Things are looking Christmas-y around here.

Part of that is putting up the tree and "hanging" ornaments.

If you have been following our blog for over a year now than you know

our ornament tradition.

For those of you who are new to our blog....

Each person gets an ornament that represents the year.

Then when they move out, they will have at least 18 ornaments to hang on their own tree with lots of memories.

So, here are this years ornaments:

Brian -  a barn

Finished our barn this year that we LOVE!

Caleb - a football

played on the HS football team

Hudson - a football
Played on the freshman football team

Abbi - violin and "Braces On"

Maggie - violin and cross
The cross for being baptized!

Elizabeth - a cross
She was baptized!

Weston - a cross

He was baptized!

Dani Rae - a school girl

Learned to read this year

Tessa - swimmer

Took (and LOVED) her first swim lessons

DONE!