Deck the House

On Monday night we had a fun-filled, tree decorating evening.  First we ordered pizza and Daddy picked it up on the way home.  We watched the Madagascar and Shrek Christmas mini-shows to get us in the decorating mood.  Then we put on the Christmas music, pulled out the ornament box, and got going!

The girls are at great ages to really get into all the Christmas traditions, and they loved decorating the tree!

Daddy handed out the ornaments so we wouldn’t have a problem like last year.

We interrupt this decorating for a bit of silliness!

Love that face!

The majority of the ornaments ended up on the bottom 1/4 of the tree…

…because why hang one ornament on a branch when you can hang four??

I found this last weekend at the store…it has a bit of a glare on it but it says “Peanut”.  Perfect!

Time out for a photo op!

Me and my silly girls!

One…

Two…

And “wait for me!”

Daddy made hot chocolate for everyone with mini-marshmallows AND sprinkles!

Then it was time for the star!

So happy!

Now one last picture with everybody!

Hooray for a successful tree decorating! :)

Christmas Kick-Off

Every year our town does a little kick-off to the Christmas season with a benefit dinner and a show on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. 

The girls didn’t dance this year because a lot of people were out of town for the holiday, but Noni and Papa got to be in the show!

They have been practicing hard for weeks with the church’s Christmas choir and this was their debut.  The group is called the Silent Monks and indeed, they came and went without saying a word…which made it all the more hilarious. No one knew what they were going to do.  They came out like this…(Papa and Noni on the upper right)

Then the Hallelujah chorus came on…

That was just a short clip…it was SOO funny!  Everyone loved it!!!

Our Pastor also got up on stage to tell the Christmas story so the girls got to go up and listen. 

At the end we went outside to go on a “sleigh”ride pulled by two HUGE white horses. They had bells on so we jingled our way around the block. The girls loved it even though it was freezing!

What a fun way to kick-off the Christmas season!

Wordless Wednesday

P.S. Happy Birthday Aunt Karen and Grandma Vonnie!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

We headed to Noni and Papa’s house on Wednesday last week.  Peanut was looking so cute when we got there that I just had to take a few pictures. :)

Smiles for Daddy.

Happy girl!

Right after I posted about her three month turn for the worse, she started improving.  She seems a lot less fussy the past few days…maybe she just wasn’t feeling good for that week?

She enjoyed having all the extra people around…lots of snuggles!

Noni actually got several laughs out of her!  I wish I’d gotten it on video.  It was really cute!

Mom and I had divided up the dishes, and we spent most of Thursday morning in the kitchen cooking together.

We had good helpers. :)

Puzzle break!

Grandma and Grandpa were able to join us, and of course the girls didn’t mind not one, but two sets of grandparents doting on them! :)

Peanut sat happily in the highchair while we ate, but wanted out towards the end.  Noni was happy to hold her while we finished up.

She made the rounds.

We realized after Grandma and Grandpa left that we didn’t have a picture with all three girls with the grandparents (remind me at Christmas, Grandma!) so we got one with Noni and Papa.

More puzzle time.  Peanut wasn’t too impressed. :)

On Thursday night Daddy went home with Grandma and Grandpa so he could get up and go Black Friday shopping with Grandma and Auntie Nae.

I got up at the regular time and fed Peanut and then Papa and Mama kept Bug and Boo so Noni and I could get a little shopping done too.  We met up with the other shoppers and all had lunch together.  Daddy got some great deals and completed most of our Christmas shopping!  Yippee!

Since Friday was our last night we went up to the shop for some playtime.

Tummy time for Peanut…

XBOX time for the girls…

Love Boo’s hands in her pockets here.  She was squirming while Bug was trying to get her character set up so T told her keep her hands still.

She got bored with the game pretty quickly so she talked Papa into teaching her how to play pool!

We finished up the evening with a few wishes…

And the completion of the the puzzle!  Followed by a lesson in Baseball history by Daddy. :)

Saturday morning we went to town and did a little shopping with all three girls and then spent a few more hours at Noni and Papa’s before T, Peanut and I came home.  Bug and Boo stayed for one extra night and came to church with Noni and Papa.

What a fun, long weekend!  Thanks for a wonderful holiday everyone!

Give Thanks

I need to get Noni and Papa’s pictures from Thanksgiving before I do a post, so for now here are the three things we are most thankful for! :)

Candy Bar Graph

Any Wheel of Fortune fans out there that like my Before & After title? :)

We did this little project right after Halloween and I forgot to blog about it.  With all the candy that the girls received I knew we were going to have to do some kind of math project!  We had played a game the day before called Beginner’s Bar Graphs and I’d had to explain what a graph was to Bug so I thought graphing with the candy would be fun.  I made her a graph and let her choose 11 types of candy. 

Sorting and counting.

Boo worked on her counting skills too. :)

Bug was so excited and did a great job creating her graph!  Then I went on the Internet and found this fun website that allows you to put in your data and make different kinds of graphs.  Here is her computer bar graph and her real one.

We made a line graph and a pie chart as well.  She’s been asking to graph more stuff so I think it was a success!