Decorating for Christmas

This year decorating for Christmas was very fun for me. I guess I was just really feeling the spirit of Christmas this year. I have so much to be grateful for and I was incredibly excited to celebrate the birth of our Savior. The kids pitched in and decorated/destroyed our Craigslist tree. It is a nine foot pre-lit treasure. We just loved it.

Snow Day

It has only snowed where we live a handful of times EVER. So you can imagine my surprise that out of the three winters we have lived here, it has snowed twice. As always, I love it when it snows but I am glad it is very temporary.

So far...

I am so far behind but I have some cute pictures. Mark's sister was kind enough to take some great family pictures for us before Christmas.
Here are my cutie pants kids.

Mr. Buddy and his daddy

Me and that handsome guy

The little princesses

Spence the Man

Our cute family

Bad Idea?

WARNING--Some of the images in this post may be disturbing!

Shortly before Thanksgiving, I got the not so bright idea to knock some of the tiles in the shower out. It was going to be a quick replacement job so that I did not have to deal with the awful mold building up that I just couldn't clean. Well, I opened a can of worms! This is what happened to the dry wall behind the tiles! That explains all the mold.



Well, we invited my parents to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and knew they would be in town in one and a half weeks. So the goal was to have it done by then. Mark was great at the demolition work. I wish I'd gotten a picture. He replaces the layer of drywall then the tile board on top of it.


We FINALLY agreed on some affordable, yet attractive tile and began to put it up.



The shower was not finished before my parents got here so we all got the pleasure of sharing the only shower in the house for a few days. It has nearly been a month and this is what our shower looks like at this moment.


As I reflect on this remodeling experience I am reminded of the HGTV show called Renovation Realities. The people on there have these low budget and short time limit goals. They always go over budget and over the time limit. Now this is my reality. Yay!

Haircut

So I really felt like Spencer's hair was getting too long. One dead giveaway was that it always had food in it. It would stand straight up in the air two or three inches every time he ate a meal. I kept hounding Mark to let me buzz it but he didn't want me too. Finally, I got fed up one night after dinner. The boy had his entire meal in his hair--I kid you not! I got out the clippers and off went the hair. Sorry Mark. It had to be done.
Before

After

The Wizard of OZ

A while back, a friend gave us a box with a bunch of dress up clothes in it. It had a Dorothy costume so that gave me the idea for our Halloween theme. Avery was Dorothy. Sarah was Glinda the good witch. Spencer was the cowardly lion. I was the wicked witch. We did some trunk or treating at the church before trick or treating in our neighborhood. Needless to say, the kids had a huge haul of candy. It's no wonder I've been gaining weight!

A SPOOKY Halloween Party!

So we wanted to make Halloween especially fun and SPOOKY this year. We had a SPOOKY party complete with pumpkin carving the night before Halloween. Here is a list of the SPOOKINESS...(warning: Some images may be too SPOOKY for young eyes!

1. The Briggs family were our party guests. The reason this is SPOOKY (Crazy) is because we have known these guys for 6 years. We were in the same ward at BYU-Idaho. Then Mark, Avery and I lived with them for 4 months in Salt Lake City. Then, they picked up and moved here to Houston to live! We are so excited to have them and their two little boys back in our lives!
Scott and J.T. carving a pumpkin.


2. A SPOOKY party is not complete without SPOOKY food.







3. Pumpkin carving can be a bit SPOOKY for children who have never seen or touched pumpkin guts before.