Merry Christmas 2010

We had a wonderful Christmas this year. The best thing about our Christmases is that we are able to spend time with both of our families on Christmas day. Another great thing about this year is that my sister, Dana, was able to spend Christmas morning with us - a rare treat!

So we woke up early on Christmas day, and feasted our eyes upon Santa's great work. He brought Noel her now most prized posession...her "big bike"! She was completely showered with gifts this year...showered! In fact there were so many toys (of ours AND hers) that we could not fit it all in our car. Noel opened countless toys, ranging from babydolls to cookware and everything in between. We received a new toaster oven and a coffee maker. Tim received an air compressor and hunting/camping gear. Dana and I both received a beautiful Pandora charm bracelet.

After gifts were done, we got dressed and headed over to Tim's mom's house for their annual breakfast, complete with fried oysters and popcorn shrimp (don't worry, they have other breakfast food too! ;-) ) We ate breakfast, opened gifts, visited awhile, and headed back to Nannie and Poppy's house for some R&R, and later Christmas dinner.

Our Pictures:

Gingerbread House

This week we headed to Roanoke for a pre-Christmas get together. Dana and I both wanted to take a trip before Christmas so that we could take a load of gifts beforehand. Unfortunately my vehicle isn't quite big enough for all of us, plus our luggage and gifts!

Anyway, we ended up getting snowed in which was SO much fun. It was too bad we didn't have Noel's snow suit though!

We also made our Gingerbread house which Noel thought was awesome. She ate most of the candy before it made it onto the house, but that's half of the fun of course :)

Here are the pictures

Santa Hugs

Last week, Noel visited Santa at our local mall. We've been preparing her for weeks, showing her pictures of him, and telling her what to expect. We weren't sure if she'd have the same reaction as last year, which was...completely terrified.

When she saw Santa she was a little hesitant at first. But he bent down to talk to her, and she gave him the biggest bear hug! It was incredibly sweet :) I wish I had a video of their meeting!

She sat on his lap for an extended period of time, completely consumed with the candy cane he gave her. She forgot what she wanted to ask for, but thankfully we were able to see Santa again this week at playgroup!

Here is a picture of her picture with Santa.

Merry Photos

This year, instead of paying someone with ZERO photography skills to click a button and then dish out too much money for said service...I had my own little photo shoot.

It included:

A fresh Christmas tree
A yummy candy cane
A holiday dress
Holiday cheer

and last but not least...an adorable little girl.

It was hard to pick out a photo for our Christmas card, but we decided on this one:


These were the other contenders:



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Playing Reindeer Games

Today Noel and I made some Rudolph cookies for playgroup this week. We're doing our annual Christmas party, complete with gifts for the kids, a smorgasbord of treats, and a visit from Santa.

Originally these cookies were supposed to be made with peanut butter cookie dough, but due to peanut allergies in the group, we substituted sugar cookie dough.

We ended up making the sugar cookies from scratch, which is better anyway. Sugar cookie mix tends to create cookies that are extremely hard to shape. We started out with M&M's (for the nose), chocolate chips (for the eyes), icing (as glue), and mini chocolate-covered pretzels (for antlers).

Noel helped mix in the ingredients, and I formed the dough into triangles. I tried to get her to help in that, but she hated the way the dough felt on her hands and asked me if she could wash her hands.

Anyway, after baking, it was time to decorate. I thought they turned out great!

Sending our wishes of holiday cheer

It's that time of year again...I've been thinking about our Christmas cards. Last year we included one of Noel's Christmas pictures in with regular cards that we purchased from Wal-mart.

Since I think we are cutting out the professional photo session this year and just doing our own (for several reasons), I am going to simplify the process and just order Christmas Photo Cards off of Shutterfly. They have hundreds of options with a range of photos, sizes, designs, and colors.

Last year I ordered calendars for Christmas gifts - it was a year in the life of Noel, showing how she'd grown throughout the year. I also ordered Noel's birthday invites from Shutterfly!

So, on with the Christmas card choices. Anyone that knows me knows that I am extremely indecisive when it comes to picking things like this. SO, please feel free to offer your opinion. ;-)

I like classic, simplistic designs (And apparently I like snowflakes!)






So many to choose from...how do you decide on one?? Hopefully I can come to a decision on the cards, find time to take holiday pictures of Noel, and finish our 2011 Calendars within the next few days so that I can get the ball moving. Only 22 days until Christmas!

In exchange for this blog post, I am receiving 50 free photo cards from Shutterfly. If you also have a blog and are interested in receiving the same, please click HERE.

Thanksgiving 2010

This year we had a re-run (kind of) of Thanksgiving 2009. Since Tim has to work on Thanksgiving, we invited Nannie and Poppy up to our house. They arrived on Thursday morning and stayed through Saturday morning.

Noel I spent Wednesday making the side dishes, casseroles, and desserts. I also cut up the onion and celery we'd need for the dressing, just to save on time.

We had a bigger meal this year, although we were down one person (Tim's co-worker). We had...

Turkey
Dressing
Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Broccoli Casserole
Macaroni and Cheese
Pinto Beans
Deviled Eggs
Cranberry Salad
Rolls

And for dessert:
Pumpkin Pie
Cherry Pie
Chocolate Pecan Pie
Red Velvet Cheesecake

For 4.5 people, we had a feast! I actually ended up throwing some food out today (how sad!).

Anyway, here are my 4 measly pictures!

Kitty Cat Obsession

Noel LOVES kitties, so I had a friend make a hat for her and it turned out GREAT. Noel loves it too!

November Leaves

We haven't done the first thing with our leaves this year. This is due to the following:

1) Our lot is an acre, and we have dozens of mature oak trees. Yea. Daunting.
2)We only have ONE puny metal rake.
3)None of our trees really dropped any leaves until about 3 days ago.

So until we find a solution to our leaf problem (which I'm guessing will probably be a leaf blower), I raked a little pile of leaves up for Noel to play in.

Here are some photos!

Her shirt reads "2 Cute in Camo" - Tim got it for her
birthday

Look at her hair in this one! I love it!

The Late Pumpkin Patch Trip

The mommies (and daddies) of our playgroup have been planning a trip to the orchard/pumpkin patch for a month now. Unfortunately, each week it kept getting postponed due to the weather.

So we finally made it, and we had a blast. No lines. No crowds. Perfect!

Noel loved the hayride, and both Willow and Noel insisted upon sitting with each other. They are absolutely adorable together. They share some of the same personality traits...the ones that will eventually get them in trouble if they continue their friendship. ;-) They are both fearless explorers, always looking for their next adventure. And they are so hardy - scratches, bumps, bruises, no problem! They get up and keep going!

.

Our trip to the pumpkin patch might have turned out better than it would have had we gone "on time". We received two free pumpkins with our hayrides (although I have to say this...the hayrides were quite hay-less). Sure, why do we need pumpkins now? But autumn is still in full effect, with vivid and changing colors on each tree.

I'm undecided what I will do with them...I've considered carving a cornucopia into one of them for Thanksgiving. Or using it as a decorative outdoor planter for a few weeks. Does anyone have any other suggestions for our post-Halloween pumpkins?

Artistic Noel

As I mentioned before in a previous entry, Noel and I have been finger painting away. I move her craft table into the kitchen, remove clothing and/or drape her with a cover-up, supply the paint and paper, and tell her to go to town.

I think at this point she mostly just likes to feel the paint on her hands, though. She mixes all of the colors together to produce this fantastic brown color and just swirls it around, as seen in the following video:

I did get a pretty good hand print of hers, though. For the time being it is displayed in her room. I will try to get a picture of that this weekend to post!

"Look mommy, make-up!"

The other day (after our fingerpainting activity was over), Noel came running to me exclaiming "Look Mommy! I Did it! Make-up!"

After I took a look at her face, I immediately had wished I owned some kind of normal lipstick, or that she had chosen a "paint" that wasn't so permanent. It was one of those permanent lip stains that you have to remove with vaseline.

But, vaseline didn't really work, so it took three days of washing/scrubbing to remove it!

Halloween 2010: Round 2

Tonight was round 2 of Halloween!

It was the same kind of set-up, but still slightly different. Noel has definitely become an expert trick-or-treater in the past two days.

They had a bounce house which Noel LOOOOVED. Check out the video:

They also had hamburgers, hot dogs, popcorn, all kinds of chili, tons of desserts, and sno cones.

Noel the "Kitty Kitty" - I found this Gymboree costume
on Ebay for $20!

Noel of course spotted the playground and had to "Go Down Slide Now!"

The cutest moment(s) of the night were unfortunately NOT caught on camera. Noel made a friend! A 3-year old boy playing on the "castle" at the same time took a liking to her. While climbing up, the little boy would wait for her at the top, and hold his hand out to help her up onto the platform.

Not only that, but they would HOLD HANDS while waiting in line for the slide. And then GO DOWN THE SLIDE TOGETHER, HOLDING HANDS. How sweet is that???

They did this several times, the whole time I was motioning for Tim to come over with the camera (he was across the playground). I was so upset to not get it on video! After he left, Noel kept asking where the boy went. Then, on the way home, Tim told her that boys are "bad news". Haha



I did (kind of) get a hand holding on video, but you can't really see it. Noel was having a hard time getting up these stairs, so he helped her up.