The Christmas Tree!

Here it is finally after some major problems Ethan and Emma are ready for Christmas. Every year we add a few more ornaments to our tree. You can see Spiderman hanging if you look very closely. This year I think Ethan wants to buy a Iron Man ornament and Emma wants a Barbie. I think our tree is still a little bare. A friend of mine found a post of a tree with a lamp in it! I somehow don't think Mario would ever go for that so I'll just stick to the traditional look. :) We are leaving for Oklahoma this Sat. to visit our family and friends so everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are so excited to take a little road trip! Wish us luck. We plan on stopping in Kansas City to do a little shopping and have a good lunch. The kids love the Rainforest Cafe. I'm planning on taking a lot of pictures. Happy Thanksgiving! ~Amy

More Christmas!

I really like to decorate with these Huge pine cones. I even put them on top of my candle sticks! And of course we had to get our Santa Claus out. I am planning on buying a nativity to add to our collection. Our nativity broke when we moved to Iowa. I looked last year but they are very expensive for a nice one. But this year I am determined I can find a good quality one at a good price. Wish me luck. Our mantle is my favorite with our stockings, pine cones, and garland. We have an extra stocking for our pets!!!

Christmas Decorating...

I am really enjoying our house decorated in all the reds, greens and ambers. It is nice to come home to a happy looking house. I wanted to bring a little of the outdoors in so I bought this garland last year at Micheal's on sale I thought it looked pretty realistic and mixed it with these HUGE pine cones. My tray on our dining room table turned out fun. I bought these trees at Gordman's a few years ago and never really found a good spot for them until this year. Our kids love snowmen so Ethan found this vintage looking snowman made by Joe Spencer and thought we needed him for our collection. He has a nice home on my other tray...

Preparing to decorate our Christmas tree...

Our tree had a small problem this year. We bought this pre-lit tree 4 years ago on sale at Hobby Lobby and have enjoyed being able to NOT worry about putting lights on it until this year. I went to plug my tree in and I know this is crazy but only 20 lights worked out of 500!!! I did what any person in my situation would do, I checked every light. After about 3 hours of frustration we went to Wal-mart and bought lights and can happily say our tree now has lights!!! Whew I thought I might lose it. Pulling the lights off the tree was the main challenge because they were attached with nice little hooks that were very hard to get off. Mario and I now know the logic behind this the company wants you to just go out and buy another pre-lit tree but we could not justify or afford that. I will say the thought crossed my mind a lot during the 3 hour process! :)

I know it looks like a big mess!!!

I have been married for 10 years this Dec. so I have collected a lot of Christmas decor over the years... I started pulling out my garland, stockings and decorations for our house first. I find the easiest way is to pull all of it out of the tubs I store it in and lay it all out in my bedroom floor. It takes me a few days to get the creative side of my brain going!:) I hate to even admit this but the pics I took don't include all of my Christmas collection. I still have 2 tubes not shown full of Christmas ornaments and picks. But I shop after Christmas for deals so most of my decorations were purchased 50% off. I did buy a new Christmas CD this year and I really recommend it. It's a new Faith Hill, Joy to the World. I try to buy 1 Christmas CD a year to add to my collection. We put our Christmas tree up early before Thanksgiving because we like to travel back to OKC to visit family and friends for Thanksgiving. So when we return everything is done! :) Well I'm off to finish decorating our house. We did the tree last night as a family. Mario kept trying to sneak off to play the guitar but he was a pretty good sport. I will post some pictures of our tree soon. I like to just sit on our sofa, light a candle, play my Christmas music and just stare at the tree after the kids go to sleep. I like to drift away into Christmas memories of the past and think about how truly blessed I am. Have a good week! ~Amy

Our first snow of the season!

Well I pulled down all my fall decor and threw out all of our pumpkins with our yard waste so all that is left is my front door wreath. And as if I needed some closure from our beautiful weather we had this fall I woke up to, you guessed it, SNOW last Friday... I am definitely getting in the mood to put up our Christmas tree!:) Luckily Iowa is going to break us in nice and slow this year with the snow because we just got a trace and it melted with in the hour!

More field trip fun...

Ethan and Emma with a friend trying to sneak up on the animals!

You can see my little Volkswagen just behind all the animals. I was the only mom there not driving a mini van. :)

The kids in line to play a bean bag game. They really thought this was fun.

Our first Homeschooling field trip!!!

We had so much fun at our first ever homeschooling field trip a few weeks ago. There were about 50 kids there playing and feeding the animals. We learned all about Alpacas, Llamas, and goats. We even got to feed a few goats which as you can see was very exciting for the kids! It was so neat to get to pet the Alpacas too. They had crafts and games set up and talked about all the animals. I was very impressed and I got to meet some wonderful moms that have been homeschooling for many years and love it. :)

Feeding the ducks and geese in our costumes...

It's always fun to dress up, Emma is Tinker Bell and Ethan is Optimus Prime the Transformer. I must say we had a great day playing in the park. Our weather was just perfect. We have a chance of snow at the end of the week so I'm so glad we took advantage of the nice weather. We spent all day Sat. raking leaves and trimming back some of our flowers that died last week when we had a few nights of 28 degrees. It's hard to believe that we are in November. Soon we will be decorating for Christmas, I like the idea of listening to some happy Christmas music and putting up our tree. Have a good week. ~Amy

Our Park fun!

On Halloween I took the kids out to eat at their favorite place, which is McDonald's in their costume. And then went to our favorite park to feed the ducks and play. I like to take pictures when the kids are just playing. Action pictures are my favorite. I know someday I will really cherish these memories we are making as the kids get older. :)

Trick or Treat

Emma and Ethan had a lot of fun on Halloween. We have family fun night which means we get our favorite take out pizza and buy a movie. This year we bought Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D which the kids thought was very cool. They liked wearing the 3D glasses. And our Clear Play DVD player cut out any tacky parts! :) While I took the kids around and greeted our neighbors Mario handed out candy and outreach packages from our church. He was very surprised at the response he got from the kids. They were excited. He was surprised because several of the kids were more excited about getting a copy of the new testament of the Bible than their candy. We gave out around 100 Bibles so we had a lot of kids. I bought 6 bags of candy and we had just a few pieces left by 8:00. I also enjoyed getting to go inside some of the estate size homes on our block. Our house is one of the smaller houses on our block. I love old homes and all the character that comes with them. So many of our neighbors gave us quick tour and I realized that our neighbors are all very friendly. That to me was a special treat!!! And the homes were incredible! That's what I like about old neighborhoods because you know you'll have at least 1 thing in common with your neighbor, an appreciation of older homes. The weather was so nice our whole street was just full of little kids. :)