On this Christmas Eve

Picture of Michael and I that I took before we headed out to Fordland for Christmas Eve. I heart him!!

Well, Christmas Eve has now come and gone and it is now really, really early on Christmas Day. Michael is already asleep but I decided I wanted to jump online really quick before heading to bed. We had a nice time out at my parents tonight. We always do homemade pizza and other snacky items. My mom makes the pizza crusts ahead of time and freezes them. . then we just pull them out and decorate them with whatever toppings we desire. We ended up with a ton left over, but that's ok because cold pizza is still delicious!

As usual, the guys disappeared into the computer room to shoot each other on the computers. Beth, my mom, Vicki, and I played a card game called "Hand and Foot", while Becky kept the kids out of stuff. Beth and I were on a team and my mom and Vicki kicked our butts!

Here are a few pictures that got taken tonight:

My parents Christmas tree. . . hmmm. . . which present is for me??

My niece, Taylor, took a while before I was able to get a picture that she was smiling in. After she opened her present from Paul, Vicki, and Oliva she had more fun playing with the gift bag and tissue paper than with her actual present. Why is it that we buy actual toys for kids when they are content with things like a cardboard box???

And it is even harder to get Trey to smile for the camera. . . I could not manage to capture one all night. My cousin, OliviaOf course Beth and I have to take a self-portraitBecky holding one of my mom's aliens. . . oops. . .I mean snowmen. My dad calls them aliens because they invaded my parent's house.

Well, I really should call it a night. We are heading back out to my parents around noon tomorrow to open presents and then for dinner around 5pm. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas!!

Lisa

beth's birthday buttons

So I said I would try to post again and show what Beth's birthday present was. . .I bought her buttons. . .lots and lots of buttons. I am happy to say that I think she was thrilled with her present. Her first response when she opened it up was a very loud gasp, and then she exclaimed (again very loudly) BUTTONS!!

I know she likes buttons and then I found this nifty container on sale at Jo-Ann the day after Thanksgiving. Plus. . .she is very much a ROYGBV organizer, so of course I had to organize the buttons by that for her. After I gave it to her, she seemed very excited to go and organize the rest of her buttons into the container. You may think that sounds crazy, but not me. I had a lot of fun just buying and sorting the buttons into the container for her. And. . .to make it even better. . .I bought myself one also!! I hadn't let her see mine though until tonight after I gave hers to her. I didn't want her to think it was a good idea and go start her own. . .that would have ruined it all.

In other news, Michael and I just finished watching the newest Indiana Jones movie really large against our bedroom wall. He bought a projecter today. . . watching our normal size TV in the bedroom will never be sufficient again. Sigh. . .

I should go to bed now though. I only have to work a few hours tomorrow, but I still have to be functional for those few hours. Seeing as how it is after midnight. . .it is now Christmas Eve!! So Happy Christmas Eve everyone!!

Lisa

Christmas Break

Michael and I came home to our heat not working last night, which made for a very cold evening. He was going to call someone today to have them come and look at it, but he did not. When I got home from work tonight I went down and fiddled with the wires a bit that run between the thermostat and the heater. . . and it kicked on!!! That makes me happy because it will not be freezing in here tonight. We will still need to get it looked at and probably get the wire replaced, but hopefully we will not have to mess with it over the holiday.

I am so excited for noon tomorrow. Why? you ask. . . because I get off of work at noon and I do not have to be back until Monday. Yeah!! Although it is going to be **SO** incredibly busy I know it will just fly by.

Today is Beth's birthday. Most of the family got together out in Fordland, but I did not go. By the time I got out there after work it would have been too late. I am ready for her to get home though so I can give her my present. I am excited to see her reaction because I had a lot of fun getting it all together. Maybe I will repost again later after I give it to her so I can post a picture. I am going to go for now though because I need to get some laundry started.

And again. . . yeah for my Christmas break that is so, so close to being here!

Lisa

A short weekend

This weekend has just seemed incredibly short. After I got off of work on Friday, Michael and I met up and did some Christmas shopping and other errand running. We did get almost all of our Christmas shopping done!! There are just a few little things we still need to pick up. We also need to go look at coats and pick out a coat because we decided we were going to buy each other a new coat for Christmas. We looked a little on Friday. . .but did not buy anything.

Saturday we slept in and then after I got up I ran to Wal-Mart to get groceries. . . that place was crazy! I was so happy when I was done and finally able to leave. After I got home I had to make Baked Potato Skins because that is what I was planning to take to my Office Christmas party that night. The party was just us women in Finance and our significant others. We had drawn names for a Secret Santa gift and mine got me a Hobby Lobby gift card. Yeah! I can always use that. We mostly ate and played some games. After getting home last night I stayed up waaayy too late watching Friends and wrapping Christmas presents.

I have all ten seasons of Friends and it had been awhile since I saw any of them. I have been watching that a lot lately which is no good. I chose a bad time of year to get involved in that.

Today we got up fairly early and went to church. It was a good service with lots of Christmas music. After church we delivered tins of cookies to some friends and family. It was nice stopping by and visiting with everyone for a bit.

Now we are home again and I have tons of laundry to do. I would love to get it all done tonight, but I know that is not going to happen. I also have lots of dishes to wash, but that doesn't sound fun at all.

I actually kind of want to scrapbook, but 9pm is not going to be a good time for me to start on that because I will end up staying up way too late and I need to get a good night's sleep.

I only work 2 1/2 days this week so that makes me happy. Tuesday is Beth's birthday and I am excited to give her Birthday present to her. I think she will like it. . . and I had fun putting it together. I will let you know what it is after I give it to her on Tuesday.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we will be spending in Fordland with my family. Michael's sister and her family will arrive in town late on Christmas Day, so we will be spending the few days after Christmas mostly out in Pleasant Hope.

I am really going to try to start posting on here more frequently. Maybe that should be a New Year's Resolution. . . . speaking of which, I think I am going to do really bad on my resolutions for this year. . . but we'll save that for another day.

Lisa

I found a little Christmas. . concerts, cookies, and trees

Be prepared. . .I think this is going to be a fairly long post with lots of pictures. I guess that's what happens when I skip blogging for three weeks. I did have good reasons though. . .the first week I had forgotten the power cords to my laptop out at my parents, so my computer was dead. Then I got sick, and then I really wanted to get my tree up which meant some cleaning and rearranging. Plus. . .this time of year is always just so, so busy. But I love it!


Michael and I went to see Casting Crowns on 12/2. It was AMAZING! It had multiple other people performing also though, some of which I could have done without, but they were awesome. Casting Crowns has some really, really great songs and I think "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" is one of my new favorite Christmas songs. It is beautiful! When we went to go see Casting Crowns, Michael started heading up to the ticket booth which really confused me because we already had our tickets. Turns out he had decided that he wanted to get tickets to go see Jim Brickman, who was going to be in town on 12/6. So he bought the tickets and we went to that show, which was also really great. He is such an incredible piano player. And Tracy Sullivan is also amazing on his electic violin. A couple of my favorite songs were The Gift, Coming Home for Christmas, and Peace. My only problem was I was already sick by that point and I don't really remember much of it. I almost made him find someone else to go with, but I decided I wanted to go. I am sure I looked like poo, but oh well.After being to those two concerts and listening to the (mostly) Christmas music, I was in the mood to put up my Christmas tree. So I worked on getting that put up last week. I worked on it over the course of a few different evenings after I got home from work. These are some pictures that I snapped yesterday before heading out to Fordland to work on cookies.

The three different shots were all took at the same time, just with different settings on. I think I am going to use the three pictures together on a scrapbook page for my Christmas tree. I really like the third one with just the greens being picked up in the picture.

For our annual Cookie baking day this year, Beth and I decided we were going to take more pictures of people and not really of the cookies because we have focused mostly on pictures of the cookies for the last couple years.

Taking a break from baking for a quick shot ( not so quick really. . .I think I took 4 before I got a good one)

Cole is always so somber in pictures. I tried. . . but I just could not get him smiling.

Laura and Shawn got a new dog, Betsy, that she brought over to my parents house while we were baking. My first comment to the dog was, "you are ugly", but I said it in a sweet voice so as not to hurt Betsy's feelings. :)

My mom **hates** having her picture taken, but I think this is a good picture of her.

Me with Sasha. . . this little girl makes me want to have a baby. . . oh, Michael. . . Also, we had to retake this picture because the first one caught my mom in the background licking her fingers, which doesn't look so well when we are making cookies to give to people (in actuality, she was licking her fingers on her way to the sink where she then washed her hands. . .I think)

Becky and Laura with Cole and Sasha after her nap, I had another picture like this with Beth in the background giving them distant rabbit ears, but the Laura and Becky didn't look good in that one. . . too bad.

Poor Beth. . .just wanted to give us more work to do. Just kidding. She hurt her foot at a friends house on Friday night and didn't think she needed to go to the doctor. By the time she got to my parents on Saturday morning, her foot was swollen, bruised, and she was in a lot of pain, so my dad ran her up to the Doctors clinic in Fordland. He said it may be fractured, so she now has crutches, is not supposed to put any weight on it, and is supposed to keep it elevated as much as possible. Since she couldn't stand and bake, she got to do the menial tasks like unwrapping the chocolates for the candy and rolling cookies in sugar. . . I don't really think she minded too much though. I am sure that she feels at bad for not being able to really help us much. . .at least there is a strong chance she feels bad. . . at least a little

Another picture of Sasha

Becky and Hugh were going down to Silver Dollar City last night with his family, so she cut out early from the cookie baking. She did already have 2 of her 3 kinds done though, and the third one was a work in process. Shane and Trey are so loud when they are together and *so* cute here hugging each other bye. I missed it the first time and then we had to convince them to hug each other again so I could get a picture. Trey was very excited about going to Silver Dollar City and was ready to head out the door.

These are all of the cookies that we made. . . 14 different kinds ( was supposed to be 15, but with Beth being injured we cut out one of the more complicated ones she was supposed to do. . .the pinwheels). This is my tray of cookies that I am taking to work tomorrow. . .assuming the weather does not keep me at home. It is supposed to ice and snow on and off for the next four days. . .starting sometime this afternoon or evening.

In addition to the tray I am taking to work, these are all the tins of cookies that I made up to give to people. I was so ready to be done with cookies yesterday after baking all day and then making up the tins. Luckily, Mama helped me with the tins so I could head home.

Well. . . I think that is about it. Now I really need to get off of here and start cleaning my house. My kitchen, bathroom, and living room are fairly clean. I just need to straighten up a few things, but the two bedrooms are a disaster. I was hoping to get then straightned up and then do some scrapbooking today, but I am not sure that is going to happen. The back bedroom (office/craft room/my clothes depository/wedding collection/junk room) is really a horrible mess. . . Beth walked up here the other day and was like, Oh My Gosh! because it is so bad. I am really feeling like scrapbooking right now, but since that is the room I scrapbook in. . . the mess would just be zapping my creative energy. You may say BS, but its the truth. I cannot scrapbook in a messy area. . . I can make it a mess while scrapbooking, but even then it gets to a certain point I have to clean up before I can do another page.

So I guess I should go clean. . . Hmmmm. . . . where to start???

Lisa

Oh, and I am also kind of freaking out because yesterday the "6-months to our wedding" date passed and I do not feel like I have nearly enough accomplished.

And, I found out yesterday, Laura started a blog so I need to find out what her site is so I can look at it.

Now I am really going. . . .