Christmas Tea

Last week Mommy and I went to some friend's house for tea and Christmas carol singing. We had a great time fellowshiping with friends and drinking Raspberry Zinger!

Here's Mommy with Mrs. S and Anna. They never fail to make us laugh! Even in conversations on Algebra.... who can do that??

And of course, you simply can't have a Christmas gathering without cookies. It's a law of nature, I'm sure.

They have the perfect living room for big groups. And it was decorated so nicely for the holidays! Some of the girls went downstairs to play Empire. A fun "name" game. Can you guess who I was? Bet not!

Here's Riley, my fellow Raspberry Zinger fanatic!

And yes, by the end of the night I finally caught Whitney with the camera! You can run but you can't hide... Especially from a "trigger happy" photographer!

Christmas party with the Inmans

This past Wednesday we had a Christmas party with our art teacher and her family. It was really fun, and Mommy had brought stuff to do a craft. It was from Better Homes & Gardens, and it was so adorable!

We had crayola synthetic modeling clay (consistency is similar to a dense, spongy foam after hardening) that we shaped into snowmen. We than glued them to candy jars, glasses, and mugs. (Goodwill!)

But we also decorated them, and did we ever. Quite the varied bunch! We had some pretty funny ones by the end.

Momma explaining the craft to her devoted listeners. One of the reasons she picked this idea was because it would be great to give or way easy to keep.

And yes, Kyle is smiling while knowing I'm in the picture. :P

Meet my snowman, Snowman. Aren't his rosy cheeks sweet?

Ha! funny moment here. Mrs. Inman made a really cute snowman who was a bit taller than her mug. So explain to me why she put glue all over the back of his head..... Maybe you could explain it to her too. She didn't seem to know. :)

Ah! Here's Mommy's. We all agreed it was cute! AND that it must have been electrocuted at one time or another.

Some of the littler guys took a break to frost and eat cookies. Above is Daniel's response to "Do you like your cookie?"

In reality, though, he wasn't eating it. He was licking all the frosting off.
Wonder where he gets that sweet tooth from......

And Daniel definitely won most creative, cause as you can see.... it is!
But we loved it all the same! He did great, and had a lot of fun.

We played games for prizes, too. Daniel won a pen that had a Santa on the end of it. When you pressed a button it would shoot off. And I'm sure the Inmans had no idea that to a little, 4 year old boy this suffices for a weapon...
Right??

A Grinch Fest

In a wonderful lapse of sanity, Mommy decided to take Lil, Daniel, and me to the mall today. On a Saturday. Three weeks from Christmas.

o_O

Anyway, what we went for was a Grinch Fest at Borders. Now I love Borders but at Christmas time, it's irresistible. And it's even adorable when they have someone read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," make crafts, and play games. So we got to listen to a story while having milk, cookies, and hot chocolate.

Here Daniel is coloring his Antler. Well... it looked more like an upside down, mutated candy cane... but so does the one in the book! You know, the one poor Max gets stuck with? They were making these for a game we plaid later.

Goose is decorating her wreath in pom poms. (And yes, for those of you asking. Elise does have almost every nickname imaginable :) Her wreath turned out very colorful and creative. Like her! Aren't her pigtails cute? The hair bands were red and green; her shirt was red, her sweater was green. Hmm.... I think some one's ready for Christmas.

I got to make an antler too, only mine ended up gold and purple. Not traditional, but don't worry. My wreath was about as plain and perfect as they come. Other than it smelling like watermelon and cherry. Please tell me someone else remembers those markers from Sunday school!

Here's where the antlers come into play. Pin the antler on Max! And that's pretty much what happened every time until when tying the blindfold on, one little girl said, "Um, I can see through the ribbon." You could just see the light bulb go on in the organizer's head. :)

Aunt Tara, when we were doing our crafts there was a little boy who was next to me. He asked me if he could have the marker when I was done. I literally had to do a double take he reminded me of Abe so much! That kind of brought me down a bit, since I knew if you all were here, you'd have gone with us..... *sob*

Okay, I'm good now. It was really fun; thanks Mommy!

Yes, we're different...

But I just can't help but love my fellow goofball!

Love ya a million swedish fish, Jess.

Reasons Jess should come for Thanksgiving:

1) Food

2) "Elf"

3) Black Friday insanity

4) "Because I lub her."

<3

Hey there.

Elise named him Todd.

If I ran the zoo...

It would be pretty similar to the Denver Zoo, I think.
I mean, of course it would have more Dr. Seuss absurdities, but as far as real goes, this was really fun!

They had a free day a few weeks ago, so we took the opportunity (along with hundreds of other people!) to go. I hadn't been since I was six, so I was really looking forward to it.

Daniel was our "map guy," and even hitched a ride on top of Kyle while directing. Daniel had lotsa fun; Kyle on the other hand didn't so much appreciate being thwapped on the head with the map every two seconds. I guess that's where being cute comes in handy, huh?

We watched the penguins be fed.

There was this really fun bird migration game we got to play, too! And no, Justin's not bowing. He's "pecking twenty times." We had to visit all these check points where they would give you directions on where to go next or what to do next. The best part was having to "die dramatically." Elise and I were the best at that!

We even got Kyle to play! But contrary to popular belief, he didn't win right away. He was eaten by a cat, had to start over, then he won.

We saw giraffes, too, but we're pretty spoiled when it comes to these guys. (Cheyenne Mountain's exhibit's way better.) But Denver tops them with their sea lion show! I now have another favorite animal. Her name's Lucy; isn't she cute?

We had a lot of fun, and we made tons of fun memories. But next time Daddy has to go with us!

It made me smile.

I love how life makes you smile.

The silly little nothings are some of the best nothings ever, really.

Like for instance....

We went to the library today, and we brought Justin along.

While leaving the library, Elise went to buy gumballs for everyone, cause she's amazing. So when we got in the car she divied them up. Now Justin does not live with us, so he would have no idea of Momma's absolute hate of "smacking."

Oh no he didn't.

Oh yes he did. :D

Poor Mom's over there cringing like it's nails on a chalkboard, and then....

"Ok, who's smacking?"

We all laugh and look at Justin, who immediately says, "Well, it's hard at first, so you kinda' have to."

I had to agree with him there and looked at Mom with a shrug. She said, "Okay, two minutes, then you're done!"

Now you may be good children who don't have any mischief running through your hearts, but sad to say, we are not. How could we resist?

Kyle, Elise and I just looked at eachother and the smacking begun.

Probably the longest two minutes Mom's ever experienced.