Enjoying the Season!

How cute are we?!
We ventured out to the Mall on black friday for a little shopping and......
to see SANTA!!
Ty was not a big fan.
After we left he told Jeremy that he wants Santa to bring him dinosaurs.

McKinley, on the other hand, couldn't wait to see Santa!
She told Santa that she wants an Ariel Baby.
She is definitely counting down to Christmas!!!

We have this cute white tree that we put out every year,
this year Kinley suggested that we decorate it.
We had a great time out there last weekend!
And the weather was beautiful.

This is our finished product.
I hung the lights all by myself!!
This was the first time we have every hung lights on our house.
The kids and I had a ton of fun!
I am a little afraid of heights that is why the other roof is not lite up.
I was too scared to get up there.
It's not great but hey it's festive!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Happy Birthday to me!

Aren't they beautiful?!
My sweet hubby sent these to me for my birthday yesterday!
Oh how I LOVE him!!!!

Yes I know that it's a little weird to write about my own birthday but it was such a fabulous day! McKinley woke up and dressed herself then make straight to me, she gave me a big hug and said, "Happy Birthday Mommy!" It was a great way to start the day.

I took Kinley to preschool and spent the next 2 hours cleaning my house. I love to have a clean house and it needed it. The rest of the day was pretty normal other than lots of fun texts and calls and of course the flowers.

When Jeremy got home he had arranged for our Niece to come over and tend the kids so he and I could go out. We went to Cafe Rio it was so good. I haven't been there for about a year. After dinner we went and did some Christmas shopping. I love Christmas shopping with my hubby!

We came home around 10 and our poor kids were still waiting up for us cause they wanted to see me open presents. I got my favorite perfume and some cute new boots. Then we ate our cake and went to bed. It was a great day! Thanks to everyone who posted on facebook and texted me and called me and gave me awesome gifts. It was a wonderful birthday!!

Thanksgiving 2010

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I hope you all had a fantastic holiday. I know we did!
These are my adorable little kids on Thanksgiving morning.
They are wearing their super cute turkey shirts that a friend made for them.

A few years ago McKinley got a turkey shirt from old navy. She wore it for a few years then it got too small so just 2 weeks ago it got relocated to the garage. When Kinley discovered it was gone she was all upset cause she wanted to wear it for Thanksgiving. She wanted a new one so bad she gave me the $10 she has saved and asked me to buy her a new one. We went to old navy and they didn't have any....she was so upset. That same day my friend had posted some turkey shirts she made for her kids on her blog. I bought shirts for my kids and enlisted her to make these amazing shirts! We surprised the kids with turkey shirts on Thanksgiving and it made their day!!

I apologize to my in-laws but I have to admit that I did not think Thanksgiving was going to be too great this year. We spent it with only a handful of Jeremy's family and I though that the kids and myself might be bored. I have to admit I was completely wrong. We had a fabulous time!!

There were only about 20 of us with 4 of us being kids. The kids had a blast at their own little kid table. The adults had the tables set up all nice and in a square so we could all talk. It was awesome! We had a wonderful meal with interesting conversation. After all the good food we headed to the gym (we were in a church) where we played a few games. Then we decided to play a game of kick ball. We had so much fun! Everyone played, from age 2 to age 80! I truly had a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving!! Thank you Reynolds family for a great time! We love you!

Ty's first haircut!

About a week ago Jeremy, McKinley and Ty got haircuts!
This was Kinley's hair before they started cutting.

This was after a snip or two.

And here is the finished product! She looks so cute.
We love her new haircut. She cut nearly 5 inches off.

Now for Ty's very first official haircut....

This is the first swipe with the clippers.
Mom had to hold back my tears at about the same time.

As you can see he is not too happy to be getting his haircut.

And now he is a little more relaxed!

Aww he was SO good. I was SO impressed.

This is Ty after is first haircut!
Now he look like a little boy and not my baby anymore.
I am still sad about it.

Before his haircut Ty had beautiful red hair with sweet little curls in the back.
I totally wanted to keep it a little long but the girl cutting it suggested otherwise
because his hair is having a hard time growing in above his ears.
So we went short. So sad but I must say he is still super cute!
Most people find it funny that he is 2 1/2 and this was his first haircut.

We LOVE these cute kids!!!

Halloween 2010!

We had a ton of fun this year for Halloween!
This is Ty as a monkey. He didn't want is picture taken.
And I'm special and can't figure out how to turn them. Sorry.

This is Kinley as an adorable Tinker Bell!
She was so dang cute and she is a wonderful poser at picture time!

Check out the old Grandma, Travis!
We had a BLAST getting him dressed up!
I had so much fun being creative with his outfit! I even curled all of his hair!
He has a walker to go with it but I didn't get that in the pic.

Tink and the monkey!

These are my 3 adorable little kids.
Ty, Kinley and the cutie B that we tend!
She was so cute all dressed up we had to include her in all our Halloween pics!

It was a great year for all of us!!

Burnt Bow Tutorial (this is for you, Valerie)

Items needed to get started:
Piece of satin fabric (I was told the cheaper the better)
Scissors, Glue gun, Lighter or match, Candle, Ribbon, Prong clips & Brads

Cut satin into various sized circles.

Light your candle and singe all the way around the fabric.
You do not have to put it in the flame just in the heat.

This is what they look like after burned.

Use the brad to poke through all the layers of fabric from smallest to largest.

After the last piece, open the brad. It will look like this.

Then glue the ribbon covered hair clip onto the back.

Viola!! The finished product!!
Valerie let me know if you have any questions.

Fun with hair!

Check out my adorable little girl!

Last night we decided to have some fun and braid her hair.
I have to admit it wasn't all my idea. My sister-in-law did this with her daughter.
This is how it looked this morning.

This is her after the braids were taken out
From the front...

And the back!
Too cute!
Kinley went to school this morning and she is the only girl there.
She didn't want to be too girly,
so she wore her multi-colored skirt instead of her pink one!
That's not too girly is it???

Insects & Indians

In our neighborhood we are doing a joyschool for our kids.
Preschool is so expensive a few of us chose this instead.
Last week was my turn to teach and I had letter I.
What do you do for letter I? Well we decorated insect boxes.
We went on an insect hunt. Made our own insects.
And we made indian head bands.
We had SO much fun!
This is the kids with their insect boxes and indian headbands!
Aren't they adorable kids?!

My Creativity

So I am not a creative person. Never have been...don't claim to be.
This is about the extent of it.
I usually just copy what I see when I do crafts but I came up with this all on my own.
I know it's not much to brag about but I was impressed with myself.
These are just more zipper bows.

The above zipper bow is supposed to be a butterfly.
Kinley loves this one!

These ones are not creative. Just some more that I made for a friend!

Gettin' my craft on!

I look a long break from crafting and decided it was time to get back to it!
I wanted to make these cute zipper bows. I also made some smaller burned flowers.
And I had lots of organza that was already cut out so I made these pom-pom ones too.
Kinley loves all of them, of course. She wears the zipper ones daily.

Once I got started I just kept on going. Most of the fabric is already cute so I just need to put it together. The problem is....Kinley has way to many bows already.
I don't know what to do with all of these.

I gave some of them away for a birthday!

I made myself some cute headbands too! I love these.
Now I need to wear them!

Fire Station

Last month for preschool we were learning the letter F.
One of the teachers for that week arranged a field trip for the kids.
This top pic is of most the the cute kids learning fire safety.

This is the lady that gave us our tour. She was really cool!
She got dressed in all of her fire gear including the mask to show the kids that she is not scary.
She then crawled next to each of them and taught them to yell and hit her so she would know they were there in case of a fire.

This in not a very good picture but it is the kids inside the fire truck!

Again not a great picture. The sun was so bright.
The kids sitting on front of the engine for a photo op.
Too bad the sun was so bright and the only camera we had was my phone.
All in all it was a great day at the fire station and the kids learned a lot!

Dentist Day

Who is this beautiful girl???
This is my sweet McKinley girl....
right after getting her first cavities filled.

Notice the crooked smile!
Isn't it so cute?
I kept asking her to smile or talk for me cause she looked so cute.

She was such a trooper she got to get a treat for being so good!
She chose this make-up kit just like the one she gave her friend for a birthday present.

I was so proud of Kinley. At first I really considered giving her an oral sedative.
We decided against it and just went with the "happy gas".
She was amazing!!
I truly cannot believe how well she did.
She got two cavities filled, one in back and one in front.
Great job sweet girl!!!!

Peaches Galore

I am the same as most of my friends right now
and I'm up to my ears in peaches!
We went to the church orchard the other day
and got 4 big boxes full of peaches.
I learned to do lots of different things with them.
BIG THANK YOU to my Mother-in-law!
The above pictures is the beginning of our process.
Canning!!

This is just a small portion of my kitchen.
Picture the ENTIRE kitchen covered in peaches.

This is my wonderful Mother-in-law and one of my
best friends skinning the peaches.

When we finished we had 44 bottles of peaches!!
Yahoooo!!

We also had 33 jars of jam!
Another Yahooo!

This is all that we could salvage out of two medium sized boxes.
They got too ripe. Sad. :(

Thanks to another friend of mine I learned how to make peach crumble!
Delicious!!!

And I froze the remainder!

This was such a wonderful experience for me. My family went to the orchard with two other families. Then I enlisted my Mother-in-law to come help all three of us Mom's learn how to can!
We learned the entire canning process and jamming process also.
It was so fun from beginning to end!!
Now I have yet another Suzy homemaker skill!!