Our Plump Tree!

Ignore the title friends~that is somewhat of an inside joke that only my family will understand ;).

Well as you can tell by the pictures~this was decoration weekend at our house. I absolutely love the house when it is decorated for Christmas with all the lights and smells. I absolutely hate having to do it all! It's a tough job under the best of circumstances but when you have 4 very opinionated (and at times grouchy) folks working towards the same goal, it can become a bit of a struggle.

We started our day with a visit to Lazy Acres Christmas Tree farm in Chunky, MS. Don't blink or you might miss it. This was a really neat place. They had sprawling fields of various types of trees to choose from which they took you out to in a sleigh (tractor drawn). They also had several other stationary attractions to draw your attention. The girls enjoyed checking those out.

Natalie worshiping the baby Jesus and Alyson as the donkey~no comment;)Other features included an animal pen that had goats, rabbits, a turkey, dogs, pigs and a real reindeer 'Dasher'. This 'Dasher' has a lot of conditioning to do if he is going to be ready to pull Santa's sleigh in a couple of weeks! It didn't take us to long to find the perfect tree for us. After a little sweat and grunting, a very out of breath Frankie had the tree down and ready to load on to the sleigh. After a couple of other brief errands in town to finish collecting our decorating supplies, we headed to the house to face the challange ahead of us. It took us the remainder of the afternoon, evening (with a break for supper and the local Christmas parade) and this afternoon to finally get it all done. Whew! Now we can actually sit back and enjoy the beauty of it all.P.S. - Dad, this is the plumpest tree I have ever had ~ and I LOVE it!

After a raid in Daddy's closet!

The Results

Here are the final results of our ornament venture. Most of the paint and marker stayed on the ornaments, with the exception of Harrison. We think he mistook his face as an ornament at one point. If you are brave enough to attempt this with your children (which I highly recommend), here is the recipe to use:

1 2/3+ cups warm water

1 cup salt

4 cups all purpose flour (not self rising)

Combine water and salt, stirring until salt is desolved. Add flour. Move dough mixture to a firm surface. The dough will be very stiff. Knead dough until all ingredients appear to be well mixed and smooth (this take a fair amount of endurance ;) ), then knead it some more. On wax paper, roll dough out using a rolling pin until dough is smooth and no more than 1/4 inch thick. Cut your favorite shapes. Use a the end of a straw to cut a circle in the top of the ornament to put a ribbon or string through. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes. Flip ornaments 10-15 minutes into baking. Bake the same amount of time on each side. Allow to cool on flat surface. Once cool, decorate with paint.

Dough Ornaments

This was a first for us - making dough ornaments. As crafty as I am (or least told I am), I am not very creative. The girls and I have been in Tupelo since Monday enjoying a little time off from school, a little R&R (as much as you can get with 4 kids in the house) and just getting in a little family time. One of Kerri's friends, JoLynn, graciously invited ALL of us over to join her and her 2 children to make dough ornaments. It was a house full to say the least. This was also a learning experience for all of us as well, but a very fun one. It took a couple of attempts to figure out the specifics to get the dough just right. We got a lot of laughs out of that. We hope to get them painted later today and ready for the Christmas tree. Here are a few pictures from our venture.

Sarah (JoLynn's daughter), Alyson, Kristi and Natalie cutting our first ornaments ...

a few kink's to work out as our first batch appeared to have a bad case of cellulite

Alyson working her dough...it had to be the smoothest with all the elbow grease she put in to it!

Natalie's own unique creation...??? Don't know that this one will make it to the tree. We may hang on to this one for Halloween next year ;)

Hailey and Harrison weren't in to the spirit of things just yet...

...however, mom was able to coax them into at least cutting one ornament each.

Thank you JoLynn for a memory making day!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to you! I know I am a day early (a rarity to most who know me) but I know tomorrow morning will be a busy one so I didn't want to miss the opportunity to go ahead and get it out there. I encourage you to take a moment and take note of how fortunate we are and thank the One who is responsible for that. I know we all have our moments when we think nothing in our life is going right and we have it so hard. Truth is, we have it so good. If I was really serious about it and sat down and tried to make a list of all I have to be thankful for, there wouldn't be a book big enough to hold it. Thank you Lord!

Christmas Pictures

Well, I have been chastised for falling behind on my posting so I will do my best to catch you up.

I am so relieved to say that we accomplished one major task for the holiday season - Christmas card pictures. For those of you who take your self to the brink of insanity to do the same, you know exactly what I am talking about. Who would think (unless you have small children) that it could require insurmountable patience along with over 150 pictures to get just the right one (hopefully). However, I must brag tremendously on my children this year - they were real troopers and cooperated beautifully. Mind you, I had given them a lecture, threatened them and I am sure I had a ruler (for spanking) somewhere in the van. I can also attribute the successful day to help from my parents. They came down and brought lunch and spent the afternoon with us, which included a trip to the local park for the pictures. Debbie brought her camera so we basically double teamed them and it all went very smoothly.

It even enabled us to get a few family pictures in.

A great picture of Frankie and the girls.

We also got a few candid/action shots.

"Trouble" is on the way!

Halloween Fun!

Check out our Halloween fun!

Natalie (Gabriella) and Alyson (Cheetah girl) getting ready for their night of fun.

Our first stop was at Aunt Kim's house where we were greeted by Madison (an old spooky woman).

Next we visited a few houses in our own neighborhood because the girls were so excited that they were able to go trick or treating at our neighbors houses.

Lexie and Natalie joined forces as Sharpay and Gabriella.

After hitting a few houses locally we attended a Fall Fling at a neighbor's house where lots of fun festivities were planned including food, a bonfire, scavenger hunt and hayride.

Alyson the mummy compliments of Maggie and her parents in the mummy race.

One last look at Happy the pumpkin.

Thanks for joining us! Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.