Holiday Reunion

Every year my highschool girlfriends and I try to get together after the holidays with all of our hubbies and kiddos. We have all known each other since we were fourteen, and we were all on our school's dance/drill team together (go Rio Raiders!). This year Courtney and Brian hosted everyone (thanks Court!), and as usual, it was a BLAST! The kids played with all of Courtney's son's new toys, and the grown-ups drank wine, ate homemade chicken soup and reminisced about anything and everything. I always have to give a special thank you and lots of love to Aisha, because she was the one who introduced Mitch and I all those years ago!

I am so blessed to have these amazing women in my life, and it thrills me to death that it always seems like it has been only days since we have seen each other (though it is usually a year or so in between get togethers). We always have SO much fun together, and it's been great getting to know everyones' spouses and kids over the years. I can't believe it's been seventeen years since we all became friends - it truly feels just like yesterday! ♥


Kearsten, Aisha, Darcie (with Jaxon), Ashley, Courtney, Me (and Sawyer)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We hope your holidays were as busy, fun and full of love as ours were!

Aside from these first two photos, I only took video at home this morning, so I'll have to see if I can get a video clip uploaded in the next day or two. The kids actually slept in, and we had to wake them up at 8:00 so that we could get down to my mom's house in time for presents and breakfast with the rest of my family. Santa left Sawyer his much talked about "Batman House" with strict instructions that it is to be shared with his brother.



Santa also left each boy a marble race track that they can either use on their own or combine to make a huge marble run. Sutton loves it!



After quickly opening up our presents we headed down to Gigi and Granddad's house for more presents and breakfast.


Sawyer got some fun classic stocking stuffers like this ball cup and a (hysterically funny) whoopie cushion

Sutton was so excited to open more presents. Every time someone brought him a new gift he'd turn around and yell "Look Mommy! ANOTHER one for me!"

The biggest hit were these blue light-up swords (that also make noise, naturally!). They have been having so much fun with these - thanks Gigi!

Every time I'd ask Sutton to show me his present, he'd stick it right up in front of his face and do this silly little one-leg-up pose...I think Holly needs to teach him some of her display and pose Christmas photo skills! :)

Jessi, Stella & Erik

Stelly gave the boys a Whack-a-Mole game - definitely a new favorite!

I didn't take any photos or video tonight at my aunt Heidi's house...sometimes it's nice to just enjoy the moment and hope that someone else captured some cute pictures of your family. ♥

Christmas Week: Christmas Light Drive

We bundled up the boys, decorated our Jeep with Christmas lights, and headed off on our holiday light drive. We drove around old Lincoln for a little while, and by the time we got to our final destination - a street filled with lights and Disney characters - Sutton had already fallen asleep!


We could barely rouse him in time to catch the last half of the lights...he was trying SO hard to wake up, but he was beat!


Every house has cartoon character cut-outs in their yard in addition to the lights that decorate all the houses. These Chicken Little characters were awesome - SO much perfect detail!


This house is working on actually making 101 dalmations cut-outs! They had a big sign on the other side of the yard that read "82 more dalmations to go!"

Sutton loved this house with it's yard all lit up. He was quite concerned, however, that the reindeer weren't actually able to fly because of the fact that they were anchored to a tree.

I figured that I'd try to take another picture of the boys since they were both awake...and it turned into a goofy face making contest! Oh well, maybe next year!

Christmas Week: Cookie Baking

I'm going to try to catch up on all my holiday blogging this weekend, I swear! We've been having so much fun, and I've taken tons of pictures that I want to share with our family & friends who live far away and can't be with us this Christmas :)

Last Sunday was our annual sugar cookie bake-fest at my mom's house. This year was my niece Stella's first time joining all the "big girls" - we baked and decorated 200 frosted sugar cookies!

Kari, Michelle (Krista's friend), Krista, Jess, Erik & Stella...we let Erik join the girl party for awhile (he's pretty good at keeping little fingers out of the frosting) :)

After about 100 sugar cookies or so, we always start to get a little bored with traditional stuff...Kari turned a bell into a dreidel for Mitch (like she does every year!), and I attempted to turn a mitten into a goldfish cracker lol. Before you know it, you end up with this...

In case you can't tell what it is, that's a masked angel with a gun pointed at a ghetto snowman (thanks to Kari and Krista), complete with a Batman-like "Kapow!". Hey, you can only make so many perfectly decorated trees and snowflakes, right? :)

8 Days

I had hoped to do a post every day or two during Hanukkah, but we have been SO busy trying to finish up all of our homemade holiday gifts that I haven't even had time to stop and take very many pictures (plus, we wouldn't want the recipients to see their gifts on the blog first!). Remind me next year to start working on my holiday gifts in April! We've been having a lot of fun working on everything, but "relaxing" is definitely not on the description list of how we've been spending this holiday season! Since I'm short on time, I'm just going to post 8 10 pictures from the past 8 days e

Mitch and I made the boys a foosball table using a modified version of the one we saw HERE


Somebody started to sneak all the candy off the gingerbread house!

The elusive sold out Must-Have-Hot-Toy-of-the-Year: Zhu Zhu Pets! After weeks of stalking these things online, I finally managed to get my hands on two of them for retail price (instead of the ridiculous 400% price that they were selling for on Ebay and Craigslist!). Naturally, after all that hard work trying to locate these suckers, the motor inside of Sawyer's hamster stopped working after about twenty minutes. Darn you, Zhu Zhu Pets!

Sutton painting and glittering a pinecone - just one of the thousand projects we have made over the past few weeks!

Mitch made the boys these wooden doghouses for their beanie puppies. We saw a similar one HERE and knew that the boys would love them, but we weren't willing to spend a fortune for a few pieces of wood. Luckily for me Mitch is handy, and he whipped these things together in no time at all. He even hinged one side of the roof and added an easy-carry handle to the top. Nice work!

The boys love having a special place for their puppies to sleep now!

Meet Shelley, Sawyer's class pet. He/She (I haven't a clue!) will be staying with us for the next two weeks while school is on break.

Boppin' around on Rody in reindeer antlers...what more needs to be said?

It's been a long week, and we're all exhausted (but incredibly happy!) ♥

Morningstar & Santa

Today was Sawyer's preschool holiday party and performance. It was SO cute watching the kids sing their incredibly p.c. "We wish you a merry Christmas, we wish you a happy Hanukkah, we wish you a merry Kwanzaa, and a happy new year!"


(Where's Waldo Sawyer? Back left corner, in the blue hood!)

After their musical performance, Sawyer's teacher, Ms. Robyn, announced that she had just seen Santa's sleigh fly overhead! The kids quickly ran around to see if they could catch a glimpse of it, but of course they were too late to see anything...except Santa himself standing in the doorway to their classroom! Santa took time to meet with each and every kiddo (and their siblings), pose for pictures and pass out candy canes. It was a fantastic surprise for both the children and their parents (especially those of us who hadn't yet taken our kids to see the creepy mall Santa this year!), and it truly made the kids' day to have Santa show up at their class party ♥


Sawyer was eager to sit on Santa's lap, and he told him that he wanted a Batman house for Christmas (good thing Santa already knew that!).


Sutton wanted nothing to do with Santa until he was bribed with a candy cane into taking this one quick photo. He never actually spoke a word to Santa, but he did give him a high-five as he was leaving.


After Santa left we were treated to a potluck lunch with an incredible amount of different kinds of treats and goodies. The boys sat side-by-side and laughed and joked...at one point I swear it looked like they were actually sitting there gossiping about the other people. I love the little inside jokes they share with each other :)

Happy Hanukkah!

Today is the first day of Hanukkah, and the boys and I started off the day making this quick paper banner to dress up the wall above the fireplace. Holly and Hattie stopped by and dropped off some incredible holiday gifts that Holly had crocheted for us.


She made the boys an amigurumi menorah complete with removable candles (it even has a bigger shamash candle!). It's seriously amazing, and the boys love it. This evening I found Sutton hiding under the dining room table with it and pretending to light the candles. I think he was worried that he was going to get in trouble for touching it because it's so nice!


Holly crocheted me this gorgeous cowl neck scarf, and I've already fallen completely in love with it. It's one big circular piece that I can wear as a cowl or up over my head like a hood. I wore it all day today, and I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing it every time y'all see me from here on out. I borrowed this photo from Holly's blog, but it truly doesn't do this piece justice at all. It's stunning, and I'm still so amazed that she can sit down with a hook and some yarn and create something so incredible. ♥


Since my mother-in-law isn't here to make potato latkes (and since I've failed for the last two years to make a decent batch on my own), I decided to try something different for Hanukkah this year - Sufganiyot! I made blackberry filled with powdered sugar topping, plain with cinnamon sugar topping, and plain with vanilla icing and sprinkles. Oh. My. Goodness. I'm sure my waistline is now cursing the fact that I know how to whip up batches of my own donuts.

This guy couldn't stop shoveling in the cinnamon donuts. I asked him if they were good, and he just nodded vigourously and said "Mmmhmmmmmmmmmmm!"

Sawyer & Mitch lit the first candle tonight & read the prayers.

Happy Hanukkah!

Snow (or lack thereof) Update

Booooo, it seems that we are the ONLY area between here and Stockton that didn't wake up to snow this morning :( Sawyer was terribly disappointed to the point of tears, but luckily there was a decent dusting of snow on the ground and the playground at his preschool (which, I should note, is only five minutes away from our house), and it was enough to avert disaster for the day. I woke up to text messages and photos of practically everyone I know showing their houses covered in white fluffy goodness, so, I'll leave you with a few pictures of the lucky ones that woke up to a winter wonderland! Oh, and the news report this morning clarified that the last time it snowed here in the valley was in 2002...for about thirty minutes!


Lots of snow in Granite Bay!


This picture was taken in Twelve Bridges...ONE frickin' exit away from our house (and it was taken several hours after the snow had already started to melt!)!


Kari & Joe are actually snowed in at their new house in El Dorado Hills this morning! Schools up there are all closed, and they're taking a snow day off. They're at a higher elevation, so they can probably expect it to snow at their house a time or two again this year if it gets cold enough. Lucky! I know where I'm going to play next time!

Snow Predicted for Sacramento

From the Sacramento Bee
Published: Sunday, Dec. 6, 2009 - 9:10 am

Snow will fall and accumulate in Sacramento on Monday, the National Weather Service is predicting. Temperatures in the capital will fall into the 20s.

A storm predicted to bring rain to Northern California this evening with cool dramatically and bring snow by Monday. Chances of precipitation are 100 percent, experts predict, and between two and four inches of snow will cover the valley floor. Northwest winds will blow about 10 mph. Most of the snow will fall before 4 p.m.

A 30 percent chance of snow showers is predicted for Monday night, mainly before 10 p.m. Widespread frost is expected Tuesday morning, mainly after 4 a.m. before conditions become partly cloudy, with a low around 27 degrees and southwest wind around 6 mph. Tuesday's high will reach about 44 degrees, then clouds will return Tuesday night with a low of about 29 degrees.

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I can't remember the last time it actually snowed here. Well, I think around five years ago it snowed for about ten minutes, but didn't stick. I think I was probably 12 or 13 the last time it actually snowed enough to stay on the ground long enough to attempt to make marble sized snowballs out of a 1/2" layer of icy dusting. I hope it actually snows after all this weather station hype!

I. AM. SO. EXCITED (and also freezing!) !

Faux Gingerbread Houses

I wanted to make gingerbread houses with the boys this year, but I didn't really want to go through the hassle of making actual gingerbread, even the good old Wilton kit kind, because A) we never actually eat it and B) putting those houses together takes both time and patience, which don't exactly go hand-in-hand with eager-to-decorate-and-get-to-the-candy-part preschoolers. Originally I had planned on making a house out of scrap cardboard boxes and a glue gun, but when we went out to dinner at Red Robin for Mitch's birthday they had these fabulous pre-assembled gems just waiting for me on our table ;)



Add a can of pre-made Betty Crocker vanilla frosting, some assorted bowls of candy, and let the kids go to town. It doesn't need to be pretty...trust me, the kids don't care, and it's not really going to be a show-stopping centerpiece in the end, cute as it may be :)



Don't forget to give the frosting a taste test before you get to work.



It was Sawyer's own idea to line the entire base with green apple laces, and he was very proud of himself.



Eating more candy than makes it on the house is always the best part of the process


Sutton ended up getting really into adding the candy, and he ended up doing the majority of the decorating all by himself!