Easy Bake Treats

So Jesse likes to find good deals and when he found a good deal for the easy bake oven toy (buy one get one free), he accidentally purchased 4! So while Bryce was at Scouts the rest of the kids and I made some tasty (as tasty as easy bake can get anyway) treats. It was such a mess, but the kids of course loved it all. I told Jesse he needs to stop "finding" such good deals. :)

Beth's First Blue Baby Shower

So in January us Sowards Sisters and Karen threw Beth a baby shower to celebrate her FIRST Boy. She wanted everything blue so I decided that we should go with the whole Blue spectrum as our theme.

I thought this would bring some humor into the diaper changing.

Celebrating with dear friends. It's always nice to have a girls night. Beth got the cutest little baby boy outfits! I can't wait to see him sporting those cute clothes.

Christmas & New Years

Christmas Morning!!

Nice spy glasses Bryce, but aren't you suppose to be able to see me without looking directly at me? ha ahaa

Here the cousins are enjoying the crappy fireworks I bought from Sams Club. I wasn't paying attention the packaging and thought they were "real" fireworks, but it turns out that they were just the party confetti style ones. O-well, at least they were kid safe & they seemed to have a good time. At least, until it was time to clean up. :)

Chalk art!

Bryson and Cameron's BIG gift this year (and many years to come) was this awesome skateboard ramp. It took about a week to put together amongst all of the festivities, but they got it up finally and the boys are loving the fact that they have a mini skate park in their back yard. I'll post more later about what it looks like now.

Enjoying a movie night of Star Wars.

So this whole Christmas break I tried to get us all to go to "Glitteropolis" that was on display at the NMSU Campus, but every time I was thought it was open, it wasn't. So, since it was such a nice day we decided to walk around Campus. Here are some silly pictures of that day.

This picture makes me laugh so much!!

I LOVE THIS PICTURE CINDY!!

A Quick Visit To Moms

In the past I've seemed to have missed going to my mom's before or on Christmas and this year I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of seeing her. So, my sister June and I met up and had a great time. We were going to hit the shops, but instead decided to just stay at the house and make it a snow day with the kids. I'm so glad we did.

Larry pulled the kids on their sleds with the riding lawn mower. He must have spent at least an hour doing that because the kids were having so much fun it was hard to stop.

Getting ready for a snow ball fight!

June's husband Chad helped Drew and Cameron with their fort. You can tell he's had experience in this area. I loved the little peep holes they made. So clever.

My mom house sits on a slight slope so they made us a trail to sled on. I love this picture.

Mother daughter night!

Claire and I had a special night out at the Nutcracker. The Las Cruces Chamber Ballet performs the Nutcracker every year and this year I felt like Claire was old enough to enjoy the show. She did! We knew we were going for nearly a month and I bought her a new dress so the anticipation was growing.

She's becoming such a beautiful young lady.

So, Claire was mezmorized the whole night. She kept telling me, "Mom, I want to be in Ballet." What's neat was that she noticed a few of her classmates in the performance so I think it made her feel more like it's something that she could or would be able to do. On the way out of the lobby all of the performers were mingling and as we were walking out we went by the dancer who was one of the sugar plum faries. Claire reached out and touched her tu tu, looked up at me and giggled. We had such a wonderful time. It's always nice to focus on one child and make them feel like they're the only kid in the world.

Showing my flaws...many flaws.

I'm all about showing people my flaws lately. Let's get it all out there! My house is out of control! I thought I'd take a picture of the big mess while trying to get up Christmas decorations. Usually I can get them on put up in one day, but this year it drug out way to about a week and when you mix that mess with everyday mess, you have a BIG MESS! :) One of my goals this year is to get my house in order (you can read about it on my ThriveQuickDish blog). It's going to be tough, but I'm grabbing this bull by the horns and getting my house under control! :)

OHHH the first snow!!! Am I the only one with mixed feelings about snow? The positives are...it's beautiful, everythings quiet, the kids love playing in it, and I feel the urge to get in the kitchen. The negatives....I have to bundle all the kids up (which seems to take forever)so that they'll stay outside longer than 15 minutes, it never snows hard enough to hide the mud (our mud is very clay-like which makes it very difficult to clean the boots/clothes, all the clothes and boots get dropped by the front door (MESS!), and it's super cold. Am I fickle or what! But, I'd have to say that with all of the negatives (that are mostly petty) that I'd take a good snow anyday. It is such a treat.

Bryce has really been into Super Mario ever since he played it at Jared's house and ever since I broke out our old Nintendo!! Can't beat a classic. My kids kept telling me how lucky I was to have had a Nintendo and how fun the games were. I couldn't agree more, keep things simple right. Press A or B, start or select. :) So, Bryce adorned our Christmas tree with his little Mario paper ordaments that he made.

Well, it was nice while it lasted. One day it's 25 degrees outside, the next 60. Here's Cameron and in shorts with Claire trying to enjoy the last bit of snow.

Jesse is now 37 yrs old. Ouch! ha ha. We enjoyed a nice night of family, cake and ice cream; later the guys went out to a movie. This is the second time that I've messed up Jesse's b-day cake. He requested that I make Aunt Janet's cake from her cookbook and I automatically thought of the Texas sheet cake. Turns out he wanted the "better than 'beep' cake" instead. He nicely made it known to me and I felt bad that there was a mis communication. I like things to be perfect on birthdays. Sorry honey! Next year!! Hopefully I'll get things just right by the time you turn the big 40!! :)