Christmas Time Catch-Up

We are really looking forward to celebrating our second Christmas with Drew! Tomorrow night, we will go to my grandma's to open gifts with my family. On Christmas morning, just the three of us will open our gifts to Drew and his Santa gift. Then we'll head over to Jon's parents for lunch with his family.

Things will be busy over the next few days and I have gotten behind on my blogging, so this will be my catch up post!

Before we headed to see Santa:

What my living room looked like the night I wrapped presents!!

Playing at Christmas dinner at Nanny and Poppy's on Friday night:

Daddy and Drew before heading out to dinner on Saturday night:


With all the poinsettia's at church.



After church at my mom's house.


And how did the gooey butter cookies turn out???



WONDERFUL! And I think Drew would agree :o)


Seriously, you should give this recipe a try. You will love them!!

I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year!

Recipes...Just in time for Christmas!!!

This is from my friend Christie. I have't tried it yet, but I am going to tomorrow! (Oh, and thank you Heather for teaching me how to link!!)

Gooey Butter Cookies

This recipe is so easy it's almost criminal! For those of you who have never experienced a gooey butter cake, you owe it to yourself to try it at least once! These cookies are a miniature version of the famous cake and are little bite sized pieces of heaven!

Gooey Butter Cookies

8 oz cream cheese - softened
1/2 cup butter - softened
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 - 18.5 oz package of yellow cake mix
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350F. Cream together cream cheese and butter. Stir in the egg and vanilla. Add cake mix and stir until well blended. Roll into 1" balls and then roll the balls in the powdered sugar. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes. Remove from baking sheets to cool on wire racks. Makes about 30 cookies.

And my favorite punch, which we just call "red punch." It's delicious!!!

Red Punch

2 packs of cherry Kool-Aid (or 1 cherry and 1 black cherry)
Add both packs to 2 quarts of water and 2 cups of sugar
1 big can of pineapple juice
1 liter of ginger ale

Enjoy and Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

"Drew, this is Santa!"

Jon and I took Drew to the mall last night to meet Santa.

First, we let him check things out. He really liked Santa's reindeer!

Then I started leading Drew towards Santa...

But it was a no go!
So, here is our Santa picture!!
Here's Drew having dinner in his Santa hat!

And just for fun here is "Butterball Drew" from last Christmas with Santa (he was almost 6 months old here)!!

It's (Finally) Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!!

Even though our tree still isn't completely finished (we haven't put the star on yet) or Jon hasn't finished the lights outside, it does look like Christmas time at our house finally!

More to come soon!!!!

When did it get so windy in here???

Here is Drew playing with his Busy Ball Popper. You know, the toy that blows balls (and air) out of the top of it?

Starting to get a little wind blown...

Oh yeah, here comes the wind!!!!!!

Operation Smile Project -- SUCCESS!!

Some of my wonderful co-workers and I were able to reach my goal of collecting $240 to donate to Operation Smile. I was so excited to know that we would be changing a child's life forever, so to show my appreciation, I ordered some special "thank you" cards for those who donated.

Here is the front...

And here is the inside...

12/1 Week In Review

I discovered that I haven't posted in a week, so I am going to go through the pics I took and try to sum it all up!

Last Monday, I let Drew play with Play-Doh for the first time.

"This is fun!"


"But maybe I should smell it..."


"Should probably taste it too..."


Then, it was time to get some of the Christmas decorations out.


Here's Drew "helping" Daddy with the tree. Doesn't he look mischievous??

And here's the assembled tree (before any love).

It took me until Thursday to get the tree done! My plan was to try to get a picture for our Christmas card of Drew in front of it on Saturday morning. As "practice," I got this pic of him Friday night before we headed out to eat. (too bad Drew isn't in focus...)


Saturday morning, Drew was treated to a sugary breakfast -- Burger King Cini-Mini's and French Toast Stix. Before we knew it, Drew had stuffed his mouth full of food and had syrup all over his face -- PHOTO OP!!


Then it was time for the Christmas card photo right? Wrong! Jon thought he would try to "level" the tree some and guess what...the stand broke! So, there was no way we could take pics with the tree looking like this!! [This is the back of the tree (which obviously I didn't spend much time on. The "good" side is facing the corner). Also, you can tell that Drew likes pulling on the garland...) We got a new stand today so I'll unveil the finished product later this week!! I know you can hardly wait!!!

Saturday night was our company Christmas party. One our way...


Check out our awesome room!!

We attended a Madrigal dinner and then headed to a place that had bowling, pool tables, and video games. I won over 4,000 tickets playing that game where you insert a token and then it pushes more tokens off the edge. It was VERY addicting! A co-worker of mine and her husband ended up with over 7,000 tickets -- WOW!!!

Until next time!

Thankful for Friends!

For the third year in a row, we have had friends over on the Saturday after Thanksgiving for a "Fun with Friends" party. This year, 18 of our closest friends joined us for a fabulous dinner and then a scavenger hunt!! This was the first time I had ever put together a scavenger hunt and it was a surprise to everyone. I think everyone really enjoyed it. And let me tell you, we have some very talented friends! The winning team completed EVERYTHING on the list. Some of the funnier things they had to do was take pictures of a teammate with a Wal-Mart associate, pumping a stranger's gas, with someone that has a mullet, and in a golf cart. They also had to collect some random items like an election sign, a job application, and an ear of corn that was leftover in a corn field (only two teams got that one!). The funniest part was hearing the stories of how they came up with some of the stuff! Here are some pics from the fun night...

Time to eat!!
Everyone enjoying dinner (in our garage!)

Candice and Colby "won" an Albert Pujol's bobble head :)
Me giving the winning scavenger hunt team their prize.
Marcie, Jared, Rachel, and Chris -- the winning team!

"Losers" Daysha and Braci! (they may not have won, but they had fun!)

My girls!

Our men!

Had to show everyone the fabulous blogs I'm addicted to!

And since I can't very well do a post that doesn't mention Drew, here he is having a lemon!

Not Me! Monday

This is my first time participating in Not Me Monday! For those of you who haven't visited MckMama's blog, it is definitely worth checking out!! And since I don't know how to do those fancy links where you can make someone's name a link, here is her blog address: http://www.mycharmingkids.net/

So here is what I DIDN'T do this week:

...I did not wear a "hoody" to work last week and justify it because it was made out of sweater material. I would never wear something that casual to our professional office!

...I did not hide green beans in Drew's grilled ham and cheese as a way of tricking him into eating them. I'm not sneaky enough to do something like that!

...I did not put a sweater on Drew on Thanksgiving just because it was very "fall looking" since it was almost 60 degrees that day. That would have been pure torture for the little guy!

...My little sister and I did not go to Wal-Mart on "black Friday" 45 minutes after they opened only to find that the two toys I was looking for were SOLD OLD! I wasn't at all disappointed since this was the first time I went Wal-Marting on black Friday and the main reason I went was to see the madness. And since I wasn't disappointed, I most certainly did not drive to the next nearest Wal-Mart (30 minutes away) to see if they had the Thomas the Tank Aquadoodle Mat or the Crayola Tadoodle toy. (Who would have ever thought that those would be "hot" items?)

...Speaking of Wal-Mart, I most certainly did not feel old when seeing that they had a 25th Anniversary Cabbage Patch Kid. I am definitely not old enough to have received a CPK 25 years ago...(his name is Woodward Woody, and yes I still have him!).

OK - so if you want to play along too, check out McKMama's blog for all the rules!

And if you are a first time visitor to my blog, please leave a comment so I can check your blog out too!