Let the Holidays Begin

I love the holiday season.  I love all the traditions, decorations, lights, family, Christmas, presents for the kids, baking...it's a month long festival that begins on Thanksgiving day.  We traditionally put up our tree the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  First, Jeff hangs the lights on the outside of the house.  Then he puts together our tree.  The branches get all scrunched from being in the box for a year, so I am the official "fluffer".  This year I recruited Sara to learn "the art of fluffing".  She did an excellent job!

After I fluff, Jeff puts on all the lights.  Then the kids hang the ornaments.  And it goes in the same order every year...first the clear balls that go on over the lights...it makes the tree look like it has brightly lit bubbles all over it.  I love it.  Then the kids put on the different colors of glass balls...only one casualty on the tile floor this year so far.  After the plain glass ones they then put on the family ornaments.  Jeff's mother usually gets each kid a "special" ornament each year for Christmas.  She buys a lot of the Hallmark ornaments, and they are really nice.  I am very happy with our tree.  We leave it lit 24/7 and I get a smile every time I pass by it.  I was a little sad about the photo because it just doesn't capture the sparkle of the tree very well, and you can't really see the brightly lit "bubbles", but here it is:

Sara really gets into the holiday spirit.

In addition to Christmas we have Sara's birthday on the December 11th.  Her middle name is Noel, as her due date was Christmas Eve and she is a Christmas time baby.  This year she's having her first "real" party with friends coming over and a huge day planned.  She is getting a bounce house from 1-5.  We'll have pizza when the bounce house goes, then we'll have cake and presents, and then the girls can play games until 8:00.  Long day!  She's so very excited.  I'll post pics of her birthday afterwards.

Another big event....my girls both got their braces off on Monday!  This was Sami's 2nd time getting them off because the first time one of her teeth went crooked again so she had to have them back on for another 6 months.  This is also Sara's first go around with braces.  This time around she had her palate spread and her front teeth pulled down and straightened to fix all the gaps and damage done to her teeth from her sucking her thumb until she was 5 or 6.  ugh!  If only I had known.  She will wear a retainer during the night for about 2 years and then get a full set of braces to correct all her teeth when she's about 12.  oy.  But their teeth are gorgemous!

Sports are done for a few months...whew!  Made it through another fall season!  But we've had a lot of school activities to make up the difference.  Matthew finished his Science Fair project tonight, and he is very proud of his work.  His project question was "do different cheeses mold at different rates".  His hypothesis was that out of cheddar, parmesan and pepper jack, the pepper jack would mold the fastest.  And because I know you are just dying to know the answer, the pepper jack didn't mold one bit in 6 weeks.  The cheddar molded in the 2nd week and produced lots of oils.  The parmesan produced some oils and didn't mold until right at the end of week 6.  So there you have it.  We called it "Dairy Dairy Moldy Cheese" as a play on words for "very very moldy cheese".  Here is a picture of Matthew with his project.  And please ignore the sink of dishes in the background. lol

The other day I had another win.  I won a Spiderman: Edge of Time game for the Xbox 360!  We got it in the mail yesterday, so that is a $50 freebie going under the tree for Matthew.  yea!  The beginning of November I won a $100 gift card to Value City Furniture.  I was pretty excited.  Until I discovered that they don't have any stores anywhere near the state of Arizona and they don't sell over the internet.  :(  So I listed the gift card on eBay and sold it last night for $45.  It would have been nice to be able to buy that nice lamp I had all picked out, but either I got to use $0 of the card or take the $45 and call it a day.  And $45 was more than I started with, so I ended up being pretty happy.  And the buyer got a great bargain.  I also won a movie pass recently for a super nice theater chain here.  Jeff received a gift from the football team for coaching...a $25 gift card to Outback.  Between that and the one movie pass, that's half a dinner/movie date paid for.  Good deal, huh?  I'm looking forward to going on a date sometime next month.  It's been a long while since we've done anything together.

Jeff is working hard...50-60 hours/week.  It's either no work or he's working 6 days a week.  lol.  Where's the medium?  But I certainly am NOT complaining!  We've got a lot of catching up to do.  I am so grateful that he's working and I'm thankful for all of my internet friends who kept us in their prayers.

What have you been up to?  Have you been busy with the holidays?  Baking?  Crafting?  Travels?  Give me the run down...I would love to hear from you!

Loving Fall

I think Fall is probably my favorite time of year.  In October the temps here in Phoenix finally drop below 100 degrees, and the nights actually get a little chilly.  In November we start sleeping with our windows open.  Love the crisp air and getting snuggled under the blankets at night!  I just can't sleep when it's hot, but when it's chilly I always sleep so much better and soundly.

Fall is also a time of sports activities.  Matthew plays football and Sara is playing soccer again.  This is Matthew's best year at football so far.  He has always been a good athlete, and Jeff (who usually coaches his teams) says that he is the most coachable kid.  He may not be the strongest or the fastest, but he listens, learns and applies the skills.  But this year in football he is becoming much more aggressive and really coming into his own.  It's so much fun to watch him play.  Their team is 4-2 on the regular season and next week starts the playoffs.  They have lost twice to the same team, so maybe in the playoffs they'll finally beat them.  That sure would be nice to stick it to 'em!  Anyways, here is a little video of Matthew's highlights from the last game.  It is only 1 minute long, so go ahead and watch it. 

Sara's team still has quite a few games to go, and they have only lost 1 so far.  She said the other night, though, that next year she wants to play football with the boys instead of playing the co-ed soccer.  lol.  But daddy said no.  He's afraid his girl (as tough and as strong as she is) might get hurt.  I would worry more about her hurting someone else!

Another thing I love about Fall is baking.  Twice last month I made my grandmother's apple spice cake, and it is DELICIOUS!!!!  Soooooooo moist.  I'm thinking about looking for recipe contests and entering it to see if it will win a prize.  I'm thinking about adding dried cranberries and chopped walnuts for a little more flare.  I'll have to try that and see how it tastes.  During the holidays I always bake cookies with the kids to take to the houses we visit.  We always make chocolate chip, oatmeal, sometimes molasses, sometimes peanut butter, or we might find something new to try.  The cake will be a great addition to what I usually make.  Do you want to know my secret for home made chocolate chip cookies?  I've got 2...First, after mixing up the batter as directed, add some extra flower to make the batter thicker.  Your cookies will get fatter and softer.  Second, UNDERbake your cookies by a minute or so.  While they are cooling on the rack they will continue to cook a bit in their own heat and will turn out perfect.

The  kids had fun with Halloween this year.  For the first time in quite a few years they carved pumpkins.  The pumpkins were on sale at Fry's for just $3.88, and they were good sized ones too!  Here are some pics...

Matthew didn't like the squishy pumpkin guts.

Sara embraced the squishy pumpkin guts.

So did Sami!

Sara was the best gut scraper of the 3.

Sami's finished work of art.

Sara's pumpkin with string hair.  Daddy helped a little.

And here are some Witchy Kisses!

Then of course the anticipation of the holidays is starting to build up.  I just love the winter holidays.  And this year is super sweet because today Jeff starts his job on a build out at Intel.  For those of you who don't know, he is an electrician with the union and commercial construction has been way down because of the economy.  He has only worked 3 months this whole year.  But the jobs out at Intel usually (knock on wood) last a while.  So this will (hopefully) be the first year in quite a few that he will be working through the holidays.  Even though he's going to start getting checks we will still have to live like paupers because since he was off for so long our savings got depleted paying the bills.  Now we have to put every penny we can back into savings to get that built up again for the next layoff.  In construction they pay you to build it, not watch the paint dry.  So as soon as a project is done you're laid off and go back down to the hall, put your name on the books, and wait for your number to get called for the next job.  When the economy was good he'd get laid off one day and within 2 days he'd be out at another job.  Right now it's 4-6 months between jobs.  I know, sucks, right?  I'm really hoping that this Intel job will last long enough to carry through to some better times. 

I'll leave you with this cute/funny pic.  Matthew is notorious for cleaning up everyone else's plate at dinner.  One of his favorites is wiping up the spaghetti sauce with garlic bread.  Here he is with not just his plate, but also Sami's plate AND Sara's plate.  Hey...they left sauce!  :)