more catching up

Here are some pics from Christmas eve. We went to my mother in laws house for dinner, and when we got home something was waiting for us. The kids were so excited to find that Mrs. Claus had left us with some jammies.


Here are the tough boys in their hulk jammies:


and pretty girls in their jammies:


the family:



leaving cookies for Santa:



sadly going upstairs for the longest night ever...

Eternal Flame--not so much!

So our little thriving metropolis rarely makes the national news for being more than the meth capitol of Arizona, so I was a bit surprised when I started up the computer and went to check my yahoo mail only to see this fabulous piece of investigative journalism I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed. Yes folks we are the town that extinguished our "eternal flame" when the first gas bill came. Sheesh!

Don't get me wrong I am so jazzed that my little town made yahoo news! and to be featured- I am just gushing pride. I'm just not so excited about why we made news. Anyways, I thought it was funny- so go check it out.

Making Gingerbread houses

A couple days before Christmas we had a bunch of friends over to make gingerbread houses. It was so much fun! And it was great to see how creative the kids got. There were no 2 houses alike It went a lot better than I was planning to be honest- not too much chaos. The really young kids weren't that interested, but that was fine. It might be a new tradition for us. It was great to be with friends and have a good time.
It cracked me up that the Baxter girls are the ones that got the messiest! They used their hands and ended up dirtier than the 5 year olds! But there houses were fantastic, so whatever works.

workin off the blackmarks

Growin up in the weeks before Christmas, the stinkin elves would show up and start watchin us. If we were caught being less than good we would get black marks. And if Christmas arrives and you have black marks- you don't get presents. Those stinkin black marks!!! We couldn't tease our siblings, or talk back to mom, or "forget" to clean our room. When december rolled around, we became angels. And, interestingly enough, now that I am a mom those stinkin elves came back, But they weren't watching me anymore. My kids learned about the elves this Christmas, and since I didn't remember how we got rid of black marks I made up my own way. My kids had to perform service to get rid of black marks. So here I have caught them in the act. I think this was just a day or two before Christmas so they were extra happy to do anything to get rid of the black marks. Now I know why Mom was so happy when the elves came!

kids christmas program

Okay so I haven't been the best blogger over the holidays. And now that they are over it is time to get caught up. We'll have to go back in time a little bit. There is a lot to report, here goes:

First the kids school christmas program. Zach and Hannah were so great. I have video, but as I have still yet to figure out videos on here you won't be able to see them. Hannah was a little reindeer and the entire kindergarten sang, 8 little reindeer. which sounded remarkably like 5 little monkeys,

so you can imagine that by the time it got to 1 little reindeer with 50 kindergarteners singing it sounded more like "yaa yaa yaa yaa" very loud! but still cute. Zach sang some country ho-down Santa song AND he was one of the 5 kids chosen to dance with a partner on the stage. He was way nervous, but way cute dancing with his partner. That's a cute video- I wish I could get that one on here. He even boogied off the stage! Here he is with his buddy, Zach before the performance started.


okay now i'm tired, maybe i'll blog more tonight later.