For Christmas, Alissa picked me out a Sudoku game book. She knows I like to play it, so one night as I was playing, she wanted learn how to play. I told her how it worked and she helped me solve one of the puzzles and was pretty great at it! The other night, Alan says "have you looked at Alissa"? She frequently has something cute going on at night (it's usually her and Bob together) but this night, it was her falling asleep playing Sudoku!! She was actually doing pretty well on her own before falling asleep!
[gallery link="file" columns="2"]12/31/2011
Date night jar
So the other day, I decided to put together a fun date jar for Alan and I so we could get some dates on the calendar! This year has been a rough one for our marriage given I have been a little preoccupied with feeling sick, depressed and now my new found friend, anxiety! I've been a bit selfish and I don't put the effort I need to into our relationship. I know for a fact that if nothing is planned, nothing happens and then the day to day becomes hard to make that connection with out extra effort. So I spent a few hours the other day searching ideas for some not so usual ideas, but it was hard! LOL. I'd see list after list and think "oh we wouldn't do that" or something else, but in the end, I came up with some fun ideas and can't wait to get some on the calendar!
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12/29/2011
Singing cousins!
The other day we were at Mindy's house and Ben said "Alissa you can go home, but Zach can stay and sleep over" (or something to that effect ha ha...nice!) so Zach has a sleep over at Ben's and Sophie came over for a sleepover with Alissa. Sophie and Alissa are so great together. They play so nicely and you don't even know they are here because they are just good girls together! It's so nice to have so many cousins that are close in age and close in distance! The next day, the girls where practicing the song on The Polar Express and came down to sing it to me. It was very cute!
12/25/2011
Our Christmas
We had a nice Christmas! The kids were told not to wake mom and dad up until 9am, but they are KIDS...we woke up at 8 (I'll take 8 and not 6 or even 7am)! We went right to opening presents and the kids (heck, we all) got spoiled (even though Santa didn't realize he was spoiling until we saw everything we got). But it was fun...I have to admit, I love Christmas and gifts...I do! LOL! I am really not one to buy a tun of things through out the year and it's fun to get a lot of fun things on the same day. I do however, want to spend more time teaching my kids that giving back and helping others is important too, I just didn't do such a great job at it. But let's not get into all the things I don't do "such a great job at" as a mom! Anyways, we opened presents, had some breakfast and then played! Zach got right to Lego making (Legos are seriously the best toy invention ever) and Alissa rode her scooter and played with her new Rapunzel doll. The kitties even got a little stocking and enjoyed the goodies inside!We headed over to Christi's house for lunch around 1:30 and spend a few fun hours over there eating yummy turkey, ham, rolls, mashed potatoes and just sat around chatting. It's so nice to be around family! We (the kids and I) then headed to Mindy's to give Grammy, Ryan and Mind their gifts and spent a few hours hanging out there. We got home just in time for bed and we enjoyed out Christmas! Lots of pictures, I love pictures! Alan got me a new Nikon Coolpix and I think I've finally found a point and shoot camera that I will like when I'm not using my big camera! Both of the kids sang at school, but it was for all the other students and not parents (dumb), so I wanted Alissa to sing her song on Christmas, so she sang us her song! Zach takes after his mom and was a little too shy to sing his song, but it's okay! We love both of our kids and their differences!
[gallery link="file" columns="2"]12/23/2011
daddy daughter date
Apparently Alissa had wanted to go to the Nutcracker last year and I didn't know. She has been asking Alan to take her and so one day they just went! Alissa was so excited to be having this special date with Alan. They parked the car, took the trax train, had dinner, saw the Nutcracker, got hot chocolate and enjoyed a special day together!
[galleryAdvent Calendars
Zach has been asking for months for a Lego Star Wars advent calendar! He wanted one for his birthday, he put it in his letter to Santa...These things are like $50! Granted, if you buy each little thing separately, you WILL pay way more than just $50 but, come on, it's $50! Well, I do this thing called "SwagBucks". It's a fun site that gives you credits and then you can change those for gifts, prizes and gift cards! If you haven't, check it out! I use the tool bar every day, which is just a search engine! Rather than going to my bookmarks, I'll type in the site I want to go to like I would in Google, but I earn Swagbucks (http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/missa425). It's easy and though out the year you collect points! WELL, back to my point! I had enough points to get $25 to Amazon (you can only redeem 5 gift cards a month) so I went ahead and got Zach's advent calendar for 1/2 off!! He was excited! And for Alissa, I found this cute idea on Pinterest (another fun site...you can pin anything you like on the internet and it keeps it all in one spot. Crafts, recipes, clothes, ANYTHING) to do a sock advent count down, so I got $1 socks at walmart with some fun $1 store goodies and each day she took out a new fun thing!
When I was a kid, we had this long piece of fabric that had yarn ties on it and my mom would tie candy on it! We loved that thing! We did it for years and years to count down to Christmas!
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The Christmas Giving Basket!
This year I wanted to do fun neighbors gifts, but I wasn't sure what and then I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it was so cute! It's a basket full of fun holiday things and what you do is drop off the basket at a neighbors house and it says on a note that they can take as many things as they want, but they must replace it with something else and then pass the basket on! We dropped it off earlier in the month (around the 5th) and it's actually supposed to come back TODAY! The only thing I didn't like about the idea is that I'm sure it didn't get to ALL the neighbors and I wish It could have! So we'll see!!
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Fun holiday gifts
I had some fun making things this year! It's always nice to have a project and I haven't had a lot of them lately, so I am not sure what got into me! I AGAIN found some really cute ideas on Pinterest and decided to try them out! For our friends holiday party, I made those cute candy cane chocolate suckers (which took way longer than I expected, but are SO CUTE and yummy)! I always wonder what to get the kids teachers, so with some searching on Pinterest, I found the idea to give them a fun craft thing filled with fun teacher supplies and candy! It turned out WAY cute! and then we had the Schacher's family for the gift exchange and I wanted to do something different! I ended up making the kids customized games with their family pictures on it! It turned out ADORABLE and even my kids loved playing with the puzzles I made! I did a SCHA-tzee game, go fish and then puzzles all customized! I made some other things, but didn't get pictures! It was fun to do that for everyone!
[gallery link="file" columns="2" orderby="ID"]Holiday party
So for the past years, we have done a fun holiday party with a group of our closest friends/family. We always have a lot of fun!! This year it was planned for the weekend, but because of some sickness we rescheduled to yesterday (which meant not as late as night as It normally would have been, but it's okay, still fun). Everyone brought their own soup, a white elephant and then their family gift to exchange. The white elephant is the funnest, although, with 30+ people (most being kids) it got a little crazy!! It must be CHRISTMAS!! Lots of pictures and lots of laughs!
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