Christmas Decorating

First let me express how much I LOVE Christmas, Christmas decorations, Christmas shopping, holiday food, Christmas music, you get it.  The kids and I will be away from our home for a week during December so I seriously considered NOT putting it all up, maybe just the basics.  It just ends up being a lot of work and I figured if I we don't get to enjoy it for very long then what's the point.  Well, that thought didn't last very long, so after all the dust settled from Thanksgiving we broke out all the Christmas decor and I got to work.  After 5 inconsistant days, over 175 individually boxed Hallmark ornaments (TONS of work to get out of all those danged boxes), two trees and tons of other decorations I'm finally finished!  It sure takes a long time to get everything the way I wanted it with two little ones to care for.  So I thought I'd share :)  don't judge the pics, I don't have a very good camera.

Here are a few before pictures:

 

 

Completion:

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!  :)

Quick Note

Ok, so I've thought we haven't done anything that I could blog about . . . well, I downloaded pictures off my phone and I've come to realize I was wrong.  So here is a nice catch up in the following 10 posts!  Have fun catching up!  If you can't see all 10 posts on this page you can click on individual posts in the blog archive to view them all.

Bella's 4th Pink Family Birthday Party

Bella has become obsessed with the color pink over the last few months.  And since then she has also been requesting a pink birthday.  She REALLY wanted me to paint the house pink as well as the carpet for her birthday, I told her that wasn't realistic, lol.  So instead we decorated as much as we could, including people.  Just about everybody either wore pink or wore something that was pink, it was awesome!  We let Bella decide what order to do things and she wanted to play games first so EVERYONE sat down and played duck, duck, goose (one of her favorite games).  It takes a while to play even one round with having 23 people playing so we only played three rounds but everyone played and it was a lot of fun!  After the 3rd round she was ready to move on to hide and seek, again EVERYONE participated!  HOW FUN!  Grandma and Grandpa even hid!  She had to find 22 people, what fun!  Bobby had the best spot, hiding in Bella's trundle!  Next Bella wanted to have cake, she loved her pink strawberry cake.  We also had pink marshmellow bouquets, pink lemonade and at dinner we had pink rice with our chicken!

Bella was kind of confused.  I had to explain she had to break through the streamers.  She had fun once she got it.  My niece, Ashley, decorated everything.  Dallin helped a lot too.

 I'm 4!

Debra didn't get a pink shirt for Rob thinking he wouldn't wear it.  But I think he felt left out so he stole Bobby's shirt, lol.

 SMOOCH!

Here is our yummy pink rice!

 



Lisa and co. got Bella pink cowboy boots, seriously the cutest things ever!!!  She didn't take them off all night.  Bella also loved getting Thomas the Train movies and mermaid from Rhona and fam.  She slept with a little pig from the Wassoms that is from Scentsy that has something fragrant in it.

When all was said and done I have to admit I got a little emotional.  We got to have a large family birthday celebration for my daughter that we waited for three years to get pregnant with!  So much love and it meant a lot to be able to have it actually on the 4th anniversary of the day of her birth!!!  WE ARE SO BLESSED!  Thank you Wayne, Rhona, Xavier, Max, Kylie, Neela, Debra, Rob, Ashley, Bobby, Dallin, Camille, Mark, Lisa, McKayla, Natasha, and of course Grandma and Grandpa Melton!!  WE LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!

 

Fun things about Bella:  she loves everybody, seriously, no matter what you look like and who you are she is more than likely already going to love you and want to play.  Age also does not matter.  She hates, absolutely hates saying goodbye, she doesn't ever want anyone to leave her (other than her parents ;).  She loves Thomas the train as well as mermaids and fairies and of course is obsessed with pink right now.  She loves her school and her favorite is to paint.  She also is excellent at memorizing and learning spanish words (thanks to Dora the Explorer).  She is an extremely picky eater but is getting better and she likes to help.  She is perpetually happy and she pretty much has one volume, very loud (we are working on that one).  She loves her little brother and they play so well together.

 

Happy birthday my beautiful Baby Bella Bugs!!  WE LOVE YOU!!!!

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving this year was held in Eugene for my family.  It was a family only celebration this year and we had it at our house.  Wayne, Rhona and kids came down from Seattle and Debra, Rob and kids came down from Battle Ground, WA.  Wassoms stayed with us and Seattle Meltons stayed with Grandpa.  We had a lot of fun playing and enjoying each other.  Especially Bella and Grayson, they really love their cousins.  Natasha and McKayla were even able to spend the night a couple nights!

23 people fed at our house this year, I think it is our current record!

Lots and lots of desserts!  Wayne went a little crazy, he made 26 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, 6 dozen chocolate crinkle cookies (all cookies were eaten by the time Wayne left), lemon bars, key lime bars, carmel bars and Rhona made heath bark.  They also brought two pumpkin pies!

 

Dave made 5 dozen delish rolls, a 23 lbs turkey, Rob made 10 lbs of potatoes, a vat of orange jello salad was provided by Mark and Lisa but Stacia made it.  Lisa was pretty much in charge of all the sides with the veggie platter, baked beans and garnishments.

The kids had a good time playing games together at the end of the night.

 

It was really great to have so much family for Thanksgiving this year!  Now we just need to get Greg and Julie and co as well as Kirk and Heather next year!

 

We played bump and kickball one night.  Debra, McKayla, Ashley and I were nuts and went out Black Friday shopping at midnight.  I think they will all agree that it was a little crazy.  We went out again around 8 and it was much better and we actually got a lot of good deals and it was just a fun thing to do, really. 

 

The last night everyone was here we celebrated Bella's 4th birthday which will be in a different post.