Traditions

It has become our tradition to get together on Christmas Eve at my Grandma's house. This is when we get to see my brother and his family and exchange gifts with my grandparents and everyone. My grandma has a tradition to get all the grandkids an ornament for Christmas and does a picture calendar with everyone's birthdays, anniversaries etc. We always look forward to seeing the pictures she chooses.

Everyone was dressed up so nice and the boys were just adorable in their suits!! The picture of everyone is not the best... but the boys were ready for presents and SO done with taking pictures. We had a very nice night with everyone.
When we got home from my grandma's house on Christmas Eve night I had a surprise for Kenny. Each year his dad would send him a big box filled with packages and goodies and he would open those gifts on Christmas Eve since that was when his family opened gifts. So to keep the tradition going I got the things like Ron used to buy like slim jims, the giant box of goldfish, velveta etc etc.... just didn't have the mall gift cards. It is more to keep the tradition going and remember him. Kenny was surprised and enjoyed it. We also opened out box from Susie. She included a huge bag of treats for the dogs and they had fun opening the box to get to it-- so cute. My favorite was the "Where in the Hell is Oquawka" shirts (that is the small town she lives in). Very fun.

When Kenny's mom got off work she came over to spend the night. We practically had to beg her to come over-- we thought it would be a nice tradition to have her spend the night and we could hang out Christmas morning. I remember when I was a kid my Grandma Lang would spend the night and when we were a little older my Uncle Rick and his family would come from California and spend the night at our house. My brother and I always loved having family spend the night, especially for Christmas.

Turkey

Wahoo!! Tonight I bowled my first turkey (3 strikes in a row) ever !!

Date Night!

Kenny was given some tickets to the Coyotes game Thursday night so we decided to make it a date night! Our friend from work had recommended a place in West Gate called Saddle Ranch Chop House so we decided to go there for dinner before the game. We had to wait 45 minutes so we walked around West Gate. They had a beautiful tree and lights everywhere. It was chilly out but we had a good time strolling around and talking-it was romantic. The place was SO awesome!! The restaurant atmosphere was neat and they had a mechanical bull to top it off!

The food was great but my favorite by far was the dessert! They brought us giant cotton candy dish on the house~! The cotton candy was the highlight of my night for sure- silly I know but it was just so fun!! Even Kenny had to actually reach up to get some!!

After dinner we headed over to the game next and ended up we were in a fancy suite! They had a huge buffet of free food and drinks. We of course were so full from our dinner and dessert we didn't have any. Our friend's son works for the Coyotes and is one of the guys who shoots T-shirts into the crowd and helps out the cheerleaders-- I know difficult job but someone had to do it. Anyway, we saw him there. The Coyotes won and it was a fun game to watch. We both had a really nice night : )

A Christmas Carol

Our Company party was this Saturday at the Arizona Broadway Theater http://www.azbroadwaytheatre.com/ .

We are really fortunate to work for the same company and we each get to bring a guest to the company partys. We brought our moms again this year (we did 2 years ago when we went to the Broadway Theater for the first time). We ate a wonderful meal and watched A Christmas Carol- It was amazing and I am not much for musicals!!

A Christmas Celebration

This year Kenny and I decided to have a Dirty Santa Christmas party and potluck. We had so much fun we make this a annual tradition!! The Dirty Santa (AKA White Elephant) was a blast - I think my two favorite items


















were the light up Santa slippers that Becky from work ended up with and the snowman toilet seat cover that poor Sarah ended up with at the last minute because Blair stole her candle!! And the food was awesome! Kenny and I cooked up a ham, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole etc. PLUS everyone brought their favorite dish to share!! We probably could have fed a small army!! We just had a really good time. Well, turns out I have more pictures than words to share (I know you are all shocked since I love to talk ha ha ha ) so here are a bunch of pictures from the party-- 1-Blair and me 2- Marc opening his secret Santa gift 3-Me 4-My mom and Dad 5- My handsome hubby 6-Barb

Kookie for Cookies

Last Thursday I took a class at Scrap Happy Sisters with my mom and a co-worker and we made this fun, sparkly, recipe book on a stand! The class also included a cookie swap.

We all brought 10 copies of our recipe and a few dozen cookies.When we left we had a smorgage board of cookies and a bunch of new reciepes to try. It was a fun class and evening.

Here is the receipe I exchanged--

Easy Lemon Cookies
Ingredients:
1 (18.25 oz) package of lemon cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 c oil
1 tsp lemon extract
1/3 c confectioners’ sugar – for decoration
directions-
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Pour cake mix into a large bowl. Stir in eggs, oil and lemon extract until well blended. Drop teaspoonfuls of dough into a bowl of confectioners’ sugar. Roll them around until they’re lightly covered. Once sugared put them on an ungreased cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 6-9 mins in a preheated oven. The bottoms will be light brown, and the insides chewy (makes 36)

Bloggin' a Blog

So I came home and read Pastor Lee's blog and low and behold he posted about the Shack -The book I just read! So I am posting a link to his blog... go read it (and the book too) ... http://www.radiantchurch.com/blog/2008/12/shack-what-do-you-think.asp

Best Score

Tonight Kenny bowled his highest scoring game yet!! 229!!! which is 78 pins over average!! He will get bowler of the week for the 2nd time this season!! Yippee for Kenny!! Also, we won 2/3 games and the series! The second game was SO close it came down to the 3rd ball in the last frame and Kenny had to get a strike for us to take the game by just one point and he did it!! It was a fun night.

Too much Christmas

Well, this weekend has been full, overflowing actually with Christmas decorating, shopping, wrapping, planning and preparing. So full in fact that it ran into Monday!! Here I am taking a "mental health day" to finish up and actually rest a little before going back to work. Saturday we (Kenny, mom and dad and I ) shopped almost for almost 5 hours (the car was so full we had to put packages between mom and I in the backseat to make it all fit). That evening Kenny and I finally got all our decorations down and he put up the lights outside. Sunday we finished decorating, cleaned the house, grocery shopped and wrapped pretty much all day. Although Kenny did make time to watch the Cardinals game. We played our last softball game of the season on Sunday night. We lost by 2, but it was a really good game. This week we are busy almost every night and our Christmas party is on Friday, our company party is Saturday and the family party is supposed to be Sunday... I love the holidays but it is only the 8th and I am exhausted!!

I am including some pictures of our favorite decorations just for fun! This is a decoration with a lot of sentiment as it was Kenny's mom and dad's from the first year they were married! It is probably 35+ years old, but my MIL takes such good care of everything it is in excellent shape. She gave it to us last year and we treasure it.

This arrangement came from Kenny's cousin Michelle. One year (before I was part of the family) she had made these for everyone. Every year I would comment on how much I loved them as I would see them at everyone's houses. Then 2 years ago Michelle just made one for us and brought it over at Thanksgiving. It is one of my most favorite decorations.

Bunko Night!

So Friday night we went out to my MIL's house for her neighborhood Bunko night and had a blast!! The plan was that Kenny would work on his "honey do list" for his grandma and mom while we played the game (his idea). The group was one person short so we asked Kenny to join us... 11 women and Kenny! He was so great though and the ladies really enjoyed having him. It was such a great night full of laughter, smiles and conversation. Kenny said is was so good to see his Nana have such a good time and it has been too long time since he has seen her have so much fun. It was really great for my MIL too, just to have people around and have a good time. Kenny and I both won prizes too! I got $20 for getting the most bunkos (6 total!!) and Kenny won $1 for loosing the most games (27/36). It was so much fun and I am already looking forward to next month's Bunko night!!

Bowling Buddies

On Monday nights Kenny and I bowl in a league with our friends. Our team name is Pin Pals (like from the Simpson's!) We aren't great but we have fun! We just got these new shirts so of course we had to take some pictures!