Our 2011 Gingerbread House

Every year we make a gingerbread house. This year was no different....however the outcome was...read below.

Here we are setting up the house and decorating it. The house was a little unstable because the frosting was not helping to keep the house together. Oh well, we continued.

Notice the lovely decorative icicles hanging from the roof. That was my addition to the house. The other beautiful decorations were done by Katie and Kellen. Tom was here as well. He was the one taking the pictures.

Almost done...
After the house was all decorated we went to our room to watch a Christmas movie.

After the movie...........

We found the house like this!!! The house had totally fallen apart. It looked as if the big bad wolf came over while we were watching the movie and blew the house down. Sad!

Next year we are going to hot glue the house together first and then add the frosting for looks.

Random Shots

Here are some random shots.

I love to do hair. Katie told me what she wanted and here is the finished product. She looked so cute!

One night Brielle came to our house while Shellie was sick. She and I cuddled and watched a movie. She was such a good little princess!

Here we are in the middle of decorating the tree. Kellen has a guilty look on his face. Why?

Kellen and Brent were playing pillow fight at G&G Lyle's house. Kinda looks like Kellen was winning!

Thanksgiving 2011

This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house. My grandpa and grandpa Higgins and Brent and Jen came as well. We all had a wonderful time. The food was fantastic. The main debate this year was whether or not to stick the stuffing into the turkey. I prefer not to put it in, others prefer it in while the turkey is cooking. The debate made for some good conversation....believe it or not :)

Also, this year we had a new little cousin to celebrate with us, Brielle!!!! She was never put down!
Jen (Brent's girlfriend), Katie and Brielle.

Sisterly love. Diana, Shellie, myself. We are missing Erica. She spent Thanksgiving in Hawaii....poor thing:)

Tom, TJ, Dad, Brielle, and Scott all waiting for the food to be ready.

Tom fell asleep holding little Brielle.

New Favorite

LeGrand Richards once said, “If you are going to leave footprints in the sands of time, you must wear your working shoes.”

This has been me for the past few weeks....only the female version. School has been out of control hard. I just took my final last night. It was crazy hard. I was so annoyed with the teacher that for every question that I hated, I wrote on the test that it was a dumb question. True story. I was so annoyed with her!

I am glad to be back in the land of the living. I am SO happy that I do not have to study for another few weeks!! However, with all the craziness that school brings, I am SO grateful that I can be in school, for a very supportive husband, for super awesome kids that pray that I will do well on tests and do not bother me once they are bed and I start to study, and for a brain that still functions (kinda:))

Oh, and this post is dedicated to my sister Diana. She just told me that I have not posted in a while. I am sorry about the wait :)

The Middle Finger

The other day I told Tom and the kids that the house was a mess and that I was not going to help them clean it. This bold statement came after Tom had been gone for about a week in California. I was tired and wanted to make sure the kids and Tom had some quality time cleaning. :) Any way...

This is the conversation that what went down-

Me: Kids, you and your father are going to clean the house and I am not going to lift a finger.

Katie: Well, I am not going to lift my middle finger.

Roaring laughter ensued....especially since Katie is still not sure why we do not put up our middle finger at someone.

Halloween 2011

This year Katie was a vampire and Kellen was Woody from Toy Story. We went to several Halloween parties and got a lot of candy! Kellen called his candy bag his "load". It was awesome!

Notice the awesome vampire teeth. They didn't last long; the teeth were slightly annoying.

If you look closely you can see that Katie is pretending to bite Kellen's head.
Carving pumpkins....so fun!

Katie wanted to show the progression of opening her little pumpkin.

The finished results! The pumpkin on the right is Kellen's pumpkin. He outlined his jack'0'lantern face for me to cut for him. I guess I misread his drawing and I cut out a too many shapes on his pumpkin's face. The top two shapes are actually eyebrows. Oops! My bad!

Katie is walking in her elementary school parade.

Kellen found some funny glasses at the dollar store. He loved them so much that they became part of his costume.
Woody with funny glasses at his preschool halloween party.

Kellen playing musical chairs at the preschool party. He actually won this round! Yay, Kellen!