Bath Time

This is such a funny picture. Here is Charlotte mid bath – with her tongue out!

Please note she has these neat color tablets that let her mix the color of her bath water. Tonight just happened to be BLUE night!

Cookies For Santa

Today, while Charlotte was napping I made gingerbread cookies for Santa. I used a new pan I received as a gift from my Mom. It is a press dough pan that already has Christmas shapes. When Charlotte woke up from her nap we decorated the cookies with red and green candies and white icing. Charlotte is really getting good at handling a spatula but she really likes to do the sprinkles the best. It was quite a messy afternoon – brushing icing out of her hair - but we laughed a lot! Hope Santa likes them...yummy!

TBLF Annual Christmas Eve Breakfast

This morning Charlotte and I headed over to The Brennan Law Firm for their annual Christmas Eve Breakfast. They always invite past employees to join the celebration, plus I’m family so it’s not like they can shake me anyway. :) After a very yummy breakfast Sancha broke out the annual Christmas quiz. She creates a quiz for the attendees and the winner gets a great prize. It’s always fun to do the quiz because everyone takes it very seriously and really tries all month long to get Sancha to slip the “subject” of the test. This year she based the questions on a new Christmas cartoon “Prep & Landing” – which threw a lot of people because not many had seen it yet. It’s a great cartoon and I’m happy to add it to my collection of holiday cheer and tradition. Anyway, back to the quiz – I WON!!!! I guess it’s only fair to admit that I watch all sorts of Christmas DVDs starting December 1st each year – it’s kind of a sickness and sometimes gives me an edge on the annual quiz! Charlotte really enjoyed coloring with the other kids and opening her gift from TBLF – a Christmas light necklace that really lights up!

Christmas With The Krafts

Tonight Charlotte was visited by two elves. “Uncle” Justin and “Aunt” Holly came by to deliver Christmas cheer. Thank you guys SO much for including all of us, you are so thoughtful and we really appreciate it!

Christmas With The Eddy’s

Tonight Charlotte and I were invited to have dinner and exchange gifts with Lauren and Liam. Lauren and I have been friends since high school – almost 15 years! Although we have MANY crazy stories of our adventures over the years more recently we both married and had our first child within months of each other. Spending time together was a special treat because Lauren lives in Arkansas now so we don’t get to visit all that often. She and Liam are in Orlando visiting with family right now while her husband in serving in the Air Force overseas.

Tonight, the kids were so cute together and really seemed to enjoy their gifts. Here are a few pictures of them – unfortunately in all the excitement I forgot to get one of them together. I promise to be more on the ball next time.

Christmas Baking

This year I let myself get behind in my Christmas baking so a majority of the baking was done in one night. This “all in one night” process drove Wayne a little crazy. See, the house smells like a bakery (and is stocked like one) and he is not allowed to touch ANYTHING, poor guy! Usually, I am able to do the baking and packaging over a few days and, so, he gets “leftovers” on a regular basis.

Anyway, I LOVE to bake so doing this for our family and a few friends is pure Christmas joy for me! This year I made old fashioned oatmeal cookies (my Mom’s recipe), chocolate peanut cups, sugar cookies, white chocolate cups, brownies, chocolate chip cookies and peppermint bark. I was able to find these adorable red buckets to package for twelve of our friends and family. I ran out of time – again I got behind – and, so, I am going to have to make the gingerbread cookies for Santa later this week.

One of these days I will figure out a better schedule so that Wayne doesn’t have to “suffer” through the holidays! :) Plus next year I’d like to be able to bake for more of our friends…we’ll see….

Gingerbread House With Aunt Katie

Today Aunt Katie came over to play with Charlotte and they also decorated our gingerbread house!

Charlotte Hi-din’

Today Charlotte was obsessed with hiding from me, which she calls HI-DIN’. Anytime I addressed her directly – “Charlotte do you want to color a Christmas Tree?” - off she would run to hide. It was really cute because as soon as she could hear you coming she just started laughing. Her laughing got louder and louder the closer you came to “finding” her. The best part is that this afternoon she started saying HIDING and annunciating all the letters insisted if just saying Hi-din’. Such a smarty!

Happy 2nd Birthday Daisy

This afternoon Charlotte and I headed over to the Downtown Y to help Daisy celebrate her 2^nd Birthday! Unfortunately, the weather has not been cooperating and instead of the park party that was originally planned Cyndi, Daisy’s Mom, moved things indoors. It’s no surprise the kids still had a BLAST. We played on all the gym equipment and Charlotte even made her first basketball basket!

The theme for Daisy’s party was Sweet 2^nd and yesterday I was able to help Cyndi wrangle what must have been 20 dozen cookies and cupcakes…NO, it was probably more! We had a really fun afternoon baking for the party and Cyndi taught me how to make some YUMMY peanut butter cookies…don’t tell Wayne! :)