This is My Forties

This morning I had a few errands to run out on the town and my inner Ohioan knew it was going to snow later. I immediately got happy and excited. The clouds were low, the air was well below freezing and it had that crisp snowy smell. People who grew up in snowy places know exactly what I'm talking about! Well at noon it finally started to fall. Then it picked up more and more until there were huge tufts of snowy clumps floating down from the sky. LOVE!! So, of course, we played outside. Once I was too cold I bribed the kiddos with hot chocolate if they'd come back inside. They shared a hot cocoa (too close to dinner to get their own, sorry boys) while I made some potato soup. Oh it was delicious... I added the leftover turkey and some carrots to it this time, put a little shredded cheddar on top. Outstanding. I got stuff accomplished. I went out for a coffee. It SNOWED!! Dinner was delicious. What a great day! It doesn't take much to make t...

We had a great Thanksgiving. There was food, family, a friend, football, fun... and bejeweled blitz (lol). All Thanksgiving needs to be successful is turkey and a ridiculous amount of side dishes, which we had... and of course family :) Pumpkin pie with homemade cool whip for breakfast, deviled eggs for appetizers. Turkey, stuffing, peppered cream corn, velveeta veggies, mashed potatoes, sausage stuffing, yams, and cranberry sauce for dinner. And good times were had by all. I even gave the dogs turkey gravy for their food (which they devoured within seconds). Josh, Tom, and I all got on facebook and played bejeweled blitz while we sorta listened to the Cowboys lose (none of us like the Cowboys). Tom and I had an eating contest which ended in a draw after our second plate (thankfully). We nearly exploded, but we laughed a lot. The kids played board games under the table and watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving and Christmas specials. We just dropped Josh off at...

Our trees went up yesterday :) :) :) We put our Christmas trees up a little early this year for a few reasons: 1. We wanted to! ;) 2. Josh will not be here for a couple weeks after Thanksgiving and we'd rather have it done early than late. 3. We really really wanted to! Our friend Tom is part of our little family out here. He comes over to watch football and hang out with us every Saturday. He also helps us out with anything, whenever we need him. He's great with the kids, very laid back... like I said, family :) So, of course he had to help us get ready for Christmas!! It's a good thing he showed up too because our kids were tearing through decorations like little tornadoes and we needed all the help we could get! We watched "Elf" and "It's a Wonderful Life" (by the way Tom's Jimmy Stewart impression is hilarious) as we decorated. By "we" I mean Josh, Tom, myself, and Noah. Tristan spent his time swinging his blan...

You all thought I forgot, didn't you ;) Noah's day begins with Tristan's gentle whispering and nudging at 6:30-ish... he wishes. It's more like a whine and a yank on the arm "Noahhhh uh go to playroom". He walks hand-in-hand with Tristan to the playroom and starts a movie for them. Then most days he goes downstairs to get them each a bowl of cereal and carries it to the playroom table. They eat their cereal and curl up under blankets in front of the TV until the alarm goes off at 7, which signals them to head to our room to make sure we're awake. I found out long ago that no alarm clock will ever really wake me up, except for my persistent children. Noah thinks it's fun to have an alarm to be in charge of turning off. Reluctantly, we comply and finally get out of bed to face the day. Depending on how much they ate and level of hunger the kids will have oatmeal or something else hot for breakfast as well. Noah finishes eating and head...

I'm a huge fan of photography, and what better way to use my love of photos than to give friends and family some fun photo gifts! When I first had kids I never thought I would be the Christmas card type, but I most certainly am. I did a lot of browsing over the years for the best prices in photo gifts and prints. I have never found one better than shutterfly, especially for photo cards ! They have the best layouts with the highest volume of pictures for less than snapfish. Their layouts are modern and fun, but they also have great personalization options. I have used shutterfly to make baby announcements , picture books , calendars , poster prints for my walls, and prints for my scrapbooks. I have never been disappointed with the color quality or cropping. Not only that, but they ship the order very quickly. Now I have one more reason to love shutterfly. They're offering a promotion to people willing to sing their praises, and I am more than happy to oblige!!! So....

When the first cold front moves through the mountains and seeps down into Madrid, an instinctual urge tells us to bake cookies. Maybe our instincts are trying to tell us to gain weight and hibernate? Whatever the case, we listen... we bake all day. We bake bread, cookies, cakes, casseroles, and pies (by "we" I mean Josh). The oven warms the kitchen and fills the entire house with clouds of deliciousness. Josh loves baking. It's scientific, it's chemistry, it reminds him of his Mom. The perfect combination of challenge and nostalgia ;) Plus he has a major sweet tooth. We just had a long weekend and in that time I think we baked about 6 dozen cookies and gained 3 pounds a piece lol. Our boys are going to be lady magnets with their cooking skills. You gotta have skills! During our downtime we also did a little raking. Catalpa leaves are ginormous and uber-glorious for leaf piles. Since it was the day after our gardener was here we had to do a littl...

OK!!!!! And we're back online! I will eventually get to everything. Sorry I missed so much!! I will do some better posts with pictures, but I gotta get this out there first!! I had an interesting day. God must like messing with me because I have been a happy little hermit for the past few months, but He made sure I HAD to interact with people all week... in SPANISH. Once I got over my initial horror, I finally made phone calls to get our internet turned back on. I don't know why talking on the phone and using Spanish stresses me out so much, but it really really does. Like... "maybe you should talk to a psychiatrist" kind of issues with it. I will avoid it like the plague. Example: our telephone has never worked. I've never called in the year+ we've had it. Never. I don't care enough about having a land line to try and explain myself in broken Spanish. It's worth the 13 a month for me to not have to make one lousy call. I waited unti...