Merry Christmas!

Christmas Shopping

Sunday night I went and did my Christmas shopping, from start to finish. Tami and Diana helped me out. Twas' fun!Thomas Hammer coffee..yum! This is for you Rach:)

Posing. Yea, don't ask. That's what happens when you're in Old Navy at midnight.

I had to add these pics of Ella and her crazy mop of morning hair.

Little love!!

Cambree's Party

Cambree opening her gift from us on the morning of her actual Birthday..the 16th.

Ella Belle..she stole most of the attention at the party!:)

Like how Duane's rolling his eyes? Gotta love him:) Poor kid was the only boy, it's a miracle he survived..or maybe that the girls survived;)

hehe

One of Cambree's gifts was that soda, popcorn, and a Blockbuster gift card. How cute is that?! She got all neat gifts though..thanks everyone! And thanks Grandma's & Grandpa's for the cards!:)

Ella was well taken care of with all the girls around. I don't think she got put down most of the night!

Diana came too..thanks for coming girls!:)

I made them Italian sodas.

I love this pic!

Twister!

The little girls watching a movie after the party:)

White Velvet Cutouts

Ingredients:

2 cups butter, softened
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
2 cups sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

BUTTER CREAM FROSTING:
3-1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, divided
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 tablespoon shortening
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 to 4 tablespoons milk, divided
Red and/or green food coloring, optional

Directions
In a bowl, cream butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add sugar, egg yolks and vanilla; mix well. Gradually add flour. Cover and chill 2 hours or until firm.
Roll out on a floured surface to 1/4-in. thickness. Cut into 3-in. shapes; place 1 in. apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until set (not browned). Cool 5 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool.
For frosting, combine 1-1/2 cups sugar, butter, shortening, vanilla and 3 tablespoons milk in a bowl; beat until smooth. Gradually add remaining sugar; beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add enough remaining milk and food coloring until frosting reaches desired consistency. Frost cookies. Yield: about 7 dozen.

This is the best Christmas cookie recipe ever! They're not too easy to work with for cutouts, but, oh so YUMMY! I'm going to make another batch and do round cookies:) Oh, and I used cream cheese frosting on mine:)

Christmas cookies!

I had my fill of cutting out & frosting cookies, for uh, about a yr.

It was fun though!

And the kids enjoyed it!

So, what kind of coffee maker do you have?

We had a $10 coffee maker for 8 yrs. It was still working great, but I wanted a nice Bunn, with the cool stainless steal pot. I got it and we had problems from day one. The pot would spill every time you poured coffee, just wasn't designed right. Matt got mad one morning and took a file to it, tried to reshape the spout. That didn't work. Then it started leaking, we had to put towels underneath whenever we made coffee. We suffered like this for 2 yrs. Matt went and bought another $10 coffee maker a couple days ago. That cute white one you see. It takes 10 min. to brew coffee, my Bunn took 2. I feel so old fashioned. Just wanted to let you all know I'm no longer living the fast life..haha. Yea, so what kind of coffee maker do you have? I want to know what is the best. In case I try to upgrade again someday.

Girls Christmas Party

If I was an amazing writer I would Tell you all about our party and Have you ROTFL! But I'm not. (actually I probably wouldn't tell you about it even if I was;) These crazy girls got really creative with the gift exchange and I have some absolutely hilarious pics. I decided it's better I don't post them;) Anyways we had lots of fun & laughs & ate allot of good food!

Thanksgiving

I know my post is kind of delayed, but that's OK:) We spent Thanksgiving with my family and stayed on the 3rd floor at Windy Ridge (aka my sister Jen's house:). She had a room so nicely set up for us. I am very thankful for all my family, among many other things like a warm house, good food, sweet babies, funny kids, friends, doctors...just to name a few...and most of all Jesus~my savior! The kids helping Jen make desert.

Ella

Duane caused us some unfortunate excitement by getting his finger shut in a door. Nothing like being at ER Thanksgiving night..ha! You can read about that more here .

My wonderful sis-inlaw Tsasa so kindly agreed to changed his Bandage the next day. It was still a little hard for me to stomach at that point.

Anya, Ella & Garret (the oldest of her 5 handsome boys)

Craig & Avoni

Duane whipping uncle Floyd's butt at chess;)

Cambree & Jazlyn. My sis-inlaw Gloria and I were in the hospital at the same time with these two. Born just 1 day apart, they will be ten next week. Crazy how fast that went by!