Disneyland Birthday's!!!

We surprised the kids with a trip to Disneyland for Brennan's 11th and Tyler's 9th birthday's! We had a blast!! They were SO excited and Disneyland is absoloutely beautiful at Christmas! We went to Universal Studios too and had a great time there, especially on Jurassic Park and The Mummy!
I can't believe my two middle boys are getting so big! It was fun to get them their buttons and have so many people throughout the park wish them Happy Birthday! They got to ride all their favorite rides (Splash Mtn, Space Mtn. California Screamin, Pinnochio and of course BIG THUNDER!!!!) It was a lot of fun to be together and to enjoy their special days!! We love you so much boys!!!! What an AWESOME birthday!!!!!

Thanksgiving and Brennan's Arrow of Light

We celebrated Thanksgiving twice, once with the Chisholm's and then with the Bennett's! It was lots of fun, food and family!!!
Brennan earned his Arrow of Light, the highest level of Cub Scouting last month also, we are very proud of him for working hard to accomplish it! (considering his mom is not the greatest scouter in the world, this really was almost all him, so it's really great!!!) Way to go Brennan, you are AWESOME!!!

Happy Birthday Gracie!

Gracie was born on a beautiful fall morning! We were so happy to have her join and complete our family!
She has always been a sweet, happy little thing and, of course, being the baby is spoiled rotten, as any true princess always is!
Some of Gracie's favorites are, reading her favorite books, Fancy Nancy and Pinkalicious, playing chef in her kitchen and helping mommy bake for real. She loves to play on slides and swings. She takes after her mom and loves to go to the mall, especially the Disney Store and Build a Bear. Gracie's favorite foods are: Cookie Crisp, Steak, and "wolly-pots" (lollypops). Of course anything about a Princess makes her happy. We love our baby so much and are so glad she's part of our family!! Happy Birthday sweetie!!!

Night of the Big Pumpkin

I love Halloween! I have loved it my whole life, and I think I've passed it along to my family!!!! We have so many special traditions that it's hard to name them all! Lots of them involve food, traditional dinners, drinks, treats etc. Some of them include chicken noodle soup on Halloween night in pumpkin bread bowls with brain jello, pumpkin pancakes with boo hot chocolate, graveyard cake, brew, witches brownies, chili. We have lots of fun sharing them with friends and family. We always go to cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point and Gardiner Village. We play in the leaves and have a picnic. We have 4 traditional songs we sing, 5 Little Pumpkins, BOO BOO BOO, Mr Jack-o-lantern and Have You Seen the Ghost of Tom. We have favorite stories we read, especially BIG PUMPKIN, and Happy Halloween Stinky Face. Of course we have to watch It's the Big Pumpkin Charlie Brown and this year we got to go see Little Shop of Horrors, which was very fun!
This year Jen was in Dracula the Musical, in which she played the mother, and did an EXCELLENT job! Josh had a party with 4 friends and their dates, they had a Dopes Dinner, which is something I did when I was a teenager, SOOO fun! We had 2 family parties with all the cousins and a few fun friend ones as well.
I love this holiday because it's just fun, no strings attached. We can just be silly and crazy and there's very little stress.
WE HOPE YOU HAD A HAPPY HALLOWEEN STINKY FACES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MASQUERADE!!!!!

See what a trip to Italy will do to a Halloween freak?
I found a beautiful mask and some black and white pasta while in Italy earlier this year, and the planning began!!!! I have always been in love with the Phantom of the Opera (seen it 7 times, love it, love it, love it) and have wanted to do a Masquerade Ball for years for our Halloween party. So, this was kind of a dream come true!!!!
It was so fun to plan this party, I went with a black and white and gold theme, decorated masks to make a centerpiece and napkin rings, painted some white pumpkins with paint and glitter and planned around that! I had everything all ready and pictures taken before 3:00 pm and thought I was pretty on top of it!!!
I was really excited when our friends went all out for the party too, they all were soooooo creative and beautiful!!!! (Tara your kitty was so cute, Shannon, Monica, Marcia, Julie, and Amy you were all GORGEOUS!) Even the husbands were in the mood.
We ate a yummy pasta dinner, which Jenica and her two friends helped serve (they were so cute!) played some fun games, and even danced the waltz to the Blue Danube (believe it or not, we really did DANCE!!!!!)
For dessert, I made a black, white and gold cheesecake with a mask and candles for the eyes, (oh so cute :) ) and a chocolate fountain, which didn't work very well, but tasted pretty good.

I was so happy with how the whole thing turned out, other than one small mishap (besides the gloopy chocolate). My centerpiece on the table was a huge vase full of water, glass pebbles and ribbons (along with 7 masks on wooden dowels) I lit some floating tea lights and it looked so pretty. Well, at 6:50 (10 minutes before the party was starting) I heard a crack and a whoosh. I went in to the dining room and water was pouring out of the vase and running all over the table (which of course had 14 place settings with good china and lots of other decorative stuff) and all over the floor, (onto our quite expensive, rather loved wool area rug.) Of course, being the refined lady that I am (ha!ha!) I only let out a few choice words before I started screaming to anyone and everyone to bring me towels of any nature and to start pulling stuff off the table in truly a dizzying speed!!! It was absoloutely ridiculous and funny now that I look back at it! I am very glad most people were fashionably late, because by 7:20 we had dried the tablecloth, changed napkins, put the vase back on the table (crack and all :) ) taken the EXTREMELY heavy rug down to the storage room, replaced the chairs, mopped and dried the floor, thrown the 8 beach towels we'd used to mop up into the wash, put all the centerpieces back on, and not let the pasta burn. I was sweating like a stinkin' pig, so my lovely wig was all droopy and my eyeliner was running, but thank goodness for that beautiful Italian mask!!!!

So, I guess the moral of this story and of all my party stories is......go with the flow, things will not always be perfect, there will be unexpected "surprises"....always. I have been nicknamed the "party girl" by many members of my family and friends, and I guess it's true, but I have yet to learn that no matter how well you plan, you never know what's going to happen, and to just grin and go with it. It will always turns out fun!!! That's what Halloween to me is all about anyway...... fun!!!!!

OOOOOOOH I Love that mask :)