Little Miss's Kindergarten Christmas Party

Little Miss had her class Christmas Party today. Oh what an event it was. There were balloon centerpieces and Christmas table clothes, crafts galore, food, and a book exchange. And she got to wear her pajamas to school today! I think that was her favourite part :)

This morning they had Fireside Reading with her teacher and then the Christmas party was this afternoon at 2 pm. I showed up with Little Man (in his pajamas as well) and helped to set up and get everything ready for the kiddos.

The kids came in and set to making their crafts. They coloured wooden ornaments, decorated foam bell shapes, and made jingle bell necklaces. Then they feasted on cheese cubes, pretzel sticks, cupcakes, grapes, strawberries, and hot chocolate. During all of the hoopla, each kid got to go and pick out one of the wrapped books in the library (each child had brought a wrapped book to give).

Little Miss and Little Man had a blast and I got a couple of cupcakes to each as well (anyone who knows me well knows that that is the most important thing :) ).

Little Man's Preschool Christmas Party

I'm the Room Mom for Little Man's class this year. It's actually a pretty involved job :) We plan all major holiday parties and crafts and get the parents to help pay for or donate their time and money for said parties. (That is actually more difficult than you'd imagine.)

The Christmas Party was scheduled for this Friday but one of the kids is moving and our teacher, Ms. Carson, is going to Hawaii for Christmas vacation this week so we moved the party to today.

Our craft was a Christmas tree ornament. I got fat green popsicle sticks and hot glued them in a triangle. Then I added red and green pipe cleaners for the "hook" and a brown construction paper trunk. Last week I went in and took pictures of each kiddo and last night I hot glued all of their cute little faces into the middle of the "tree". Then today we let the kids decorate their trees with sequins, stickers, and jewels. They turned out super cute!

We got the kids McDonalds happy meals for a "special" lunch and then had them decorate a sugar cookie for dessert.

One of the grandmothers even came in today and did face painting for the kids making them each look like a reindeer.

The kids had a great time and so did the parents and the ornaments turned out even cuter then I thought they'd be :)

My 34th Birthday

My 34th birthday was great this year. My actual birthday was on Friday, December 11th but we celebrated it over the weekend (twice).

Ryan, the kids, and I had our own little celebration where they gave me my presents on Saturday evening after the Movies by the Fire in our neighborhood. Then on Sunday morning we had the entire family over to celebrate my birthday with a brunch at our house.

Christmas Movies by the Fire 2009

Every year our neighbor down the road hosts a Christmas Movies by the Fire evening. Usually it's the second weekend of December. They provide the hot chocolate, hot dogs, and s'more makins' and the rest of us bring something to share. Then they blow up their large inflatable movie screen and project the movie onto it. We all bring lawn chairs and a bunch of blankets and watch movies well into the night.

This year's double feature included Fred Claus and White Christmas. While we were unable to stay for the movies we were able to go down to enjoy hot chocolate, hot dogs, chili, eggrolls, corn casserole and numerous fabulous desserts. The kids had a great time playing with the other neighborhood kids and we shared in some fun neighborly conversation.

We look forward to this night every year!

Decorating the house for Christmas

This year we decided to be smart Texans and decorate the outside of the house when it was still warm outside.

So the day after Thanksgiving when it was in the upper 70s, the kids, and Ryan, and I headed outside with all of our boxes and tubs full of decorations and made a day of it.

I put red and green lights all down our front walkway, around all of our "flower" beds, and along the street. Then we put out the Santa on a tractor inflatable and the Santa on a horse lighted display. Finally, my dad got us a Texas Tech Red Raider football players lighted statue and we decided to put that one out this year as well. We finished it off by wrapping our three pine tree trunks in lights.

I really LOVE Christmas time and having the lights out early enough to enjoy them for as long as possible.

Halloween 2009 and Pumpkin Painting & Carving

The Art House in Flower Mound was offering free pumpkin painting. All you needed to do was show up with a pumpkin and they would provide the rest. So the kids and I decided to head over there on Monday October 19 so that we could partake in the fun :)

Little Miss made a rainbow striped pumpkin with antenna and Little Man made a globular painted pumpkin with LONG antenna that ended up falling off!

Messy --- Yes.... Super Fun --- You Bet!

As for our pumpkins, Ryan and I decided to go a different route with our carving this year. Little Miss and I both had the swine flu over the Halloween weekend. Since Trick or Treating was out for this year we decided that we couldn't hand out candy to unsuspecting healthy people either. So here is what we carved...

Needless to say... no one came to our door for treats :)

As for the costumes ... the kids did go to a costume birthday party the week before Halloween. Little Man wore his Batman costume and Little Miss was a Texas Tech cheerleader. Her actual costume was a Cleopatra but we were saving it for Halloween...

Little Man - Western Days

Western Days is a big deal at Little Man's new school! They go all out - petting zoo, picture taking area, campfire songs, stick horse races... the whole nine yards. Today was the day!

I volunteered to help out with the picture taking station and Ryan let the school borrow his roping dummy, chaps, bits and bridles, riding blankets, and saw horse.

Little Man had a blast going from station to station with his preschool class. His favourite stations were the petting zoo station and the stick horse race station. Nana even came up to school and followed his class around for a couple of rotations. He thought that was pretty cool.

After the kids went through all of the stations the room moms (of which I am one) brought the kids each a McDonald's Happy Meal. The kids really loved this special treat and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to spend most of the afternoon with my favourite little boy!!