Christmas Par-tay

Christmas Eve eve, Sherrie invited a bunch of families over for a par-tay. It was super fun. We ate Café Rio tacos and had some yummy desserts. We did a gift exchange, As Seen on TV style, and the kids ran around and played like there was no tomorrow!
Good friends. Good food. Good times!

What would a party be without picture taking?


This was my Christmas gift to my friends. Since we just ended the Health Challenge a few days before, and have been trying to eat healthier, and have been bombarded by cookie plates and homemade treats, I thought….tis the season to be healthy. Hummus and baby carrots. Yum!

What’s Café Rio without homemade tortillas?

Do you know how hard it is to take a decent picture? Seriously?

Don’t let Miss Parleigh fool you. She was a pill. With a capital P. But, I don’t blame her. She was having a rough week fromeating dairy. She only let me hold her…and she cried and cried and cried if anyone even thought of holding her. Oh well, she’s back to her happy self—all dairy out of her system. Remind me NOT to introduce dairy when we have parties planned!


Gift exchange. I got a battery-powered fly swatter, an alarm for my door, and some benderoos!

I love this girl. She is too.much.fun!



Parker apparently had a loose tooth. He’s wiggling it. About ready it yank it out, or so it looks! What’s up with my boys losing teeth? It fell out the next day!


This, my friend, was Parleigh’s mood for the past weekend. I think I captured it pretty well, if I say so myself. Talk about a cranky, needy, baby. I’ve never ever heard her cry so much. Darn you dairy products! Darn you!

Annnnnddd….if you made it through this far…here’s what I made for Parker’s teachers. I thought about doing a gift card…but I’m a homemade type of girl!

Christmas PJ’s

Bright eyed and bushy tailed….these three kiddos are ready to see what Santa brought them!

Aren’t they the cutest little elves you’ve ever seen?

Reindeer Cupcakes

My friend asked me if I could make cupcakes for her son’s preschool party. She wanted something “festive”.
What preschooler wouldn’t love to eat these reindeer cupcakes? They are too cute for words.

I saw the idea here. I used pretzel m&m’s for the noses, york pieces for the eyes, and I used the duff candy writer for the black in the eyes. Go ahead, make some today! :)

Gingerbread Houses

5 moms. 15 kids. We are quite the crowd! If we get together, it’s one.big.party!

This time, it was a gingerbread house party!

My kids were super excited all.day.long. to go to Easton and Mackay’s house. When we got there the kids were able to play while we got dinner ready. After we ate, it was decorating time.

Sherrie is a rock star for inviting us all over! Such a fun time for the kids and us moms!

We got home and the boys wanted to make sure we would hide the houses so Piper wouldn’t sneak into them and eat them while they slept. Sure enough, we hid them well enough and they were fully in tact when we woke up this morning. Until….after breakfast when we allowed the kids to attack them! What fun they had. I don’t know what’s more fun…decorating, demolishing, or eating them!

Even Parleigh got a piece of the fun! ♥

O Christmas Tree

I have had my eye on these beauties for quite a few weeks. I was intimidated/scared to make them. With that being said, they really weren’t as hard as I thought. I just wish I could have found the other bag of green candy melts that I know I bought and if I would have had just 10 more extra minutes, they would have turned out cuter. But, I knew that the kids that would be eating them weren’t going to be too picky.

Transporting them across town—I swear they were all going to tip over at some point. I need to work on not being an aggressive driver!

More pictures to follow of our gingerbread house decorating party. It was super fun. The kids had a blast. And we put Willy Wonka to shame with the amount of candy!

Prep Work

My kids are tuckered out.

Tuckered. Does anybody still use that term? Since I am behind on everything. Behind. Meaning: I don’t have a cell phone. Or a dishwasher. Or a garbage disposal. Yes, you could say I am behind. I guess I’m entitled to use old school words like, tuckered. And whoopsy daisy. Right?

The boys woke up at the crack of dawn, hours before us girls woke up, and they went fishing. Preston was so proud to say he caught the first fish! What good little fisherman my boys are. And, they were home in time for Parker to go to school! :)

Us girls. We had way more fun. We did the prep work for some awesome gingerbread houses the kids will be decorating tomorrow. Super fun!

So I got the kids tucked into bed. And I held Parleigh for longer than I normally do. That little girl is growing up way too fast. If someone can please tell me how to make her stop growing, I would love to know! Because, frankly, I am having some mixed emotions with this youngest child of mine. Can’t she stay little forever?

14 graham cracker gingerbread houses.

Someone thought I wasn’t piping the icing on fast enough with the trees:

And I had to watch to make sure she was doing it right. I promise I’m not OCD! :)

It’s a pretty sweet forest!

And then, for good measure, I whipped up some eggnog cupcakes. I have other ones in store for tomorrow which I hope will come together as planned. I had all the ingredients for these so I thought I would make some.