Carving a pumpkin...

Well, as it turns out ds age 12 has never carved a pumpkin.  We quit "doing Halloween" a long time ago.  I guess it's been about 12 years!  Anyway, this year I decided to get him a pumpkin to carve.  He decided to do some sort of video game helmet and here is his result. Can you guess what it is?

The carving...

This is it illuminated.  Cool!

I think he did a good job!  He drew the pattern and then applied it to the pumpkin.  I helped him do some of the scraping and a little of the carving - just the larger areas, but mostly he did it himself.

Our Christmas Eve Menu

Appetizers:

Deviled eggs

Jalapeño Poppers*

Veggie tray (broccoli, celery, cauliflower, grape tomatoes, petite carrots)*

Pizza Dip*

Chips

Main Course:

Honey Baked Ham (yum!)

Broccoli-cheese-rice casserole*

Crescent rolls

Mashed Potatoes*

Baked Beans (my oldest dd is bringing this)

Corn Casserole (my mom is bringing this)

Desserts:

Pumpkin spice cheesecake*

Chess pie

Red Velvet Cake (my mom is bringing this)

Hello Dollies (dd is bringing this)

* Healthier versions. I specifically added these foods or re-vamped the recipes to reduce the empty calories.

Thanksgiving

(I found this post in drafts and never posted it! So I'm posting it now.)

I was so blessed yesterday.

We celebrated our family Thanksgiving on Wednesday instead of Thursday.

All my family was there and I felt so overwhelmed with JOY to have all my kids together again for a day.

I have been blessed with wonderful children and their families now.

God is so good to me.

Parade Slide Show 1

Christmas Parade

We took the kids to the 21st Annual Neiman Marcus/Adolphus-Children's Parade. It was nice and warm, we had so much fun!!! We arrived early with our blankets, hot chocolate and snacks, as well as a few toys to keep the boys occupied while we waited TWO HOURS for the parade to begin. It was worth it. I took about 90 pics but here are just some of the highlights...

My Little Nerd

I'm proud to say... this is my ds... the Nerd.

Christmas Time

Yesterday and today we got in the crafty mood. We dug through our craft boxes but couldn't find much that inspired us, but today as we watched Carol Duvall's Christmas Workshop we were reminded of paper crafts! So we cut out snowflakes and learned how to make German Paper Stars.

When we put up our tree the other day we decided to use only our white and silver decorations but there wasn't quite enough to satisfy me so I added touches of red here and there (red is my favorite color so it's not surprising that I would find a way to get some on there ;-)). With the white snow flakes and white paper stars, I think our tree will look just lovely. We have a goal of making 100 of them in the next few days. I wonder if we'll make it? I'll post a picture if we do.

Needless to say, we didn't complete all of our school work on our list, but there's always tomorrow right?