Winter Wonderland

Hello all!  Well this week things were a little slower than last week, but sometimes it's nice to not have to run around all the time.  We did get a snowstorm Friday night/Saturday morning and the temperatures plummeted.  I think the high on Saturday was 4 F, but there was plenty of snow so we couldn't stay inside!

Earlier this week we started working on Christmas treats.  Monica made fudge and toffee to take to people, and we made some ginger bread cookies together.  We of course decorated them!  Here's a tree I made:

And here's the cookie Brooke decorated!  The hardest part was definitely getting her to not just shove candy in her mouth!

And like good parents we let her take a few bites!

On Saturday morning while Brooke was having breakfast the neighbor was in their back yard clearing snow off of their hot tub, and Brooke thought it was amazing.  She totally zoned out for a minute or two.  No noises, didn't look at us when we talked to her, didn't care about food, just stared as the neighbor cleared off the hot tub.

Later that day we headed into the winter chill to play in the snow.  Brooke loves to be out in the snow!  She doesn't do much playing yet.  I tried to hand her snowballs and such but she'd just kinda tap them in my hand and that was it.  So I had to help her throw them at Monica!!!

Teammates!!

Saturday night we got invited to a tamale party!  It was at the Robinson's house (I helped Joe with math last year).  The food was great and we had a lot of fun.  We let Brooke down to roam and she had a blast!  Which is good because we were there till 7 and she usually won't stay up past 6:15!  I believe I heard her say she made 120 tamales!!!  Crazy!  And all the ones I ate were very good!  Robinsons, if you read this, thanks again!!

Well, I think that covers everything for this week!  I hope everyone is doing great out there!

Christmas Parties!!!!!

Welcome back everyone! (Or just welcome if it's your first time...)  I hope everyone had a splendid week!  We sure did.  And I got a lot of pictures of Brooke after getting chastised for last weeks post.  First, Brooke put on her work out clothes this last week and did some exercise with Monica!  She did lift that 2 pound weight a few times, so she's getting swull!

Last Sunday Monica and I had our own Thanksgiving dinner, also known as "dinner" on nights that are not Thanksgiving.  We did this because we didn't get to bring back any leftovers!!  It was a very successful first go at it.  The stuffing came out a little dry, but other then that it was terrific!

On Wednesday SEAKR had their children's Christmas party, complete with Santa!  They had a great dinner of pizza and chicken fingers, all kid classics.  Brooke got to meet Santa for the first time, and was immediately interested in coming back to us.

They also had a present for each child.  Brooke got a Paddington bear!  She really does like it, she was just feeling the stranger danger!  We had a lot of fun at the party and it was fun to see everyone there with their kids.  I don't much get to see co-workers kids.

On Friday night we went down to downtown Parker to see the decorations.  The shopping center had inflatable decorations out again, such as this bear.  They also had a big Mickey that Brooke really liked, but there wasn't a good way to take a picture with it.

There was also some sidewalk chalk out on the street.  I'm not sure what event that came from, but it was really cool.  It unfortunately wasn't complete, but here's an octopus:

And a... design with fish:

And some turtles!!  They were very impressive.

Oh yeah, they also had this whack-a-penguin.  It was motorized and the penguins would go in and out.

After our initial walk around we went to dinner at Indochine, which was terrific.  Brooke was waving at everyone that walked by too!  I let her try my lemon that was in my water, and she was going crazy for it!  That girl loves sour!  Well, after dinner it was dark, so it was a good time to go see the lights.  First here's an old historic church that was across the street from where we ate.

And here's the big main tree in the park!  They do more sparse lights and the snowflakes in a lot of other trees, but they always do the big tree in the corner the most.

And here we all are at the park!  They had a more standard Christmas tree that we tried to put in the background, but it was really tall, so that never worked out.

Saturday night was my work party at Mile High Stadium.  We got a babysitter so we could go again this year (we missed last year since Brooke was so recently born).  We got to go down to the field and into one of the nice VIP boxes.  The dinner was also very good again!  But the desserts were not near as good as two years ago...

Today Brooke wore her Christmas dress to church, and I was instructed to take a million pictures until I got it right!  Here's Brooke chilling at the base of the tree.  I was trying to get her to reach for an ornament cause I thought it would be cute, but she just kinda half pointed instead.

Then I moved an ornament down for her to get, which led to her no longer looking at me or sitting up.

Finally she grabbed a very Christmasy random book from the floor and without ever smiling looked at me.  BOOM! Nailed it! I also need to note that this is the first time Brooke's hair has been long enough to put a barrette in it!

What a busy week!  A lot happened around here.  I think things are going to calm down a little this next week.  I hope everyone is doing fantastic!  Till next week!

Christmas Decor

Hello to everyone!  This week we started getting things looking a lot more like Christmas!  On Monday night for FHE we went and got our Christmas tree!  We tried out Costco this year, and the tree is awesome!  It was a great choice.  And as usual, we tied the tree to the top of Tuna (our '99 Corolla), which got some smiles and points on the drive home.  Once we got home it was time to put up the lights and ornaments!  Here's the final project.

Friday night for date night Monica wanted to make some new ornaments.  We made some snowmen out of tea candle lights.  Here are the final products.  Can you guess which ones I made?  Maybe just one of them?

And here they are on the tree.  We didn't really leave them this bunched together, they were just more photogenic this way.

On Saturday Monica had a training all morning, so I surprised her and made this little stable for her nativity!  I also did a lot of cleaning around the house, which is what I think Monica really appreciated.

On Saturday night we decided to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas together before Brooke went to bed.  It was her first Christmas movie!  And also the first video we openly let her watch.  She LOVED it!  In case you haven't seen the video yet I have a link to it here.  She loved it for the first while, but then her attention span caught up with her.  She did make it all the way through without having to go to bed, but we had to play with her a whole bunch to get there.

And I think we're basically caught up!  Tonight we're having Thanksgiving dinner.  We decided to make one because we didn't have any left overs from actual Thanksgiving.  Flying is SO HARD!

Hope everyone is doing great out there!  Have a great week.