For the last two days I’ve been on my feet all day cooking and cleaning!  Party was tonight and went well.  We had yummy food and exchanged cookies and beer.  My friend Lisa told me about the annual beer and cookie exchange she does with some friends every year and I told a couple of the people here that we had invited to our Christmas party/ cookie exchange and they loved the beer exchange idea and said we totally should do that!  So I called the other families coming and everyone loved it and sooo….beer exchange tonight!   What fun.  Made the Christmas party a little more fun for the guys I think - something they could pick out and be “in charge” of for the party.

So last night Alyssa’s friend from across the street (a daughter of one of the families coming to the party tonight) stayed the night, and both girls helped me with lots of the cooking - they did such a fantastic job, AND they cleaned the play room and Alyssa and Ky’s bedroom!  Wow! 

The menu…

• 4 dozen oatmeal scotchie cookies for the exchange
• 18 chocolate dipped pretzel wreaths
• Veggie tray (cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, carrots with ranch dip)
• Fruit tray (pineapple, mandarin oranges, apples)
• BBQ Smokies
• All the fixin’s for sandwiches (sliced turkey and ham, tomatoes, cheese, pickles, lettuce, mustard, mayo)
• Deviled eggs
• 2 loafs of homemade bread
• Taffy apple Pizza (cookie)
• Tomato-basil squares
• Lemon cake
• 24 rolls
• Fudge
• Punch
• Sodas
• and of course beer.

We’re already looking forward to another year of fun even with sore feet.  So I certainly learned, next time I’m gonna be on my feet all day (or for 2 days) on the hard floors, WEAR SHOES!  I put my tennis shoes on when I was cleaning up things and Oh my, my feet already felt 5x better!

I toooootally didn’t even get to take any pictures of all the goodies or any while company was here, so…nadda to share there.   

 

SNOW!!!

HOWEVER, we did get some decent snow Thursday night (a couple inches, and enough for it to stick around for a while), so when Alyssa got home from school yesterday, Eric took the girls across the street to go sledding with several other neighborhood kids.  I finished up some things I was working on and then joined them too to take a bunch of pics before it just got too dark to take any more.  Kyleigh has totally forgotten that she didn’t like the snow much last year (though she did like sledding) and is sooo excited EVERY time she looks out the window and sees the snow!  She was even brave enough yesterday to do some sledding on her own after a few times down the hill with daddy.  She kept going higher and higher up the little hill for her starting point until she was starting down from the top of the hill and just LOVING it.  The big kids also had a bike ramp out on the hill that they were aiming their sleds for and then flying in the air.  It was so funny to watch them.  One of the girls even had a snowboard that a few of the kids tried out too - I was pretty impressed with how well Alyssa went down on it.  I totally expected her to wipe out immediately.

 

Family Shoot

I did finish playing with some of our family pictures yesterday (Friday) too and got our Christmas card designed and ordered.  We went for a black and white look for the pictures and the card this year and I think it came out pretty snazzy myself. LOL

 

OH…and I have to share this layout I did of Alyssa “modeling” during our photo shoot last weekend! hehe

 

(view credits here)

 

I need to crawl up the stairs and get my butt in bed.  It’s late (as usual) and we want to try and get to Church tomorrow weather permitting (we have freezing rain coming and lots of ice!) and I should be doing a family shooting for a friend of mine.