all the holidays

last night ella's prayer included these words..."we're thankful for christmas and hannukah" (pause) "and for the chinese new year".

some days are so sad

 i'm so saddened to read about elizabeth edwards lost battle to breast cancer.

it sort of hits close to home.

 i'm so sad for my sweet sister.  she has to have her smokey put down tomorrow.  i know it will be a hard day for her.  i'm sorry kara bear.

and this guy, my uncle rand, will be missed. 

(sorry i stole your picture ches)



christmas letters

cute christmas letter templates from marthastewart.com

we burned our letters tonite and watched for the smoke.  you see, the smoke sends the words to the north pole for santa to read.  this is a tradition of my dad.  we do this every year and every year our girls are so frustrated that they can't see the smoke.  but i assure them that santa can read it and they seem somewhat satisfied.

more birthday fun

oh what a crazy, fun birthday party ella had yesterday!

 i do believe i've made two or three sets of vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting

and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting over the past week.

 these little girls are decorating their own bags for their party favors

 oh, did i mention that afton planned the entire party? 

she had great ideas and the little party-goers loved everything!

afton invited two of her friends to help her.

 the girls made hair-clips with flowers, beads and ribbon, and they also made bracelets.

 we had a little freeze dancing, and even a conga line! 

we also had a pinata, but i didn't get very good pics.

and last but not least-

presents!!!

i felt like i should duct tape all these girls to their seats.  they were sooooo excited to be as close as possible to ella.  they were hysterical! 

we had a very fun and festive two hours of craziness.

happy birthday sweet lady!

what could be more perfect?

we got our first snowfall on the first day of december.

how great is that?

the girls had a great time playing in the snow right after school. 

in the days following, parts of western new york received 36 inches. 

ryan's worksite is in south buffalo and was one of the hard hit areas.  there was a driving ban in the area of buffalo that he works.

so, that meant we got to have ryan home a day and half!  woo, woo!!