Oh fudge!

We celebrated our 12th anniversary this year by attending an "Ugly Sweater/Christmas Story" party. It was so much fun!!! Yay for us having the coolest friends ever. Hands down, the best part was not the ugly sweaters, although they were scary and awesome at the same time. No, the best part was the dancing. Just Dance 2 is fun to play--and even more fun to watch people play. And it's really fun when you WIN!!! Yes, I was the winner (of my round), thank you very much! You can't touch this.

(Becca, next year try to get me winning at a more flattering angle, K?)

The men give it a go. Jeb was freaking AWESOME. I want to get a video of his Jackson 5 moves to cheer me up on rainy days.
Anne' and I in all our ugly glory.

Some of the winners with their "major awards."
In case you didn't get Heidi's outfit at first glance...

Quin wins, not for his daringly feminine sweater, but a Red Rider BB gun door prize!

You just know it's going to be an awesome party when the hostess has this hanging on her kitchen wall.

Santa???

A few years ago someone told us that the best place to see Santa was at The Bass Pro Shop. We went and had a great time--there was an AWESOME Santa, free pictures with him as well as crafts and games and fake snow. Oh and all the dead animals were cool too. (No, not really.) We decided to give it a try again this year. We met Ryan's sister Katie and her family there at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon. Not the best planning on my part. It. was. packed. I saw the line for Santa and got in it, so excited that it wasn't that long. Then, it was just like the scene from "A Christmas Story." You know the one.

Me: "Is this the line for Santa??"
Man: "Do you have your ticket?"
Me: "What ticket?"
Man: "You can't even get in line without a ticket. You have to get one from that booth over there."
I saunter over to the booth, only to discover that the tickets they were currently handing out were for 8:00 pm that night--SIX HOURS LATER!!!! Sorry kids, no Santa is that good. Better luck next year. HO. HO. HO.

So we played the games and played with the dead animals instead.

Luckily, the kids had all seen Santa the week before at Ryan's work party. Lincoln told him that he wanted a snowglobe for Christmas, but Santa thought he said a snowblower and told him he was too young. Fun times!

The Firefighters Museum

It's probably not a place I would have normally thought to take the kids, but I got a Groupon for it so I thought--why not? Really, this time of the year, any place that I can take the kids that is indoors, somewhat entertaining, and relatively cheap is great in my book. And actually the kids liked it a lot! We stayed there for almost three hours. The museum itself is housed in the original fire station in downtown Denver and it had a lot of artifacts from the past. It also had a lot of hands-on exhibits for the kids. And I got a lot of great pictures. So it made for a great little track-off field trip for us!!

Track off

This is one of our long ones. The kids are out of school from the day before Thanksgiving until after the first of the year. LONG. But we are keeping busy, busy, busy. Here we are making ornaments...

More DIY

Most everything is wrapped and ready to go, but here are a few more of the many gifts that I made this year. I guess the rest of the pictures will have to come after Christmas morning.

Elf

I'm sure most of you have heard of "Elf on the Shelf" but if not, I highly recommend googling it. Our elf, Rudy, has been up to all sorts of mischief this year!

He replaced all of our family pictures with shots of himself!

Here he is after a little afternoon refreshment.

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar???

One morning we came down to discover that he had replaced all the kids stockings with pairs of their underwear!!! That little stinker...I would have posted that, but I think the kids might have gotten embarrassed.

Remember ET?

Apparently elves need to shower, too. A little privacy, please!!
Toilet papered the Christmas tree!!

He is a graffiti artist!

And got the boys, too.

Linky's Christmas Party

Lincoln had his first school Christmas party/program on his last day of preschool for this calendar year. We sang, we ate, we slipped on the ice and almost killed ourselves. Oh, wait, that last one was just me. And I still have the bruises to prove it. But Lincoln was a darling little Santa and we all had fun!

Four eyes...no, make that 16...

The girls have been complaining that their eyes hurt so we took them in to the eye doctor a few weeks ago. What do you know, they needed glasses! After realizing that there seems to be a trend in our family, I decided to get Lincoln's eyes checked, too. He was soooo disappointed when the eye doctor gave his eyes a clean bill of health for now. All of his siblings have glasses and he felt so left out. The receptionist noticed what was going on and took pity on the poor guy. She found him a little pair of glasses, popped the lenses out, fitted them to his head and sent him on his way. She even gave him his own little glasses case! He has been thrilled and wears them often.

We picked up the girls' glasses yesterday. I think they look so cute!!!!! We stopped by the American Girl Doll Store to get Felicity a pair, too. (Kaya already has some.)

Bonus!! If you couldn't tell them apart before, this should help--Audrey's glasses are dark brown and blue, Chloe's are lighter brown and cream.

I just can't wait!

In 2006, the traveling Broadway production of The Lion King came to Tucson and we took the kids to a matinee show. It was incredible. We fell in love with the music and story and looked forward to the time we could go again.

So I was so excited when I found out that it was coming to Denver this year! On Wednesday night we dressed to the nines, bundled up and went into downtown Denver. We walked along the 16th Street Mall and enjoyed the Christmas lights. Lincoln chose Anthony's Pizza for his birthday dinner. Then we went to the theater. Once again, it was awesome! And the three youngest have been listening to the soundtrack and playing "Lion King" nonstop ever since.