Santa Claus is Coming to Town! or Third Time's A Charm

The kids have seen a lot of Santa Claus already this year. And after three Santa visits, we finally got a good picture. The kids saw him several weeks ago at Bass Pro shop. Aggie was screaming and crying in that picture because she was scared of Santa. Last week, Santa visited the daycare. That time, Aggie would stand beside Santa with a skeptical look on her face. At least no crying that time. And today, we went to Memorial City Mall to see Santa and get our "official" Santa picture for Christmas 2008. Both kids did a pretty good job and below is what we got. We had told Aggie that, if she smiled pretty and took a nice picture with Santa, he might give her a candy cane. Of course, it turned out that this Santa was giving out stickers instead of candy canes. But Aggie specifically asked Santa for a candy cane, and one of his elves was able to come up with one for her.

Teacher Gifts

The Christmas rush is in full effect. We're trying to finish getting ready for Christmas and prepare for our trip to Indiana at the end of the week. Since the kids only have two days left at school before Christmas, I needed to hurry up and get the teacher gifts ready. Between the kids, there are five teachers plus a couple of former teachers that the kids are quite fond of.

The idea for the two items above comes from Sandi MacIver's blog and her Splitcoast Stampers posting. They are eight Hershey Nuggets wrapped in Designer Series Paper. They truly are a great way to use those small pieces of DSP that are left over from other projects. They are inexpensive gifts, but it's the thought that counts, right?!

The items above are an adaptation from Andrea Walford's blog. She made them to hold a gift card and some hot cocoa mix, but it has multiple applications. For one of my Secret Santa gifts, I had placed a big, flat chocolate bar in the pocket. I scaled Andrea's dimensions up for my purposes here. In this photo, these have a Target gift card and a small paperback book in the pocket. Shelli Gardner had mentioned on her blog that Richard Paul Evans was giving away copies of "The Christmas Box" (you paid postage). He's promoting a new book, I believe. Anyway, I took it as a great gift option for the kids' teachers. I think the presentation adds a lot, don't you?

A couple more creations

Here are a couple more items I made in my burst of creativity. The red box is a tall, skinny box. The general template is something I got from Convention this summer, but I had to adjust it a bit to hold what I needed it to hold. It has a box of gummi lifesavers inside for my Secret Santa person. The designer series paper is from the Bella Rose package. I used rubons from Season of Cheer. The "flurry" is held on by a build-a-brad with a white snowflake rubon.

This next box is the packaging I made to hold my ornament for the TOPICS Christmas party in a couple of weeks. The ornament had to be store bought or else someone would have gotten one like the one in my previous post!

Kid-Free Afternoon

So the grandparents take the kids for a Sunday afternoon. What do you think Mick suggests we do with our few precious kid-free hours?! He suggests I take the time to clean my stamp room! Can you believe that? Well, if I had taken a "before" picture, you'd believe it. There's now a good bit of visible table top, and the dazzling diamonds glitter and white embossing powder have been wiped clean. Stamps have been cleaned and put away in their respective sets. Paper scraps have been bagged. It actually looks like someone could work in here!

Steak 'n' Shake!!!!!

We were out doing a little Christmas shopping last night. Mick offered me three choices for dinner: two were BBQ and the third was the "Mystery Restaurant". I chose the mystery choice, and boy was I glad I did. It turned out to be Steak n Shake! I had no idea they had built one around here. Granted, it's not "close", but it was a nice treat. Aggie really enjoyed the hat!

Stamping and Such

Over the holiday weekend, I had some time to create some gifts for the Secret Santa exchange we have going on at work. The first one is an ornament and matching box that I made using Ski Slope designer series paper, Alpine ribbon, and Season of Cheer rub ons from Stampin' Up!s holiday mini catalog. I got the idea from my friend and fellow demonstrator, Kirsteen Gill. The little rub ons on the box match the design in the designer paper! So cute!

The second gift is some gummi bears inside of this box stamped using the Mr. Twigster stamp set, also from the holiday mini catalog. The idea comes from Heather Summers, a Canadian demonstrator, as posted on UStamp.

And the third, and perhaps not as exciting, is some candy sticks from Cracker Barrel tied with the Alpine striped ribbon and a tag with a rub on from Season of Cheer. I hadn't really been into the rub ons before now, but I REALLY like them....No mess, just rub with a popsicle stick and you've got great greetings!

The Party Never Ends...

On Sunday we attended a birthday party for Ike and Aggie's cousin Logan.

As you can see, the special guest at the party was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!

What's That Up in the Sky?

On Sunday, we had some fun watching Grandma take a glider ride...

Halloween Fun!

As you can see, the kids had a great time trick or treating...

Assorted Fall Fun

Here are a few images of our Fall activities, including trips to the Sealy Football game, the Zoo, and Aggieland...

Dewberry Farms

Ike, Aggie and Mommy took a trip to Dewberry Farms and had some old fashioned fun...

Parade Time Again...

Parade: 2008

Parade: 2007

Parade: 2006

Aggie was able to attend her first Austin County Fair Parade...

I've included some old photos to show how Ike has change over the last 3 years...

Award Winning Pumpkins...

Here are some photos of Ike's award winning pumpkin...

As you can see, Anita chose the perfect pumpkin from the patch, then with expert carving, Ike was able to win "Scariest Pumpkin" at the Brazos Country Fall Festival...

After the Hurricane...

We weathered the storm without much damage, but we did lose power and water for a time.

Lots of our friends weren't so lucky...many have damaged homes.

As of September 17, things have returned to normal for us.

In the pictures you can see a boat that was washed up on our shore during the storm...we still have not found the owner.

Hurricane Party

Despite the impending storm, on Thursday night we partied with Stephan and Stacey Stuessel and their house full of storm evacuees...