Move over Bakerella

I love to read the Bakerella blog, she makes some of the cutest treats. These santa cupcakes are no where near as cute as anything she makes but I was proud nonetheless.

I just made regular white cupcakes then used regular white icing. I took part of the icing and made it red with food coloring. I iced half of the top in the white and the remaining half in red. Then used a ziploc bag and piped a white line across the middle, then added a marshmallow on the end.







Then I added chocolate chips for the eyes and a red hot for the nose.



And there you have my dessert for Luke's house.

Christmas Morning

Even though the kids didn't go to sleep until almost midnight, Kyle comes and jumps on our bed at 7:15 and says "Santa brought us a Wii!!". Then he runs to wake up Kaitlyn and tell her. I heard them looking at stuff and so about 7:30 I got up to take some pictures then promptly went back to bed while they played with their stuff.













After I got a couple more hours of sleep I let the kids open their gifts from me.

Cookies and reindeer food

Kaitlyn made these cookies for santa. They are strawberry flavored whippersnappers. You take a box of whatever flavor cake mix, an egg and 2 cups of cool whip and mix it together. It is really hard to stir them and then they get all sticky when you try and roll them into balls, so I let Kaitlyn do it. She was thrilled.





The kids were still up at 11:00 p.m. and Kaitlyn remembered we hadn't put out the reindeer food. So they went out in their pj's to sprinkle the food that Abby and Allie made us for the reindeer. They tried to throw it up on the roof but it wasn't working so well, I tried to convince them that the reindeer would come down from the roof to eat the food while Santa was putting their gifts out. Then they started throwing it at each other.

Christmas eve at my mom's

We always go to my mom's for Christmas eve to open all of our presents.




I used my star filter to take this photo:




















Justin and Mandy



My brother got Kyle this nerf gun set. There will be payback one day for that.

We're off to see the Wizard

We went with my stepmom today to see the Wizard of Oz at the Orpheum. My stepmom's mom was supposed to go with us but she was sick so we invited Aaliyah to go along with us. The show was really good. Kyle almost sat through the whole thing, he got kinda wiggly a couple of times. It was a really good show.














After going to eat we drove around Harbortown to look at the lights.

Bowling party

The kids had their bowling party to end the league today. We get free pizza and drinks on this day plus they bowl their two games.

Here are a couple of videos of them bowling.

Breakfast with Santa

We had our annual Breakfast with Santa for Agape at the church building today. The kids love to go to this. We eat breakfast, get pictures made with Santa, play games, bid on silent auction items (that I never win) and shop in the Santa shop.

I really should have turned off my flash because of the professional lights around but I didn't think about it.





Playing games











And this is what a $600 basketball looks like (even though it is a bad picture). It is just a regular basketball that was signed by Josh Pastner, coach for University of Memphis. It was our big item for the auction this year.

Widow's luncheon

We had a luncheon at church today for the widows and widowers. The kitchen crew made pork tenderloin, green beans, sweet potatoes, wild rice and chocolate chess pie. The kids sang a few Christmas songs for entertainment then were paired up with a widow/widower and made an ornament for them to take home. Maggie Jamerson was in charge of this event and it turned out so nice.

Kevin led the kids in the singing:







Kyle made an ornament for Ms. Louise



Kaitlyn made an ornament with my granddad



And here is both kids with my granddad




And here are a couple of videos (taken by a bad videographer) for your enjoyment.