Happy Anniversary!

Wow, what 29 years does to people!

I hope you guys had a great day yesterday and glad you still

like each other after all those years :)

I love you.

Favorite things

When we unpack all the ornaments its amazing how a few will transport you back and how a few are more special than others. This is my favorite Christmas ornament. Its my first Christmas ornament when I was a baby. The beautiful baby is me :) Its always the first ornament to be put on the tree and it has its 'spot' right on the front, two thirds of the way up. My mom offered to give me my ornament this year as we helped her decorate her tree; but it seemed wrong. It still belongs on her tree. My favorite ornaments are still on her tree, the ornaments I remember unpacking for all those years. Our tree at our house is starting to get some favorites, currently they are Disney characters, but that's what my favorite person is into right now. Belle was the new ornament this year. She was a hit.

Speaking of favorites, Miss Paige has another one. Its Mickey Mouse pancakes. Gramma Shelly; this is what they are supposed to look like :) I'm told yours weren't like mine. Thought I'd be courteous and show you the secret! (Put the chocolate chips on last--not in the batter) Too bad she likes to eat the chocolate chips first and then only eats a little bit of pancake.

Oh Christmas tree, Oh Christmas tree

Our family is having a real tree this year. Its our first real tree as a family. I am not used to them; and Cowboy grew up cutting down their own real one--don't know how he handled our Charlie Brown artificial one all these years. I got the privilege of picking it out and I think I did a great job. I arrived home to see it tied up and held hostage in the garage. Cowboy had cut the bottom of it and was letting it drink. However, he didn't want to lean it up against anything and have it be squished; so he cowboy tied it up with three ropes!

Paige to help Gramma Shelly decorate on Sat. afternoon. The outfit of choice when I showed up to get her--T shirt and undies. A classic outfit to decorate in.

A few days later we have our tree in the living room and were decorating it. Paige loves her Disney ornaments and is ecstatically showing me Nemo. Note my helper in the back.

Our almost finished tree. Note the blur on the side of the photo--that's Paige running out of the beautiful picture of her in her pretty dress in front of the tree. Sigh. I tried all day today to get good pictures of my family and none of them worked.

Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving; and once again, I didn't take a picture of the huge table of food. I took very few pictures; but thought I'd share these two. The first is of my mother in law and her granddaughters. Lovely ladies, aren't they? The turkey art is courtesty of Cowboy. I didn't know he could draw such a good turkey! We hosted at our home, and this was my 2nd official Thanksgiving. Nothing was burnt and everyone ate too much; so it was a success. Many thanks to dear Cowboy who stuffed the turkey for me. I have an issue with putting my hand inside of birds. I could do it, but he loves me enough to do it for me :)

Ina. .Matt; Matt. . .Ina

I had to giggle when I saw Paige's beloved play horse, "Matt" sitting on the counter this morning. He had been assisting her eat her egg and watch Mickey Mouse. She had ran off and I had changed the channel and was doing dishes. I glanced over once and got the giggles when I saw the horse still sitting there 'watching TV'--absorbed in Barefoot Contessa.

Matt goes pretty much everywhere Paige does. Sometimes he goes to daycare, but most of the time he stays home or in the car to protect it. He is a necessity for bedtime. He has escaped once; and I had that horrific parental moment envisioning bedtime without him and wondering how that would go. Thankfully he was found in time.

Oh Deer

The mighty hunter asked that I get the pictures off of the camera of his deer and share. I am obliging. This is the 5 by 5 that is now in our freezer, may he rest in peace. He was taken on Saturday, the 7th before 8am. So my lovely hunter didn't have to trek all over for several weeks chasing deer around. I am not a deer hunter and was actually delighted that I at a concert the first weekend of deer hunting and missed this lovely specimen hanging in my garage. No watching skinning, skull sawing, meat cutting time for me! I couldn't go shoot a deer or anything that is fairly cute and fuzzy. I think I'd have no trouble knocking pheasants off the face of the earth--but Cowboy says I'd have to do hunter safety and learn to clean them. Not going to happen, so therefore, I just cook his kills.

Paige-isms

"Can you go get that, dear?" I asked Cowboy the other day. A 3 year old looked at me and asked, "Mom, why is daddy a deer?" She had just been hearing about deer hunting all weekend.



I was telling Cowboy how neat it was that I get to be a godmother. Paige says "Mo-om, you are NOT a fairy godmother!"



As I try to wake her up in the morning, she grabs the covers, rolls away from me and shrieked, "Mo-om, my eyes are not awake yet!"

We were at a craft fair and Paige found some pretzels. Gramma asked her if she had any money because she couldn't just take them. Paige fishes out the penny from her pocket and replies, "Yes." Gramma and Aunt Connie are suckers for big blue eyes acting cute and donated the $3 to the cause. Paige paid for them herself, and tried to give the lady her penny with the cash.

"Let's go shopping!" after our lunch break while out at the craft fail. That's my girl--she's a good shopper.