Christmas 2011

What a fabulous Christmas we had this year (excluding me having a never ending sinus infection). Can you believe we have all our Christmas deco already taken down and put away??? Yep!

Christmas Eve we let Shelby and Tucker open their gifts from Uncle Lee, Aunt Theresa and cousin Madeleine. It was killing Tucker to see such a huge box under the tree for days and not know what it was. He was so happy to see what he got!

This was the first year we weren't up before the kids. Shelby woke at 1am swearing she heard Santa in the house. She was too scared to look though. But she stayed awake the entire night!!!

That afternoon Mimi, Poppy, Buffy, Larry and Colyn came over to our house for Christmas dinner and the kids opened up more gifts!!

This Christmas Shelby received over 30 books and tons of webkinz stuff. Tucker received several Tomica sets, lots of cars, and some great lego sets. Santa brought both kids nintendo 3ds's and some games. They were quite pleased!

Random Photos

Here are some snap shots from the weekend where we had the Christmas Parade, Christmas Pageant and Baby Jesus' Birthday Party. It was a VERY busy weekend.  http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8IcMWLNuzbN7E

Pretzel Time

This year I was going to make something different. I looked thru magazines, pinterest and all over the internet and found a few different things. But none of them turned out the way I wanted. Then people started asking me when I was bringing in my pretzels. So that just meant I needed to stick to what I've become known for. Candied Pretzels. (I'm so my mother.)

Shelby's class Christmas Party

Shelby's class had 25 kids, plus 1/2 their parents and all their siblings. Good Lord was it crowded! Shelby passed out her class party favors to all the kids, which they loved. It also bought time to entertain them while the party pizza arrived. I knew most of the kids and parents in Shelby's class since most of these kids were in Shelby's class last year, and some the year before.

 Bliss and Caylee

 Rachel

 Chase

 Brenden (they call him the Justin Bieber look alike - LOL)

and Luke (Jennifer Hartenberger's son)

 Caylee and Dakota

Tucker's Class Christmas Party

Friday both kids had their school Christmas parties. I went to Shelby's and Mimi an Poppy went to Tucker's. I have no clue who these kids are. All I know is that both my kids were crazy hyper when they got home from school....at noon.

Ornaments

I'm getting ready for tomorrow's Baby Jesus' Birthday Party. We will be making lots of ornaments, decorating cookies, singing carols, telling the birth story of Baby Jesus, playing games and having a ball. I have the HUGE bag of 1000 Popsicle sticks and I'm putting them to use. Here are 3 of the ornaments we will making.

Shelby's nutcracker close up

Magical Reindeer Food

Shelby received "reindeer food" from a classmate a few years back and I remember the kids loving it. So this year, thanks to pinterest (yes, I'm addicted) , I found out the secret ingrediants to make reindeer food. And it's CHEAP and kids LOVE IT!

1 cup of oats ($1.99 for huge can)

1 tablespoon of sprinkles ($2.99 for large container of crystal sprinkles)

ziplock snack bags (had on hand)

labels with cute saying (had on hand)

foam reindeer stickers (had on hand)

And I made 50 of these!!   

 

Christmas Party Favors

I made 35 of these.

Class Christmas parties for both Shelby and Tucker are both at the same time Friday. Not sure what I’m going to do there, but more than likely will go to Shelby’s so that way Tucker can just stay and play at kid city after his school lets out. Since life has been crazy hectic lately and time is limited, I did nothing too creative. I found these cute treat topper bags from Hobby Lobby and all the items I put inside from Party City. The item most highly wanted are the snowman markers that are stacked on each other. Shelby and Tucker begged me to save them each one.

Cookie College with Girl Scouts

We spent the morning at "cookie college" for girl scouts. It was held at the University of Houston and 100's of girls from all over the Houston area came and learned about the finance side of selling girl scout cookies. With this they are working towards the financial leadership badge. While the girls were wisked away to their classes, Christine and I went to the adult classes for managing cookies. I'm seriously shocked with the GS cookie business. I mean, I knew it was a big deal, but it's really crazy. Did you know that the girl scout thin mint cookie is ranked the # 2 cookie sold in the US. # 1 is the oreo. Oreos are sold year round and the thin mint is sold only a few months out of the year.

Breakfast with Santa

While Shelby and I were at our scout event, Lonnie took Tucker to have breakfast with Santa at his cool. He said Santa told him he's getting 12 gifts for Christmas. 

Santa and Tucker

I decided not to go to our traditional photographer and Santa this year. I just couldn't bring myself to spend $75 for 1 photo, not to mention those cost of buying Christmas attire, and dealing with the fiasco it always is there. Tucker saw this Santa at school this week and he says he's the real deal. :-)

Shelby's Science Project

Happy Holidays from the Blevins Family!

This year the Blevins family took the Girl Scouts Forever Green Pledge with Shelby's girl scout troop. Click on the link if you want to read more about it. But with doing this, we are cutting back on paper products by sending out our Christmas Cards via email. I swear we aren't trying to be cheap and save on postage. ;-) This is our first action in our journey. Merry Christmas!!!

Love, Lonnie, Jamie, Shelby and Tucker