Christmas so far

With the holiday season here, I thought I would give a quick update on how ours is going.

-Brady and I made a gingerbread house (well really it was a kit, but who cares). I did not realize how difficult and time consuming the houses are. I made the mistake and tried to move the house from the table to the counter before it was set, I thought the boys would knock it over on the table. Silly me, I was moving it and it all fell apart with a few pieces crashing to the ground. Before I could get them all picked up, Dexter found and ate 1/4 of the back panel. I had to do a quick repair job with graham crackers and lots of icing. B and I decorated the house and I had to let go of my particular ways and let Brady put the candy on because he wanted to so bad. It actually WAS a cute house, but it was very easy to tell I had lots of help from a 3 year old. I say "was" because Dexter decided to make it a treat for himself one afternoon when we were out of the house. I did not even get a picture.

-The Christmas tree. We went to a cute little tree farm not far from our house to pick out the tree. After much searching we found what we thought was the perfect tree. Jamie started to saw it down and I reached in to hold it so it did not fall on a child. Inside was a birds nest, yes a nest - luckily no birds or eggs. We took the next out and loaded it up to take home. After 2 tree stands - it is still crooked.

-Decorating the tree has been interesting with the boys. I started with putting the breakable decorations up high and ones that were ok to touch lower, they stayed on the tree all of one day. All decorations are now on the top 1/2 of the tree, I have to admit it looks pretty funny.

-Back to baking, I decided to make sugar cookies and have Brady help decorate. I used to love doing that as a child, however I am pretty sure my mom did not have us decorating at age 3. Brady was not into frosting the cookies, instead he just wanted to put on sprinkles. He loves his sprinkles, most cookies are more sprinkles than frosting. Colby watched and ate the whole time.

That is the Christmas update for now, more to come I am sure. Pictures to come too.

Missing Maddie

Today we had the horrible task of deciding to put our cat, Maddie to sleep. We will miss her.

Maddie was a cat that loved to be left alone yet you knew when she wanted something. She had the loudest howl I have ever heard from a cat. Mostly she would exercise her lungs when the rest of us were trying to get some shut eye. Many nights I woke up to her "singing". I remember one night shortly after we were married she was singing. I got up to quiet her down to find her in the kitchen with a dead mouse - yes a mouse in the house - I guess she wanted to give me a present.

Maddie put up with a lot in the last 3 years - since the boys came along. She never once scratched one of the boys even though they sometimes loved on her a bit too hard. Or thought she was something to drag around.

If you have a pet hug them, we never know how long they will be around to make us smile. We miss you girl.