Christmas (Part 1)

okay so i'm going to have to split up our holiday festivities into several posts. WAY too many pictures. so for now here are pictures from Christmas day. keep in mind we had a total of 5 different get togethers...it'll literally take days for me to go through all those pics but here are a few...

opening presents at our house christmas morning was a lot of fun. the boys really ''got it'' this year but they were somewhat overloaded. they would open a present and be wowed and perfectly content with it. we had to coax them to keep going and to keep opening more. we didn't go crazy with gifts this year and it turned out to work in our favor! i honestly didn't take that many pictures...i was busy enjoying the kids and nursing peanut. b videotaped the whole ordeal so we do have it just not in photos.

as for peanut, well he didn't really have an opinion of anything! he mostly slept. in fact, i don't know that i even got a picture of him Christmas morning...i know he was sleeping in his swing, and i know papa took a lot of pics with his new camera so i may have more pictures to add/post later.

Santa came!

Our tree Christmas morning
(notice the boys' new playhut?)

pooks attempting to open his present from Santa

bubba surrounded by his stocking, presents and goodies

bubba opening his gift from Santa

pooks playing with his new cars

comparing cars, they each got one from Santa

playing together

nanaw opening her and papa's present, the boys' hand/foot prints

and finally, their ''big'' gift from their auntie--a wooden play kitchen. they got to open it on Christmas eve because i had already assembled it and it's heavy! originally it was going to stay in the basement until Christmas day but the sucker is solid wood so it became an early present!

i know that i have boys, i'm not trying to make up for the fact that i don't have a daughter--they genuinely like cooking and pretending. before they had the kitchen they would pretend to cook/eat invisible food. they like to stir and help me cook so it made sense. it took B a bit to come around but now that he sees how much they like it, he doesn't care. plus look at all the male chefs these days: bobby flay, emeril, rocco, etc. its not just julia childs anymore.

already bubba has made B a sandwich and a hamburger, he made me cookies and pooks loves to use the pots and pans that nanaw & papa got them. pooks also love bringing me the fruit--he can say banana and apple! bubba always says '' yike mommy?" ("Like Mommy?") whenever he's "cooking". its freaking adorable.

okay thats all for now, peanut is up! more later....

Merry Christmas!

i just wanted to pop in quickly and wish everyone a "Merry Christmas". or a "Merry Ho-ho-ho" as it's said in our house. (we also have "kee-ka" and "oooff-goff"....commonly known as Santa and Rudolph)

our family has been overly spoiled and had a great day visiting with family, eating awesome food and opening presents! bubba had a blast seeing what Santa brought them, pooks enjoyed eating the leftover cookie that Santa didn't finish and peanut gave mommy the most WONDERFUL present of all: 5 hours straight of sleep! (he slept from 12am-5am without waking last night) here's hoping its the gift that keeps on giving, lol.

i've taken about a billion pictures but i'm WAY to tired to upload and resize them tonight. i'm gonna grab something to eat them head to bed. hope that everyone has also had a wonderful day!

complete randomness

i realized that i haven't posted any pics in over a week! yikes, that is like forever on my blog. so i finally dumped my camera onto the computer and this is the resulting randomness:

here are a ton of baking/holiday pics:

pooks' enjoying puppy chow

bubba checking out the puppy chow

helping mommy make sugar cookies

making ''ho ho tee ookie dough'' (aka Christmas Tree cookie dough)

really concentrating on using that rolling pin

the chocolate covered mint oreos that we made friday morning....yum!

peanut inside his stocking that nanaw made him

looking at the Christmas tree lights

nanaw with all of her boys

(they were laughing at papa)

all of these pictures i took of peanut thursday afternoon. the older boys were asleep and he was wide awake, being silly.

a little smirk
(he smiled but i didn't catch it on the camera)

"what are you lookin' at?"

"what?!"

"no don't hurt me!"

i couldn't think of a saying, but worth 1,000 words regardless....

friday night we did some last minute Christmas shopping and then because the boys were SO good at the mall, we went ahead and treated them to McDonalds. they wanted to use chopsticks like daddy so thats how they ate their nuggets.

bubba really got the hang of it

pooks did not...but he had fun!!

why don't mommies get paid??

how does this not deserve a paycheck?

sixteen: the number of diapers i changed in 8 hours
seven: the amount of #2's in said diapers
three: the number of kids whose diapers were changed
two: the number of times that i was puked on yesterday by two of the three kids
zero: length of the much needed, highly anticipated nap that i so wanted but did not get

yesterday was a bit rough. it seems like all the young butts in our household were having some issues. luckily today the poop count is at zero and so far (knock on wood) i haven't been thrown up on. i'm hoping that whatever they were all hit with was a 24 hour thing cause mama needs a break!

Recipe for Puppy Chow...

i had a request to share my puppy chow recipe :) its basically the same one off of the box of Chex cereal but i always use a brown paper sack to shake/coat the cereal. its quicker, less messy and a whole lot easier!
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Puppy Chow

9	cups Chex cereal
1	cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2	cup peanut butter
1/4	cup butter or margarine
1	teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2	cups powdered sugar

Measure out cereal into a large empty brown paper sack. Set aside. In a big microwave safe bowl melt chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter for one minute. Stir. Microwave for 30 more seconds or until stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring to coat evenly. (do this quickly!) Add powdered sugar to bag, roll the top down to 'seal' the bag and shake, shake, shake! Once evenly coated, spread on waxed paper to cool.
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i have to add 2 things: once you pour the chocolate mixture onto the cereal, try to work fast. the warmer the chocolate mixture is, the better the powdered sugar sticks to the cereal. and numero 2, if you use corn or rice chex then this recipe is gluten free (YAY!).

once the boys wake from there nap we're making this!