Oh Christmas Tree, Where art thou?!

Last week in the newspaper I read about a bunch of local Christmas tree farms where you can go and cut down your own tree and participate in many other fun activities. Don and I decided it sounded like fun and that maybe this year we would give it a try. So Saturday morning we get on the Internet and find a farm near us called the Rocking T Christmas tree farm is Springtown TX about 45 min away. We get the kids all hyped up and excited that we are going to a farm to cut down our own Christmas tree, we load up in the car and head out.

This is the dirt road we came up on - notice all the wide open space, nothing around for miles & miles!

These are the basic directions on how to get there drive out to the middle of nowhere, turn left and continue driving to the middle of nowhere for another 20 min. Turn right onto a horrible bumpy and torn up dirt road, travel down this road for 5 -7 min until you see the very small sign at the entrance to the farm. So we arrive and low and behold the gate is locked! The place doesn't even look like it is operating. Their website said they opened the day after Thanksgiving and were open from 10 - 5. We arrived at 2pm and nothing! We could not help but laugh, what luck we drive all the way out to the middle of nowhere and they are not even open, their trees looked pretty shabby as well so I doubt they will open at all this year.

standing in front of the locked gate

The really funny thing is we tried to call the farm in the morning to ask a couple of questions and no one ever answered the phone it went straight to an answering machine. We just assumed no one was answering because they were outside helping customers. Let that be a lesson to us all, if no one answers at the Christmas tree farm, they must not be open! So we ended up going to the Home Depot Christmas tree farm instead where we didn't chop down our own tree, but we did drag it to the register all by ourselves!

The sad selection of Christmas trees

very sad faces

This farm never lets us down

The wide selection of trees at the Home Depot farm

Getting ready to decorate the tree

"Bundt" is beautiful

While my mom was here we went to a cake store in Southlake called "Nothing Bundt Cakes". As some of you may know my mom decorates cakes. Her passion recently has been cupcakes and has come up with a whole line of cupcakes called Pokie - Lou's. However we have now discovered the Bundt cake and how easy they are to make. We made this one for my neighbors, isn't it gorgeous! So we have decided that maybe we should start a bunt cake business and we have come up with a few names. Please vote on which name you like the best and we will see what wins! (I will put a poll up on my sidebar).

Packaged and ready to go

Grandma is Here !!!

My mom, Andrew, and Adam came out for Thanksgiving this year. We were so excited to have them come. Ben and Aliza started counting down the days two weeks out! These are the pictures from picking them up from the airport. Their plane didn't get in until 9 pm which is very late for my kids, but they did great and on the ride home could not stop talking! (Oh wait, they are always like that :) Just for posterity sake - Ben can not take a picture without his mouth open!

Ben and Aliza "hiding" at the airport.

Uncle Adam

Uncle Andrew

Grandma

Happy Thanksgiving!

Aliza's Thanksgiving Feast

Last Friday Aliza's preschool had a Thanksgiving Feast. Parents were invited to come and have lunch with the kids as well. My mom is in town for Thanksgiving so we went over for lunch. Aliza was so excited to see grandma there that day. Can you believe we were the only parents there! I felt bad for the teachers, they had done a lot of hard work and we were the only ones who came. All the kids looked so cute, some were dressed as pilgrims and others were indians. They all had fun and the food was great!

Election Drama

Well unfortunately my choice for President, John McCain did not win, I am a little scared about what the future holds! I am very excited that Prop 8 in California passed. It was a proposition to the state constitution to keep marriage between a man and woman. Several members of my family worked very hard to be sure it passed. It was sad to see the way the church came under attack out there though by the opponents to the proposition.
Anyway enough of that - On election day the kids came with us to go vote, Ben was very excited because they were learning about the election and voting at school. By the way in their little election at school John McCain won! Today after school Ben came home and told me they were having an election in his class to pick a president and he gave a speech here is what he told me he said:
I would be a good President because I would be nice to everyone
and help everyone. If someone was down I would help them up,
that is why I would be good.
How cute is that! I didn't even now they were doing this, so he says he hopes he wins.

One Question

How much is too much???

By the way in case you are concerned they have hardly made a dent in the candy, they only get to have some occasionally!

TrUnk oR tREat & faLL carNiVal

This past weekend we had our ward trunk or treat as well as the fall carnival at school, the kids had a great time and have already gotten a ton of candy!

Mario & Luigi - Mario won a costume contest at the trunk or treat.

Beautiful Belle

Little Dumbo

Aliza's awesome hair!

Aliza is always so good to sit still while I am doing her hair, so last week I thought I would push her patience to the limit with this hair do. I found this do on http://shedoeshair.blogspot.com/,

which is where I get most of my inspiration! It took almost an hour to finish, but it was worth it, we left it in for 4 days before taking it out. Everyone thought it was so cute and I must say I was proud of myself and her for getting through it. Isn't she so stinking cute!

PumPkIn cArvINg fUn

Last night we carved our pumpkins. I think they turned out pretty cute! The kids picked what they wanted on each pumpkin, and then helped us carve. I had seen a piece on the today show

where they carved their pumpkins using power tools, it looked amazing and saved so much time that I thought we would try it. Don used his reciprocating saw to cut the tops off which worked well, then we put the blender beater in the drill to clean the pumpkin out. It worked ok, not nearly as well as well how it worked on t.v. So in the end Dad ended up cleaning out the pumpkins just like usual! Oh well, it was worth a try.

After the pumpkins were carved the kiddos sat down to watch The Great Pumpkin, they love watching that every year they think it is hilarious! Once snoopy was done we had one of these delicious and cute spooky brownies. I saw the recipe on my friend's blog and decided to give it a try, they were so easy! Overall a fun family night!

Twighlight Maddness

I am so excited, I just saw the 3rd trailer for the Twilight movie, and I think we all can agree that it looks so good! You should all go to this website http://twilightersanonymous.com/ and take the quizzes they have there.
And now for the first time ever Don will write on this blog;
Hello all. It's my first time writing on any blog - my better half worries what might come out of her worse half (evil laugh here). She's already threatened to edit my posting if she doesn't like what she reads...I guess this is the U.S.S. (United State of Sharla).

Let's get one thing straight...even though I've read all the Stephenie Meyer novels I get to keep my Man-card. Why? Simply because the Twilight series is an action/drama that has a love story to propel it forward. Having said that I have indeed enjoyed reading the series and am fairly familiar with the characters, etc.

After thinking a little I guess I'm not surprised I'm a Carlisle. After all he is smooth, debonaire, and highly intelligent. Did I mention stunningly handsome? Much better than Edward - unless you like the teenage look I suppose.

It is quite funny that wifey came out to be Esme. She finds no humor in it at all and thinks I cheated!!!.......aren't we already married, or are we simply contractually obligated (that might explain it I guess)?

Also, it's SO appropriate that a certain family member turned out to be Belle!! Can you think of a more emotionally tortured (add more adjectives here) soul? Of course 8 years of real life torture will link you right up with a Bella...

Ben's room

Back in August before school began we decided to move Ben back into his old room, but we wanted to paint it first. We were originally going to do a sports themed room around the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Cowboys, but then we saw it! In the Nintendo Power magazine (yes Don has a subscription to the Nintendo magazine!) Vinyl stickers that go up on the wall to look like a scene from a Super Mario Brothers game. Once Ben saw it, that was it. The stickers are made by a company called Blik. Their website is http://whatisblik.com/, they have a lot of cute things.
Anyway Ben totally loves his room, and it is definitely unique! The quilt is pretty cute to if I do say so myself.

Cutest Quilt Ever!!!!

Trying to find any bedding with Mario on it is utterly impossible! The only thing I was able to find was a pattern for a patchwork quilt, so I thought to myself, hey you have never made a quilt but really how hard can it be? So I printed it out. Well Luckily for me, Crystal was here visiting. Now I knew she could sew really well but what I didn't know was that she had been taking a few quilting classes back in Pennsylvania. Needles to say it was a good thing she was here to help me. It really wasn't that difficult once she showed me a few pointers like how to measure stuff properly, and she made me iron ALL the seams. The quilt turned out so good, and really it was our own creation, we used the pattern as a guide but changed a lot of things about it. It was a really fun project and Ben loved it!

Here we are just getting started, we had to cut out tons of these squares to piece together

All the sqares laid out to make Mario

Making progress
We both did alot of sewing

Behold, the finished project!

Chuck E Cheese

Well as mentioned in the previous post we went to Chuck E Cheese for Don's birthday. This was the first time we had gone in a while, so we could not wait to see how Lilly would respond. She loved it, just like every other kid. She was pretty cute, when she would ride on the moving rides she preferred to sit on the floor rather than in the seat, it was pretty funny. Here are a few pictures of everybody from that night.

Landon taking advantage of the open seat!

Of course Aliza went right for the horse!

You've had a birthday shout hooray . . .

Don turned 34 this year! We had our little family party on Sunday, the day before his actual birthday. He choose to have a brownie ice cream cake for his cake. It was delicious! He was a difficult person to buy for this year, but he still made out with a box of raisin bran crunch, a new tupperware bowl for his lunch, cards from the kids, and tickets to the BYU/TCU game coming up in October. He was a good sport about it all and is looking forward to the football game. On his actual birthday he got to celebrate at Chuck E Cheese - I know, really could you ask for more? The kids actually asked if they could take him there, they were so excited and told the lady when we went in that it was their dad's birthday, so he got a birthday boy sticker. Ben and Aliza thought it was hilarious! Happy Birthday honey, we love you!