Have no fear

Have no fear.....we'll protect you! (Elisabeth and her friend Bryce)

Snow Day

After a long morning of playing in the snow
Snowball fight

Breland's first snow (our neighbor)

Oops! How do you control this thing?

Sledding in the cul-de-sac

Pouring snow on Belle

Elisabeth

Look how happy I am that I don't have to go to school today!!!

Ansley's snow angel

Ansley making a snow angel

Elisabeth making a snow angel

It finally snowed! It wasn't much but enough to have school canceled for the day. Ansley was up at 3 am this morning looking out the window to see if it snowed and wanting to know if she had to go to school today. She never really went back to sleep very well and at 5:15 am I finally got up and went downstairs with her to watch the news and see if school was cancelled. Thank goodness it was. I think she would have cried if she had to go to school and miss playing in the snow! We stayed outside for a few hours and had snow ball fights, made snow angels and went sledding. It was fun! Finally Elisabeth had had enough and said she was freezing and that all the sledding had worn her out. She was ready to go in and get warm! Ansley has been out in it since and as I speak she is on the way to the park with a neighbor to see if there is any snow left on the ground for sledding. Most of it has melted by now.......it's the perfect snow for me. Here today and gone tomorrow!

Puppy Tales

There's nothing like a new puppy. I love their puppy kisses, curling up in your lap and just being so cute in general. But then they start to grow and start doing bad puppy things. For instance, eating all my potted plants in my backyard, eating the nozzle off the hose, pulling the dog bed out of the doghouse so it sits for 3 days in the rain, etc, etc. We tried taking both Winston and Belle on a walk to our neighborhood park yesterday. It was definitely a sight to see! Winston does well but he is strong and can sometimes pull Ansley in directions that she doesn't want to go. Ansley pulls forward and he pulls backwards and off comes his collar with the leash attached. In the meantime I'm trying to walk Belle who has no leash manners at all! She's pulling and twisting and cutting the circulation off from my hand because I have the leash wrapped around my hand so tight in an attempt to gain some kind of control. At one point she pulled forward and up so fast that she literally did a back flip but I caught her before she landed on her back and head on the pavement. She is one crazy dog. The walk didn't last long because I couldn't take it anymore. We brought them home and tried getting them in the fence from the side gate. We would get one in and the other would run out. We tried for 5 minutes to get them in --- funny to watch I'm sure. Wasn't funny to me though. I won't be taking Belle on another walk for a while :-) As I type this the dog just jumped on the patio table and is standing on it looking at me and mocking me. Why I ask? Why?

Facebook

Ok Ok I know I am behind the times and after soooo many people asked me if I was on Facebook I finally decided to go in and create a page. I did it mainly to connect with high school friends that I couldn't find otherwise. I'm so glad I did it! I have found 3 friends that I haven't spoken to in 20 years (yes, 2009 will mark 20 years since graduating from high school. It hurts....it really hurts). It's pretty cool! But I have to be careful because it can be a little addictive and like I really have time to be sitting in front of the computer for hours on end. :-)

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year. We stayed home (as usual) and watched all the fireworks in our neighborhood. It's like having our own personal show. Both kids stayed up until midnight (after feeding them lots of chocolate cupcakes). Elisabeth was very tired by the end and barely made it to her bed before starting to fade away. We've been catching up on sleep ever since. School starts back on Monday so tonight and tomorrow we've been trying to get back on a "normal" bedtime schedule. Hard to do after two weeks off from school! The girls decided to sleep together in Ansley's bed tonight and I can still hear them in there (it's 9:00 pm....so much for getting them to bed early). Ansley is reading a book to Elisabeth. Ansley gets 3 extra credit points if she reads a certain amount over her Christmas break so we are trying to get the last of that in before Monday. Nothing like waiting until the last minute. We work better under pressure in this household!

More Christmas pictures

I'm so excited!

On the last day of school before the Christmas break Ansley's class had pajama day

Kayla, Ansley, Kelise & Heidi

Ansley's class

Ear Piercing

Marking her ears
A little nervous

Getting ready......1, 2, 3

Ouch!

Aren't they pretty? I'm so proud of myself!

Over the Christmas break Ansley decided to have her ears pierced. She's been wanting to do it for months but couldn't get up the nerve. She thought it was going to hurt too much. But one night she decided she wanted to do it so we drove her to the Southpark mall and went to Libby Lu's. They were able to pierce both ears at the same time and the girls there were great. They were so nice. Ansley was so proud of herself to say the least. We even had to go to Claire's afterwards to shop for new earrings even though she can't take these out of her ears until February!

Christmas Images

What's under the tree? Is there anything for me?

Playing at the mall after visiting Santa

A South Carolina Christmas

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

We've Been Elfed!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Flip Flops in December

It is around 70 degrees today and I am wearing flip flops. There's just something not right about wearing flip flops while Christmas shopping! Don't get me wrong......I love my flip flops and would love to wear them most all the time but Christmas is one exception. It just doesn't feel like Christmas to me if there isn't a chill in the air. Hopefully it will get a little colder next week before Santa arrives.

Santa

Yesterday after school I decided I would get the girls ready and head to the mall to have their picture taken with Santa. I didn't have many more days that I could work it into the schedule so I decided to go to South Park Mall (which is farther away and quite a bit more traffic in that area of town) so I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone: Santa picture and get a gift from Caswell Massey that I need before next week since it's the only one around here. But as the time approached I just dreaded driving to that mall and back in traffic and then getting home late and still having to eat and do homework, bath night, etc. So I wimped out and went to Carolina Place Mall instead which is only 15 minutes from the house. We got lucky and got in line just before they shut the line down so they could finish so Santa could go on his dinner break.

Elisabeth wasn't sure about the whole sitting on Santa's lap idea and I could tell by the look on her face when we were next in line that she was definitely reconsidering. She looked up at me and said "No. I'm not sitting on his lap. I'll stand beside him but I'm not sitting in the chair or on his lap." As we approached Santa much to our surprise.....he started speaking Chinese to Elisabeth. It wasn't what I expected and I didn't know what to say. She said Ni Hao (hello) back to him and he continued to speak English and Chinese to Ansley and Elisabeth. The first picture was of Ansley sitting on Santa's knee and Elisabeth standing beside Ansley. Then as Santa continued to joke and talk with them he moved Ansley to the other knee and picked Elisabeth up and sat her on this chair beside him. Then after more talking he picked her up and put her on his knee. I don't even think she realized it! Boy he's good! The picture turned out so cute and much to my surprise they are both on his lap. I spoke to him a few minutes afterwards and found out he grew up in Hong Kong as a missionary kid and that's how he knows how to speak Chinese. Is that cool or what? What are the odds of finding a Chinese speaking Santa. That made my day!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

Enjoying hot chocolate after a cold day at the Christmas tree farm
This marshmellow is very yummy1

View of the tree farm from the top of the mountain

This is our tree!

Ducks standing on the frozen lake. It was cold that day!

We headed to the mountains of North Carolina the first weekend in December to get a Christmas tree. I know we could go to the lot down the street and get one but when we can we try and make a whole day of going to get the tree and cut it down in the mountains. It's a different experience every time and one that we talk about and remember year after year. The kids really enjoy it. This year we went to Sugar Plum Tree Farm in Plumtree, NC. It was about a 3 hour drive and was extremely cold that day. Ansley got her wish.......it snowed while we were there. It was very neat to be picking a tree in the snow but we were so cold we couldn't feel our fingers or toes anymore! We picked a beautiful tree and ended up staying at the tree farm for hours. They had lots of actitivies: meeting with Santa, sitting in the warm indoors eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate, shopping in their Christmas store and roasting marshmellows in the fire pit outside. It was a fun day!!

The human hamster wheel

Trying to run over Uncle Scott

Our neighbors gave this to the girls a few weeks ago. We took it to Conyers with us at Thanksgiving. They had a blast playing in it and it was great because it wore them out!

Ice Skating

Ansley loves going to the outdoor ice skating rink every year during the holidays

Elisabeth taking a break from ice skating with Grandmother and Poppy

I am having so much fun!

Elisabeth Ice Skating with Grandpa

Such a ham

We went ice skating at the outdoor rink in Conyers, GA while we were there for Thanksgiving. We go every year. Ansley loves it and so did I until I fell on the ice 2 years ago and am convinced I broke my tailbone. Haven't skated since. I just sit off to the side and take pictures and video. I'll get back out there eventually. This is Elisabeth's first year skating. She had a great time but Ron and John were very tired afterwards since they are the ones that had to help her skate. She couldn't really hold herself up at all. Enjoy the pictures!

Wordless Wednesday

(I know it's wordless Wednesday but I just have to add that our poor dogs are abused. Poor Winston is wearing a pink headband with a bow. Who knows what they will do next!)

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We traveled to Conyers and had a great time visiting family. We didn't participate in Black Friday shopping......I just couldn't make myself get up early and be out with all the crowds! We stayed in bed and slept instead! We brought our puppy, Belle, with us to Conyers and she did really well traveling in the car. She slept the whole time. She enjoyed running around outside at Ron's and even got her feet wet in the lake. We'll have to bring her back in the Spring or Summer to do some real swimming. :-)

Unfortunately we came back to some bad news. First a teacher's assistant at Ansley's school passed away the day after Thanksgiving and then our neighbor's daughter passed away on Monday morning. She was in 10th grade. It is so very sad. It has been a rough week so far to say the least.