You know you're a mom when...

...you ask your 4 year old daughter, who likes to tuck her jeans into her polka-dot socks "because they're pretty and people want to see them" and who puts stickers on her plain shirt you made her wear "because it wasn't cute without anything on it", which shirt and shoes you should wear to work. And you take her advice.

(Following friend's awesome post theme!)

Shelbyisms

I got my nails done last week and since then Shelby has been asking for her nails painted red like me.
Today after I picked her up from school I told her that I got her some red and green nail polish so she could do a Christmas pattern. I thought she would be so excited because she is always specifying that she wants a pattern. Her response to me was, "Well Mommy I'd like to do the red right now, and we'll do the green another day, and then when it gets closer to Christmas we can do the red and green pattern." OK High maintenance!

Another little priss thing she said, yesterday as we were leaving the mall in her Christmas dress from seeing Santa: "Mom guess what. No one said that they liked my dress! They all just like waved or somethin'."

Christmas is coming!!!!

Ok you people are in big trouble now that I have my new BFF, Live Writer!

Last week, I wrote about my stressed-out Christmas decorating.  Well, during all that, probably what all the chaos was from…was Shelby decorating her own tree that Gram got her last year.  And Cole decorating his own tree.   And then we got out Shelby’s NEW pink tree for her room. 
 

And then Cole wanted one in his room so Jeff went back up to the attic and got these other 3 trees down that were all tied together and a huge mess!  

No way, that chaos didn’t stress me out at all! :)

But in the end, we have our baby Jesus in our kitchen…

And our stockings are hung by the chimney with LOTS of care…

 

We have a jolly tree with all of our special ornaments…

And we are ready for Christmas to celebrate the birth of our Savior with the 2 most precious gifts we could have ever been given!

Fort Worth’s Parade of Lights

On the Friday after Thanksgiving we headed out to the Parade of Lights in downtown Fort Worth.  I don’t think we’ve ever been, but now that Dad and I work downtown, we have been getting emails about it and had a perfect and free parking space in our work garage, so we decided to check it out.

Sissy and Buddy were dressed in some Christmas garb.

Jeff didn’t get to go, he was working :(

But Tyler and Poppy walked around with the kids.  Our new campus is  a pretty cool grounds to explore with a waterfall and pond, a bridge to walk under, and lots to climb on!

I got some cute pictures, wish I had waited on making my Christmas cards!

Once the actual parade started, the kids LOVED it.  Shelby stood there and waved at all the people.

What a great parade it was- over 100 “groups” that were a part of it.  Shelby’s favorite was the cheerleaders that were with the bands.  She kept telling me that she wanted to be one of those!

Thanks Fort Worth!

Texas Tech vs. Baylor

This was our very first trip to the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington.  It really felt like we’re about the last people in the metroplex who hadn’t been there yet!

We packed up for the 5 hours of tailgating and headed out.

 

Jeff cooked all the meat…YUM!

We were pretty official with lots of current Tech students.  :)  Tyler’s friends were there…and there was lots of cornhole played.

Once inside the game, it was big and loud.  And no alcohol served.  (Was quite a shock!!!)

We were in the student section.

 

So we never sat down.

It was a pretty darn close game.  Fun to watch.

 

The end.

 

Now I just have to give a shout-out to Windows Live Writer and thank a fellow blogger for sharing it with me.  It’s a FREE DOWNLOAD!  This was a “test post” and guys…it was AMAZINGLY easy!  No photo uploads!  No manually resizing pictures…and they all have pretty shadows and easy dragable resizing, and are still clickable to the big original picture. 

I LOVE this thing and it will make blogging SO much easier and less time consuming!  Why doesn’t everyone know about this already?  All we ever do is gripe about how hard blogger is.  Well this is your answer!  Have fun!!!

Thanksgiving 2009

Our Day of Thanks 2009 was spent in Dallas, Texas! Aunt Millie and Luke hosted their first Thanksgiving as husband and wife at their house and it was wonderful! Nana and Papa G came down from Powderly but I didn't get any pictures of them :(

Shelby was dressed in her pretty outfit from Misty at All Tuckered Out and she was workin it!





Within an hour she had wiped her red strawberry mouth all over both sleeves and somehow she ended up with red tomato seeds all over her back. Still, the outfit was just darling!

Jeff got up at 3 am to start smoking our turkey. It was his first time to smoke a turkey and it was amazing!




After taking a bite my mom said, "This is probably the best thing I've ever tasted in my life." Kudos Jeff!!!!

Sissy and Cole just ran around all day...Mill and Luke have several rooms to hang out in, and 2 huge backyards. The kids just explored and played.


Luke and Millie also made a turkey (using Alton Brown's brine recipe.)
It was SO moist and so good. The best roasted turkey I've had.



The host picture...


Reminds me of ours in 2007...

(Now what the hell was I thinking with that short hair??) YUCK!!!!

They put up one of the signs from their wedding. CUTE!



Here are the Jones girls in the kitchen. We all contributed by making/bringing a couple of things and therefore the meal prep wasn't stressful for anyone! That's the way to go!















Not sure what is going on here but it's a funny picture.


Oh yeah! Anna had fun too!


Family, laughs, fun. It was a great day!

Veggie soup

Last night I was driving home from my long day at work and thinking what I could fix for a quick dinner. I hadn't been feeling well all day and had to cancel some sushi dinner plans so didn't have anything lined up for dinner at home.
I wanted something hearty and good for you when you are starting to feel yucky. It was a COLD day yesterday (snow!) so I thought a hot soup would be good.
I threw all this together and it was GOOD! Jeff and the kids ate it all up!

Combine in stock pot:
32 oz chicken broth
1 pkg frozen carrots
1 pkg frozen broccoli pieces
1 pkg frozen peas
1 pkg frozen cauliflower
1 can stewed tomatoes

Then pour enough tomato juice over to cover all the veggies and make it a brothy soup consistency.

I had a can of chicken (not my fav!) so I sauteed it with some garlic and threw that in. It wasn't much chicken and the soup didn't really need it.

I spiced it up a bit with dried minced garlic, kosher salt, pepper, and quite a bit of Cavender's Greek seasoning (this stuff is great on sauteed veggies too!)

Just bring this all to a boil and we ate it in about 20 or 30 minutes. Very quick and simple!