Thanksgiving 2016

We went to Montgomery for Thanksgiving in Nov of 2016. We hadn't been down there for Thanksgiving in so long. We had a wonderful dinner at Mother and Lothar's house. Paul and I stayed with Bud and the kids with Mother. We did some shopping on Black Friday and had a wonderful time. We headed back to MO on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

That Sunday back in EP I had the kids pose with the neighbor's nativity scene. Thought they looked cute after church and wanted to get a few pix!

Mallory turned 12 on November 4th, 2016. On the Wednesday so I got her a pumpkin pie to celebrate with the Wed night gang. She loves pie better than cake!

Her birthday morning she got to use the "red plate" on her special day. We had a toast buffet.:)

Just before heading out to school on her birthday.

The annual "cake" pic. She's gotten her picture taken with the cake every year since her first birthday.

A little brother lovin'.

That night she had a bonfire and hayride. We had lots of kids here and they enjoyed hot dogs and nachos.

After the hayride they made smores and had cake.

I love this cute pic!

We're so proud of you Mallory. You love playing your flute in the band and playing on your ipad. You didn't have your phone during the birthday but finally got one that Christmas! You're a wonderful daughter who is witty, loves to read, is sensitive and smart. You are amazing.

A few more of the family...Christmas morning 2016

Happy New Year...and I'm back!

Wow! Can't believe my last post was the end of August 2016. I don't know what happened and why I got away from keeping my blog going. Like I've said before, I want to keep it going for my kids. This is the closest thing they have to a "scrapbook" so I need to make a better effort of posting.

We've just come past the fall and the holiday season. Plus, I never finished my cruise posts! For now I will try to just get something up so that I am back kicking!

We went to Paducah in December to have the kids' picture taken with Santa. This is typical Mallory and Michael when we were waiting in line. Mallory is 12 and Michael is 9 and we told them they had to get their picture with Santa until they are out of the house!

We had the Sutton girls over for our annual ornament painting and cookie party. We've done this every year since we moved here as far as I can remember. Afterwards the kids played a game of Quick Cups. I love tradition!

I didn't take many cake orders during the holidays so I could spend time with the kids. But I did do this cake for a special girl who graduated from nursing school.

We had our birthday party for Jesus in Sunday School and Mallory told the Christmas story using her nativity set she got from Martha in 2010. This is her last year in elementary school so I wanted her to share with the younger kids.We had cake and made an ornament like we always do. Sweet times.

I noticed a nice trend in the Christmas cards we received this year...Merry Christmas is back! Not that any of these sweet friends hadn't used it in the past, but you can just see how many cards say Merry Christmas! 

I painted a couple of wooden boxes for a friend's daughters for Christmas. They were actually gifts from her mom to her girls. I suggested the grandmom write a sweet message on the bottom of them.  I painted on the top but decopauged some things I had cut out of magazines on the sides.

Our elves were back this year. Quickly, Snowflake and Jingles the reindeer, made their appearance on December 1st. I didn't get a picture of all the things they did but they had lots of fun pulling pranks and playing games.

On Christmas Eve the kids listened to the recording of The Night Before Christmas my sweet daddy recorded for them on his last Christmas here on Earth. I'm so glad we have this book for the kids to enjoy hearing Granddaddy read the story in his special way.

 My mother, Lothar and brother were all here for Christmas and we enjoyed playing games, going to the movies and eating out at Red Lobster which has become somewhat of a tradition. I loved that Christmas was on Sunday this year. It's just so wonderful to worship the Lord on the day we celebrate his birth. 

The week after Christmas we went over to Frankfort to visit friends. We had a great break and were ready to go when school started back on Jan. 5th. Happy New Year to everyone!

Catching Up

It's been quite a few weeks since my last post so I thought I'd do a little catching up. 

Paul, Mallory and I are maintaining our post detox weights. Paul and I are actually down a few more pounds. Mallory is about the same. Paul and I still drink two shakes a day and eat one meal for the most part. We like the shakes. They're healthy and an easy meal replacement. To us it's easier to make a shake than to come up with and prepare a meal so we're sticking to that plan. Mallory has a shake on occasion but mostly eats better. We keep healthy snacks on hand and don't have junk food in the house. From time to time we have a treat and it's fine. Paul went back to having a small coffee each morning but I still haven't had coffee since June 5. I don't really miss it. I make myself a cup of tea in the mornings and enjoy that. 

School has started and we're all getting back to our routines. I am working in a new role as one of the secretaries in our school office. I enjoy the new job and look forward to going to work each morning. I take a lunch break around 1245 which makes the afternoon go pretty fast. 

This is my principal Aimee in the middle and the teacher I assisted for the past five years, Leslie, on the right. We all had on blue jean jackets the other day so we had to get a pic:). 

I've been making quite a few cakes lately.  

This was for our back to school staff meeting. The shirt on the cake represented the staff shirts we got for wearing on Fridays.  

This was a smash cake for a one year old birthday boy. I was a little worried about the difficulty of these fondant turtles when the girl sent me the picture of the cake she wanted but it wasn't too bad. 

I made these cookies for a swimming pool party. I don't care for royal icing so when I make cookies I use buttercream. It's not as neat looking but it tastes so much better in my opinion. 

This was a simple white cake for a 16th birthday. The mom just wanted a plain white cake but I added our school logo for fun. 

These two cakes were for a sister and brother who celebrated together. 

This was for a bridal shower. I love these rosette cakes. So pretty. 

I did these rainbow cookies for a rainbows and unicorns party. 

I did these cake pops for a baby shower. I'm not a big fan of cake pops. They came out pretty cute but I prefer cake to cake pops myself. 

This was a surprise cake a guy ordered for his wife and two sons. I thought it was so sweet of him to to that. 

For this one I was given a picture of some paper goods for the birthday so I painted the picture on a piece of fondant using food color as the paint. Horses are so hard to do!

This cake was for a girl graduating from nursing school. 

And this was for a special friend of our family, Sydnie❤️

Whew! That's a lot of baking! I also have been painting some. I'm not a real artist but I enjoy painting easy, graphic things. I absolutely have to look at a picture to copy it. Here are some canvases I did for our school on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Kids :

Then I did these for our counselor's office:

And I did these for a couple of  friends' classrooms:

All this amongst trying to organize our garage and shop buildings. I'll save that project for another post😉