Yeah, I'm Here

Just haven't had the time or been in the mood to post.  Not in a bad way, everything is hunky dory.  :P  Just that life has overtaken free time I guess. 

School is going well.  We will continue up until Dec 19th and take a break until Jan 5th.  It works out well, as that is the perfect time to wrap up our second quarter.  Gee, where did those 18 weeks go??  Right now we are doing our basic subjects and ds2 is working on a president's notebook, ds4 is lapbooking penguins, and ds3 is studying the weather.

Hey, did you know I have another blog?  Yeah, I ignore two blogs in my spare time lol.  Just kidding, it's a blog for all the recipes I try out that make it to my permanent recipe box.  I only share the ones that my family loves.  Right now, I'm having a Christmas Cookie Carnival!  I hope to make a different batch of Christmas Cookies every day until the big day...or until I run out of money, patience or interest.  Or have gained too much taste testing weight.  Whichever comes first. :P  So check it out if you want/need some good cookie recipes.

Thanks to all who left comments about The Toe.  It seems to be healing well!  I can go all night without taping it up now.  Before it hurt even just to have sheets touch the darn thing.  My boot is very comfortable and hardly anyone even notices I have it on...no limping!  Yea!  It's definitely going to heal crooked and stick out a little bit from the other toes...I guess it thinks they have cooties or something.  But at least I didn't have to go in for surgery, PTL.

We had a super duper wonderful family fun filled Thanksgiving at my parents' home.  We had close to 30 people!  Dh is my brother's best friend from like 1st grade, so we grew up with each other's families interacting all the time.  I love that we can all gather at times like this and be one big happy comfortable family. :)  Besides both sets of our parents, two of my brothers and two of dh's siblings were there, as well as all of their kiddos.  We even had a woman who used to work with my Mom join in the fun. :) 

The men-folk in the kitchen...yeah.  (My dad, brother and dh carving various meats.)

Here you see two of the three tables dad had set up...some people even ate in the living room.  That's my oldest on the left, youngest on the right, middle child in the, um, middle.

  It was a gorgeous day and the kiddos took advantage of it to play outside.  Here, ds4 participates in the "jumping off the back porch" activities.

My nieces and one of my nephews (oh wait, he's a grand nephew.)

My ds3 getting checked out by one of my niece's twins.

My niece and the other twin. :)

When we drove home we saw that our neighbor had done this!  Now that's the holiday spirit.