Live. Laugh. Love.: 2011

I'd been dying to try Smitten Kitchen's Peppermint Hot Fudge Sauce since the minute I spotted it on her blog.

So I came home after work one night and got the ingredients melting together on the stove top while Craig grilled our dinner and the kids got settled in for our "dinner & a movie" picnic on the living room floor.

I crushed up some candy canes to sprinkle on top just like Deb did. Extra yummy touch. But don't be a doofus like me and try to chop them with a knife. Pieces will go flying everywhere. Just put them in a baggie and get out your meat mallet. Duh. Sometimes, I don't know where my head is. ;)

We ate burgers 'cause Will's been begging for them...

...and watched Prancer 'cause it just occurred to me that I loved that movie as a child and "how come I haven't shown the kids yet?" I requested it from the library along with another silly movie that we watched later in the week. I love the library.

I think she digs it.

After we ate, our dessert had sufficiently cooled to not instantly melt our ice cream and I brought that out to our picnic blanket too.

(Just me and the kids for dessert... Craig went right back to working on the basement after dinner. It was crunch time last week and he/we just barely finished in time for Christmas morning! Hooray!)

I threw in one of our chocolate snap cookies too even though the orange and peppermint kind of clash. Still good. And so pretty!

My favorite part: the end when the little girl and her dad go out at night to release Prancer in the woods and then hear the jingle bells of Santa's sleigh as a sign that Prancer found his way home on Christmas Eve.

On Wednesday before Christmas, our babysitter Lisa held a Christmas party for the kids/families at her house. We had pizza with sides of fruit, veggies and a yummy dessert and the kids played and sang and opened gifts. It's always so fun to see them in their element outside of home.

Missy Mya & Stella Belle - the twins are 2 1/2 now!

Cousins!

The playroom in Lisa's basement.

Charlize & Sophie

Will & Jagger

Jaxon was standing behind the twins right before I took this... but he darted off somewhere. :) I have a really cute pic of him further down, though.

Meanwhile, the big kids (a.k.a. parents) hung out in the kitchen to eat and look up music videos. ;-) Hehe.

Lisa's enormous tree... Her holiday decor is always so enviable. I seriously don't know where she finds the time.

All of the kids have been practicing some Christmas songs that they were going to sing to us tonight. Lisa's getting them all organized and ready to perform. ;)

Ha - Love the faces Will & Char.

Remember the 12 Days of Christmas I mentioned in my last holiday post? This is where that obsession stems from. But instead of this being a group effort of singing... it was really more of just Will & Jax trying to out-yell each other with the lyrics. Haha.

Listening to Lisa read.

Left to right: Jagger, Stella, Jax, Mya, Will, Charli & Sophie.

Best buds and every day playmates.

We love you, Lisa! Thank you for loving our babies!!!

Jax & Will's singing competition.

What a handsome little dude. :)

So thoughtful - Lisa had a gift for everyone!

My kids each got a Pillow Pet and a book.

A blurry pic... but this is our gift from Lisa. What an awesome memento. She did this (a framed picture collage) for each of the families. One group pic with her and all the kids, one of her with each individual family of kids and one with her hand stacked with theirs. So cute. I love the message!

And Lisa got a salon day from all of us.

Another evening involving chocolate bars... It's been a chocolate kind of month. ;) This time in particular, the chocolate was morphed into a drinkable liquid. :)

Uh, huh. Velvety smooth, dark, hot chocolate. Yum.

I may never drink the powdered stuff again...

I got Friday off before Christmas!! I was so excited 'cause it was kind of last minute that my boss officially got permission for this (we follow the docs schedule in the peds office in our building) and I wanted some chill time with the kids before Christmas.

Craig still had to work for part of the day, so it was just the three of us home.

We kicked off our morning with gingerbread pancakes. I originally placed the aluminum gingerbread man cookie cutter directly on the griddle to shape our pancakes, but that would have taken ridiculously long to get them all done. So I resorted to cooking them like normal (a little larger, actually) and then cutting out after.

Don't worry - I saved all the scraps and we ate those too.

The kids LOVED these pancakes and especially their shape. (Mommy ate scraps.)

After breakfast, we got comfy with our pillow pets and all three of us snuggled on the couch to watch Furry Vengeance - another library rental. Very cute and funny.

Festive shirts courtesy of Nana.

After the movie, we started our first annual "Jingle Bell Games", as Will called them.

I bought a package of little bells from Michael's that I figured we could play with somehow and we did! Tot school style.

First: 10 bells were hidden in a pan of dry pasta. They had to find them one at a time and drop them in the silicone star pan... while being timed. ;) This "game" is way more targeted to a two year old than a four year old, but Will always wants to do whatever I present to Sophie, and he did take pride in beating her time and announced it later to Craig.

Etsy hair clip.

Game #2: spooning and tonging jingle bells. Again, it was timed. ;)

Game #3: jingle-bell-on-a-spoon race. Not many pictures but it was so funny and I was mostly videoing or participating. They had to transport eight bells each across the room on a tiny ice cream spoon without using their fingers and drop them in a mini muffin pan.