The Girls' Room and a belated chritmas gift

It has taken me forever but I am almost done with Mackenzie and Avery's room! Mackenzie said she wanted bright colors so that is what she got! It is not completely finished but It's getting close. I still have to paint the trim and the ceiling, replace the blue blinds with white ones, and hang the closet doors. Plus, we are going to put up a chair rail to separate the 2 colors of the walls. I also have some shelves and pictures to hang but I am having a hard time deciding Where to hang them. We found this cute rug to match the polka dots on the wall. Plus, it will help protect the carpet

My friend made these vinyl letters with their names across that I put up over their closets. They turned out so cute!

This is Dallas's contribution to this year's christmas. It didn't get here until the 27th and the kids were so excited. He is an Australian Sheperd and the kids named him Tucker. When we bought this house I said that we would NOT get a dog. We haven't had very good luck in that department in the past and no one wants to take care of them so the responsibility always falls on me, and I DO NOT like dogs AT ALL. Apparently no one listens to me and I lost that battle pretty quickly. The kids just want him to be in the house all of the time but I can't stand having dogs in the house so he will be outside most of the time except when It is cold outside, he can come in the laundry room to sleep. He has been pretty good so far - It is fun to watch the kids with him though. Avery LOVES him!! She gets so excited and tries to feed him her binki and brings him toys and blankets. Hopefully we will have better luck with him than we did with the last one!

Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year! Some of these pictures are backward but I am not going to fix them... Mackenzie had a christmas program with the all of the first graders, she also had a christmas dance recital which I didn't get any pictures of because my battery was dead. Then, on Christmas eve, we spent the day painting in Mackenzie's room (I will post pics soon) , then we had some friends over for dinner. The kids painted ornaments, and we played some games. It was fun. Christmas day was so nice. We just stayed home and spent the day as a family. Most of us stayed in our pajamas all day and just enjoyed staying home for a day. The kids were pretty worried that Santa wouldn't find us at our new house but he did! They were very relieved! Here's some pictures of all of the excitement!!

Christmas eve with their new jammies and blankets.
Yay!! Santa found us!

The truck and horse trailer that Gavin got from Grandma Anderson. He LOVES it!

7:30 in the morning and a face covered in chocolate! It doesn't get any better than that!

Gavin got a remote-controlled four wheler, an ipod, camo clothes, craft stuff, and a TON of farm toys : Truck and horse trailer, barns, sheds, fences, and farm animals. He was so fun. He kept saying "This is just what I always wanted" which Dallas and I thought was funny because that is exactly what Dallas would always say when he opened presents when he was a kid.

Mackenzie got just what she wanted: an ipod and an i-dog. Santa even found her a "stuffed" one because he knows how much she loves stuffed animals. She also got a scooter, make-up, craft stuff, some CDs, clothes, and of course, some stuffed animals. She got a whole bunch of beads and jewelry making stuff from grandma Anderson so she spent most of the day making bracelets and necklaces for all of her toys. when it was getting dark outside she said "this has been the best day! Too bad it's over huh??" She is so cute!

Dallas's gifts- He got spoiled this year. I was trying to surprise him this year by getting him a Wii. Mackenzie and I were the only ones who knew about it and we kept it a secret until Dallas guessed 2 days before christmas. So Dallas got the Wii, and a couple games, and I got a Wii fit and of course, some clothes. Gavin is loving the hunting game and Mackenzie has had a blast bowling and boxing. I can see that I am definately going to have to set some limits but I think it will be a fun thing to have.

Avery-playing with some new toys! she got a big picnic table with an umbrella, a shopping cart, clothes, a little keybord, and instrument set, and some other small toys. She is the funniest kid. She didn't care about the presents At All. She only cared about one thing- CANDY!! She has the biggest sweet tooth I have ever seen. She opened her stocking and the first thing she pulled out was a chocolate santa and before I knew it, she had opened it and was munching away. Any time anyone came near her to try and get her to open a present, she would get so mad because she thought we were going to take her candy away and for the rest of the day she was on a mission- to eat as much candy as she could find. She kept saying "nany" which is candy. I really try to not let her have too much sugar so I didn't give her much in her stocking and I told Mckenzie and Gavin to put theirs away so she couldn't get into it but every time I turned round, she had gotten into more candy. I don't know where she kept finding it but she just thought she was in heaven! I am surprised she is not sick because of all of the sugar she ate!

Anderson Christmas party

Making Snow globes

exchanging gifts

Christmas program for the first graders

update

We are all moved in to our new house, the tree is up and I am so excited for Christmas. I love this time of year. I have no pictures to post. I have not taken hardly any pictures since I started school but I will get some up of the house as I get the rooms completed. right now I am trying to get the wall paper off of Mackenzie and Avery's walls. I think it was super glued on because it is not coming off very well. I have tried hot water with Downy, I have tried using a steamer and the top layer is coming off okay, yes, there are several lyers of wallpaper in that room, and the bottom layer is not coming off. I think I might just have to put a coat of primer over it, and do some texturing, then paint. Any other ideas?? I am not very good at this kind of thing. Anyhow, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!!! Merry Christmas!!!

We DID it!!

Well, we did it!! We bought a house, or are buying one anyway... We probably won't close until Dec. 15th which is perfect for me because my last day of finals is the 14th!! The kids are very excited. Mackenzie is already picking out colors for her room. She wants to paint unicorns on the wall????? I told her no, I don't know how to paint unicorns and her response was "I do!!" I'm going to have to let her down gently!! We are going to be doing lots of painting, putting up trim, and other small projects like that so it will keep me busy through the winter. The house is small but it has a HUGE yard so we are hoping to add on in a few years. Living here, there aren't too many options as far as real estate goes and we can't build because we don't have the 20% down they require for buying land so we are just happy that we finally found something that we can agree on..

Halloween!!!

Every year for halloween the kids decorate sugar cookies and carve pumpkins. I take them to the store and they pick whatever they want to decorate the cookies with.

Here's the finished product. That's a LOT of sugar!! They ate a couple, then the rest got thrown away!

Carving their pumpkins!This year, we were planning on taking the kids to Lagoon for Halloween but it has been so cold and when I last checked the weather it had said is was supposed to be cold and rainy so we didn't go. We should have because it ended up being such a nice day!! Oh well! we had a fun day regardless...

Getting ready to go trick-or-treating!

Mackenzie gave Avery a sour skittle. I don't think she liked it!The cutest little Butterfly I've ever seen!My little Soldier...AND... The wicked Witch!We got our trick-or-treating done early, then we went to a friend's house for dinner. It was a great Halloween!Gavin's lootMackenie said "This is the best day ever! We are spoiled rotten!"

Avery is quite the candy junkie! She only got about 1/3 of what the other kids got but she was so excited! She had fun dumping out her bucket, then picking the candy up and putting it back in. She ate a couple pieces then I had to take it away because she would have kept eating as long as it was sitting in front of her.