Ornament & Cookie Exchange

Since we have been in Germany, I've been trying to help organize "social events" to help get everyone together.  We started doing a potluck once a month, and a Ladies' Bible Study every other week.  When we were in Lubbock, the ladies got together every year at Christmas time to do an ornament exchange.  I LoVeD this tradition!  If you know me, you know how much I'm in love with Christmas!!!  And how much I LOVE to decorate the tree!  This was right up my alley :)  I thought this would be a good tradition to start with the ladies here.  My friend Amanda had the idea to combine it with a cookie exchange.  So this past Saturday, we had the 1st Annual Ladies' Ornament & Cookie Exchange!  It was great.  Amanda was gracious enough to let us do it at her place again.  Amanda set the table and used her wedding china!  It was very fancy and SO beautiful!

The Exchange was at 10:00; brunch!  We had a chicken ring, breakfast casserole, pumpkin-cranberry muffins, apples with fruit dip, and cinnamon-mocha cupcakes!  Yummy!!!

Cinnamon-mocha cupcakes.  I was pretty proud of them!  They were delicious and oh so cute!

Everyone came with a wrapped ornament, and 2 dozen cookies!

To trade ornaments, we read a right/left story of The Night Before Christmas.  It was really cute.  Everytime she said right, we passed to the right.  When she said left...  You get it.  At the end of the story, the gift in your hands is the one you open.  ALL of the ornaments were really cute.  I love the ones I ended up with!  And yes I said the "ones", because mine had 2!!!  Bonus!  I got a wooden snowman!!!!!  And a pickle!  Haha.  It's a german tradition.  Ma-maw started doing it a couple of years ago.  They are both on my tree, and someone already found the pickle.  hehe.  But I didn't have a prize for him...

All in all, I would say the Ornament & Cookie Exchange was a success!  We had a lot of fun together.  We ended up sitting around the table talking and laughing for several hours!  What a great tradition!!!  I can't wait until next year!

snow. Snow. Snow! SNOW!!

As I said in my last post, we got our first snow on Thanksgiving.  Well, it has snowed almost everyday since.  It's so pretty!  Snow makes everything look prettier!

Our backyard

"Christmas Tree" in the front yard

Jesse's motorcycle (before he moved it under the carport)

Our patio

Backyard from the patio

Neighbors

The puppies had to get used to it.  Rusty had no problem.  He charged right out there, sniffing everything.

Rusty, checking out the backyard

Checking out the tree limbs cut from our apple trees

Investigating the front yard

Has to check out everything

Weezel was not so adventurous.  If I have not mentioned this before, Weezel is a BIG baby.  He's such a momma's boy...  He's not all that fond of cold and wet.  He finally ventured out, but he's still not too crazy about it.

Weezel preferred to stay under the carport where it was dry.

At first, he stayed on the sidewalk in the front.

He finally went into the side-yard to "say hi" to (aka bark at) our neighbor.

Later, I let him out onto our patio to check it out.  He discovered that you can lick snow and it's like water!

Not so sure about this...

Yummy!  A water bowl outside!

He had to show his brother his discovery!

Needless to say, we're enjoying the snow!  The cold is something to get used to, but we stay bundled up :)

I love the puppy prints in the snow!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving!  I was sick before and after, but I felt ok the day of Thanksgiving.  One of the families from church had us all over to their house for Thanksgiving.  Everyone brought something.  It's   funny how we all think of Thanksgiving dinner differently.  We have pretty much the same food, but it's fixed differently, depending on which part of the country you're from.  But it was great!  And what made the day even better, we woke up Thanksgiving morning to our first snow!  It snowed all day, and has snowed every day since then!

We woke up to snow!

Our backyard

There was so much food!  And it was delicious!

I made green bean bundles, cornbread...

mashed potatoes...

pumpkin swirl bread...

and oreo balls!  Yumm!!!

After dinner, they broke out the Rockband!  It was fun :)

Jeremi's rocking out!

Freedom liked the music!

It was a good day!  I hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving as well!  Be prepared for more snow pictures coming soon!

Jesse's "Super" Birthday!

Well, Jesse's birthday has come and gone.  It was yesterday.  A couple of weeks ago, I asked him what kind of cake he wanted.  When he responded, "NERDS cake,"  my response was, "DUH!"  Haha.  It's his favorite.  I know that.  But I meant, how did he want it decorated.  His response, "I don't care."  Typical man, typical Jesse.  So I pestered him ;)  Here's how we decided.  None of his sports teams were doing well this year.  So he said red.  If you know anything about tinting icing, you know that red is not fun...  It takes a LOT of color to turn a whole batch of icing red.  So I said I would not have a completely red cake.  He needed to pick something to go with red.  So he said blue.  Then it hit him, "Superman!!!"  So, he got a Superman NERDS cake!!!

Super Jesse Birthday cake!

The yellow, red, and blue stars made it look more "comic bookie"

It came out pretty good if I do say so myself!  I still need to practice my writing, but other than that, I'm pretty proud of it!

Our afternoon service starts at 2:30 here, so afterwards, we invited everyone over for cake and coffee!!  And I threw some piggies (pigs-in-the-blanket) in the oven.  We enjoyed it, and there's only one small piece of cake left!  Thank goodness.  I was afraid we would be eating cake for a week (Jesse wouldn't have minded; he loves cake!).

Jesse's cake, birthday card, and present (2 cd's he wanted from iTunes)

The "Super" Birthday Boy and his "Super" cake!

No I didn't put 24 candles, there are 2 on one side and 4 on the other.  That's 24, not 6 ;)
(We didn't have any  matches, so he pretended to blow them out...  oops...)

All is going well!  Turkey day is Thursday!!!  Eat well :)

Halloween 2010

Well, Halloween has come and gone.  But I'm just now posting about it...  Oh well.  Better late than never! We had a themed Halloween party.  The theme was, "NERDS"!  It all started months ago.  Jesse and I were sitting around the table with our friends Kevin and Amanda.  Somehow we started talking about the NERDS candy and, Jesse's favorite, NERDS cake.  The idea was born there.  So we had a NERDS themed party with NERDS desserts and everyone dressed as nerds!  It was great!  Here are some pictures from the party!

NERDS cake

The mouth is made of NERDS boxes!

Big spider

Dessert table

Pumpkin & Werewolf cupcakes

Mummy & Dracula cupcakes

NERDS rice crispy treats

HUGE bowl of NERDS

Marshmallow witches :)

Nerds only!  And yes, those are NERDS boxes :)

Ok all you Office fans!  The sign says:
QUESTION? What do you call a line you stand in for punch?
FACT: A punch line!

The food!

Just a couple of nerds :)

The hostesses!

What nerds...  ;)

We ate lots of food, and played games including:
- costume contest - everyone voted on the nerdiest costume, and the winner got to pick the order of the games!
- "chubby mummy" - like "chubby bunny" with marshmallows
- the paper game - this was hilarious!
- "apple on a string" - they had to bite the apple
- scribble scrabble!

Lots of fun was had!  Great memories!