Wow, I’m finding myself constantly behind these days. But our days have been loaded with activities and we’ve been having a lot of fun!

I was able to take Friday, Kevin’s birthday, off work and I figured it would be fun to have a cookie decorating party in the morning with Finn and Sam. I made the cookies and frosting the night before in hopes of having everything ready to go.  Wow, what a fun and messy time we had as evidenced by the photos 🙂 Finn had lots of taste testing of all the cookie decorations.  Later that evening we gathered with family and friends and had a pizza party to celebrate Kevin’s birthday. Unfortunately, I realized after that I didn’t snap a photo of the more than 12 different pizza’s we had from 6 different shops. It was a tasty night, for sure. You’ll just have to believe me. I did get a couple cell phone pics of Kevin blowing out the candles on his devil’s food cake made by yours truly. I’ve been having a lot of fun spending time in our new kitchen testing out lots of new recipes.  The cake wasn’t super impressive, but the frosting was delish! And here Finn shows his new skills of racing along the floor on his back. It was actually really cute, he laid down next to Uncle Andy and then realized how he could scoot using his heels – and he was super fast. It was pretty hysterical.  Our sweet girl Cameron also celebrated her birthday on Friday too. Yep, she and Kevin have the same birthday. Here is our 13 year old girl in her party gear. Saturday we made a surprise visit to see Grandma and Grandpa in Mansfield to visit their churches inaugural Nativity Open House. I believe they had over 160 nativity scenes to view, many from their own collection. Finn quickly found the kids Veggie Tales set! We enjoyed dinner out and some play time at Grandma and Grandpa’s too before heading home to gear up for Sunday’s festivities.  We ended the week with a bang on Sunday with our inaugural Candy Making festivities. I remember from my childhood when my parents hosted other families for a candy making day to make hard-tack candy and buckeyes. All of the kids would come too and help a bit with candy-making and also made some crafts.  Earlier this fall my dad suggested that our newly renovated kitchen would be the perfect place to revive the tradition – and I thought it was a fabulous idea! And here you go – images from the day (sorry for those out of focus!) Unfortunately Amy was sick and wasn’t able to come. It was a long afternoon, turned into night, but we had a great time and all of the kids really enjoyed helping.  I made some notes of things to tweak for next year, and we will be scheduling the date far earlier so we can have it on a Saturday!  We ended up making 6 flavors (6 double-batches) including cherry, lemon, black licorice, buttered rum, sassafras, and cinnamon. Mom and dad had made peppermint a couple days before as the trial run. We also made fudge (which was an interesting experiment and needs some perfecting for next year!) and buckeyes.  And mom prepared several crafts for the kiddos, including reindeer ornaments, jingle bell bracelets, and foam ornaments. Everyone had a lot of fun!