Catch Up! Halloween, Thanksgiving and all that's been going on lately!

 I'm am so sorry I've been absent for a while now. We have been so busy with holidays, events, visits from the parents/grandparents, work and school. So I will try to catch you all up on what's been going on.

We had a great Halloween, the kiddo dressed up as Snow White this year and the hubby and I dressed up as Beetlejuice and Lydia (from the 90's annimated TV show) and we took the munchkin to the mall for Mall-O-Ween trick or treating. It was awesome and the hubby was pretty much his own attraction becuase EVERYone and their mom wanted a picture with Beetlejuice! LOL!

My little Snow White, complete with Poison Apple and all!

Love this pic of her!

Hubby and I as Beetlejuice and Lydia

My hubby... the ghost with the most!

Lydia (90's animated tv series)

Hubby has been busy at work and has also applied to the masters program at George Mason University. I can't believe the man is going for his masters already but it's fabulous! I am so freaking proud of him and can't wait to see what great thing he does next! He is incredibly smart and can pretty much do anything he sets his mind to. The kiddo has been doing great in school as well, and is moving along "swimingly" in her swim class! I also have been taking some time and checking out a computer forensics program with SANS and am actually loving it!

Last month my parents came to visit during the week of Thanksgiving. My dad came up with my mom this time and it was our first time having him here at our new house. It was very nice to have them both here for the holiday. We went to DC and took them around to see some of the famous spots and check out the Christmas lights at the National Zoo, it was pretty and great time!

Thanksgiving 2013!

We went to see Frozen too!

And found DC's version of a "German Holiday Market"

Mom and Dad having a German before dinner at the Doener Bistro!

Zoo Lights at the National Zoo in Washington DC

Snow Tubing for the first time at the National Zoo with her Daddy.

This Friday is the kiddos birthday (on Friday) and the hubby's parents are coming up to celebrate and take her tubing up at one of the Mountains in Pennsylvania, it should be a GREAT time!

A Toothless Thanksgiving!

My little toothless turkey! lol!

Yup, baby girl lost her first tooth! On Thankgiving! I know what you all are thinking... "how dry was my turkey?!" LOL! But she actually lost it even before the turkey went in the oven :) She was just sitting on her poppa's (Grandpa- hubby's dad) lap saying "look poppa, it's really wiggly!" and the next thing I know... out it came! She was so surprised, she didn't even cry or get weirded out when she saw the blood!


We had a great Thanksgiving this year! And I had a lot to be thankful for! The munchkin is thankful that he tooth is gone and that the tooth fairy came! In fact she cometh last night! Apparently little miss tooth fairy had some trouble at the ATM... apparently the ATM doesn't give her cash in increments of $5.00 bills either! So the munchkin ended up with $10.00! Haha! It was well worth it though, when her eye balls nearly exploded at the $10.00 bill she saw hanging on her door this morning! She took it out of her fairy pouch and unfolded it and proclaimed... "I'm RICH!". It's the little thing's ya know?

Yeah, she's gonna play for the Pittsburgh Steelers some day ;)

We also had some special visitors this year for Thanksgiving... two really nice guys that hubby works with and two airman students who are here at Keesler for their tech school and about 2 weeks out of basic! They were very kind and must have thanked me a billion times for everything, but the pleasure was all mine... I love having lots of people to cook for and opening the house up to people when they are too far from their family to go see them for Thanksgiving or to people who might have no where else to go... I can't bare the thought of some one having to eat at the chow hall on a holiday espeically like Thanksgiving! So if I can save a someone or two from that, by golly I will!

We made Turkey and all the fixings we made pies and carrot cake, we watched the game and played a little pig skin of our own in the backyard with the kids, all in all it was great! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too! :)

The kiddo and two of her bestest friends... at their own little table :)

And the rest of our bunch :)

Thanksgiving Recap

I'll start off by saying our Thanksgiving ROCKED (and I have also survived Black Friday LOL)! We had great food, great people to share it with and a great time! The Saints even won against Dallas! Ok, ok... just barely but a win is win! So Whooooo DAT! LOL!

We had 3 Airman ladies over for dinner as well and they all seemed to have a good time too, munchkin kept them pretty busy with playing tea party, dress up and candy land. They were all airman that are here for tech school and just couldn't make it home for the holiday. They were from South Dakota, California and Washington state. I think we were more than proud to be their surrogate family for Thanksgiving, I'm sure it was very hard for them seeing how they had just graduated from BMT 3 weeks ago and it was also their first holiday away from all their family and friends.

I also started a new holiday tradition... I saw a few weeks ago on another blog (and wish I could remember where I saw it!!) how this lady took one of her table clothes and had each person she had the pleasure of having a holiday dinner with sign or write on her table cloth, she embroiders over it and makes it incredibly beautiful and perfect family heirloom. She has had her table cloth sine 1973! I started mine on Thanksgiving and plan on using it for all our family holidays and get togethers and cant wait to see what mine looks like in 37 years!

So here's a few pics from our event. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too :)

My table cloth after everyone signed it :)


My daddy-in-law just checking the green bean casserole .


The wreckage lol! I think everyone ate good :)

Cue the football and the turkey coma's!

And later we did a little PT by walking the beach lol!

What winter looks like on the beach.

The munchkin and her "girls" is what she affectionately called them :)

Thanksgiving Craft Explosion

So I have been up to crafty no good... yet again. They are just fun easy things that the munchkin and I have been doing together. Last week when we went grocery shopping we went to the commissary and as always we end up with about 15 paper bags, I usually use these paper bags for the kiddo to draw, doodle, paint or just play with but this time I thought why not try to upcycle them into a craft? I must have stood there for at least 15 minutes trying to figure out what I could use them for that I hadn't already done... and then I got it! I thought, how about a Thanksgiving leaf bunting?! Sounds pretty cool so far right? Basically I just took the same maple leaf pattern as I use from the craft where I made a felt window decoration (which my neighbors just happen to LOVE... I have gotten sooooo many compliments on it, you should see their faces when I tell them how much it cost me to make it LOL!) and cut out the pattern on back side of the bag (the one that doesn't have the ads on it for militaryonesource.com) you can get about 4-5 leaves on there. After cutting out each leaf I then glued some fall colored glitter on the front of each leaf out lining the leaf and then wrote out 'Happy Thanksgiving" on the front with a sharpie. Now here comes the craft FAIL part... as I stood there and hot glued each leaf to my wonderful, yet again useful, hand dandy fishing line, I thought to myself this is gonna be pretty cool... until I flipped it over and realized I placed each damn leaf backwards (which would have been ok had we had Thanksgiving in Japan, where they read right to left!) I then proceeded to smack my forehead and give a great big Homer type of DOH! while my hubs snickered from his spot on the couch. At this point I had already had the sign up and cleaned up my massive pile of glitter mess (did you know that glitter is a real pain in the ass?) and then it occurred to me... why not just paint over the sharpie letters and then paint in new letters? Heck yes! So there I stood like Michael Angelo painting my buntin up near my dining room ceiling for about 20 minutes. It goes to show though, even with a craft FAIL you can still make it work. ;)

The leaf bunting after I corrected my FAIL :)

A close up, if you look at the lower left corner of the G you can see just a bit of the sharpie letter shining through still... thank god no one will be this close while looking at it... at least I hope no anyway... But on the back the munchkin and I both wrote all the things we were thankful for. Among the things she wrote were; Daddy, Mommy, Both sets of grandparents, Her friends, The Air Force, Her toys, Her room, Her Cape (yes, the one I made her) , and of course Batman.

Today the munchkin and I decided we would make Thanksgiving Thank You cards for the Airman that will be coming over for dinner. Just something for them to know we were thankful for them to come to our house, have dinner and spend a little time with us. I know it can't be easy being away from family and especially during the holidays so I like to do what I can for them to make it just a little easier. Though nothing can make up for being home for the holidays but I do hope they will have a good time with us. After all isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about?

The front of the kiddo's card. We made hand print turkey cards for each both Airman.
She is soooooo excited that we are going to have "new friends" over for dinner, and I'm so proud that she is eager to spend time with them. I hope her generous nature stays with her always.

What she wrote on the inside to each of them.

This program which is "Home away from Home" is sponsered by the Chapel at Keesler AFB and really is a great program, if you ever get the oppertunity to do something like this for someone in any branch, I urge you to try it... nothing will give you a better feeling of hospitality :)

And finally... my Thanksgiving wreath! That cost me a whopping $3.00 (including the over the door hanger!)

All the materials used for this came from the dollar tree store. Yup, even those pretty, shiny, sparkly gourd's. Its really easy to make too! I had left over fall leaves from my Halloween Candelabra project and I just hot glued them to the wicker wreath that I bought then I hot glued the gourds on top and... Wah-la! Instant Thanksgiving wreath for your front door! ;)

A little close up of the shiny sparklies... say it with me... oooh ahhhhh... LOL!