Conan Baby Jesus

This is our Nativity Set.

This is our baby Jesus...

..who looks a lot like Conan O'Brian.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We spent this past Saturday fixing up the house for Christmas. It's always so exciting and also exhausting! We still have one of those trees that you have to put together branch by branch. In all, it took about an hour and a half just to put the branches and lights on. Whew! We don't have a ton of Christmas stuff, but it never fails to look like a bomb went off in our house. Then we moved outside and put lights up on the house. Will amazingly slept through almost of it and was very interested when we brought him out of his room. I'm so lucky to be married to someone who loves Christmas as much as I do. We played Christmas music and put Will in some new Christmas jammies.

*We even had snow yesterday (which didn't stick) and should be getting more on Friday!

The tub we keep the branches in is so huge and heavy, it's just easier to bring the branches down in a few bunches at a time.

Steven trying to put on the star.

Will in his Christmas jammies was very excited about the tree!

Please ignore the junk all around.

"You could even say it glows! "

When You're Married to a Musician..

...you find guitar picks all over the house. This is ridiculous. I have found more since these pics were taken & even found one at my Mom's house. Out of control!

Eating My Words

Thank you to whoever fired the the director from Twilight and hired Chris Weitz! I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really liked New Moon! I didn't even want to see it because I thought I'd be so disappointed, but I did and am so excited about how good it was. MUCH better than Twilight! Better quality, better special effects, better acting.

I love being surprised by something being more than I expected. Now I can't wait to see Eclipse!

The First Thanksgiving...

..as a family of 3! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year and were thrilled that Will got to spend his first Turkey Day with both sets of grandparents. We spent the holiday in Belton at Steven's parents' house and my parents joined us there. We are very fortunate to have families that get along so well. Here is a recap of the trip, not necessarily in order.

Some Thanksgiving Day backyard football.

Will with his Uncle Brian & cousin Kyler.

Playing the piano with Daddy.

"Perusing" (or eating) the Black Friday ads.

What a shame, my pie slid right off my plate.

Not quite sure of his first bite of turkey.

A feast of baby turkey and sweet potatoes!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Steven about to dig in.

Will & Mommy

I just love the holidays and besides spending time with family, the best thing about Thanksgiving is that it really kicks off the Christmas season. Yes, we are those people who start listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and decorate the house as soon as possible. I am so ready to experience my first Christmas as a mom. Lights are up outside, the tree is up, and Will has already been sleeping in Christmas jammies. Pics to come of this soon, once the decoration chaos has been cleaned up!

Once A Month Cooking

So a couple friends and I are trying out this idea of "Once a Month Cooking". We really only made 7 meals (this month is mostly an experiment) so obviously we'll have to cook more than once this month, but it will be nice to have some pre-made meals in the freezer for when I need something quick. They are all chicken recipes and should only require dumping the ingredients into a dish and baking it. We split up the shopping and then spent about 4-5 hours on a Saturday afternoon assembling the meals. Each meal is put into a freezer bag with the cooking directions on the outside. So far I've tried two of the meals and they weren't too bad. It did take some time to assemble them, but I really love the idea of having dinners on hand when I'm just too pooped to do anything else. The idea and recipes came from Recipezaar (although I just found a new site dedicated to this idea- see button in left column) Each of the 'cooking sessions' is already planned. It's really great b/c there is a master ingredient list that you can remove items from if you already have them. A detailed step-by-step plan is also included to help you stay organized and on track when assembling the meals.

Here is a list of the meals we made:

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Baked Honey Mustard Chicken

Herb Wine Chicken

Honey Sesame Chicken

Golden Honey Chicken

Sangria Chicken

Chicken Bruschetta Casserole

Monterey Chicken

A couple pics from the day

My cooler full of dinners!

Super Quick

So it's 12:30 and my son is just taking his first nap of the day. He has been fighting it all morning and been quite a little bear. I'll probably only have about 10 minutes until he wakes up with my luck, so this will be quite short. I just have a couple of things on my mind that I need to send out into the universe.

1. What's the big deal about Susan Boyle? I know this makes me sound like an awful person. I'm sure she's a wonderful person and doesn't sound terrible, but really? I guess maybe she's inspiring and it's not really just about her voice...

2. (Now I'm really going to stir things up...) The Twilight books are excellent. The Twilight movies are terrible. Yes, I said it- terrible. They are cheesy and cheap and an insult the novels. Maybe it's the directing, maybe it's the acting, maybe it's just me and my literary snobbery. However, I'm also quite a hypocrite because I'll probably break down and see the dang thing.

So there they are, my two cents. or would that be four cents since it's two cents per thought...

Go ahead and judge me.