Mischa's Recital

Mischa had her 2nd winter recital today. She did a duet with her piano teacher on Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and did Nuttin' for Christmas. She did really well.

Caleb's First Concert

Caleb started playing clarinet this year. He's really enjoying it. The 4th and 5th graders had their winter concert at the beginning of December. 4th grade did really well doing songs using only 3 or 4 notes, and the 5th grade band was very good. It's amazing what a year can do!

Visiting the North Pole

We go to Santa's North Georgia Embassy before Christmas every year (this is our 3rd year). He and Mrs. Claus go all out in decorating their yard and house. My favourite room is their bedroom. All of the decorations there are nativities. They have a huge yard size nativity in the corner.

Caleb asked for an I-Coaster roller coaster set (and I guess the I-pod to go with it).Mischa wants silly putty.

Joshua is fixated on a wireless Wii nunchuck.Liesie was too shy again to sit on his lap. But she wasn't shy enough to accept a candy cane from him. She wants a Barbie.

After we saw Santa, I put her down to give my arm a rest. She started to throw a fit and we told her it wasn't a good idea to be bad this close to Santa (we had received a call from him the night before for setting off his naughty radar). Joshua chimed in "Yeah, you'll receive a lump of coffee!"

Not Quite As Creative As Kris

My sister-in-law, Kristine, is the card master. I'm not that great at paper layering- I have no sense of colour combinations- so I stick with the simpler stuff. But, Joshua's teacher still loved the card.

Just For Mom

The dog does exist-

Great Site

Found this today through a link from da Momma: Moosebutter. If you like Weird Al, you won't be disappointed

My Tears Weren't Because He Was Getting Older

Josh's sixth birthday will be talked about several generations from now. I'm still not in the laughing about it stage, but I'm no longer crying. Let's see what this is about, shall we?

It all starts out with Joshua's theme for his cake. He wanted a Ben 10 character, like Caleb had (but not the same alien), then decided to go for a Teletubbies cake. That really didn't fly with us, so I came up with Bumblebee from the Transformers, Joshua's favourite. I was going to do the car, but when I went to get the cake pan, I realized I didn't have any rectangular cake boards. It's Black Friday, and I'm not going anywhere near Wal-mart or Michael's. I did have round boards, so I had to modify the design some. The car was gone, and I chose the Autobot logo instead.


I did keep the cake in Bumblebee's colours, though. I've been trying to liven up my borders some.

I was just sitting down at the computer, all done with the cake, when I heard the dog drinking in the kitchen. Then I realized he wasn't drinking. As I run to the kitchen in slow motion, the scene from A Christmas Story flashes in front of me- the dogs eating the turkey. Yep, life is imitating art right in my own home. Lucky me!!

Ooh, pretty bad, huh? Wait, it get's worse....

Um, it wouldn't be the back that's destroyed would it? Oh no, front and center baby!

Perry and the kids convinced me that they would still eat the cake if I cut off the destroyed parts (we'll eat from the back to the front). I had used all of my white to make the black, so my shells are different in the fixed part, but overall it isn't too bad.

The dog is really bad about trying to steal food, so I'm making it my mission this coming week to break him of that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is the cake I did for Perry's potluck at work:

Marathon Day

Race Day

Before the race. Josh is crying because I hurt his feelings when I said he looked like an Oompaloompa.

At the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor's Center during the race:

Victorious!

Worn out

Ruby Falls Photocap

The waterfall

All together at the waterfall

A bad picture of us, but you can see the waterfall this time

Downtown Chattanooga

The kids really enjoyed Ruby Falls. As far as caves go, I think Carlsbad Caverns has better formations, but the waterfall was really neat.

Tennessee Aquarium Part 2

Photocap of the Tennessee Aquarium Part 1

Since we were all traveling for Perry's marathon, we decided to go up a day and a half early to get some sightseeing in. The travel through the North Georgia mountains was beautiful. We've decided to go on a day trip here next fall. On Friday, we hit both the Tennessee Aquarium and Ruby Falls. Here's some photos of the day:

A brave turtle