Crazy Christmas Hair!

We had a great Christmas season! After a late night the night before we had to wake the girls up Christmas morning and put a slight rush on things so we could be only slightly late to Christmas morning at my sister's house with my family. (Mmmm, I can still taste those "Slap your brains out biscuits" my dad made - that's seriously the name of the recipe. Can you tell we've been eating good around here lately? Therefore, if it's greasy/fattening/loaded with preservatives and high in sugar, I want to eat it!!! More on our resolutions soon!)


I forgot to get a shot of all that Santa left for the girls! But this tent was one of the things. The girls love stuff like that!

Winter Princesses

This was a fun family outing at Santa's Villages. It was free and it was a great, cool night (not cold) spent with one another and great friends!



Here's Teagan loving the other girls her size! She plays so well with others! Ms. Claus just gave everyone a cookie!





The girls with a real princess! (Yes, these pink coats were also hand-me-downs!!)



Family pic!

Thanks MP and Robyn for inviting us out with the kiddies!

Oh, how I love....

hand-me-downs!!

I've always had an appreciation for hand-me-downs. It started off when I was little (being the third girl in the family and all). But also when I met hubby, and his sister gave me some hand-me-downs. She still will let me rummage through on occasion after she's cleaned out her closet and oh, how it delights me. Because a) I have no sense of style. seriously. b) i mostly buy one style of shirt in three colors - white, black, and whatever color is "in" (or what I believe to be "in"). I was just giggling about it the other day doing laundry after I hung up my white, black, and purple shirt - all of the same style and brand! (Can't beat $5.99 at TJ Maxx!)

I use the excuse that the girls prohibit me from shopping, because....have you ever shopped with two kids 3 and under. Well, it ain't fun!! Even if hand-me-downs are sometimes a season (or two) behind and technically now out of style, I ain't complaining! (why do I feel it necessary to sound so hick-ish with all the ain't's?? oh yeah, because this blog is about being myself! :)

okay, so how did I get so off topic. Oh yeah, because I love hand-me-downs. (You can see I may have a touch of the A.D.D. today.) So hubby's sister has given us lots of hand-me-downs for the girls from her little girl who's now 9! There are especially a lot of Christmas dresses! Here are some of the cute things we've worn this season - all hand-me-downs!! And I'm talking from head to toe - bows, dresses, shoes, and jackets!!!

Posing in front of the tree before a birthday party.

(side note: everyone always says how much Teagan looks like me. Well ironically, I see it in this picture where she's making a silly face!!)

My lens on my lil camera was filthy because the girls love to take pictures with it, but here is Presley and her best bud at school, M! She insisted on wearing this silk dress to school on the day of her Christmas party.

Making cookies at Shelly's. Presley enjoyed each phase - making, decorating, and eating cookies! Teagan just wanted to jump on the trampoline with the boys. I made her partake for a little while. Why pretty dresses to make cookies in? Because if you don't wear them when you can, they grow out of them and the opportunity is lost forever!

The way we roll...

Well, this is a silly post to be the first post I've posted in quite a while. BUT!
We rolled Presley and Teagan's hair in rollers for the first time. And it was so cute and fun! I have fond memories of trying to sleep in those pink sponge rollers. Teagan didn't leave hers in for five minutes, but Presley slept in hers and I let her brush out her hair the next morning for school. In hindsight, not a good idea, because then she just had a slight poof to her hair and the curl pretty much came out. Which solidifies my theory that she has hubby's hair - good, thick, heavy, silky, hair!! I think Teagan has my hair.

And now, I feel the need to apologize for this lame post. I apologize!

Halloween Festivities

I think we all know I'm usually a day late and a dollar short. But I still wanted to share what a nice Halloween season we had - the festivities just didn't end! The weekend before Halloween, my friend Monica had a Halloween costume party. This was our opportunity to let Presley be a princess. And Teagan was a little kitty cat! (Just for the record, I was Pippy Longstocking and Price threw on a poncho!) Thanks, Monica for hosting and having us over! (She's like 20-something-weeks pregnant with twins, soooo nice of her to still put on such a nice show for all the kids!)

Then the Friday night before Halloween, we went to Aunt Shelly's Halloween party where ALL the kids and adults dress up. So much fun! (FYI, I couldn't get my scarecrow nose just right and it kept getting bigger and bigger...and WOW)

And don't forget the Hulk (Cash)! I didn't get a pic of Jacqueline, she was very busy with all her friends!! Trust me, she looked cute though!

Then on Saturday, we went to Aunt Addie's house for dinner and then trick or treating around the neighborhood.

The little cowboy!

One ladybug (Dovie) in the stroller with a sucker.

Dorothy and another little ladybug (Willa) in the wagon gearing up to go!

The Lion with something sweet I'm sure!

And don't forget the turtle (Kellan). (I guess you can just call the Kirby Family family friends, because I hate to say they're just Alison and Jay's friends.)

Mom and Dad stayed and watched the girls while we went to another costume party my friend, JT (actually now it's JW) was hosting.

We had a spider woman (who's missing her web (aka her hubby and their last name! Nice spin off!), the heartless and brainless pair, angel and devil, some roadsters, and a Mad Men couple! There were lots of other folks dressed up! There were umpa-loompas, the apple and mac guys, a bunch of swine flu, and many more! Thanks, JTW for a fun night!!

Perfect Plumply Dumply Pumpkin

Each year the Pointer Genovese Calhoun Family (aka Price's fam) has a pumpkin carving contest. And it gets competitive! We all had to bring our own perfect 'plumply, dumply pumpkin' (that's a book that Presley likes that we've read oh...at least 100 billion times) because there was some controversy over who would get the best pumpkin for carving out of what was available.

This year we even made it official with a trophy that says "pumpkin carving champion of the world". We all vote and this year Heath won, Poppa came in second, and I got third. Oh yeah, the little kids had fun too. They got to paint and decorate little pumpkins.


From left to right. Poppa carved a witch (evidently the same as last year), I carved Snow White, which the kids all loved, Shelly did hers in about five minutes, Price carved Mikey Mouse (he copied my Disney theme), Jacq carved a scary pumpkin eating a smaller pumpkin (all by herself) and Heath did a Joker thing with his.

Here's Honey and the little kids stripped down to their skivvies to paint. (But really my kids are "ready to paint" nine times out of ten around our house.)

And here's all the pumpkins aglow!

Thanks, Shelly for a fun night for all of us!

Fun at the fair!

A while back we went to the fair on Wednesday with all the girls and Madden. Wednesday is bring two canned goods and get in for a buck. So we left all the men folk at work and took the kiddies to get a corn dog! Plus Aunt Mac was off and it was Rockwall's fair day. We all took the train from Garland to the fair. It was so fun and adventurous, my first train experience! Chloe had a friend with her so that improved the baby to adult ratio. Not that Chloe and her friend are adults by any stretch, but they helped hold a baby while we shuffled strollers and made sure everyone was on the train, which was no easy task. That was the only mildly stressful part.

These pictures are a little backwards, as usual!

This was actually just before we left to catch the trains on the way back. The twins were asleep by this point. And the other three needed to be!

We went into this really fun free petting zoo! There were camelsm zebras, and these CUTE pink piglets among lots of other animals!

This was everyone on the train except for me! See, lots of kids! Price thought we were crazy!

It was really fun and I look forward to doing it all again next year!