Let's Make Christmas Cookies

Emmy came over to help make butter cookies last Saturday.

She is doing a great job!

Dave helping!

Emmy's batch - we will serve them for dessert when everyone comes Saturday night for our Christmas with Dave's kids.

Gorgeous and yummy. I made 6 batches. I am giving some to co workers and we will take some the St. Louis!

Had to share this - my favorite kitchen christmas decoration Dave gave me. It is a music box and the oven door opens and closes while the little gingerbread boy hangs on and the boy on the top stirs the pot. It is from Cracker Barrel.

A cute little cookie sign, I love to decorate my kitchen in the gingerbread theme during the holidays.

Mary Lou Turns 60

We were invited to Mary Lou's birthday at Topeka's Steak House. It was great fun.My cute neice Tracie and hubby Robert.

Mary Lou having a little bit of Jenny's drink.

Jacob and Hunter - they are getting so big and cute as ever.

Yummy chocolate cake!

That is my other cute niece, Jenny in the background. Yeah, I know Lou - it's hard to believe we are 60! It was great being with them. For some reason I never got a picture of Adam. He came late but he was there. Thanks for inviting us!

Quilting Class

I took a quilting class a few weeks ago. It was for a Rag Quilt. The "Busy Bee" in Chester has been in busines for 30 plus years. I dropped in one day to see if they carried embroidery supplies, which they did and when I saw this quilt on display I signed up. Cutting the squares of fabric and batting was done before class. We made about 3 rows and are on our own to complete. I started on this one for Meg and will make Alex one next - for their 4th birthday in March.

This was a neat trick - just keep sewing the squares together and snip apart; saves time, not a lot of stop and go.

Top stitching. The other print I chose is a tiny rose bud to go along with these solids.

Lining up the squares to form the pattern desired. I embroidered some of the squares before hand. The pattern is "Once Upon a Time" - little princess designs. That is a cute little dragon on the yellow square. I will share the rest of the embroidery later.






Two quilt samples at the shop. Once you complete your quilt you throw it in the washing machine, then dryer and you have a cute ruffle edged rag quilt.

The shop is full of gorgeous material and lots of other goodies. The owners are very helpful. I plan on taking more classes in the future.

The weekend after Thanksgiving was the UVA and Tech game at @ 12 Noon. So we got up early and headed for Blacksburg. We went to a Pizza Place we had never been before - it said they were serving breakfast -Dave's favorite! Breakfast was delicious. The biscuit I had was gigantic! and so good. Following breakfast we headed for the stadium for the last game of the season against UVA.

It was a great game - a lot warmer than the week before. Hokies won - 17/14. Yes and the Hokies are headed to the ACC championship game against Boston College!!! This game was played on December 12 and the Hokies won 30/12. The Hokies are the ACC Champions!!! They play in the Orange Bowl on January 1 against Cincinnati. We won't be going to the Bowl game this year but we will be watching on TV! We are headed for St. Louis to spend Christmas with the twins. Should be an interesting trip. We are taking the dogs!! We will be having Christmas with Dave's kids on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and on Sunday will head to St. Louis.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving was a little hard for me this year, being away from Amy and her family was tough. This was the first Thanksgiving without her except for the year that she got married and she was on her honeymoon at Thanksgiving. It turned out to be a very good day, thanks to Dave's family == from left to right, Matlin, Judy, Kari and Monica -thanks Monica and Brian for hosting. The food was delicious and we had a fun time. We have so much to be thankful for.

Emmy made place cards.

Dave with Samara.

I made this chocolate peanut butter cake. I had my doubts == when I put the batter in the pans it was very watery . But it turned out ok. VERY RICH! You couldn't eat much of this.

The food was great and we had fun - hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving!!

The Coldest Football Game Ever!

The football game on the weekend before Thanksgiving against Duke was at 5:30 pm so we had a little time to do some shopping before going to Blacksburg. These pictures are from a craft mall and we found some cute displays. A lot of them involve water, which peeked Dave's interest.

Notice the water pumps - a favorite for making some type of water apparatus in our yard.

These pictures don't to justice to all the cuteness of these individual booths.

We were bundled up for the game. The temperature was 20 degrees. It was cold but with all the excitement of the game it wasn't so bad. My feet got cold but otherwise it didn't seem so bad. A lot of fun, especially since Tech won!!!

Yeah, fireworks, the score was 14/3.