9th Annual Gingerbread House Contest

Am I really only just bloggin about my party? Yes! December has been a whirlwind of chaos!

The Gingerbread party came and went and it was a blast! I love it. I think I'm really going to have a hard time quitting it in a year...we'll see.

It was a small turnout (which was perfect for me because I had the busiest week EVER that week).

Bret and I FINALLY placed after about three years of nothingness! We came in first!

Now, on we go!

Mike and Rene' came in thirdplace with what they named "Abandoned Redneck Treehouse".

In second place we had Tim and Nancy's "The Little White Wedding Chapel of Love, North Pole, USA"

And Ryan and Tracy took first with "Santa's cottage"

And now all of the honorable mentions:

Julie and Preston's "House of Rock (Candy)"

Gennifer and Creston's "North Pole"

And Zack and Genice's "Left Overs"

The OFFICIAL first place (I don't think I can say that enough...it's been a long time) is Mine and Bret's "Barnyard"

I spent the good part of an hour on this lamb.

Yes, the animals look dead, BUT, I am getting pretty good at this fondant stuff. It's too bad you can't see the horse's mouth. I gave him some big ol' buck teeth. But, alas, his head wouldn't stay on the house, so we had to hold it up with a pile of "hay".

LATER!

Aaaaand, they finally got it right!

Aiden had his third grade Christmas concert on Thursday. It was aaaawesome! They actually sang Christmas songs! Silent night. Rocking around the Christmas tree. Jingle Bells. Even some strange folky type song that mentioned Jesus and I think the entire nativity about 20 times. Go figure.


I love this picture. Isn't he handsome? It reminds me of his two year old pictures for some reason.

I tried to upload one of his songs, but it was taking an eternity...then my kids closed it! GAAAAHHH! It was cute. Just take my word for it.

And thank you, Mrs. Donahue, for finally getting it right!

Plants VS. Zombies

Our Grayson turned five on November 6th! So on the 12th, we celebrated Plants Vs. Zombies style!

Plants Vs. Zombies is a DS game that Grayson has been obsessed with. There may be others in this household obsessed as well, but I won't name names....ME!

Grayson is really gettting to know more boys in the neighborhood thanks to the neighborhood sports group. We invited a couple of them over for Pizza and BRAINS!

We set up a human-scale game. We also invited two of his little girl friends...they didn't dig the game as much as the boys did.

Here are our Zombies...

And here we have our plants...

I filled nylons with flour to be our "ammunition". Eventually, it just turned into an all our flour war.

After it was all over, we settled down for some cupcakes and ice cream.

The little dudes on the cupcakes are "Doom-shrooms". You have to play the game...

Then Gray got to tear into some serious gifts!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MONKEY BOY!

Picturing Halloween

Rapunzel

Candygram.

Plumber.

Unicef Man

LANDSHARK!

NINJAHHHHHH!

Mummy.

Policewoman, SWAT, bumble bee.

DONE!

Fun with Grandma Chloe

For dinner Sunday, Grandma Chloe brought over a specials surprise for the kiddies...

Gingerbread haunted house!

You know how we love gingerbread around here. I gotta raise 'em up right if I'm to throw them any future gingerbread house contests.

Ahem...pardon my dark pictures. Don't worry, I eventually learned that a flash was needed.

We gave each of the kids their own piles of candies and then...

We let 'em loose!

Nobody but Grandma is looking in this picture, but I just really liked Everett's face in this one!

Check out Everett's sleight of hand. He's looking directly at the camera while snaking a few candies. Hilarious!

The finished product.

It was all over but the eating!

And of course my kids have to play in it.

Thanks, Grandma! The kids had a blast!

California Vacation

For fall break we joined the Rowley clan in California for a reunion. Frank and Elaine were kind enough to pay for a beach house for all of us to stay in.

For the most part, we hung out at the house and on the beach. It was quite the relaxing vacation!

One morning we were walking down to the beach and it turned out to be high tide. The waves were rolling clear up to the cliff's edge at the stairs we took down to the beach. So we hiked a ways down the beach to a larger beach area. Mabel and Gray were completely traumatized by this. They were sure the waves were going to take us out. They screamed the ENTIRE time.
Here's Mabel when we reached our destination:

None too happy.


Gray and I built a merman:

Mabel and I built a sand castle:

The weather was PERFECT the first two days. I actually braved the chilly waters! I tried to boogie board. It didn't go well.

I think I'd just gotten overrun by a wave when this picture was taken. I haven't boogie boarded since I was a teenager. It was a lot of fun even though I totally stunk at it!

Aiden braved a few waves:

Bret boogie boarded as well. He may have been better at it than I was.

All the cousins built a giant sand city.

Here's the view from the balcony of our beach house.

We went to the Mormon Batallion Museum. It was really good!

The kids panned for gold.

Mabel quickly got tired of it and found some stick horses to tool around on.

Aiden and Jackson (I can finally tell Chad's twins apart! Now, to work on Cade's twins!) were selected to show us what the gear looked like back in the day.

Since Frank and Elaine were on their mission over Easter, we held a late Easter egg hunt. Sadly, none of the Bret Rowley family found any of the golden eggs :(

Here's Grandma Yellow with the older grandkids.

Mabel isn't entirely aware of the need for speed in this hunt!

Gray with his winnings.

The fam.

All of the grandkids.

The WHOLE fam damily: