Elf on the Shelf

I know many of you reading this have kids of your own. I'm not sure how many have heard of the Elf on the Shelf Christmas tradition. The first time I heard about it was last year from my friend at work sent it to V. It is a great story that explains to kids how Santa knows if they are naughty or nice. Since Santa is only one guy and he is very busy he sends his magic elves to watch the kids and report back. The elf watches V each day and at night when she is sleeping he flies back to Santa and tells him if she was naughty or nice. In the morning he is back in the house except sitting in a different location. There is a story that goes along with the elf. Victoria loves it! Yesterday we put up our tree, this morning when she woke up her elf, Zert, was sitting in the tree.

Thanksgiving Cranberries

We spent Thanksgiving at Len's again this year. We had a really nice time and are thankful to have such great friends. But we couldn't go an occasion without a story from little Miss Victoria. I unfortunately only heard this story second hand. Eddie had the pleasure of hearing it live. I will tell you though, when Eddie told me I literally almost peed my pants. Enjoy...

We were eating dinner. I had put a little of everything on V plate and told her she had to try it all. She had just taken a bite of the cranberries (homemade, not out of the can). Eddie asked her if they were tart. Her reply was priceless..."what is tart? Does that mean not good because they aren't."

Stella has friends too...

This is my Mom's dog Wyatt. Him and Stella are quite good friends which is nice because we can hang out and bring the dogs too.

Go Bears

For those of you that know us you know we are hard core Bears fans. As Eddie says it is pretty much the religion in our house. Well, after a couple of hard losses (the GB loss last week was especially hard) they won today. Yes it was to St. Louis but a W is a W. It probably had to do with the cutest little cheerleader...

Election 2008

Well...it is the day after one of, if not the most historic election in history. We have a new President elect, Barack Obama. Victoria voted at school. I was interested to hear who she voted for because we are not a family that is very vocal about politics. Not that we don't care we just don't sit around and talk about it. So after she voted I asked her who she voted for, and her choice was Brock Obama (she says it so cute). When I asked her why she chose him she said and I quote...John McCain is bald and I don't like bald guys. So there you have it.

Eddie and I decided to wake up early and vote in the morning. We thought it would be good to bring V so she could experience it. We got there about 6:30 figuring that would be enough time to vote and get V to school by 7:45. I signed her in at 10:00. Yes that is right...we waited in line for about 3 hours! It was quite the experience...overall she was very patient and well behaved. Oh, except for the part where she insisted that Eddie and I tell her who we were voting for so she could write it down.

I don't know if she will remember this experience, but I hope she does...

It is November and the air is on...

...yes that is right. As I sit here the air conditioner is running. There was a brief couple of days where I thought it was fall but I was wrong. It has mid in the mid 90s. V was actually sweating during trick or treating because I got her the long sleeved leotard. Yeah, I thought it might get cool when the sun went down, silly me. Don't get me wrong, I do love Arizona. I just miss the fall back home sometimes. Trust me though, I will soon be complaining when it is 60 degrees and I am freezing and wearing two layers of clothes.

Here's to hoping it falls to the 80s this week...

Halloween 2008

So we made it through the Pumpkin Walk. I was helping out with the spider party at her school in the morning, I had to then go to work and after we were going to her friends house to go trick or treating. Busy...busy...busy. I DID remember her costume this time. It was a very good day! And she was SO cute. V and her friend dressed as bunnies. It was very adorable!

As you can see she was beat...

Pumpkin Walk

Halloween Week 2008 has been a very busy week!! Like every other week V has dance on Monday and Gymnastics on Wednesday. On Thursday at school she was carving pumpkins for the Pumpkin Walk Thursday night. On Halloween they had a spider party at school and then trick or treating...breathe, breathe.

I was going to help out at school for the pumpkin carving. We had to bring a gutted pumpkin and carving tools. We also had to bring her costume for the Pumpkin Walk. Well...I forgot her costume. I felt TERRIBLE! I was sure I was going to lose my mother of the year award. We had to stay at the school until all the kids pumpkins were carved. I had to leave at 11:30 because I had a very important meeting at 12 (I was already missing a meeting with the president of the compnay so I had to be there at noon). I was hoping we would get done early and I could go buy a back up. Luck was on my side...9:15 we are done! I am on my way to get a costume...first place, no luck...very picked through. Second place, cute pirate costume...$16.99...no way. I go to the Halloween store with plans to just buy black ears and a tail for a black cat. She was wwearing black leggings. All I needed was a black shirt. I called the Dad of V friend that we were going trick or treating with to see if V could borrow a black shirt. He said they had tons of costumes and to not buy anything, thank goodness! And that was fine with her. She was very excited to wear one of her friends costumes.

First Real Play Date

This is going to sound wierd but V just had her first play date with a girl from school. We have always lived kinda far away from school so we really haven't had play dates with school friends. Well the first week of October was her fall break. So that Thursday I offered to take her friend to hang out with us (her parents had to work). We had a very busy day planned...we went to the park, painted pottery, had lunch, read books at the library, went to a movie, stopped to get ice cream and tehn went to her house for dinner. Yes, all in one day. The girls had so much fun!!