Whats been going on in my neck of the woods!

                                         Alexis Renee my niece

                                        Layne,McKenna,Jaxon, Serena,Kiera and Payton

                                         Grammy,mom and sister.
We have been busy busy busy.  My sister and her 4 kiddos were in town for Thanksgiving.  They stayed here at the house with us.  We had our family plus mom and dad plus 5 guests!  My nieces and nephews did stay st their friends houses some of the nights.  It was so nice to see them.  You don't realize how much you miss someone until they don't live 10 minutes away anymore.  It was so nice to have everyone here.  Talk about being thankful!  Shauna and family left Sunday late morning.  Then mom and dad left Monday early morning.  Dad is officially retired from work and they moved to Michigan!  While it was a little crazy having them stay with us I miss them.  They will living in a rental house up there while they have a home built on some property they own.  They are closer to our family in Michigan.  This is the farthest I have ever lived from my parents.  It is quite the adjustment.

We celebrated Jaxon's 10th Birthday.  His day fell on Thanksgiving this year so we did cake and a present the following weekend.  He got a video game for the xbox he had been wanting.

I made a cookie cake for him.  Not bad for my first attempt! I got the wrong kind of icing but it looked ok and tasted awesome!  So hard to believe he is 10.  He is such a little gentleman and I am so proud of the child that he is!

We decorated our home for Christmas the same weekend that we did Jaxon's birthday.  Last year we put our tree downstairs so the kids would have more room to open gifts.  It just didn't feel like Christmas with no tree upstairs.  So I had an idea to put a smaller tree upstairs and the big one downstairs.  We have my dad's HUGE TV downstairs right now.  So we decided to just put the small tree upstairs.  This is also in hopes that Payton will stay away from the ornaments!!
The kids did a ginger bread house!

One last thing to update.  Payton got his first hair cut on 12/1/12.  He HATED it.  Cried the whole time and I had to hold his head still.  He looks like a big boy now.  All his crazy curls are gone. His hair still looks wavy.  So I have a feeling that he will have curly hair.  Tim and I both do.