It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

This year I really felt led to reach out to our neighbors at Christmas. The first reason is because I wanted to have a chance to connect with those living closest to us, and let them know we care about them. The 2nd reason was because I want to make sure our boys grow up knowing that Christmas isn't about what you get, but what you give. We've been focusing on it being a celebration of Jesus' birth through playing with nativity scenes, lighting our advent candle weekly and reading our verses that go with it, and talking about it in conversation. December has been a great month for us. I have really been able to enjoy this time. In the past I've felt pretty flustered, but I decided that I didn't want to miss out on the fun of this season due to craziness, so I'm just making it a point of having family time a priorioty this year.

Since Andy was going to be going to the SEC game this past weekend, I thought this would be a fun time to put my plan into action. I wanted to bake goodies for our neighbors, so last week I began searching for some new recipes. I went to my favorite recipe web-site http://www.allrecipes.com/ and found some great recipes to try. Everything I made for my neighbors was a first time for me. Some were successful right away and some I got a chance to make a 2nd time. Here's pictures of our adventure, and I'll give some more details with the visuals!

Here are the boys in their aprons helping to decorate our cookies on Saturday morning. I used a new sugar recipe this year and the cookies turned out nice and soft, as long as I didn't roll the dough too thin. Also, I used a new icing recipe. It was powdered sugar and milk (like usual) and then it had you add corn syrup. It helped it to harden up like more professional cookies. It was very yummy, too!

This turned out to be one of my favorite recipes. It's called Tiger Butter, and it consists of 3 ingredients, semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, and crunchy peanut butter. It was one of the easiest items to make, and when I sent Andy to work with all the treats this week, it was one of the biggest hits.

Here's a close-up of one of the plates covered and ready for delivery.

Here's a picture of all of the treats. I'm not sure why it's sideways, but just turn your head to the right a little for a better look. On the plate was

caramel corn

sugar cookies

peanut brittle

(which I burned on my first attempt and got to redo, and I'm still cleaning that pot)

Tiger Butter

Oreo Truffles

(another favorite at Andy's office)

I thought that the best way to make the deliveries would be to load up the boys' truck and head out. We all had so much fun. Even though we could only carry a few at a time, it just added to the adventure when we had to head back to the house for a refill.

Plates ready for a ride.

Here we are at a friend's Mr. Brent and Ms. Catherine. As soon as we pulled into their driveway they rushed out to greet us and invited us in. We got to see all of their Christmas decorations (since they were in the midst of getting them all out). This year they are doing an animal themed tree with some really cool ornaments they ordered. The boys loved seeing it all. Drew enjoyed orange juice while we visited and Knox got a set of beads with Santa on them, to take home as his own. Here they are added to his other beads he decided to wear that day.

One of our newer neighbors is a couple where the wife is from Romania and the husband is from Germany. They were so happy to meet us, and the wife rushed back inside to grab some cookies to share with us. These cookies are a European recipe, and they are delicious.

Here are the boys getting ready to deliver to our neighbors at the end of the street. Drew's job was to carry the plate, knock on the door (or ring the doorbell), and say Merry Christmas! He did great.

Here we are on our way home. As you can see it was almost dark out. It took us just under 2 hours to deliver 11 plates, and we enjoyed every minute of it. It was great getting to visit with some of our neighbors, and it made Andy being out of town not feel as lonely. Our 12th plate was reserved for a mailman and we got to deliver that yesterday. It was definitely a success!

Riding off into the sunset....

October has come to an end....

Tonight we headed to Hallelujiah Harvest, which is our church's alternative to Halloween. I never grew up celebrating Halloween and have implemented this with our children. I'm thankful that our church has something fun to do, so the boys don't have to feel like they are missing out on fun and of course candy.

First, let me flashback to 2007. This is when I had Drew wear this chick/duck costume. I thought it was so cute! After getting a little bit of teasing from one of our dearest friends, whose name I won't mention (Brett), I decided I wouldn't make another child of mine wear this costume. I think Brett, I mean our friend, just thought it was a little girlie. The problem was we had a birthday party this morning that Drew was dressing up for. I didn't want Knox to feel left out so I dug this out of Drew's closet before we left, put it on Knox, and.....well, you can see for yourself. Adorable, right?? The worst part was, I didn't know our friend would be at the party and when he saw me from across the room, he just shook his head. I'm going to hold on to this costume for the future (just in case).

DREW 2007

KNOX 2009

Drew and Knox milking a cow at Hallelujiah Harvest.

Knox having his first ever pony ride.

This isn't this cowboys first ride. He's loving it!

Cowboy Drew

Knox got boots!

Since Drew was going to be a cowboy at Hallelujiah Harvest we needed cowboy boots. I never did find some (reasonably priced) for Drew, BUT we did find some for Knox. I'm not sure how practical they are, since I tend to have the boys dress a little preppier, but they were so cute, and he really liked them, so we bought them. Here he is trying them on for the first time at home. He does wear clothes (sometimes) :)

It's been a while....

For anyone who ever checks my blog, I am sorry that the last few months I have been MIA. I promise to attempt to do a better job of keeping up with this. Since it has been so long it's hard to know exactly where to begin catching everyone up, but since this is the last day of October, I thought I might start with some "October" themed pictures. So we'll begin with our annual pumpkin patch visit.

Knox was enjoying throwing the pumpkins. I ended that pretty quickly though, because I didn't want to have to buy all of the pumpkins.

So instead we began passing them to Drew.

Here's a group picture of all our friends. If you can't see how happy Knox is, look at the close-up that follows this picture. Am I a bad mom for making him pose when he's crying?

Here I am with the boys. Drew has been practicing his smile, and apparently Knox has been practicing his lean.

We hope you had a good October. We have enjoyed a few beautiful days, but it's too hot for the most part. We're still waiting to fall to get to Tallahassee.

Some projects last a long time...

I bought these picture frames last November and had been wanting to put them together for a long time. Since I didn't know which pictures I was going to use, the framing guy talked me into cutting my own mats. He said as long as you can measure it is not too bad. WRONG!!! I was always pretty good at math and all of my measurements were fine, but when using the blade it's very difficult to cut straight lines, and then when trying to double mat, it ends up being completely off with the first cuts. Anyway, I finished the project on Friday and I hung them up that night, so out least they are out of the corner of our bedroom. Even though a few mats will need to be redone (probably by a professional) at least it's pretty much complete.

Drew's driving...

Drew and Knox's great Mimi bought them a truck. It is amazing! The boys are having a wonderful time using it. We've been driving it in the yard, and down our street. Since our street is a cul-de-sac it's perfect. We picked out a two seater so that Knox could ride around with Drew. Since there is a seat belt, Knox is already riding along and loves it. Since getting this last week we have had to find time at least once a day to take it for a drive. Here is Knox trying it out while I was putting it together. He was a big helper!

Both boys in the assembled truck. We had to wait 18 hrs. for the battery to charge for the first time, so we kept the truck inside for the boys to sit in.

Drew gives his truck 2 thumbs up.

Here is Drew driving Knox around in the yard. There is a real radio in the truck. It picks up a lot of stations. As soon we turned it on the first time it was tuned in to our local Christian radio station which we listen to all of the time. Drew asked me for CDs for his truck, and I had to break it to him that it wasn't a CD player.

Driving down our driveway

In the yard