Results Revealed - 2nd Annual Gingerbread House Contest

Thank you all for voting in our Gingerbread House Contest. Here are the results:

Best Overall:

This ended in a two way tie between this house

And this house

Most Creative:

This was also a tie, and I acted as tie breaker

Funniest:

Winter Wonderland:

Martha Stewartest:

Christmas House:

2nd Annual Gingerbread House Contest

Last year was our family's 1st annual Gingerbread House Contest. It took place in Dallas Texas with family members who were celebrating Christmas together before Sam and Teresa's wedding. My family missed out because we were in St. Louis celebrating Christmas with Steve's family before traveling to Dallas for the wedding. Apparently the contest was so much fun, we have decided to make it an annual event. Last Tuesday we held our contest. It was a fun night. We want YOU to vote on the houses and determine our winner. You can vote for the "Best Overall House" to the right of this blog post. After voting for the Best Overall, please vote for each house in the following categories:

Most Creative

Funniest

Winter Wonderland

Martha Stewartest

Christmas House

HOUSE #1

HOUSE #2

(the other side of this house has a person's name on it)



HOUSE #3

(the back of this house is eating the chickens in the yard)

HOUSE #4

HOUSE #5

Don't forget to vote on the side of the blog for the "Best Overall" and vote for each house in one of these categories: Most Creative, Funniest, Winter Wonderland, Martha Stewartest, Christmas House. Polls will be open until midnight Christmas Day. The winners will be announced on Monday, December 26th and the creators of each house will be revealed. Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving In St. Louis - Day 6: Guns, A Flash Mob, Some History, Food, Dancing, And Lots And Lots Of Fun

Friday, November 25, 2011

Our last day in St. Louis. We woke up early (for us on vacation) and went down to Main Street in St. Charles. St. Charles is the suburb of St. Louis where Steve grew up, and the Historic Main Street is a special place for his family. If you click here it will take you to the St. Charles website and a picture of my Father-in-Law.

They have fun Christmas Traditions on Main Street, and this was the opening day. We went for the opening ceremony where Santa and all the other characters came in.

All the characters have their own cards that the kids can collect. Our girls had fun going around to all the characters and collecting cards.
St. Charles was the first state capitol for Missouri. It is the third oldest city West of the Mississippi. And it was the last "civilized" stop for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Here are the kids and Heidi by a Lewis and Clark statue that is right by the Missouri River.

Everyone else had things to do that morning so we were by ourselves on Main Street. By the time we were done, everyone was getting ready to meet up for our next adventure. We stopped for lunch at Taco Bell and the kids were able to fulfill their plans of a flash mob where they sang and did the actions to the "Taco Bell" camp song they had been singing all week.

Then we all went to Sheila's Dad's house. He has property where we could shoot guns, and Steve was itching to try out his new gun Mike had brought to him. We spent a couple of hours shooting.
Emily, Spencer, Zac, Sierra and Asher

It's pictures like these that make me so sad that the cousins, who have so much fun together, live so far apart.

Meagan and Aubrey Ed helping Addy shoot

Steve and Emily

Steve and Aubrey

Zac

Emily, Meagan, Asher and Sierra

Zac trying out Asher's Bow. He has been begging me ever since to buy him one.

After we got our guns on, we went to Steve's Dad's house for our Thanksgiving Dinner.

Amanda and her fiance were able to come from Illinois to be with us.

We stayed at Grandpa's house until late that night. It was our last time to all be together on this trip. We played games, at one point we had the majority of us playing the wii dance game together. We ate, we talked, we laughed. We just had fun being together.

All of us playing wii Just Dance 3

Zac saying good-bye to Uncle Mike

Saying good-bye to our hosts, the Hobbs, the next day before we rolled out of town.

I look at this picture and see a bunch of cute kids, but it reminds me of how I felt that morning, and that wasn't good. This was the day I woke up and tried to pack us up but I could hardly move. I didn't know it at the time, but I was coming down with bronchitis. And here I am 22 days later, and I still haven't fully recovered. Oh well. I'm sure one day I will be back to "normal".

It was a fun trip. We had a blast. We loved being with family. The kids had so much fun with their cousins. It will provide us with fun memories for years to come. I am so thankful we were able to go.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Thanksgiving In St. Louis - Day 5: Thanksgiving! Kind Of.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving in St. Louis has finally arrived. Just kidding! On Thanksgiving Steve's family goes to their in-laws. Then they all get together on Friday for their Thanksgiving celebration. Mike and Sheila and their kids had just come into town the night before from Kentucky. Our two families spent the day together. First we went to see Arthur's Christmas in 3D. Then we went to where else for our Thanksgiving feast, but Jack-in-the-Box. It is where we had our Christmas dinner last year when we were in the St. L. We wanted to keep with tradition. And it was the only place open. And we don't have Jack-in-the-Box where we live so that makes it extra special. Except they were out of everything we wanted to order. We just kept going down the list until we found something they had.

Steve and Mike watched the Cowboy's game on Steve's phone

After our Thanksgiving Day Feast, we all went back to Steve and Heather's house. The girls had a plan. Dan. We were going to camp out at Walmart. Heather, Lisa, Samantha, Sheila, Sierra, Rhonda and I got our game faces on and headed over to Walmart around 6pm. We left all the kids at home unsupervised, uh, I mean with the dads who were playing their war game. Again. So yeah, unsupervised.

What we wanted went on sale at 10pm and then other things at 12am. What we all wanted, there were only 26 or 36 of them in the whole store, I can't remember. And they were giving out numbers to people. We all thankfully got a number. Even though we had a number, we had to wait in line and if we had to leave the line we had to sign out and we could only take two 15 minute bathroom breaks before we had to sign ourselves back in. What we were getting was that good. Let me just tell ya. I can't wait for Christmas to be here. Sheila, Rhonda, Sierra and I were all camped out for the big thing while Heather was camped out in another spot ready to grab a whole bunch of stuff I can't say right now. Lisa and Samantha also were camped out between certain items. They had checked out the supply of what we all wanted and had their game plan as to what they were going to grab first and then where they were going next. I think that those of us camped out in the Pharmacy department had it pretty easy compared to everyone else. Here we are playing Skip-bo with our friend Brian, who we met while sitting on the floor at Walmart. We also played several rousing games of farkle to pass the time.

I wish I had been able to take a picture of everyone else who was with us. Here is a picture of the area poor Heather was in. I took this picture after we got our item. It was CRAZY!

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Monday Morning Musings - My 38th Birthday In Which I Sound Like I'm 83 With A Bad Habit

It's that time of year again! I'm another year older and wiser too. 38. That's how old I am. I'm good with that. I feel like I mature a little each year and become a little more of the person I was meant to be. It's like I'm growing into myself. So even though I'm only 2 years away from the big 4-0, I'm not as freaked out as I thought I'd be. So here's to 38! Hopefully it will be the best year yet!

I had to go this morning to help in Aubrey's class at school. When I got home Addy and I had a snack and then I sat down on the couch to read a chapter in my book. About 45 minutes later I woke up and felt so guilty that I was reading/sleeping when I had so many other things I needed to do. But then I remembered it was my Birthday so I got up, used the bathroom, and sat right back down on the couch and read another chapter. It was great, but I still have so much to do...

I am trying really hard not to freak out at the lateness of the season. I feel like I missed the whole first half of December. I spent the last 1/2 of November in trip mode. There was getting ready for the trip, then the trip itself. Then I got home from the trip and was so sick. Then I had trip/sickness catching up to do. I haven't done much to get ready for Christmas and usually I'm about done by now. I like to have it all done and then sit back and enjoy the season. But I have a lot to before any sitting back can occur. And how do I handle it? I spend the day napping and reading on the couch. That's really good Allyson.

You really gotta love it when your 5 year old comes running into the room with a phone in her hand all panicked like saying, "I CALLED 911 AGAIN! I CAN'T BELIEVE I CALLED 911 AGAIN!!!" Yes, she called 911. Again. For the third time. This time it was with an old cell phone she was playing with and she said she didn't think it would work. Even though I had told her before that it would.

So after she called 911, she told me that she is even more scared of police than she was before. Great. She was scared of them before. Then she met a very nice police officer and I thought she was over it. But then, about a month ago something happened to change all that. What do you think would be the worst thing to happen to a small child who is scared of police? She could be in the car when her mother gets pulled over by one. Yes. We were on our way home one night. I had all the kids in the car. We were having fun singing Christmas Carols at the top of our lungs. I may or may not have come to a complete stop at a the 4 way stop sign coming into our neighborhood with no other cars present. I may or may not have been pulled over and given a warning. This may or may not have caused my 5 year old who was 4 at the time to have a major panic attack. And this may or may not have scarred her for life. She freaks out and starts screaming and crying anytime anyone thinks about doing anything slightly out of the ordinary while we are driving. Like the time we were on our trip and the kids were trying to put a movie in the dvd player. They dropped it and we were in the middle of nowhere so I told Zac to get undone from his seat and pick the movie up. Oh my good golly miss molly. You would have thought someone was pulling her toe nails out with a pair of pliers. I thought she was going to blow a blood vessel right then and there. And heaven forbid we ever pass a police car while we are driving...

I am pretty much over my horrible awful illness. However I don't sound like it. I sound awful. And each day the awful gets worse. Like right now I sound like an 83 year old scary woman who has been smoking a pack a day for 75 years. I don't know why it is taking so long for my voice to go back to normal. It must have something to do with bronchitis, but whatever it is, it's annoying. And it really upsets me the most because I can't sing. This sick voice isn't giving me the sexy husky singing voice I wish it was. It is giving me the sound of an ox dying a slow torturous death singing voice. I am a singer. Not like a singer because I can sing well singer, but a singer because I love to sing and singing makes me happy and I sing all the time singer. So when my favorite Journey song came on the radio the other day while I was cleaning house and the sound of my voice frightened even myself, I had to stop singing. And when I took the kids ice skating Saturday followed by a trip to the store for hot chocolate and we had Christmas songs playing on the radio and I couldn't sing along because my kids kept begging me to stop....And yesterday when we were in church and they were singing Christmas hymns and I couldn't sing along....and when I was trying to sing and dance with Steve last night and he nicely asked me to stop singing...I can't. Handle. Not. Singing....

So yes, I did take the kids ice skating Saturday. They are building a new shopping center near our neighborhood and they have an outdoor ice skating rink and Santa's village that just opened. The kids have never been ice skating so we decided to go check it out. That was some messed up ice, that's all I have to say. But it was fun. Zac, Emily and Aubrey just took off on their own like they had been skating all their lives. Addy needed a little help from me for a while, but then she got to where she could skate on her own. After skating we went to see Santa next door. It was a fun little outing.

Thanksgiving In St. Louis - Day 4: Art And Animals

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Day four started out with another trip across the river. The girls helped us get safely across with their river crossing ritual. Our destination? Forrest Park. It is a huge beautiful park in St. Louis and was home of the 1904 World's Fair and Summer Olympics. Our first stop in Forrest Park was the Art Museum.

Aunt Heidi, Uncle David and all the kids

Emily, Aubrey and Meagan

After getting a little culture into these kids, we walked over to the Zoo, where they felt a little more at home.

These penguins are up high, above our heads. I was walking past one when it almost violently pooped on me. I was about 2 inches away from getting it right in the face. Thankfully my timing was spot on that day.

The St. Louis Zoo is one of the most beautiful zoos I have ever been to. Because I have been to so many different zoos before in my life time. But still, it is a beautiful zoo with beautiful buildings. And it's free! And it was cold but not freezing so we were able to enjoy our day there.

Steve and Roy

Grandpa with 9 of his 15 grandchildren

Aubrey and Josh

After the Museum and the Zoo, we all went to Ed and Lisa's house where we had pork tacos waiting in the crock pot for dinner. Then it was a long night of hanging out and playing games. The dance game that we had rented the night before for the wii was constantly being played the entire night. Sometimes there were only a few kids playing, sometimes we had all the kids and some of the adults playing. We all had fun with this game.

Finally! Mike and Sheila and their 3 kids arrived from Kentucky! Steve was so excited for them to get there. Because he was finally able to see his brother. And his new gun that Mike had been keeping safe for him.

These crazy texting cousins, Spencer and Sierra, were finally reunited

Addy had been waiting patiently our whole trip for Reagan to get there. Reagan is the closest to Addy in age of all the cousins.

Cheeks the squirrel came out for a visit

Mike wasted no time getting in on the Axis and Allies game the boys were playing

We had cake to celebrate all the November Birthday's. The Birthday people are from left to right: Addy, Asher, Tyler, Austin and Rhonda. Amanda now lives in Illinois and was unable to be there that night so we called her on the phone and sand Happy Birthday to her.

Best Cousins Em and Meg

Reagan and Aubrey

Austin and Asher

The girls started making our attack plan for the next days Gray Thursday shopping expedition.

Tortilla face Addy

Spencer and Josh. They had missed each other so much and they were so excited to spend some quality time together.

I can't remember what time it was when we finally called it a night, but I am sure it was already Thanksgiving Day before we headed home and fell into bed. It was a fun day.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three