Christmas 2011

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of fun and family. I could sit down and write a long post with all the details but now I have to switch gears for Kate's birthday coming up on Wednesday so here are some of the highlights....

1. Christmas Eve morning - the girls and I baked cookies for Santa. Don't worry, no one else but Santa and the girls ate these cookies after I caught them licking the batter spoons and bowls...

2. Christmas Eve night - with everyones different work schedules it's a rare occurrence that the Bury - Johnson crew is all together, so of course we had to take a picture.

 3. Mimi and Poppi got Maddy a "big girl" bike. She was so excited and is already zooming around our house on it.

 4. Christmas morning - an impromptu family photo after all the chaos. Can you tell that Santa and his helper were up until 2am building a dollhouse?

5. Zack and David relaxing after all the chaos.  

6. My latest baking experiment, Vegan Red Velvet cupcakes! I am willing to bet no one could even taste the difference between these and non-vegan red velvet. Keep in mind that just because it's vegan doesn't mean it's sugar free.... Ha!

There you have it, a quick rundown on our family Christmas. Check out the web album below for more pictures.

Christmas Web Album

Character Breakfast 2011

Kate, Maddy, and Braxton with Santa Claus

Last Saturday the girls and I went to the Junior League character breakfast. Character breakfast is a super fun event were all the Disney princesses, superheroes, Santa, etc all come in costume and eat breakfast with the children. 

Last year I didn't know that children could go in costume so Maddy went dressed in "street" clothes. Boy was she upset with me that day and she didn't forget about it either.  This year she laid out her Tinkerbell costume the night before and informed me that she was going dressed up this year. In her words "mommy it's okay that you didn't know to dress me up last year, but this year I am dressing myself."

So both girls went in "costume"... And wouldn't you know that this year most kids wore their cute Christmas clothes. Go figure. Ha. Despite the wardrobe drama the breakfast was a smash hit with both girls. Kate wasn't too sure about the "characters" but she didn't throw a fit and cry. She stuck close to me and just waved. And of course Maddy was in heaven, she had to meet every princess. And for the grand finale the kids met Santa. The picture above might be my favorite Santa picture of all time. :-)

Tinkerbell Twins

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

Everyone has a "Thanksgiving" story about how something goes terribly wrong leading up to dinner time. Whether it's a dog that ate the turkey before dinner or a Dad setting fire to the deck while frying the turkey, our own Thanksgiving is no exception. We now have our own "remember that Thanksgiving when...." story.

It all started the Monday before Thanksgiving. I went to the basement refrigerator at Dad's house and noticed a very odd rotten egg smell. The refrigerator contained only bottled water and a turkey so there was nothing that appeared to be rotten. So I closed the refrigerator door and went back upstairs. I casually mentioned to Allison "hey, I noticed a funny smell in the refrigerator downstairs. Do you think it could be the turkey going bad?" 

About that time Dad and David chime in and say "yeah, we smelled the same thing earlier, is it the turkey?" Allison tried to assure us that "no the turkey is fine, it's a pre brined turkey and you must be smelling the brining solution." None of us were convinced it was the "brining solution" so Allison called the store and spoke to someone that confirmed our fear "turkeys should not smell." So the next day Allison exchanged the turkey and brought home a different turkey.

Well the story doesn't end here. Flash forward to Thanksgiving morning. Everyone is enjoying the parade on TV, there's a nice fire going in the fireplace, and the house is filled with the smell of Thanksgiving. It's a perfect morning until about two hours into Turkey roasting time when Dad frantically, yells asks, "who turned off the oven?" Everyone in the house denies touching the oven. Dad starts the oven again and announces that dinner will be a few minutes late. But the story doesn't end here either....

Another hour goes by, Dad checks the turkey and decides it's time to turn the oven down. After some more "frantic discussion" it is realized that the oven has turned off again and won't come back on. Yikes! Allison calls "the Thanksgiving emergency" hot line while David "Googles" oven repair techniques. Thanksgiving dinner was not looking good at this point. The turkey was almost done but all of the casseroles still needed to be baked.

In the back of my mind I was thinking we might have to order Chinese food for dinner and Allison will never ever cook Thanksgiving dinner again. But thanks to the kindness of a neighbor with a working oven our turkey finished roasting and our casseroles baked. Thanksgiving dinner was saved and served only two hours late!

The next morning Dad tried to start the oven just to see if it would work and you won't believe me....but the oven came on with no problem and successfully warmed up leftovers for lunch!  Go figure....

We returned home to Macon late Friday night from a wonderful week long Thanksgiving break. I've got hundreds of pictures from our adventures during the week, including Maddy's first time ice skating but they'll be posted later in the week. Right now I've got a backlog of pictures to process for Bury Cute Photography but I couldn't resist sharing our turkey story and a few of my favorite pictures from our trip.

On the "Mall" with Maddy. It was a rainy, foggy day.

David and Maddy on the "Mall" with the Capitol and carousel in the background.

Kate was asleep in her stroller for the first two pictures but she woke up in time to ride the carousel.



Today's snack is brought to you by the letter "V"

It was our turn to provide snack for Maddy's class this week. Because I am the "crazy" mom who likes to come up with a snack that starts with "letter of the week", I decided that we would make chocolate covered "V's." Chocolate cover "V's" sounded better to Maddy than bringing "vegetables."

So we took 2 mini pretzel sticks glued together with chocolate frosting and then dipped them in melted chocolate. Maddy said "they were delicious and everyone enjoyed their snack....except for one kid that didn't like chocolate and he threw it in the trash can, isn't that crazy?"

Our pretzel V's

Kate, our taste tester. Notice how she is starting to pose
for my camera. Wonder where she learned how
to do that?

A not so good picture of our final product.

Trick or Treat

Kate telling Maddy "no, mine!"
Translation: that's my candy and you better leave me alone. 

Halloween is finally over! Between a costume photo session, preschool party, Trick my Trunk at church, and then trick or treating on Monday night we've been "doing" Halloween for almost a week now. I am exhausted and really tired of candy but it was worth it because the girls had so much fun. Especially trick or treating last night.

Kate trotted around the neighborhood holding her candy filled pumpkin and she would not let go of that pumpkin. At barely 22 months old she knew it was candy and that she better protect it from Daddy and Big Sister...

And in case you didn't know, both girls dressed up as cowgirls. Below is my new favorite picture.

                            

Some of you might be thinking "look at how sweet they are and look at Kate holding Maddy's hand" but trust me, two seconds earlier the picture looked like this....

Kate really did not like Maddy being on the horse with her. In fact it took two excellent photography assistants to help put a smile on Kate's face....

Check out the web album below for pictures from all of our Halloween events....

Halloween_2011

October brings the harvest....

Today was Maddy's school field trip to Twin Oaks Fun Farm. There were not a lot of pumpkins left but we still enjoyed a hay ride, the playground, and feeding the animals. Kate was particularly interested in the donkey. The donkey made a noise and then Kate proceeded to imitate it by going "hee haw hee haw." It was pretty funny considering that she was supposed to be quiet and listening to directions on how to feed the donkey.

Maybe that's why instead of feeding the donkey Kate decided to eat the donkey food.... She seemed content to eat it until I realized that's what she was eating. After a quick finger swipe to remove the feed from her mouth, Kate got mad and never really recovered. I think she was more upset that she had to share the feed with the animals than she was mad that I told her "no"...but I could be wrong.

Then there's Maddy. She had been waiting on this field trip for weeks. At school they learned a special song to sing on the hay ride and Maddy sang it every night to "practice." I'll have to get Maddy to sing it slowly so I can write down the lyrics but it ends with "October brings the harvest." And just that one line is has been stuck in my head all day now. :-) I wish my hands were free during the hay ride so I could have captured Maddy's little face. She was so excited. All in all it was a fun morning.

Go "Bluedogs"

Jessica and Holly

 My best friend from high school and freshman roommate at UGA, Holly, has been inviting us to games and tailgating since we moved back to Georgia but for one reason or another we didn't go. Well the stars finally aligned and we went to the October 1st game against Mississippi State.

The boys (aka the Husbands) left Macon at 5am to set up the tailgate. You have to be either crazy or dedicated to UGA football to get up that early on a Saturday. I am not either one of those things so Holly and I drove up later with her son Braxton and Maddy.

Everyone had a blast that day. In fact David had so much fun I may never see him again on football Saturdays. I think he's hooked on football and tailgating. :-) Maddy and Braxton played all day long and were so good. I thought for sure they would sleep on the way home but they didn't sleep a wink. In fact they spent most of the car ride giggling over an Oriental Trading catalog. Who knew a catalog could be so funny?

The funniest part of the day was Maddy calling the "Bulldogs" the "Bluedogs"... During the game she kept yelling "go Bluedogs." So she's going to have to fix that before we can take her to another game. Ha!

Maddy and Braxton with a "Bluedog"

Click on picture below for more football pictures.