Mega Post

Okay, so it has been a long time since I have updated our blog. Even Doug has asked me when I was planning on updating it.

I spent most of the month of November in Baltimore, Maryland helping my sister Andrea. She had a beautiful baby girl named Zoee. We had a great time getting ready for the baby. The day she went into labor, we were at a karate tournament. Everyone around us thought she was crazy for staying. Then we went to a baby shower that her daughter Lindsay was throwing her. We didn't stay real long for that because the contractions were getting really bad. She was in labor all night long and had Zoee the next morning. It was so fun to be there for that. I miss them all.

I had to be back home the week of Thanksgiving because I was having everyone come to our house this year. We had turkey and all the trimmings. It was wonderful. Doug has never thought my Lemon Merngue Pies were tart enough so this year I doubled the amount of lemon and lemon zest that I put in them. He took a bite and puckered. He decided that they were more lemony than a lemon. We had a good laugh and decided that next if I half the the lemon it should be good enough. Too fun.

Christmas was great. We had all of our kids at the house. We ended up getting a lot of snow right before Christmas so everbody decided it was a good time to build a snowman. It ended up being about thirteen feet tall. It was huge. We named him "Rico" bcause the bucket that we used to get the snow to build the top was carried in an old rice bucket but it looked like it said Rico. So there you go. Brittany sacrificed her old green comb for the mustache and we used lemons for the eyes and carrots for the wicked eyebrows. He is very scarey.

We spent Christmas Eve at my dad's house. He has a big prime rib dinner every year that we wouldn't miss for anything. All of the kids got to open one gift, jammies. I ended up making 9 pairs of jammy pants. Doug is beginning to think that is a tradition that needs to end but I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I was sewwing jammies before Christmas. Maybe in a year or two when all of the kids have graduated high school I'll stop. We'll see.

Christmas morning we got up and had a nice breakfast of ham and sweet rolls. My mom came over to spend the morning with us. We opened presents and were just settling down for a long winters nap when Brittany handed each of us another gift. She got up and announced that this gift was in honor of Doug and explained that he has done so much for each of us and has been such an awesome example. She said that she wanted to do something to show him how much we all love and appreciate him. We unwrapped our gifts and found a nerf gun that was loaded and ready to go. Doug's gun, on the other hand, was still in the package. He was very confused as to why we were able to shoot him so quickly. After we got him. She explained that she had been shot randomly by Doug a few times with an old nerf gun he had found. The same with the rest of us. She thought it would be funny to get him back. We laughed alot. It was great fun.

We hope that everyone had a great Holiday Season. We love you all. Happy New Year.