Holiday Party 2011. WooHoo!!

This past Saturday evening was our (work) annual Holiday party. Sadie and Adam were my dates. We had a good time and ate some yummy food. There was a kid's room with chicken nuggets, coloring and crafts, so Sadie was happy. It was nice to see everyone and mingle. Unfortunately I didn't win any of the raffle prizes (Lots of gift cards, a gift basket, a kindle fire and an ipad 2), but it was still fun. There was a person there taking photos and these were the ones of us. I am looking forward to this weekend and celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah with our families. Adam and I only have one more gift to get for Sadie (fish) and we are going to let her pick them out herself. We are going to wrap up the tank and let her pick out the inside decorations, gravel and fish. She will have a nice little tank in her room. Hanukkah begins tomorrow night, so there will be more pictures to follow.

Winter wonderland.

Here are the decorations we made and have displayed. I have to finish the tree topper (blue snowflake). I still have to attach the piece that clips it on to the tree top! Enjoy.

Weekend arts and crafts

What a great weekend we had! Friday night, after work, Sadie, Adam and I met Kristin, Benny and Ciara at North Florida for the pond lighting. We walked all around the pond and the girls enjoyed dancing and jumping around and being silly. Saturday Gigi came over and we made holiday decorations. First we made the salt dough ornaments; Sadie really enjoyed helping me to kneed and roll the dough. I even stamped a few with ink and stamps and they came out great! After we popped those in the oven to bake, we started on painting and coloring the snowflakes, making paper ornaments and tying ribbon on the pine cones (from the yard). It was such a blast and Sadie had a great time painting and making her own ornaments. Everything turned out really neat. I even painted and glittered a big snowflake for the top of the tree! Adam and Henry even got in the spirit and helped me cut out paper snowflakes. Even after all those arts and crafts, Sadie still had a great time playing outside and riding her bike. Later in the evening, once all the decorations were dry and ready, Adam and I put the tree up and put lights on and we all decorated the tree, hung the paper chain over the tree. We also put out our menorah and hung all the paper snowflakes. What an awesome day. Sunday was a little less busy, but still fun. We took Sadie over to NE park and ran around there for a while. I LOVE taking her there. I have such good memories of that park and that neighborhood and it makes me smile to see her run around at my old stomping grounds. After the park, we got groceries, cleaned and just hung out together, enjoying the day. I am getting really excited about the holidays coming up. It was so fun doing the ornaments, etc. I am going to try and do something like that every weekend. Cookies, gingerbread house, anything else fun I can think of! Adam and I have been discussing what Sadie's "big" present will be. So far all we have is hungry hippos and some play dishes for her kitchen. We have a couple of ideas, but we'll see what happens. Pictures of the tree, ornaments and general holiday festive-ness at our house to follow.