Andrew's grand takeover

It's been a crazy Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  It started with the stomach flu that slowly moved itself to each of our youngest children.  Luckily nobody was sick during the few days before and on Thanksgiving and we enjoyed a fantastic holiday with my family.  Each of my siblings and their families were here- something that has not happened in a very long time.  Because we were all here, we even had our annual Christmas party early.  

Last night, Carter finally got that dreaded stomach flu and while ditching church with him today, I loaded all my holiday pictures getting them ready to post.  During my 3 hr (not even kidding here) nap with Steve this afternoon, Andrew saw my pictures and wrote for me.  It was "SO" kind of him.  As sort of sweet revenge for his sarcastic-ness, I'm leaving his commentary as is.  

Please enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday pictures as described by a 14 year old boy.  I was kind enough to check for spelling and grammatical errors for him (well, most of them).  I'm a peach…I know.

 Saylor fell asleep.

 Colby fell asleep.

 Wow!  Look at that Christmas tree!

 Look at my beautiful family.

 Saylor likes to fall asleep with Icey.

 I qualified for the 55+ menu AT DENNY'S.

 The three buddies.

 BACON!!!!!!

THE KIDS

 Uncle Jon

 the beast himself

 look at that nice view

 Thanksgiving

" I wish that I could be like the cool kids"

 swagolicious

 Who cares about Thanksgiving?  Christmas time!!!!

 family shooting 

 shooting 'dem clays!!!!

 more pics

 the bruiser

 little kid lover

 trying to be a beast but sadly unsuccessful

 gift exchange

 nativity

 MOO!!

 we try

 the Christmas pjs

 gift exchange

 the best gift known to man

 Looks like he's getting a Harley for Christmas

 lottery tickets

the wanna-be pro wrestler

Jill here again.  Please remind me to close my open blog windows next time I take a nap.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And the Party Just Keeps Going and Going

Because her friend party just wasn't enough, we went to Grandma Dixon's house to celebrate Saylor's birthday again with Uncle Spencer Sunday night.  His birthday was last week. 

 Happy Birthday Spencer!

We had cake,

and stories...

and Saylor got a crazy cute puppy purse that she has named Sparky.

(I love how she names everything she has.)

Yesterday was Saylor's actual birthday.  

So we had party number three!

(Because its totally normal to have three parties for a five year old right?  RIGHT?)

Our attempt at a picture of all our five children.  This is no easy feat.

See the smile on this girl's face with her $3 Target dollar-spot lunch pail?

I should have know and just stopped with the presents there.  She would have been fine.

But oh no...

I had to wrap up the Madame Alexander doll I bought for her three years ago.

As you can tell by her face, she was less than thrilled.

Colby was even creeped out.

It took some explaining to Saylor about how I had a similar doll as a little girl, how I loved her, and how I waited until Saylor was old enough to take care of her before I gave this type of doll to her. 

She succumbed to the doll's charms just like I knew she would.  Saylor has Great Grandma Walker blood in her…it was inevitable.

The fiery glow of trick candles and birthday songs.

Truly Saylor was spoiled rotten this birthday week.  Being my only girl, I don't mind the spoiling as long as she appreciates it.

On another note…I couldn't pass up this Wookie shirt for my little wookie.

He is a wild one indeed!

Frozen Party Overload

I'm giving fair warning here.  If anyone out there doesn't want to see a billion pictures of little girls in dresses eating all kinds of sugar and presents galore…then look away.

This is a Frozen Party Overload post.

Saylor's 5th birthday party was this morning.

She wanted a Frozen party…of course she did.  What little girl on earth right now doesn't want a Frozen party?

Figuring that friend parties are few and far between, I decided to go a little crazy.  We had costumes, and decorations, and ice cream, and cookies, and party favors, and snowmen and balloons.  To put this not quite so delicately, a winter wonder land threw up in my house.

And Saylor loved it so much.  

She wore her new Elsa dress most of the day and was in Frozen heaven.

This is her "Let it Go" pose.

Not sure what this face was but it's pretty cute just the same.

Notice her hands.

She wanted me to be sure to get a picture of the little plastic broach on the dress with the picture of Elsa.  That is her favorite part of her princess dresses.  "That's how you know I'm Elsa!"

Yep!  She's five!  

(Or will be on Tuesday!)

Then Saylor tried out the twirling factor of her new dress. 

I think the dress performed to Saylor's satisfaction.

Having only one girl, I've never been able to bask in the pure giddiness that is a little girl in a flowey dress before Saylor.

I would be putting it lightly to say it makes my heart swell.

It's pretty much happiness spinning in gobs of material.  Heaven.

I'm grateful Saylor is all things feminine and dainty.  (ok…except for when she acts just like her brothers and burps on demand.  There is nothing dainty about that.)   

And then the party started.

The girls were asked to come in their favorite fairy tale costume.

We had three Elsa's (of course we did!), a Cinderella, a Snow White, a Snow Princess, a Pirate Princess, and a little girl who is epic enough to come in her regular clothes.   (I love that Laney girl!)

One game we played was Build a Snowman.

This was team 1.

My favorite picture of the party!

Snowman team 2.

Presents!

Ok…maybe this was my favorite picture of the party.

The light bounced off the toy packaging and illuminated the girls faces.  Pretty cute stuff.

We had decorated snowflake sugar cookies and hot chocolate with whipped cream.

It was a bit of a sugar overload!

Is it bad to say that Preslee has my favorite smile?  Because it is!

We then ate ice cream (snowballs) and sang Happy Birthday!

After the sugar gluttony, the girls ran downstairs to play in Saylor's room until their parents came to get them.

This is what was left over.

I think by the mess I can consider the party a huge success!