Christmas at the Zoo

All piled in the van on our way to the Indianapolis Zoo

Bundled up, but inside looking at the sharks

I think she's confused, but we were having a good time!

With some of the lights...she looks like marshmallow in her snow suit. It was cold-about 39 degrees, but she was toasty warm!

Family pic

Ann, Nora, Bella, & Nellie

Click HERE for a all Standeford Family picture-take by my sister-in-law, Tabatha.

Nora's First Christmas

In Pictures...

Before Christmas Eve Service



Christmas morning in her santa hat that she couldn't stand...reason why I'm holding her arms/hands down!

Opening presents with Daddy

Playing with her Little People Castle set

New Dora jammies she wore Christmas Eve

It's true, she loved the bows, paper, boxes & the TV remote more than the gifts! Good thing she technically only got 3

With Nana, Alan, Sarah, Serenity & Hunter on 12/26

Fun with Daddy & Serenity

The kiddos

Christmas 2010

In Pictures:

First Christmas with Jersey

Mom & Jersey, she got her a 'Santa Baby' t-shirt

Anthony & Beth (~19 weeks pregnant here)

Jake & his mom...they don't look anything alike...do they?!

Last Christmas as a 2 member family, well 3 with Jersey (30 weeks pregnant here!)

Isabella with her baby doll

Ann, chocolate faced after eating a cupcake! What a big ChEEsE!

Nellie and her sweet treats for the night

Gamma and her girls

Jersey, opening her stocking-the excitement we had on Christmas morning since we had already opened and used our gifts. The new camera and camcorder...the same ones I stood in the cold for on Black Friday! We relaxed and enjoyed the silence for the last year.

The bone she got in her stocking was delicious-based on the amount she devoured in 30 minutes, however, she has gotten sick twice since eating it so its gone & never to return. Too much of a good thing is not good.

I hope you enjoyed Christmas this year as much as we did.

Merry Christmas-2010

Christmas (No) Baking

Just finished with my Christmas (no) baking after a couple hours in the kitchen. Last year I did a lot of different kinds of cookies: chocolate chip from scratch, snickers surprises, sugar cookies, etc, but this year we had a lot of things in pantry that needed to be used up so I did a little no-baking! I also got a lot of coupons for free chocolate chips and refrigerated (side note: I dont know how to spell refrigerate with out specll check-I always want to put a 'd' in it!) chocolate chip cookie dough (the break and bake kind) those expired on 12/31/10-so I needed to bake them up too. This year it was puppy chow-we had left over chex cereal that wasn't going anywhere fast, no bake cookies-oats that my boss gave me because she wouldn't use them, the chocolate chip cookies, and I guess I did bake a little-chocolate cupcakes so that I could put red and green sprinkles on them for Jake's work for tomorrow. Even though I didn't make anything from 'scratch' or bake much I still had tons of dishes! That's the part I hate about cooking or baking. an you tell chocolate and peanut butter are my favorite? I thought about making peanut butter fudge, but I think I'll save that for next year...I'm tired!

Later tonight we are going on a drive to look at Christmas lights. Jake knows of some houses in Avon/Brownsburg that have music that plays through the radio so he's going to take me on a ride-we might get ice cream too (mmmmm)!

Gift Exchanging

Doing a gift exchange always sounds like a good idea until it happens. The kind of gift exchange I'm talking about is the kind where you bring a gift for male/female and draw numbers and pick gifts and the other people involved have a chance to steal your gift. We do this at one of our family Christmas party's and have done it for other things too-so we've had a lot of experience. I've come to the conclusion that the gift I take is always the one I want to take home...so after this year I have decided not to participate! Call me scrooge, but when I buy a gift for something like that I try to find a good deal where you are getting more than the amount because I found it on sale-where most people just take face value and spend the amount no matter what the gift ends up being. I find that mine suits me best anyway-so why ruffle my own feathers over a game that has been chaotic or frustrating in the past. Does anyone out there know what I'm talking about?

A little behind this year...

I have zero, I mean a big fat zero, Christmas gifts purchased this year as of now! Compared to last year, this is bad becuase I had almost all finished at this point. I guess I'm not that worried about it too much-I just realized that next week was Thanksgiving and black Friday so I better get moving! I just cant believe its nearing the end of November...time is flying by. I'm ready to change to our Christmas decorations since we have lots more of those than any other season. One thing I'm dying to buy is another set of cinnamon pine cones-mmmm my favorite. I went to JoAnns for some crafting stuff and I could smell them right when the door opened. Its going to be here before we all know it!

Christmas Shopping

So the last few weeks I've been spending part of my days off Christmas shopping all over the place! Its a lot easier to find a deal if you are looking, although Jake would say its a lot easier to spend money if you're in a store... He has a point, but still. We actually have a lot of people crossed off and done! My latest was a gift at Kohl's that was regularly priced at $49.99, but was on sale a week and a half ago for $19.99-but they were out. So, I got a rain check and in the mail that same week I received a $10 off your entire purchase from Kohls. So my once $49.99 gift was only $10.48. Thats the steal of the season!

~

I dont seem to have a problem buying things for anyone other than Jake. He never wants anything, never thinks of things he could use, and never shops unless I ask him to come with me! With that being said, you can see where I would have run out of ideas-especially since his birthday was in September. If we had a house I could go off of that and buy him something for that, but there are somethings that work well in a house and not an apartment! If you have any ideas about what things you think would make a great Christmas gift, I could use the help. I try to look at electronics, his hobbies, etc for ideas but I'm blank and it's sad! After all Christmas is only 40 days away!