Organizing Tizita's new toys

John and I are up in Oshkosh to celebrate New Year's Eve. If you have followed my blog, you know how much I dislike NYE and am always looking for something new and different to do that night. So much pressure to do something to ring in the New Year. I usually like it to just come in like any other night. I don't buy the whole out with the old, in with the new business. That is hopw the idea to come to Oshkosh was born. Courtney, Paul, and Tizita are celebrating Christmas with Paul's family in Minnesota over the weekend, so the Van Auken B and B had a vacancy. In fact, we are the only guests for the next two nights.
While I was up here, I offered to organize Tizita's playroom and put away her new Christmas toys. That is what I spent hours doing today along with John's help. We like the finished product and we think Tizita will like it, too.
We put up a new full length mirror in her playroom so when she dresses up in her new dress up clothes, she can see herself. We bought her a bunch of dress up outfits for Christmas.

I moved many of her books into her bedroom into the empty areas in this piece of furniture. The girl has many, many books so it was nice to find a new place to store some of them.

I put her wigs up on top of this shelf which also houses play shoes, jewelry, baby clothes, hats, and purses.

We put up these hooks so she could easily hang up some of her dresses.

And finally, we set up this little area in the kitchen for her grocery store. She got a new cash register for Christmas and she is all about playing store. You can also see her Easy Bake Oven on the table in the background. I am excited to hear her feedback on the new look here at her house.

Tomorrow John and I are going out for dinner to an Italian restaurant here in Oshkosh and then ringing in the New Year with a few wines and some scrabble back here at the B and B. I am looking forward to our little celebration.

Happy New Year everyone!

Christmas Memories 2010

Tomorrow Courtney, Paul, and Tizita will leave and go home to Oshkosh, thus officially ending our Christmas celebrations. We had a full and fun five days spent with family. Here are a few of the highlights: John and I began with a lunch on Christmas Eve day at Applebee's. Here I am with my Cosmo toasting in the holiday in a fun and festive way. After our lunch we opened our gifts to one another. New underwear, cigars, a calendar, and a Rose Bowl shirt for John and a lego necklace, new homemade (not by John) purse and wallet for me. Great gifts all the way around.

We spent Christmas Eve with Kev, Mal, Mom, Lis, and Nathan at Kev's house. We started our partying earlier than previous years due to the fact that we did not go to church this year. We all agreed it was a fine decision and the day seemed much longer. We shared lots of laughs, silly memories, and good food and drinks.

On Christmas Day, Coutney, Paul, and Tizita met us at Jack and MaryAnn's. Jack was home from the nursing home for the day, so that made it very nice. He was doing well and seemed to njoy his Christmas at home. Tizita became very attached to this doorstop dog at their house.

Tizita brought this alarm clock along so we could all wake up bright and early on the day after Christmas Day to see if Santa had come.

Indeed he did come, as he always does. Here is the obligatory pajama archway picture as we all look at gifts for the first time.

Tizita inspects the carrot which the reindeer had chomped on.

After opening our gifts it was time for the second brunch with our famous donut holes. Courtney is wearing her new apron from Alissa. We exchanged names this year among the six of us and we all agreed it was the best way to go.

John and I bought Tizita a bin full of dress up clothes. Here she is in her Princess Tiana dress with her Princess Tiana doll.

All the ladies had to get in on the dress up fun, too.

On Monday, Courtney, Paul, Tizita, John, and I went into Madison to do some shopping at Trader Joe's and have ice cream at Ella's Deli. Tizita is riding the mechanical horse at Ella's. We took a tour of Lake Mills and then had pizza and beer at the Rose Garden. Another fine, fun day.

On Tuesday, today, John and I took Tizita sledding down the big hill at the swimming pool. It is a big hill, but she loved it. We also collected sticks for a roaring fire-the perfect way to end the Christmas celebrations.

Time to get the tree down now and get on with the new year.

Merry Christmas

I am sitting here in the quiet of the living room with just the Christmas tree lights on. I have been up since 5:30 getting an egg dish ready and relaxing on the computer. Tiz is sleeping in with Grandpa and everyone else is still asleep, too. As soon as Tiz wakes up she will see that Santa came last night and there are many presents under our tree for her. I cannot wait, but yet I am enjoying this last few minutes before the paper starts flying.

It has been an awesome Christmas. I will update with many pictures later so I can remember the special moments. In the meantime, Merry Christmas wherever you are!

Some thoughts on the Eve of Christmas Eve

Today we celebrated Jesus' Birthday in school. Here are 35 of my Preschoolers just before the party started. It was a fun filled celebration and I am sure each of these little ones knows the real meaning of Christmas.
I was very proud of this circle. The kida actually stay seated in this circle for a good fifteen minutes singing songs with me. I was very impressed with myself, not to toot my own horn or anything!

The best part of the day was coming home to bake cut outs with Tizita. Mallory came over and joined in the baking business, too. Tizita is quite the little baker. She could roll that dough out with no problem, cut the cookies, put them on the cookie sheet, and then frost them like a pro.

Of course, she is like her Aunt Alissa and had to get the flour all over herself. Used to drive my dad crazy the way my girls would get flour everywhere! There are so many happy memories tied up in baking Christmas cookies, but I just don't have time to go into them here, suffice it to say, it was a fun, memorable afternoon.

Tomorrow we begin our celebrations. I am excited with the arrangments this year. Santa will even make a stop here one day after Christmas with our presents just like he used to do in the days when the girls were young.

I want to wish you a very Merry Christmas. I hope you spend it with the ones you love and always remember the real reason for the celebration.

Thank you for commenting

I just wanted to thank those of you who have left me a comment so far.
To Verna: Thanks for coming by and reading. I enjoy your blog and I don't always comment on yours either. I hope you keep coming by often.

To Kim: I read your blog regularly, too. I enjoy catching a glimpse into the life of the Brockmans especially little Kenley. I don't always comment there either. I hope you will continue to stop by often.

To Laura: I am so glad you still come by and catch up on things. I follow you on FB and am able to keep up with little Aiden that way. No need to comment, just glad you are here at times.

To Lulu: So excited to meet a new reader! Please let me know via comment on your "news" this Christmas. How exciting! Thanks for visiting here and for commenting.

Merry Christmas to anyone else who comes by. Please leave a comment if you are visiting and have not left one yet.

Another Christmas office party for the books or in this case, for the blog

Over the last 35 years, I have gone to many, many office Christmas parties with John. Since he has had at least nine employers over those years there have been many different themed parties as well as way too much small talk for me. I think we have gone to most of the parties. As I recall at least one employer opted for a honey glazed ham instead of a party which suited me just fine. I have always dreaded the required summary of the business year. I find it boring and the tooting of one's own horn. I have also dreaded the necessary small talk with people that I don't really know or care about but such is the business of Christmas office parties.

You may recall that I had quite the fun time at John's party last year due in part to the amount of hurricanes consumed. But, alas after the lay off we would not be attending that business's party again.
This year's party was held at the Green Acres in Sauk City. There were just thirteen people attending which is the whole office except for two single guys who were not able to attend. The thirteen included the owner, Cheryl, her husband, Scott, their two teenage sons, her dad who started the company and is now 87, and four other employees and spouses.
The small talk was very easy this year. These people were very friendly and I really enjoyed them. It reminded me of our very first Christmas party in Elkhorn and the reason was because of the ages of the other employers.
At that very first party all the other employers were our age (young) and just beginning their lives, having their children, and our interests were similiar. We became fast friends with those people and I felt the same way about the people last night due to the fact that they were our age within ten years, both older and younger and we had lots in common again. All in all, it was a great, fun night which ended early because that is how it is with older people.

Here is the restaurant which is really a lovely place and the steaks were yummy.

This is the motel we stayed at which is across from the restaurant. It wasn't fancy, but we got the upgraded "big" room so that was nice.

The decorating in the room was a bit quaint to say the least. The phone was a princess trimline and this is the table in between the beds. Notice the clock, you usually don't find these in most motel rooms.

And here is our big room.

Here are the rules posted on the wall. Simple place but many rules.

So another Christmas party down. I hope we are with these people again next year, but we all know we have no control over that.

Remember to check out my previous post and leave a comment.

Where are all these viewers coming from?

When I check my stats on this blog, I notice that it gets lots of hits from foreign countries as well as many hits from the U.S. I was just wondering who these people might be, so I am asking a favor of you. If you came to my blog, please let me know who you are and where you are from. I know it takes a bit to leave a comment, but I would appreciate it.
Thanks for visiting and Thanks for commenting.

And the Party continues...

This will be my last installment of Tizita's fourth birthday party here at our house. Here she is one more time with a peice of her yummy Candyland cake. I bought her the cupcake dress especially for her birthday. She sure wears it well! I ordered Candyland party supplies from an online party store. Here we are sporting the hats. Tiz is enjoying her root beer from Lis and Cheddah.

We also celebrated Mallory's 18th birthday. Here are the two birthday girls.

We gave Tiz a pink Disney boombox with microphone. She certainly had a lot of fun singing for all us once she got over her initial stage fright.

Tizita hung up her tights on Saturday night and Santa made a stop and filled her tights with some goodies. She was so excited and it helped me remember that magic that only Santa brings to a little one.

Here she is dressed in her new dress, also from me and Grandpa ready to go sing in church with her preschool class.

Due to the blizzardy conditions, I was worried about how many of my 37 students would show up for our Christmas singing. I knew Tiz would be there, but wasn't sure about anyone else. To my pleasant surprise 22 children weathered the storm and sang beautifully.

It was the perfect way to end the birthday weekend!

And here is one proud grandma and her little four year old. (Well, almost, technically not four until the 19th)

Snow Fun

Part of Tizita's Birthday celebration included some quality Gram/Tiz time in the snow. The temps were in the high 20's on Friday and we took advantage of that. We made snow angels. Tiz made the first one and asked me to make one. At first, I said, "I only have my jeans on and I don't want to get wet," but then I figured why not, so I joined in the angel making fun. Here is my angel.

After making numerous angels, we headed to our little hill in the back. We both had fun sliding down the hill on our slippery jackets until we made it down to the bare grass.

Going down the hill was easy and fast, but getting back up presented more of a challenge to us. Sometimes we would slip right back down and laugh so hard. It was a fun time for sure.

We tried to make a snowman, but the snow was not good for packing so we had to put that idea on hold until the next snow adventure.

Tizita's sled was no where to be found, perhaps it is up at her house in Oshkosh, so I decided we should go looking for some cardboard to use as a sled. We found some in the garage, found out later that John was using it to protect our screen doors, but who knew? The fun we had with that cardboard sled was way more important than protecting any old doors!

Tiz would direct the sledding and tell me how we were going to ride down each time. More laughs and memory making together. I pulled her on the cardboard sled and we walked over to the pool to check things out. All in all it was a perfect snow day for us.

This week we are in the deep freeze and I am missing temps in the 20's. Funny what becomes comfortable to us in the winter.

More Birthday coverage coming soon.

As a note to myself because I will forget the details. Tizita and Courtney came on Thursday AM for school. I had half a day due to Christmas practice. Courtney stayed overnight and came to help with our chapel singing on Friday AM. Half day of school again so Courtney headed back to Oshkosh while Tiz and I baked, played outside, napped, and spent the evening playing with Grandpa. Courtney, Paul, Lis, and Nathan all arrived on Friday night due to snow predicted on Saturday which did come by the way. On Saturday we celebrated Tiz's birthday all day and into the night. On Sunday my class sang in church during the blizzard. 22 of my 37 were there and the singing was terrific. We had lunch on Sunday and everyone headed home. It was a perfect weekend and a wonderful birthday celebration for Tiz.

Candyland cake

One of my Preschoolers was cutting food pictures out of magazine and she found a Candyland cake. It immediately caught my eye and I decided then and there that I would be making that cake or one like it for Tizita's fourth birthday.
Little did I know that when I googled "candyland cake" I would find hundreds of different ways to decorate the cake. I took ideas from some of the sites and from the picture that Laura had cut out and added a few of my own designs to make the cake.
I knew that I would have a problem making the cake, getting it out of the pan, and frosting it so I took the easy route and had Walmart bake the cake, frost it with white, and spray it with green. Then I was ready to decorate it.
I also decided it would be wise to let Tiz make and decorate her own cake while I worked on the Candyland cake, so here she is licking her beaters after mixing up her own cake. Then she frosted the cake all by herself.

After that, the fun really began as she and I decorated our cakes with lots of candy.

Below you can see Tiz's finished cake. She said it was so much fun to decorate it all on her own. As you can see, she used lots of candy.

This is my finished Candyland cake except that you cannot see the castle of King Candy. It was a big gingerbread house cookie that I propped up behind him. I also had not made Grandma Nut's house yet because I did not have the circus peanuts I needed. All in all, I think it was a pretty awesome cake and I know that Tiz enjoyed it.

Here is the candle blowing and you can see by the look on her face just how much she enjoyed those two cakes. That smile alone is worth everything! I hope Tiz will remember these two birthday cakes for a long time.

What will I ever do to top this cake in years to come?

I will be posting some more pictures from the birthday soon.