Krampus

My first birthday after moving to Florida, Tyler decided to get me an elliptical machine (YAY!). We looked and looked on craigslist, and finally found one that seemed perfect. We called the guy selling it and drove out to take a look at it. Once we got to the house, we checked it out and decided it was exactly what we were looking for. While we were purchasing it, we got to talking to the couple selling it (and talked and talked). When we left their place I was telling Tyler that I thought we should try and hang out with them sometime and as I was saying it, his phone rang. It was the couple asking if we'd want to hang out and telling us not to think it was weird that they called and asked us out. They are now some of our closest friends in Florida.

We love Kathy and Wade, not only because they gave us a fantastic deal on an elliptical machine but also because they are way fun.
 This year for Christmas Kathy decided she wanted to throw a Christmas party so she went and found a Santa suit and talked her husband into dressing up for the kiddos.

That was not all they had in store for us. They also had a ton of very delicious treats:


Collette already at seven months old LOVES treats. She is a girl after her mother's heart.

 

The kids wrote letters to Santa and then he showed up to go over their lists with them (how cute is that?).

After Santa, the kids did some crafts. Owen and his best little girlfriend showing off some of their work:

Since we're in sunny Florida, instead of a hot drink bar, Wade and Kathy provided us with snow cones. YUMM...

There was also great conversation provided (can you see how hard I'm laughing? so hard I've got a major double chin happening. Thanks for that Kathy!)

I'm just going to go ahead and throw this picture in because I think he's super hot and she's probably the cutest little girl ever:

Also, while at the party, Tyler and I learned about a guy called Krampus. Have any of you heard of him?

This is not Krampus, this is Wade showing us a picture of Krampus on his bottle and explaining who he is.


Basically Krampus  is the anti-santa. Apparently, he accompanies Santa on Christmas Eve and if there is a bad child in the home, he puts the child into his sack and devours him for Christmas dinner. Super scary right? Not only does he sound frightening, check out what he looks like:

So next year instead of threatening your children with coal from Santa if they are being naughty, you can bring out this picture and threaten them with Krampus. I think it would work.

Nothing better than a hamster nativity set...

When I was in first grade my teacher announced that for Christmas all of the kids would be exchanging white elephant gifts with each other. I was super excited and came home to tell my mom. She explained to me that a white elephant gift was a gag gift. We found some stuff around the house and my mom sent me school with a pair of holey nylons, a pumpkin seed and this thing you throw in the fire that looked like money when it burned. I was super excited about how funny my gag gift was. When I sat down in the circle and the first kid opened their white elephat and it was a bubble gum machine I realized I might be in trouble. Why didn't the teacher explain to us that her version of a white elephant wasn't a gag gift? WHY? Anyway, the nice, smart thing to do would have been to pick my own gift so nobody else ended up with it but instead I stole that bubble gum machine and left school a happy child. I can't stop thinking about that poor little kid who left school with a pair of holey nylons. Poor child.

This year when a friend of mine invited us to an ugly sweater/white elephant party, I made sure she had gag gifts in mind when she said white elephants. Lucky for us, she did. Nothing better than ugly sweaters, good friends and joke gifts to make for a good night.

Since we live in Florida and sweaters are hard to come by, especially ugly Christmas sweaters, we had to get creative. We ended up with a nice women's Christmas vest for Tyler and a red sweater vest that I made into a Christmas one by hot glueing some velvet ribbon bows on the front and a noel decoration we found at Salvation Army for a dollar onto the back. Luckily for us, someone gave Owen a velvet sequence one peice outfit when he was born so he had the perfect outfit to wear for the occasion.

Our friends McKenzie and Luke really know how to throw a party.

 Collette thoroughly enjoyed herself (Ella loved it too)

The party was full of fantastic friends:

A full hot choclate bar: YUMMM

 Great food:

Side note: Does anything say sexy better than a christmas vest and parted hair? I think not.

 The white elephants were awesome as well. Everyone understood that they were to be gag gifts (phew) and there were some great ones to be had. Including pregnant belly paiting kit:

And the white elephant that we ended up with: A hamster nativity set.  I mean really, if any animals can play the baby Jesus, it's got to be a hamster.

This was just the beginning of our fun December. Many more blog posts about Christmas happenings to come.

Thanksgiving Dinner and Funnel Cake in one weekend? Sounds like a dream...

But it's not a dream! Here in Florida, because of the amazing weather, the Broward County Fair happens Thanksgiving weekend.

If you know me at all, you know I LOVE the fair. For the sole reason of The Zipper. When we saw that the fair was happening this past weekend, we decided we couldn't miss it. I also needed someone there who had not ridden the Zipper before and could be convinced to ride it with me. A Zipper virgin if you will. We found that person in my friend Kathy. She, her husband Wade and their son Owen joined us.
Kathy was not only a Zipper virgin but also a corn dog virgin... can you believe this? She had NEVER eaten a corn dog in her life. We took care of that in a hurry:

She enjoyed her first corn dog experience thoroughly.

Something Kathy didn't enjoy... the thought of having to throw away her garbage into this:

What about this garbage can? These guys were everywhere. I actually kind of loved them.

Owen missed out on this action above. This is what he was doing while we were enjoying our first bite of fair food.

We waited until just the right moment to wake the sleeping bear (it takes our sweet little guy a while to get in the groove after a nap, especially when he's not waking up on his own.). We knew that if we waited for this to wake him, he would be all smiles:

Really, for a two year old, does it get much better than waking up to a helicopter ride? I think not.

Next up were the animals. So in Utah, you've got some real decisions to make when it comes to the animals... do you want to hit all five or six buildings that contain cows, pigs, sheep, bunnies, chickens, and all other farm animals or do you want to pick one or two to check out? Well... in Florida, that problem is taken care of for you. There is only one building with animals to look at. It had about a million rabbits and chickens and then maybe one of each of the animals listed above. Perfect for us. Owen was in heaven.

They actually did have a few more animals over in a petting zoo.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I swear at most petting zoos, you actually get to go in the gates and pet the animals. Not here... you were able to reach your hands far enough in to pet maybe one or two of the animals.

That wasn't the only thing this petting zoo had to offer us though, it also had this guy:

Amare Stoudamier. I didn't know who he was (shocker) but apparently he is a basketball player for the Knicks so that was exciting for Tyler. Too bad when Ty asked if he could get a picture with him, the guy told him he didn't take pictures with people when he was with his family. Oh well... we snuck this one by pretending I was taking pics of these goats... TAKE THAT AMARE!

From there we headed for more rides. A couple for the kids and then the most important ride of the night.... THE ZIPPER!!!

It's almost embarassing how much I love this ride. Really... I get on it and don't stop laughing until the ride is over. And good news, Kathy even loved it. That has never happened. Usually when I find someone to go with me, the minute we are off the ride, they swear it off for the rest of their lives. YAY Kathy! So happy I found someone to share my love with.

 Yep. Loved it. Thumbs up.

We figured we couldn't end the night without one more ride for the kids and some more fair food.

Nothing better to end the night with than a giant funnel cake. We had to go to four different booths to find just the right toppings. Tyler is very particular about his funnel cake and apparently everyone else at the fair was too. Everyone wanted strawberries. When none could be found,  we settled on some cherries and chocolate sauce. I have to admit, even without the strawberries...YUMMM....

After one celebrity sighting, fair food and fair rides, we figured it was time to hit the road home. On our way out, we ran into the Puppetone Rockers. These guys drive around in this contraption, sing and play the piano (and almost run over little children). The Owen's could not get enough of these guys.

When we finally convinced Owen that it was time to go, we stepped out of the gate and there were some guys playing the steel drums. Owen can't hear music and not stop to dance:

 Where is Owen learning these moves?

Side note: On the way home in the car we asked him what his favorite part of the night was. I'm thinking he is going to say one of the rides or the petting zoo. You know what he said "Dancing to that puppet car". Lesson learned: Instead of spending $50 at a fair, go stand right outside of the fair and let your child dance for twenty minutes. He'll be just as happy.

One more thing: Because this poor little lady gets left out of a lot of these posts, let's just take a moment to look at this sweet face: We love this little girl!

Gobble Gobble

We started off the Thanksgiving holiday with Tyler getting in a little turkey bowl time while me, Owen and Collette took a bike ride (YAY! Finally got a bike trailer for the kids so we can go biking and running together again!) and prepped the house for Thanksgiving dinner.

This year we got together with four other couples. Since there were going to be 17 people in total, we decided to be super classy with our Thanksgiving decorations. We took some church tables, used some dollar store plastic table cloths (I have a $30 credit at my local dollar store. Who knew you couldn't return items to the dollar store, you could only get credit? Not me.)

Since I had one round tablecloth and one rectangle shaped tablecloth, we had to get creative to make sure we had tablecloth covering the whole table.

Should we pause here a moment to talk about my socks? This is what I look like when I mop my floors. Mismatched socks. Don't judge me.

I also got dollar store plates, cups and silverware and for decoration, we threw in the oreo cookie turkeys that Owen helped me make that morning.

 Owen helping but mostly eating all the peices of the oreo turkey. That's what happens when you make crafts with a two year old.

  I grew up with a tradition that I have tried to incorporate into our little family. It is called a Thankful box. You put it out at the beginning of November and whenever you feel thankful for something, you put it in the box. Then on Thanksgiving, right before you eat, you read everything in the box. Owen and I made our Thankful box at the beginning of the month and he and I would put thankful messages in it every few days. When our Thanksgiving company arrived, I explained to them that I would love for each of them to put something in the box as well so we could see what everyone else was thankful for. I also needed to remind Tyler to put something in there since he had passed it by each day without a glance this month. After the prayer I pulled out the Thankful box and started reading them. I soon noticed that nobody else had contributed to the box so I put it away and told everyone we should probably just go around the table and say what we were thankful for instead. I'm going to go ahead all call my friends out here... they all acted like this was something they had never heard of doing before. Is this not a Thanksgiving tradition? Come on people! Anyway, after the initial awkwardness of me forcing people to talk about what they were thankful for, the dinner was a success. Tyler had smoked a turkey for us and everything that everyone else brought was AMAZING. I love Thanksgiving. Yumm.

I'm sure you are all wondering what we had in our Thankful box right? Owen was thankful for pumpkins and crocodiles and his friends. Tyler was thankful for the thankful box and his hot wife (his words, not mine), his kids and great friends.  

And me... I'm so Thankful for Tyler. Even though Ty's work takes him away from us a lot, I am so grateful that he is such a hard worker and that he does so much for our family.  I'm so thankful for our kids and the amazing little people that they are. Lastly this year, I'm so thankful to have friends here who feel like family. Even though we couldn't be with family this year for the holiday, it was so great to have fantastic friends around to spend it with.

Happy Thanksgiving!