Huge Family Christmas Party

I've been AWOL for a couple of days, but my sweetie and the Dog Walker were nice enough to take care of me. I wanted to tell you about our big family Christmas party we had on Sunday. Every year we have my brothers and sisters and their families over for dinner and Santa and a fun activity.

This year my sweetie prepared BBQ ribs and homemade rolls. I did the acquiring of food, not the actual cooking. Everyone brought a salad and we served dinner to more than 50 of us. After that Grandpa gave a speech and then we settled into our craft project.

I thought long and hard on this project. I wanted to make a family tree that would help all of us to remember names and get to know the cousins as they grow and change. The same cute girl who prepared our boards for the girl scout party put together the trees for me. They are about 3 ft tall with a gold star on top.

For the last couple of weeks I have been collecting pictures of all of the families. Then I bought plastic keychain frames and little gold hooks and we hung everyone on the family tree. Actually it was multiple family trees because we had one made for each household (if you were counting, that was 15 trees). They have the pictures on the front and the names of each person on the back.

They turned out even better than I had hoped and everyone was super excited about keeping them updated every year. After that, Santa came by to visit and he brought gifts to all the kids under 18. They loved the 3D holiday glasses that turn lights into reindeer, snowflakes and a whole range of Christmas pictures.

After eggnog shakes and exchanging of gifts, the families drifted off to their homes. I always love having everyone together, especially on holidays. There's just something about hanging out with the people we love...

Guest Blog: Scrape-A-Round Review by Sweetie

I was super excited when my wife first showed me the Scrape-A-Rounds. They looked like they would probably work well, and we were the perfect reviewers. You might say we have a lot of cars. Each night there are 3 cars, two trucks an SUV and a large passenger van parked on our driveway. At least 5 of these go out and about each day. How many vehicles are in the three-car garage?  None... unless you count bikes, trikes, skateboards, scooters and power wheels...then it's well over 25, but sadly not a single licensed vehicle gets to sleep out of the reach of Jack Frost.   

I won't say I was sad or disappointed when day after day I went out and no frost, but I was anxious to try this new product. I grew up not spending money on ice scrapers. My father was in construction including electrical and we always just used a spare light switch cover. It worked, but my hands got all frosty. Later, out of desperation, I once took the sippy lid off a kids Tupperware cup and used it to clear the windshield.   It worked so well, that’s all I used for years. The Scrape-A-Round reminded me of using the tumbler, only bigger and easier to grasp. 

The first test turned out to be a hard one. It was not just frost, but a skiff of snow followed by a bit of freezing rain. Would the Scrape-A-Round handle it? I started on my wife's SUV and then onto my precious G8. The snow and ice came right off.  (I should mention that I had applied Rain-X a few weeks ago which always makes frost removal easier.)  It worked so well I had to take a closer look. 

One of the reasons it works is because applied pressure is a much easier proposition.. no handle .. no awkward angle.. just down. Another thing I like is that there is actually an edge the looks like a little snow plow... It really worked well. Plus I loved that it took so little room in the car and wasn’t likely to put a hole in my upholstery. 

The only real downside I could see was the lack of a handle made it a bit less useful on a tall truck or van. Overall I would say this is a great scraper for a car or smaller SUV. It might be OK for a truck, big van, or large SUV... if you're 6 4 or taller and have long arms.

*** We were given a free 3-pack of scrape-a-rounds for our honest review.***

Guest Blog: 12 Siblings of Christmas by the Dog Walker

My mother asked me to write a post for her, because she was super tired after all that stress of getting ready for our traditional and yearly family Christmas party. Throughout the fall semester of college, I enjoyed two classes that helped me gain some skills. You may haven't known that I figured out how to make a slideshow or if you're a digital media expert about it, you would probably already know. Anyway, right after the semester ended for a little while, I made this video of all of my hard work of PhotoShop and figuring out how to make digitally shown on the media.I made this video that inspires both our blog and family. I call it 12 siblings of Christmas. They are shown of each sibling in the order they were given birth to our mother. I hope you enjoy it and Merry Christmas!

Running, Running, Running...

When I was a kid, I used to love Saturdays. It meant we could have pretty much the whole day to do whatever we wanted to do. My sweetie says he had to work all day on Saturdays. It's been difficult for us to mesh those two activities, but we try our best.

This morning was my kind of day. Baby Doll's basketball game was at 8:00 AM with pictures scheduled right after that. We had just long enough to eat breakfast at the ward party, regroup, and run off to Scout's game. They lost in a heart-breaker by 2 points in the last 30 seconds of the game.  Then it was pictures for her team.

By the time we finished 4 basketball games and the ward party, it was just past noon. The girls had ballet rehearsal, so I ran to the store to pick up the ribs we are having at our family Christmas party tomorrow. It the meantime, my sweetie and the Drama Queen got the kids working and helping be Christmas elves so I could take a short nap after I made two trips to the Home Depot to bring home almost everything my sweetie needs to finish the downstairs bathroom for Grandpa next week. Curly was my helper and he only dropped one box of tile as we were loading the truck, so that's not too bad.

We finished the evening with a wedding reception for a close neighbor out in Saratoga Springs and another trip to the store to get everything I forgot. The party is at 5:00 tomorrow and I'm not sure how we are going to pull everything together by then, but somehow we always seem to manage.

Anybody have the phone number for those Christmas elves?