Decorating for Christmas

We celebrated Thanksgiving this past Thursday at Shawn's parents with the Peterman side then with my parents and sister and her family Friday night after I got done with work. Saturday we headed down to Walcott to my Grandma's to celebrate with the Warnecke's. After stuffing ourselves with the usuals and making the hard decision between Grandma's apple pie and pumpkin torte we started decorating for Christmas. Last year we Oliver was too young to even care about the tree or decorations but that is different this year. He helped decorate the tree at Great Billie's but soon we had to make him stop because he kept taking the decorations off again and then throwing them into the tree. I don't think he understood or could manage to hang the hanger on the tree branch.

Sunday we ate breakfast and started decorating our house. We have a fake tree so Shawn and I put it up while Oliver danced with his Mickey and puppy to the Christmas music. 

After stringing the lights Oliver then "helped" if you could call it that hang the ornaments. 

We put all the breakable ornaments up higher and Oliver helped hang some of the non-breakable ones lower down with the help of Shawn and I.  

Our Christmas tree 

After all that hard work and eating for the past 3 days it was nap time for all of us. 

Later that evening after coming back into the house from the garage, it was dark out and Oliver walked into the living room and stopped suddenly by the tree and said "Mommy, it's beautiful" as if he forgot we had put it up that morning. Now each evening he tells us to turn the lights on the tree and sits under the tree looking at the lights.  

Gingerbread men

This coming Saturday is the Holiday Open House and cookie walk at work so Oliver and I made some gingerbread cookies to take in tomorrow. The good thing about this is that I can take in these and bring home more delicious treats! I found the recipe on Kraft Foods website and it calls for butterscotch pudding to make them soft. I liked it because they made the house smell AMAZING!

My little assistant helped with cutting them out with the cookie cutter but he thought it was playdough so he just kept pressing the cutter in in random spots and over top of others. It made the process longer, but was fun to have him help. When mixing the dough in the mixer, he now knows how to turn the speed knob so he had put that on high and we had a flour shower.  

I baked them on parchment but the recipe didn't call for it, I just like no mess clean up. 

They didn't turn out too bad for never making them before even though some look like aliens and not gingerbread men. They taste much better than they look and I guess that is what matters. 

I plan on getting Oliver's lab work done tomorrow since we'll be heading to the hospital anyway so I'll keep you all posted on how that comes out. I don't expect it to be low but the hematologist wanted us to check it in 3 months so it's due. 

Halloween 2012

My mother-in-law kept all of the Halloween costumes she had made for Shawn when he was that little and this year Oliver was supposed to be a mouse. I had tried getting Oliver into it to accustom him to wearing a costume but really only ever got the ears on him without him pulling it off or throwing a tantrum. So, Tuesday night, the night before Halloween, I fought him to put him in the mouse costume only to find that it didn't fit him. Now Shawn and Oliver's birthdays are only 7 days apart so I thought they'd be the same size for the 2 year costume but nope- Oliver is longer from shoulder to butt. Thank goodness she has all the costumes because Oliver then had to be the skunk, Shawn's 3 year old costume.    

So the night before I still needed something for him to wear to the daycare Halloween party so I scrounged around the house looking for things and even went to my parents house and got the pumpkin outfit my sister and I had worn and tried it on him. He again wanted nothing to do with a putting it on. Mom and I then made a toddler tool belt I had found on Pinterest http://pinterest.com/pin/103934703870441482/ thinking he could be a construction worker. He wouldn't put that on either. We also had an apron at home that he refused to put on too. I was thinking that my son was just going trick or treating as a toddler by the way things were going. It was PJ day at Daycare anyway so we through on some Mickey Mouse PJ's yesterday morning and sent the Mickey hands that I knew he didn't mind wearing and told Julie to see if she could get him into something.

Well it took Grandma Shirley last night to put him in it but he was an adorable little skunk.

He kept looking behind him to make sure his tail was following him and I really do think that this tail is the only reason he put the costume on. Oh and the fact that he could go outside by wearing it.  

It fit Oliver perfectly. He went door to door telling everyone "Halloween" (he'd forget the happy part) and "thank you." He caught on fast about how this goes and that he can just reach into the bowl and grab a handful of candy. He came home with a lot of goodies- fruit snacks, crackers and cheese, animal crackers and of course some chocolate!

All of the loot 

I had soup in the crockpot to eat when we came home which warmed us right up and of course candy for dessert. 

Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins

We carved our pumpkin on Sunday that we had gotten from my parents.This is what it started out looking like- sort of lopsided on the bottom so it didn't sit very flat.

 Shawn cut the top off for us with the saw

Oliver and I scooped the "guts" out of it. 

After that Oliver went off and played with his shovel in the garage flinging gravel/dirt all over himself and Shawn and I. This is the pumpkin after I had cut the face out. 

Here is a blurry picture of our pumpkins. Oliver had carved the one on the left about a week ago at Chuck and Shirley's house. It is blurry because right after I snapped this picture, the pumpkin we had just carved on the right side fell and broke into pieces on the porch. Let's hope pumpkin comes out of the carpet. 

Here are the other pumpkins Oliver carved with his Grandparents 

Never fear, my parents had more pumpkins to carve. This time I did it alone though. FYI, there wasn't a candle in the one that fell either, just a LED light thank-goodness.