Mexico - Part 1

We left for Mexico Dec. 17th, flying through Chicago, spending the night there then on through Detroit to Monterrey on Dec. 18th. We arrived in Monterrey, MX around noon, rented our vehicle and careened/hurtled for an hour to Saltillo, where Marc and Melodie (my brother and sister-in-law) and Beth and Steve (my sister and brother-in-law) live. Andrew and I in the Detroit airport.This is in front of Marc and Melodie's house, with the beautiful mountains in the background. They live in a beautiful, gated community which is very safe for the kids to play in.

This is the nice playground that is just about a block away from their house.

This is my sister, Beth's house, in the same community. We were all descending on their house for lunch that day.
Now time for a game of "cowboys and indians", Mexican style...... "americans against mexicans". The boys had a blast playing with the neighborhood mexican boys. It was really fun to watch them make friends, even though they didn't know the language. Thankfully, Jordan and Cameron and Logan were able to help in that arena.

We un-desecrated his deer!!!

With this post I am officially announcing that I am back "on" and will be posting more often in the very near future. I now have a couple of months of pictures and interesting things to post so you should be able to check back fairly often and find something new.... at least for a little while. :) But, I thought that since you looked at the deer and the Christmas lights for so long, you probably wanted to see that the Christmas lights are now down and we are getting back to normal!

We desecrated his deer! :)

Andrew doesn't like us to put anything on his animal heads but Katie decided to decorate the buck this year. :)

Time to decorate!!

The kids and I were bored Saturday and it just seemed like the thing to do, so we decorated for Christmas. I say it was the thing to do because we are leaving in mid December to go to visit my brother and sister and their families in Mexico. We normally wait until after Thanksgiving to decorate.

I am going to buy snow to make my Department 56 village look a little more festive.

We are also going to buy a few more sets of lights to hang around our banisters. Well, Merry Christmas everyone!

Halibut Chowder and Honey Oat pan rolls

I made some halibut chowder the other day... it was yummy... just what you need to warm you up on a cold day. I also made my favorite dinner rolls... they have oats in them. I use left over grilled halibut, if I have grilled salmon I put that in also. The grill gives the fish a great smoky taste and that helps flavor the chowder.

OK, I'm not sure this will be funny when written down, it might get "lost in translation", but another funny that Taylor said the other day..... he and Tyler and fussing at each other about something and came running to Andrew to fix the problem. Taylor is talking the loudest so that Tyler can't tell his side of the story, he's saying, "Tyler did yada yada yada.." and Andrew stops him in his tracks, "tell me this without using his name", trying to keep him from blaming Tyler. So Taylor says, "He yada yada yada", which made us all die laughing, cuz he didn't say Tyler's name but he was still needing to blame him for whatever it was. Oh, so funny!!

Creativity

Katie drew the picture on the left, Taylor the one on the right. Only we had to cover up some of Taylors, cuz he got a little carried away and was showing a little too much "skin". :) He was copying off of Katie's picture. We thought that was so funny!
Now THAT is a banana split. Andrew came home this past weekend and was "hankerin'" after a banana split so I made him one. I thought I was going to be able to help him eat a couple of bites but by the time I finished making it I didn't think I could eat any without it making me sick so....
He ate the WHOLE thing... yes he did. ( Yes we can!! - that's for you babe!! hahahaha) For you who might not be able to figure out that inside joke... Obama said "Yes we can" about 17 times in his acceptance speech... and I haven't even hardly been able to talk to my husband since he got elected, because he has NOT been a happy man!! :)
It took me about four tries to get this picture of Taylor working so hard with his tongue sticking out, carving his pumpkin. He was very serious about it!!


I remember blogging last year about the kids carving pumpkins... where has the time gone??

She's back!!! :)

Well, she's back to being "ours"..... it's your loss, America..."our" loss.... but she is destined for greater things. I know this!!!