My goodness, three days passed but it felt like a week! I guess all that busyness just comes with this time of year, right? Okay here we go, I’ll try and keep these things in order.
So Thursday night after a long traumatizing day of meeting Santa and lots of errands, Brandon and I stayed up all night making Christmas goodies to give to a few neighbors. We decided to make some Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites and Peanut Butter Bites. Seemed simple enough since you did not have to bake anything in the oven. However, we did not factor how many balls of dough we would spend an endless amount of hours rolling….
And 5 hours later, here you have it. On the Left are Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites. They have no raw egg in them so they are 100% safe to eat as is. We topped them with a chocolate drizzle. On the right are the Peanut Butter Balls dipped in Chocolate. Yum yum yum!
Friday we basically ran another million errands. Kids napped, we cleaned, blah blah blah. At around four we packed up the kiddos and headed over to my parents for their sleepover. Brandon had his company Christmas Party that night so my parents decided instead of just babysitting Friday night they would make a sleepover out of it. Brandon’s Company Christmas Party was at the International Albuquerque Balloon Museum in one of the banquet rooms. The dinner was great, they had a nice live band and the dessert was amazing. All in all it was a nice night to dress up and get out with my wonderful hubby.
Please excuses the crooked picture. It was the best we could do with our self timer and no tripod. Lol. Here we are all dressed up and ready to go.
And this is at dinner. The picture was taken from my cell phone so it’s not all that great. O well.
Well, since my parents had the kids over night I decided to take advantage of my free time. Brandon has been planning a trip up to Colorado with one of his best friends Gavin to go watch the Bear vs. Broncos game in Denver this Sunday. So he left on Saturday morning around 7:30am. I asked my parents if they would keep the kids on Saturday until after naps so I could participate in our Church’s second Saturday. They graciously agreed. I’ll try and keep this brief in explaining. Basically our Church does some kind of Community outreach every second Saturday of every month. I have been dying to participate in one, but since Brandon works weekends and it is really hard to find a willing babysitter at 7am I have never been able to. Needless to say, I was stoked to be able to participate. This second Saturday was what they call the Christmas Store. People from the church have brought over 2800 gifts to donate to the Christmas store over the past month. What our Church does is set up Christmas Stores in 5 different locations around town. People who can not afford presents this year were able to come and shop for gifts to give to their children. It was so awesome to be a part of it. Here is how it worked. Families in need would show up. They would first drop off their children in an area where crafts were being made. Next they would go shop the store that was set up with gifts divided into age groups and gender groups. Next they would take their gifts and have them wrapped up. And last they would head to pick up their children and go have a nice warm lunch that was provided. It was so awesome and I had the opportunity to meet some awesome families who are just struggling to make ends meet. It breaks my heart to see such needs right here in our community. Sometimes you get blinded to all the needs around you. A huge huge thanks to my parents for keeping my kids so I could be a part of something amazing. I headed to the church around 7am to load up and head out to one of the locations…
Here is the store all set up at the location I went to, Highland High School. It was really awesome to see and be a part of all the work that goes into this.
And here is the wrapping station. All the paper and wrapping supplies were also donated from people within the church. There were 4 areas to volunteer in, Crafts, the Store, Wrapping or Serving Food. I was in the wrapping area. I think I wrapped well over 30+ gifts yesterday. It was so fun and I will make it a priority to do it again next year.
I got to my parents to pick up the kiddos around 1:30pm. I let the kids finish their naps and then headed back to church at 4pm for Church service so I could kind of sleep in this morning. The kids had a blast at Nana & Pampo’s house and did not want to leave. Here are a few pictures from their time there…
This was right before bedtime. Don’t they look exhausted? Nana & Pampo wear them out!
They made the kids special Snowman Pancakes in the morning for breakfast. So cute!
The kids had so much fun and LOVED breakfast. I can not say it enough how blessed we are to have such amazing involved grandparents for our kids who live right down the street! Thanks again Mom & Dad for everything you do!!!
Last night, after church we came home and the kids ate dinner. Around 7pm my Sister, Cammy & Kaitlyn arrived. We had a little girls night planned to bake cupcakes and a cake for my niece’s 1st Birthday! Her party is this afternoon! Anyway, I decided to cook us a special dinner to eat before we started baking. I made a Parmesan Basil Tomato Soup. I decided to make this since Brandon hates tomato's and I have been wanting to make this soup very bad. It was delish! I had such a fun night. After putting the kids to bed, we were up until almost midnight baking and decorating. It was a blast and we laughed A LOT! I cannot believe my niece will be one on Wednesday. Where does all the time go??
Here are all us girls busy at work! The four of us baking was quite the sight and my kitchen was a disaster but it was honestly a BLAST!
Trying to get this homemade blueberry frosting to be the correct consistency was quite the task. After lots of trial and error we finally got it right!
My sister wanted to make Abi a special Teddy Bear cake because that was what she had for her 1st Birthday. My mom still had the cake cutter thingy too so it is the exact bear she had 30 years ago. Crazy. How special!
My new mixer worked great for all our baking last night!
I think once 11pm hit we were all getting delirious! Haha
But all that work was worth it. They look adorable. Perfect for a 1st Birthday. They are Lemon Cupcakes with Blueberry Buttercream Frosting. And they are all organic. My sister is awesome!
And here is her adorable Pink Teddy Bear Cake. I wish I had a picture of my sister’s cake from her 1st Birthday to compare it to. So much fun. I think we should have a dinner/baking girls night way more often!
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