Ladybugs & Stinkbugs

This was funny

> Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.
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> Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The gravesite was piled high with flours.
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> Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was a crusty old man and was considered a positive roll model for millions.
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> Doughboy is survived by his wife Play Dough, three children: John Dough, Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.
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> The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

We had so much fun decorating. We had Christmas music playing on the TV (Thanks, TiVo), and it was a little chilly outside. The kids would gasp, ooh, and aah over every single ornament we brought out. Over the years, Santa has brought each of us a new ornament, and our tree is getting pretty full. I still have most of mine from childhood, and we're adding the kids ornaments yearly, so it won't be long before we'll have to have two Christmas trees! I could handle that, but Jeremy thinks it's silly.=)

I'm excited about having our Christmas tree in the living room this year because we'll have (at least the possiblity of having) a fire in the fireplace. Oh, can you imagine sitting in the living room on Christmas Eve, all the lights out, just the Christmas tree lights twinkling and a fire in the fireplace?! Andrew has a list of Christmas carols we are going to sing on Christmas Eve, and he keeps adding to it, so we may do that for a WHILE. =) I'll be posting a lot about our Christmas traditions in the next few weeks. What are the Christmas traditions your family uses to celebrate the holidays?

Here are our pictures!

Before:

After:

Every year we go out to the Christmas Tree farm and pick out our Christmas Tree. This year they got pretty beat up by the hurricane, so we're calling our tree the "Ike Tree". It looks great, but we're leaning a little bit... Here are what some of the trees looked like, though - they really took a beating:

Annie wanted this one:

 

But Jeremy wanted this one:

 

so that's the one we took home.

The kids had so much fun playing at the Christmas tree farm. Especially when we found the tree that we wanted, they always really get into the process.

 

Here are my little ducklings, all in a row!

And here is their favorite part - they put the tree on a "shaker" machine that shakes out all the excess pine needles, dirt, etc. See Annie's "shaker dance"!

I'll be updated my photobucket link to my December album, so here is the last call to check out my November pictures!!

I thought I'd share a few of last year's Christmas pics - they have all changed SO MUCH - especially Jacob.  It's so much fun to look back over the last few years.