Clifford's 3rd birthday

Clifford is so into Batman!  He loves this huge Batman balloon that his Uncle Blake and Aunt Jessica got him!!  

It was a small get together but he sure enjoyed himself. 

Aaron and Clifford opening gifts. 

Cute Batman cake with helicopter. This cake was so good but had a lot of icing. Which I enjoyed very much!! The icing did leave my mouth dark blur. 

Was so nice to spend time with the family.  

Clifford grandma loves you so much!! Hope you had a great 3rd birthday!!  His actual birthday is November 25th.   

 

Christmas Tree 2021

Am loving our Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  My husband put up the tree by himself while I was at work.  I had asked him if he would get it up before everyone came over for Thanksgiving. 

I was thinking it would be a good background for pictures.  

      These tree decorations are new.  Somehow our box of tree decorations ended up at Alisha and Jonathan's house 2 hours away.  So I stopped at our local Dollar General to pick up a few decorations till ours came back home.  I was actually okay with how these decorations turned out on the tree. Sometimes change can be good. I do not think I will be redoing the tree at all this year. 

       

My little Dollar Tree Christmas tree.  It's definitely not finished but so far it's cute.  I do need  a star and tree skirt and more decorations.  I bought the mini bulbs from Target. I so need to go buy another package or two to make tree pop with color.  I also need a string of battery operated lights to sting on the tree.   I do like decorating my one side of my desk for holidays and such. I need to buy some garland and hang. Heck I bet that there is garland and decorations in our department's holiday tote. I may have to go dig and see what all we have.  

When do you guys usually put up your trees?  If it was up to Luther it would have been the weekend after Thanksgiving. 

Do ya'll have any special holiday traditions that you observe each Christmas?   For me on Christmas morning I go to all 3 of my son's to see what the kids got for Christmas.  I normally go to Aaron's and they wait for me to unwrap their gifts.  Then on to Mellissa's and Trevor's to see Kyndall's gifts and the last stop is Blake and Jessica's.  Then around noon everyone shows up and we have Christmas lunch.   

 

Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes

Operations Child Shoeboxes ready to roll to Lawton Ok Baptist Church.  These 8 boxes are completely packed with fun items. 

This was my first year to do the boxes.  This is thru the Samaritan's Purse. I have been buying all year for the boxes.  I also put back the $9.00 for shipping fee's for each box.  

This charity really tugged at my heart strings.  

I watched so many YouTube videos on what other's packed. I did lots of research on what to send and not to send.  For instance no liquids or toothpaste or army play figurines are big no no's. I made sure to add hygiene items, school items and a few toys to each box. I actually made 13 boxes this year.  

This is one of the boxes I sent for a girl 10-14 years old.  It also has a doll that went in the box for the wow factor.  I would have loved all these items at that age or even at my age!  Wish I had taken a picture of each box I had packed.  Shame on me!! I actually found 3 more boxes hidden that I was working on to send.  That will give me a head start on 2022.  

I already know that I am not going to pack 13 boxes.  I am going to do less but with more quality to them. Better wow items and such. I also want to make sure to add a clothing item to each box. I am thinking shirt, shorts, undies or even undies or shoes. 

I have another charity that I want to do for 2022.  I will makea new blog post about that later on.  It is something Luther and I are planning on donating to this upcoming year. 

 

Blake's 30th birthday

Love this cake. Super cute

Sheri & John & Brooks

Whiskey bouquet that I made.  I haven't made Blake one of these bouquets before. His friends thought it was pretty cool.

Blake had a good size crowd show up for his party.  Kochendorfer Brewing company has been around for several years.  Imust admit this was my first time out here.  It was super busy and seen several people I knew.  Since I was driving I did not buy a craft beer.  I'm a big ole chicken with having to drive 30 minutes to get home on the highway.  Everyone had a great time. 

 

Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes.

 

Really loved these Operation Christmas Shoeboxes.  They are a bit bigger than my plastic shoe boxes that I filled with my goodies for the children.  I used 8 of these boxes and 5 plastic shoeboxes.  Was really proud of the boxes I packed this year.  

Next year I will probably only pack a few boxes.  I plan on going with more quality items versus quantity boxes.  I plan on putting a bigger wow items in each box.  I wasn't happy with the wow items I picked out for my boxes this year.  So I do plan on watching for sales and such.  Next year I really would like to focus on the boys 10-14,  I feel as if they get overlooked when others are packing boxes. 

Here is one of the boxes I packed.  Not shown is the pink stuffed bear.  I do like the mini fabric kit I put together with the 2 fabric squares.  It does show that I love pink!! 

Next year I do plan on putting together a few toolkit boxes for the older boys.  I also will add the small fishing kits that I made this year.  Made several and ended up not sending all of them.  Maybe I can pick up a few more pieces of tackle to fill up the small kits.  

 

Bread & dessert table

Lots of great  food.  Duncan Regional Hospital catered Ls for the last several years.  They have done a bang up job with the food this year.  

When we have company lunches I do appreciate the effort they go our for us.  Sometimes I feel like they don't appreciate us.  Which seems pretty normal as far as work places go. Thanks so much  LS for all you do for the employess. 

Turkey's and Chicken's in our yard

Living in the country is so different than in town.  Even after all these years I am always so excited to see wildlife in our yard.  I have been watching these turkeys grow from babies has been fun.  Now on the other hand if I catch one of these turkey's on my jeep we will be having a turkey in the oven.  Not even joking.  

At this point I do not think I want to live back in town. I would miss seeing the cows, ducks, snakes, turkeys, geese, chickens and roosters.  Well okay I would not miss the snakes at all.  They scare me to death especially when I find them in our house.  I truly believe we do have a smaller snake in the house hiding but so far I haven't seen him. Nothing surprises me anymore.