Christmas Craft Day

Last weekend we had our annual day of crafts!! The day was spent trying to be like Martha Stewart, watching Christmas movies, and cooking A LOT!! Although we all tapped into our little Martha, the day was spent mostly cursing at her (probably something she does not do). Debbi, Matt, and Tweedy spent the day in the kitchen (thankfully Tweedy spent her time in the kitchen cooking us breakfast---YAY for Tweedy!!!) The rest of us spent our time doing our little projects. Sam made a snowflake light out of rope lights, I gave up on that one after the first round.  Tori spent her day sewing. Kim spent the day making a cupcake liner tree, which turned out a lot cuter than it sounds. Mike spent the day making a penguin wreath (made for ages 6 and up). Dayton and Mike did a side project of making root beer, which unfortunately will not be ready until New Years... that was disappointing to find out because we were all ready for root beer that day! Here is Tori's insane project... from the looks of it in this picture it looks very basic, but wait till its done... that will require a whole post in itself.  Also lets take notice of the fabulous bangs!!! I love it!! Then there is good old beeze... crafts are not her forte and apparently neither is grating cheese.  Deb definitely recruited the wrong girl for the job...lol.  The picture of Sam is with her final project... she made four of them!! Major kudos to that, because they may look easy, but let me tell you... zip ties are not your friends!!  As for me the picture below explains most of the day for me... I mostly watched the movies and then when  I did decide to get ambitious I tried to finish Kim's craft from last year.  Advice number one... never make a pom pom wreath.  They may look cute and seem like a really great idea but its not.  Here we are a year later and the dang thing is still not done!! As usual Jaybee and I were the least productive of the day ;0)

Oh, A Tree Hunting We Will Go!!!

You may be wondering why we skipped such a major holiday, going from November to December without so much as a mention of Thanksgiving.  Well I had to work... so I left it up to Kim to document all the Thanksgiving festivities that happened... well guess what?!?! Kim not only did not blog, but did not take any pictures!! Kim I believe you just got herbed!!!

 

Anyways Thanksgiving weekend we did our traditional tree hunting with the entire Burkholder family.  Another great year with family, eggnog, saws, and the smell of winter in the air!! We all drove down to Morgan Hill and found our Christmas tree.  Little did we know then that the trees that we picked would cause us so much grief!! Since the lighting and decorating of both trees (one at Debbi's house and one at our house), the Burkholder's tree fell over, and it wasn't even Emerson's fault!! Believe it or not we just picked that crooked of a tree. As for our house... our tree must have had a lady bug nest in it because we have had an infestation of the little red bugs since.  Its been hard to rescue them before the cats get to them.  Talk about peace on earth between all creatures!!

After we chopped down our tree we went home and hung ornaments and listened to Christmas music.  Sam was the honorary guest to put up Christmas Bear on top of the tree... she is officially in the family and there is no escaping us now!!

Funny Pictures

I recently started to notice that when we all take pictures for an event or something that we set aside the "bad ones"... well I decided that some of these "bad ones" are actually the best ones!! The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words... well these pictures are worth more than a thousand.  I began my search of my library to find a couple of photos...however there is a lot more than a couple.  So on slow blog days I have decided to show you these awesomely hilarious photos... so you have some sort of entertainment at work ;0) We will just start with a few random photos...

Here is Molly and Kim... so hungry for s'mores they can't even put it down for a picture

Okay, now this photo is extremely awkward... but to know Dayton's sense of humor is to love Dayton. Although I do love how terrified both boys look...lol

To justify my face in this picture... I thought sense it was being taken in that sienna or whatever its called... I thought I should embrace my John Wayne side!!

Tweedy's Surprise 25th!!!

So our dear friend Tweedy turned 25 this year in August... you might be asking yourself why the heck did you throw her a birthday party in November then??? Well the answer is two fold... one, she was in Europe for her actual birthday and two, we really wanted to surprise her! We decided to invite all her friends and family to meet us at Roux Louisiana Kitchen in San Jose, off Santana Row. We told Tweedy that we were planning a girls night out, so she would suspect anything.  And it worked!! We got there and her first response was "Why is Dayton here?" (even though that is most peoples response when they see Dayton somewhere...ZING!!! lol) Then we yelled SURPRISE!! And she was still a little slow to understand what was happening...lol.  After she caught on...it turned out to be a great night. We got her these sweet purple heels to add to her collection (not that she needs any). The dinner was great and we all got these drinks called hurricanes, which were super cool cause they put dry ice in them, so it bubbled.  After dinner we went to a bar in Los Gatos (forget the name) but it was really fun!! We had a great time dancing the night away...unfortunately they didn't play our song, The Cupid Shuffle, before we left.  Sam was super disapointed ;0) It was another great night out with friends and family!!

Tweedy with the boys

Oh the birthday girl had a grea night with her date ;0)

All Hallows Eve...

Peanuts style!! This years Halloween we decided to take it a little bit easy on everything, so we only slightly decorated...lol!! The entire group decided to do a theme... and we decided on the Peanuts gang!! It turned out super cute!!The party was a big success because it was the same night as the World Series... and we all know how that turned out.  So needless to say the bay area embraced the black and orange, so it made for a great Halloween. 

Everyone seemed to have a great time and the costumes this year were amazing!!! Jon won best costume.. he was a hillbilly.  Of course I had to leave early cause I had work the next day... but it was a fun day at work!! Gotta love Holloween!!

To the left is Dayton's spider that he worked super hard on... it moves and everything!! Very impressive!!

I told Jaybee to dress as a peanut character... and this is what she interpreted Mr. Peanut!!!

Jon with his hillbilly costume... lol!!

Debbi was a gypsie and baby lucas and the whole Burkholder family were some version of Santa Clause... they looked super cute!

My mom was a biker chick...I think the tatoos were very natural looking ;0)

The most creative costume of the night went to my brother and Dominic. I saw them earlier in the day and they were covered in styrofoam dust... then five hours later they show up at the house like this!!

Mike's Hidden Talent

As most of you know Mike and I are not the most crafty people on the planet.  Its hard to believe that such athleticness cannot translate into sewing, paper cutting, or scrapbooking...but it doesn't.  However, in the recent years we have discovered Mike's hidden talent... pumpkin carving!! He does it all without tracing!! I am very impressed with his craftiness... now if only I could find my crafty side.

This is the barfing pumpkin and the skull pumpkin from last year.

Dwight K Shroot from The Office, from two years ago

This year was Snoopy... the whole gang dressed up as Peanuts characters...so it went with the theme!!

Krista's Baby Shower

It is quite amazing that we are in the section of life that baby showers are out numbering bridal showers!! I can't believe how many of my friends are having babies... I love it!!! Puts the baby fever on the back burner for awhile... lol. Whats a little ironic about this post is that as I am posting this my friend Krista is giving birth... so obviously I am a little behind.  Anyways we had a "nursing reunion"/ baby shower for Krista's baby boy Aiden!! It was so great to see everyone and play games and just catch up on life! I of course, being the competitive one that I am, won one of the games.  It was the guess how big the belly is with ribbon game (I am sure that is the official title)... I  swear I was only a centimeter off!! I was quite excited to say the least.  It was a wonderful day with my nursing friends!!

So my friend Grace painted this free hand for baby Aiden's room!! He has a jungle theme room and so she did it from memory!! I can't believe how good it turned out!! It put my store bought present to shame...lol

Katie apparently has craftiness too!! She made this blanket.. and it also matches the room!!! These girls are AMAZING!!!

Kimmy's Birthday Fun!!!

In celebration of Kimmy's last birthday in her twenties, we went to Campo di Bocce for a nice dinner and some bocce ball.  Earlier in the day we took a family trip to the fabulous city of Oakland to see the Pixar exhibit, eat at Sauls, and get some Fentons ice cream.  Both were fabulous... apparently Mike and I like museums that show cartoons.  And of course Fentons and Sauls were fantabulous!!!

Bocce was a lot of fun... there was a lot of food, wine, and "friendly competition."  We decided to do guys vs girls... well lets just say that the girls absolutely dominated!! We were so good that the boys wanted to stop or they started changing the rules!! I believe at one point the score was 15-1!!

It was a really fun night to spend with the girls and boys.  We all cleaned up so nicely!!! LOL!! I can't wait for the in laws to turn thirty cause I know we will do it up big!!! Only cause we love them so dearly!!

A Be-witching Night

As new Livermorons we have yet to discover some of the great quality events this town offers... until last Wednesday!! Thanks to our non Livermoron friend Tori, we discovered a tradition that consists of everyone decorating witch hats and walking around downtown drinking different types of martinis.  Although I am not much of a martini kind of girl... I am very much a dress up in costume kind of girl.  So Sam and I decorated hats... which I was very impressed with Sam's ability to sew!! The night turned out to be a lot of fun... even though we didn't make it to the top ten in cackles and hats (apparently I am losing a lot of contests, I just realized!) It was a fun night out with the girls!!

Mike didn't want to come out with us because he thought it was mostly for women... which he was right, but he decided to be a hooded scary man before we left.

We tried to cheers before every martini... but after the tenth one we kind of started to run out of things to cheer about... apparently that means life is pretty good!! But there were sixteen different martinis to drink!! Anything from jalapeno watermelon to pumpkin pie!! AMAZING!!!

Me and the Blam sporting our craftiness... I think we did pretty good! But our competition was stiff, so next year we will be better prepared!!

Salsa Competition

A couple of weeks ago at Alden Lane Nursery, we entered a home-grown tomatoe salsa contest.  Since we basically have a salsa garden we used all our veggies... hoping it would garuntee us a win.  So we did a major harvest, chopped all day, Sam cried over our onions, and we didn't even get in the top three!! We were the only ones that did a pico de gilo (not sure how to spell that) , so we think thats what hurt us.  However, when Mike went to pick up the container the women working there said they liked ours the best because it was a pico style! So I guess we learned for next year that we will magic bullet all our veggies!! Or just enter in two styles, so we can please everybody. 

We obviously had tons of veggies... these pictures don't even show all the onions we picked!! Our sink is about a foot deep and it was almost filled to the top!!

The ingredients were:

white onions, green peppers, jalapeno, red peppers, banana peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, lime, lemon, and garlic!! AMAZING!!!

Here is the final product!! We had to make a quart of salsa... so we made twice the amount because we knew we would eat a lot of it before the contest started.  We thought it was really good!!

My New Humble Abode

And when I say humble I mean humble!! As most of you know I recently started working at UC Davis Medical Center as a RN on the Pediatric ICU unit!!! YAY for having a job!!! Anyways the location is in Sacramento, so it is about one hour and twenty minutes away... so that kinda sucks.  But on the bright side I met two girls at orientation who were also planning on commuting... one from Richmond and one from Reno!! So we decided to get a place together by the hospital, so we have somewhere to crash when we have back to back shifts.  Anyways we found this one bedroom apartment right accross the street from the hospital for 650 a month!! So split that three ways and we are paying as much as we would just to park!! The place is clean, but it looks like it never made it out of the 70's. So here are some pictures... and don't worry it looks somewhat sketchy, but there is a police station right accross the street!! (I am not sure if that makes it more sketchy now that I think about it...lol)

This is our kitchen which came with Glad Wrap (weird).  And now we have plastic silverware thanks to Debbi!!

Me and Gloria claimed this room because there is a wall AC unit and it is BLAZING in Sac!!! And we are on the second story so it can be like an oven sometimes!!

  This will be Erin,s room when she moves in and another girl may move in too!! YAY!!

     Here is the bathroom... and the towel is up cause there is no curtain.