Trees and Birthdays

Since Thanksgiving, we got busy tearing up the house and decking the halls, inside and out. I am nowhere near done and I've lost my energy to finish! I know how to get it back, don't you worry. As soon as my Girl Scout cookies arrive, I'll be good to go! Anyway, we bought a new tree this year after mulling over several options to replace our last one. I'm allergic to trees (such a nerd I am) and I didn't know how Angel would handle the needles. She seems to eat very strange things these days. We also figured that in the 15 years we had a fake tree, we saved a ton of money! So, we went ahead and got a nice new beautiful 9 foot pre-lit tree! (Did you hear that angel choir??) Only problem is, we are so very traditional about Christmas and we like playful, childlike trees covered in the kids ornaments. That means a multi-colored "color book" tree to us. Well, we don't care for the weirdish psychedelic colors of the new LED lights, so we went with (drumroll) clear lights. Yeah, that fell flat on me too at first! It's all decorated, finally after having to figure out why part of the tree wasn't lighting...pre-lit, fellas at the factory...not currently dark. Anyway, it does look beautiful in our living room. It is stately, elegant, and not so traditional, though it has all of our traditional ornaments on it. Oh well, we also have 2 other trees decorated and if you stand in one spot, you can see them all at the same time. The mystery spot, I guess we call it now. On Wednesday, we celebrated Steve's birthday with a special theme party. When Natalie turned 6, I turned our kitchen into a pizza parlor, and made matching aprons and chefs hats for all 13 of her friends....i was so much more energetic back then! Anyway, Nat thought it would be neat to do for her daddy, since we have a standing Friday night homemade pizza night at our house. It took me ALL day, but I did get the kitchen transformed, as well as menus printed, signs made, and a storefront window completed. Of course, I got the dough made and all the toppings ready too. Welcome to Papa's Amazing Pizza!

Where you are waited on by beautiful girls with mustaches!

The birthday guy has to toss his own dough! He's really good at it too!

Hi "cake" is a giant cookie decorated to look like a pizza. Didn't the girls do a great job? Daddy thought so too.

We had such a fun time throwing this party for Steve/Daddy. He works so hard for us and has been having such a hard time with work lately. He comes home tired and deflated sometimes. On this day, we just kept coming at him with more and more love. He had a great time and so did we!