Trimmin' our tree

On Wednesday, we had our Annual Tree Trimming. This is one of my most favorite Christmas traditions. I loved it growing up! We have all sorts of yummy snacks and drinks, so the kids spend a lot of time at the table instead of the tree :)

The spread.

Filippo wanted to make sure his ornament was hanging just right.

The family, minus me.

And I had to throw in another lost tooth picture. Spencer now has three missing teeth...so cute.

Thanksgiving and All That Jazz

I know I haven't blogged in awhile. Suddenly there were too many things to blog about so I thought I would ignore it and it would just go away. But here I am :) ready to face the music.

So here is a run down of Thanksgiving.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we went camping in Olema which is right by Point Reyes. A little chilly at night, but not bad :) We had a great time! We went on a beautiful 7 mile hike...Bridgete pooped out the last mile...I love that they all love to hike. Sadly, I wasn't the speediest: I guess a 6 month pregnant belly has slowed me down :)

Next, was the annual Thanksgiving parade and stone soup at Bridgete's preschool. She is a giraffe and I love the face she was giving the crowd!

We went to Dave's folk's for Thanksgiving.

There is always excitement to be had on Thanksgiving at the Schramm's and this year was NO different.

Dave's dad collapsed when trying to get the turkey in the oven. Scary, but he is ok. We believe it was a heart attack. And can I just add that men are the worst patients in the world?

Next, Spencer fell on our walk and got a nasty bruise.

And the final fall of the evening was by Jenny. She and Evan were fighting and she was trying to get him, tripped and sprained her ankle. By the way, this was all before we even sat down to our feast.

My Mother in law scheduled dinner to be ready and served by 5:00pm. But, she and my father in law have not realized that every single year they are off by an hour. So we ate at 6:00pm. By then, a pumpkin pie was gone , so was an apple pie and half of a dump cake because everyone was starving. She didn't plan on lunch: she just figured we would save our appetites. Yeah...there was no way that was happening :)

BTW, everyone is stripped down by dinner time because the house was so hot. I look forward to the day when I am old and keep my house hot :)

But I must say, once we did eat, it was delicious! Everything was so yummy. I look forward to Thanksgiving dinner all year long and I was not disappointed.

Before dinner

Dinner is served. Hallelujah.

The next day we made caplit. Caplit is a yummy, homemade pasta filled with different cheeses and served like soup in broth. Claudia and Poppy make it every year from scratch, so I suggested we do it while we are all there to help over Thanksgiving. They eat it every Christmas Eve and it is delish! It was not an easy job to do...I don't know how they do it all by themselves.

So here we are. I have to cook in an apron. So everyone copied me (LOL) and we dug up some aprons. Aren't we cute? I love Diane and Suzanne. They are the best sister in laws.

And finally, we went and chopped down our tree in Columbia on our way home. Nothing smells better than getting a tree in your house after it has been cut down just hours before.

Ok, that is it. Thank you for scrolling down and down and down. Sorry it took so long, but better late than never :)

Home fishing

We have a great lake right by our house. The kids have been into fishing lately, so Dave bought some worms and they all walked down to the lake. No luck...but they still had fun. Jenny and me went to Old Navy while they were fishing. I guess 16 year old girls aren't that into fishing :)

Milk

I went to the store today because we were out of milk. So I bought enough to last us till Monday morning. Scary. OJ is another staple, especially for Evan. The store had a sale on chocolate milk, so I had to get it (I love it more than the kids do I think:). The chocolate milk disappeared in a matter of two hours. When did we become a gallon a day family? Dave refuses to drink it...maybe that is a good thing.

Happy Birthday to my sister Amanda. We love you!

Employee of the Month

Yes, you read it right. My sweet hubby was named November's Employee of the Month. How cute huh? They announced it in his briefing last week and he said they talked about it again at last night's briefing.

Here is a quote from the nominating documents provided by his supervisors, "David is always among the first to volunteer for any assignment. He never hesitates to quickly answer the radio when a supervisor requests an officer provide medical transport...."

"David works independently as well as within the framework of a team. He truly understands the meaning of customer service, which has earned him the respect of both coworkers and supervisors...."

"Deputy Schramm motivates fellow employees by consistently displaying a positive attitude, maturity, and a very strong work ethic...."

Is that so cool. The kids think it is really neat that he is Employee of the Month because they see what a big deal it is between SpongeBob and Squidward. Too funny!

Congratulations Hubby. We all know how special you are...now they are beginning to find that out:)

A pregnancy picture

Allright, a lot of my family and friends who live far away have not seen me with my new figure. So I thought I'd post a picture of me. I am almost 20 weeks - half way there!

What a beauty. LOL Truth be told, I am not feeling my sexiest or my cutest. It has been driving me crazy lately. And I realize there is nothing I can do at the present moment about it, but I just had to vent a little. Now...back to the Halloween candy :)

Halloween

Ok, here is the group. (Jenny and Evan weren't with us this Halloween....that is why there aren't any pictures of them. )

Bridgete dressed up as Minnie Mouse, Spencer was Mario and Filippo wanted to be something scary so he got him a bleeding Scream mask.

Nice.

Bridgete refused to smile because she was embarrassed.

Whatever.

Dave took them around while I passed out candy. I went through 10 + pounds of candy in two hours. I had to raid some of the kid's "bad" candy towards the end and then ran outside and turned off the lights and blew out the candles. It was crazy. We get tons of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.

Here is Mario! It was fun to put this costume together :)

And here is Spencer with his loot. He was "burning hot" so he stripped as soon as he came in. Oh well.

Here is our sassy Minnie Mouse. Thanks Mom!

And here she is afterwards. She took a nasty fall-bloody lip, scraped hands and chin and a hole in the brand new tights :) They came home after that. Here is Scream.

He made out big time! And he is so much cuter this way, don't you think?