Day After Thanksgiving Brunch

There is always that big question going into the day after Thanksgiving.....

???What to do with the leftovers???

Well, here's what we did:

Fruited Turkey Salad on Rye with Pap-Pap's Stuffing Balls, fresh fruit,

celery sticks and Sissy's Homemade Ranch, pumpkin pie,

Layer Deserts: Pumpkin Spice and Raspberry

and my new favorite desert sticks.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoyed all of your family and friends.

Until next time,

May all your endeavors be a blessing!

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Aspiring to be a Proverbs 31 Woman. "She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar." Proverbs 31:14

Happy Easter 2013

We had a wonderful day and hope that you had a great Easter too!

Sissy's Special Birthday Day

Here are the fun things that Sissy and I did for her birthday.

She wanted to have a home-made breakfast of pancakes and strawberry syrup. So I made cinnamon pancakes for Sissy and banana pancakes for the other children. Here is Curly giving Sissy her gift.

 Here is what was in the box, a silver and amethyst ring I made for her.

Then it was off to get her nails done at the local nail place.

We went clothes shopping next but I didn't get any pictures.

Hunger made us stop for a bite to eat. She wanted a cheese steak and ice cream shake from Grace's but they were closed. So I suggested my favorite sub shop in town, Frank's on the square. The sandwiches were sssoooo good. I'm half glad Grace's was closed.

Then we did more clothes shopping and again, didn't take any pictures.

At 3 o'clock we had an appointment at the photography studio. The pictures really turned out well.

Then it was home for dinner and root beer floats.

Sissy says she had a lot of fun for her special birthday day. I can't wait to see what she plans for next year.

Curly's Special Day

So Curly and I went and did everything that she wanted to do for her birthday. Here is what she wanted to do:

Breakfast - Restaurant for Pancakes (with a side of cheesy grins)

Hair Dresser - wash, style in curls

Clothes Shopping - Sorry, I forgot to take pics of this. :(

Lunch - Sushi (she changed her mind and had pizza and a milk shake at the mall)

Pictures Taken

Bowling

Supper at home - mac and cheese, chocolate pudding, baked chicken, peas and corn

I do actually have a picture of the food, and it does look good, but this post is about Curly. She says that she had a great day. I sure hope so and I can't wait to do it again next year. I wonder what she will put on her next "Birthday With Mommy List"?

4th Of July Fun

We had fun today!

Baby at the parade with his balloon...

Sissy at the parade with her friends...

Curly and Little Man climbing the rock wall....

They also picked up candy that was throne from the parade floats, had snow cones and rode the ponies.

What a fun day! Aren't you glad we are free to do all of these fun things today?

Merry Christmas!!

Sissy Turns 10!

Wow, she is getting to be so .......

Anyway, we had a party and invited our homeschool friends. This is a great benefit of staying home, you don't have to always have your parties on the weekends.

So we invited her friends and made all the plans and didn't tell Sissy. It was supposed to be a surprise. I suggested that we have a play date so she wouldn't suspect when people started to come.

It turns out that she is just as bad as I am at ruining surprises. She suggested that we invites all of her homeschool friends and make it her party instead... oh well. I had been wondering how I was going to pick up the cake without her seeing it (a draw back to having your kids with you all of the time).

Most of the kids came and they had a great time. Sissy had made a tray of cookies and brownies to share. We had hotdogs, mac & cheese and pasta. Of course we had ice-cream and cake.

I had originally said no gifts but family doesn't allow parties with no gifts so she had plenty of those to open. Here she is with her most favorite store bought toy.... Calico Critters. She has been wanting them for 2 years but hadn't gotten any until today. Now she has both the dog family and the cat family.

After all of the gifts were done the small children went out to play on the swings and the older children opened up the Apples To Apples game that Daddy brought home the other day. They said they had a blast with the game and so did I.

Thank you to all of our friends and family that came or sent gifts and cards. Sissy had a wonderful day and says "Thank you very much".

Ice Skating

We were invited to a friend's birthday party at an ice skating arena..... so we went. What fun the girls had on the ice.

Sissy, being so tall, couldn't help holding on to the side to keep herself on her feet. Curly on the other hand had no fear of falling and was found most often in the center of the arena, as to stay out of the way of faster skaters.

I would include some pictures for illustration but they didn't turn out so well with all of the action and other skaters getting in the way. :)

There is a great picture that I have to share.... the cake. I love it! My friend made it and used a real Barbie with the legs taken off. How great is this idea?

More Holidays In February

Since we had family for the weekend, we took the opportunity to celebrate both Sissy's upcoming birthday as well as Valentine's Day and more Christmas.

First, Sissy received more treasures for her special shelf in her room. Here is one that she especially likes...

Then we had Christmas. Little Man and Curly got some new clothes... they love clothes!

We finished up with Valentine's Day. The children gave Grandma Dean and Aunt Amy the cards that they had made. Mommy gave Curly a sterling thimble and Little Man gave both of his sisters each a new porcelain doll. Here is Curly with hers.

Always remember that giving is much more fun than getting.... but getting can be fun too! :)
 
Let us all be thankful for the little things,
Mother Dean

Finally Christmas.... In January

Well, last month we decided that we would wait until we were moved into the new place before we had gifts. We are in and now have the room to open and put away gifts.

Here is just one of the millions of pictures that we took last night.

My mother and grandmother came over to share the occasion with us.

Thanks to everyone that sent gifts and cards for the holidays,
Mother Dean

Happy Belated Birthday Curly

So Curly's birthday was months ago but we didn't want to have a bunch of gifts to pack and move so we decided to have her family party after we moved.

Here she is..

 
We had cake with her friends back in October so Maw-Maw decided to put candles in her ice-cream.
 
What a fun evening with the family!

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to you and yours,
from the Pa Deans

Let Us Give Thanks

We come together as friends, families, communities and a nation. Let us all, joyfully, give thanks for what we have and the opportunities that present themselves. In this great nation we have many freedoms and today we exercise our duty to celebrate those freedom.

Let us give thanks for....

wonderful food

 

the opportunity for fellowship

 

 great friends

 

great friends

and the freedom to do what we wanted to do today and every other day all year long.

 

From our family to yours, Happy Turkey Day!!!

The Wedding

So, I didn't take any pictures of the ceremony but I did get some nice shots of the reception. Here are just a few.

 We can start with the beautiful bridal portrait.

 Isn't that a beautiful buffet center piece? That is a carved pumpkin in the center, I would never have imagined. What a wonderful idea!

 Each table was beautifully decorated with flowers.

 Then there was music.....

and cake. What could be more perfect?

Curly's Birthday Party

Curly's 4th birthday has come and gone but we waited to get the bunnies before having a party for her. That way she would have her present on party day. Here are pictures of the party we had with her friends at Snow Hill.

Sissy took a great picture of Curly coming in the door to her party. She was so surprised.

 Here she is with her corner of the cake.... and what a corner it was! She wanted a piece with a butterfly on it. :)

 Here she sits with all of her friends at Snow Hill. Everyone enjoyed the cake that Maw-Maw brought!

 Then, there were gifts...

followed by games.

They all had a great time at Curly's party. Can you believe that she is four years old now? She has grown so much over the past year. Check out the post from her third birthday here.

 

Thanks to everyone that sent cards and gifts,
Mother Dean 

Happy Birthday To .....

Me!

Thank you so much to everyone who called, sent cards and gave gifts. You all made my birthday a very special day!

Love,
Mother Dean

Little Man Turns.......

Sissy wanted to make his cake again this year but we ran out of time. Instead, we ran to the store to pick up a small cake. Just a little one to put the candle in and give him to make a mess with.

Once we got there I saw the coolest cake! It had a bulldozer, a backhoe and a dump truck on it and the icing looked like a construction site. It was no small cake and no small price tag..... but I got it anyway.
 

 
We had a very nice little spread with Sissy's new dishes and our light supper and desert.

 
 That dark pie in the bottom right corner is a black walnut & raisin pie. It turned out a little more done than it was supposed to be but it was still very yummy. I'll give the recipe later.

Once the song was sung and the candles blown out everyone had supper with their cake and ice cream.... all on the same plate. Then there was just a little time to play before we started to open the presents. Little man had the opportunity to try out his new construction equipment. Here you can see him running the bulldozer and backhoe at the same time. That is what I call multi-tasking.

 
 Here he is at the beginning of the paper tearing spree. He is very excited to get started as you can see. This year he was ready and didn't need much assistance once the first piece was started.
 



We would like to thank everyone who couldn't come but sent gifts and cards. Everything was so nice and the little guy loved all of his new toys.

Camping At The Beach

As a child my grandparents would take me to Ocean City, MD every year. I loved it! Now, with our children, we try to take the trip each year to carry on the tradition.

The best time to go is before the summer season starts. There are no other people on the beach and very few, other than those who actually live there, in town. My favorite reason, however, is that the shells washed in from winter storms are still hanging out, waiting to be found.

The children had a lot of fun checking out the beach and the waves. The girls played 'chicken' with the waves and at one point, Sissy fell in. She laughed for a very long time about it! Little Man didn't want to play with the waves, he was more interested in getting the sand out of his sandals.


We stayed at a campground that I found about six years ago. Fort Whaley is lots of fun and very inexpensive! Can you guess the theme of this campground from the photo?

Another of my favorite activities at the beach is to visit Assateague Island. There are wild ponies that live there along with lots of other native wildlife. Sometimes you can drive along and the ponies are just walking beside you, eating the grass at the side of the road. We weren't that lucky this year. The only ponies that we saw were way out in the marsh.

We always go to the visitors center to see the films that they show about the island. Here are Curly and Little Man checking out the critters in the touch tank.
 

This was the first year for the toddlers to go camping. Sissy has gone several times and was excited for the little ones.

 

They were not quite sure what to do with that campfire. It took some time but they finally decided that they liked it. Cooking marshmallows was on our list of things to do. Everyone tried one and then thought that they were better straight from the bag. Mostly the campfire was just for show, we didn't use it for cooking this year.

We made the trip easy with meals out.....

all except breakfast....

and sometimes lunch.