Fondue Anyone?

Tonight we tried out our new fondue pot. Thanks Nana for the great Christmas gift. The kids loved it. For our first time we just made a chocolate recipe and dipped strawberries, bananas and marshmallows. I can tell this will be a hit everytime we get it out. Now we have our very own Melting Pot right here in Wichita!

Miles favorite seemed to be the bananas.

Grant of course liked it all!

Christmas Pictures

As promised, here is a slideshow I made with many of the pictures we took on Christmas Eve with Jeff's family and then on Christmas morning with my family. The kids are still talking about how this may have been their "best Christmas ever".

Christmas

What an amazing Christmas we had. It all started on Christmas Eve when Jeff's family came over to celebrate. Jeff got a Wii Fit from his dad and Debbie. We are all really excited about getting it set up. I got several new fun scarves and a couple of vests. Debbie always does such a super job picking out gifts!!

Grant got a new Nerf game for the Wii. It comes with a nerf gun that shoots real nerf bullets but you can also hook the wii controller to it to play a shooting game.

Even grandpa tried out the new game.

The drive down to Winfield was very exciting on Christmas Eve. Grant was sure that he saw a red flashing light in the sky, which we all of course know could have only been Rudolph's shiny red nose. Spiro made the trip with us and showed off his new Santa outfit. Here he is doing his favorite begging trick.

Santa brought Grant some new Webkinz. Somehow he knew that Grant was wanting the clown fish and the eagle.

He also got Rockband for the Wii.

And a new baseball bat.

The only thing missing on Christmas morning was Miles. He wasn't able to make it down earlier in the week as planned due to bad weather conditions up in Kansas City, but today Jeff picked him up and we did Christmas with him. He has been wanting a new laptop, so everyone, including his family in KC, got him gift cards. After doing a little research tonight he found the computer he wanted so we went to Sam's and got it and now he and Jeff are busy getting it all set up.

This is post is getting really long and I have oodles of pictures I would love to share so maybe tomorrow I will try to make a fun video slideshow.

Christmas Eve

Today we are busy around the Bumgardner house getting ready for all of the celebrations to begin. Tonight Jeff's family is coming over for our annual Christmas Eve get together. We always eat and exchange gifts. This year we are doing something a little different. Everyone has really been dieting so instead of a big meal we are just having soups and chili. Jeff of course wanted cinnamon rolls to go with his chili so this morning I have been busy making those. I also am going to make a pot of Mary's famous Chicken Noodle Soup. (She's the one who makes the fabulous cookies.)

Then tonight if the weather cooperates we are planning to head down to Winfield. It's always nice to wake up there and get right to the gifts and my mom's cinnamon rolls in the morning!!! Speaking of gifts, I still have a few that need to be wrapped and Jeff's grandma just called and wants me to take her over to Sams's so I'm sure there will be even more yet for me to wrap.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Pajama Day

I have been looking forward to today for several weeks now. Could it be because I'm excited about all of the fun Christmas activities I had planned with my kids at school . . . nope, not really!! Could it be because it was my last day of school until January 5th . . . well maybe, I am pretty excited about that. Or was it because I got to wear my pajama's to school . . . yep, that was it!!! There's just something about taking a shower and getting ready for work and then slipping on your favoite pj's before you head out the door. The only problem came at the end of the day when I was thinking about stopping off at Target on my way home to pick up a few things and then I remembered what I was wearing and thought I might get a few crazy looks if I walked in wearing fuzzy snowflake pants.

A little explanation about the pajamas: Today we had "Polar Express Day" at school. We all wore our pajamas and did lots of fun Polar Express themed activities this morning. We even made festive bead and bell necklaces. I will probably hear little bells ringing in my sleep tonight!!! Then after lunch we got out our pillows and blankets and curled up to watch the movie. I have a super group of parents this year who wanted to host a party for us so they all came around 3:00 and we decorated Christmas cookies and had hot cocoa.

Here's a picutre of me and the girls all decked out in our pajama's.

We had a school sing along too!!! Jen snapped this picture of us while we were waiting for the excitement to begin. You can only imagine how loud the gym was with 8 kdg classes and 15 first grade classes full of kids.

(Michelle, Kelsey, Mary, me of course & Diane)

Happy Birthday Hank

Today is Jeff's dads birthday. Happy birthday Hank!!! Hank lives here in Wichita and is an optomitrist. Even though he lives so close by I don't feel like we get to see him nearly as often as we would like. He was been very busy the past few years remodeling his house and he always seems to have some kind of project going on. I know it's all going to look fabulous when he gets everything finished.

This is a picture I took back in August of Hank with the boys. I may have posted it before, but I just love all the happy faces!!

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is my mom's birthday. We went down to Winfield this morning to celebrate with her and spend the day. It's so nice having her close by. She is such a great mom and grandma. We truly appreciate everything that she does for us. She has always made a point to spend special "grandma time" with the boys and she has always been there for Jeff and I. Anytime I need her she finds a way to help me out and I want her to know how lucky we all feel to have her in our lives. I couldn't ask for a better mom.




















Happy birthday mom!!! I hope you had a great day.

Winter Weather

Even though it is not officially winter yet, I think it's here. On our drive to school this morning it was beginning to snow and it continued to do so throughout the day. I think we only got a little over an inch, but it was just enough to make the driving conditions unpleasant tonight on the way home. This wasn't a good week for Jeff to take my car. That left me with his little truck and I didn't do so hot. I'm not used to driving a 5-speed, much less on ice. Grant and I didn't go over about 10 mph on the way home and at one point we hit a really slick spot which caused me and the car beside me to begin sliding and spinning. I think we made two complete turns in the middle of Maple street. Besides being so embarrasing it was quite scary. I was sure the van beside us was going to hit us but somehow we manged to avoid each other. I however did not avoid saying a REALLY bad word during this spinning ordeal. It wasn't one of my finer parenting moments. I can't tell if it was the near wreck or me saying the naughty word that upset Grant more. It took awhile for me to get him settled down after we finally made it home. We talked more tonight about the bad choice that mommy made and I asked him to forgive me. I think all is well now but I really am dredding the thought of getting back out there tomorrow morning. Thank goodness my neighbor Mary works with me because I think we will be catching a ride with her. No more truck and icy roads for me.

Where Does The Time Go

It looks like another weekend has flown by. Yesterday morning we got up early to go have basketball photos taken. It was exactly what I wanted to do at 9:00 am on a Saturday morning. Then we spent the majority of the morning running errands. We met Jeff's grandma for lunch at Texas Roadhouse. I have been craving a loaded sweet potato and it was delicious. After a little afternoon nap we went to see the movie Four Christmases. It was a cute movie with lots of laughs.

This morning Jeff headed out for St. Louis so Grant and I relaxed around the house and then went to Wal-Mart to grab some groceries and a birthday gift for his friend Bryson. After dropping him off at the party this afternoon I went over to visit my grandparents. I took a few photos of them and then helped them make a Christmas Card. I thought this was a good picture of them, but they went with one of the shots I took inside by the fireplace.

Now it's Sunday night and I've got spelling test to grade and fabric to cut for a special Christmas gift my kids are making at school for their parents. Grant also needs to read me a few books to add to his December Book-It list. He learned last month it's not a good idea to wait until the end of the month to read all 12 books.

TGIW

Thank goodness it's the weekend. Last night we spent a quite night at home. Sometimes those are the best nights ever. After playing a few rounds of Mexican Train Dominoes with Grant, Jeff and I watched an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. If you haven't seen it check out some of the episodes here. Our neighbor Aaron shared this site with us (hulu.com) and when nothings on tv we check out reruns from some of our favorite shows here.

Grant is so excited. Last night he asked me if he could make his own blog. He wants to make it into a little diary so friends and family can read it. Jeff thought it would be a fun idea, and then when he is out of town he can check it and post little comments. We worked together last night to set it up. I think this will be good for him because he is super creative and he loves to write stories. I need to e-mail the link out to friends and family. If you could all do me a little favor and post a comment now and then he would be thrilled. As soon as we woke up this morning he wanted to check to see if anyone had and I reminded him that nobody knew about it yet, so we called Grandma early this morning to tell her.

www.theadventuresofgrant.blogspot.com

Jeff is leaving in the morning for St. Louis so I better wrap it up here and head in to work on the laundry.

1st Grade Blog

I thought it would be fun to create a blog for my classroom. Check out the link below. I'm hoping this will be a fun way to share photos and info with parents. Now I just need to find the extra time to keep it updated.

http://mrsbumgardners1stgradeclass.blogspot.com/

Animoto Video

I discovered this fun website where you can create your own unique slideshows of pictures. I tried it out today with a few pics I took of the boys this fall.