Happy Holidays!

Our days were Merry & Bright, as I hope yours have been!

We started off the holidays with a trip to see none other than Alvin & the Chipmunks, Chipwrecked! Daniel loved it!

Christmas Eve we had our annual dinner and survivor style auction! We had 21 total people, 7 of them were ages 6 and under and they were all EXCELLENT!!! We cooked a 22 pound turkey for the occasion and had all the trimmings. Good food, great family and lots of fun!

The auction was the highlight as always. I auctioned off my CVS stash from the year, instead of hoarding it like you see on Extreme Couponing!! (If you haven't check out my other blog From Dimes to Dollars - I'm sharing more hot coupons and deals this year in an effort to lower our monthly grocery budget, and maybe yours as well!!) I keep enough of the auction items to get through a few months and the rest goes to my family! You should see them outbid each other for items like toothpaste and shower gel! The funniest thing to happen - my niece's new boyfriend buying her a toothbrush because she said she needed it! The second funniest, my brother-in-law buying my father-in-law (and they are no relation) vitamins for his eye and brain health!! Always a load of fun and laughter!!

Christmas Day Daniel was in heaven. He counted his gifts this year from Santa and then woke us up!! Some of the items he received from everyone including Santa were Leapster games, a personal CD player and his first books on CD, a science lab kit, the Joker House, Star Wars items, including a clock, and a Bop It!! Awesome!!!!

We spent hours mixing colors for a food coloring experiment with his science kit! I have great photos below to share!! I also have great photos of Daniel listening to his book on CD. Santa got him a Magic Tree House Books 1-4 audio book and at first Daniel wasn't interested. Then when I said he couldn't run around with the CD player, that it was for music or books only, he sat down and gave it another try.

Within about 2 minutes he was hooked!! I couldn't have pried it out of his hands if I had wanted!! Since I love audio CD's I was thrilled that he took to it also! He's listened to the stories several times now!! I wasn't sure how he would do without having an actual book to follow since our other short CDs have books and are only one story lasting about 10 minutes. These stories last about half an hour each. I have to say again how thrilled I am that he really likes them!!

We had an awesome holiday and are looking forward to a New Year's dinner at my mom's house with a big game of Tripoly to follow (we bet with pennies) so if you lose, you lose about a buck, but you can win 4 or 5 bucks!!

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays as well!!