My Christmas...

Headed to Stockton for a few days to spend time with the family over Christmas.

Went to Christmas Eve services at my dad's church and the children's leader read a story during the service called Humphrey's First Christmas. It was super cute!!! I would highly recommend it to anyone with young kids looking for a Christian Christmas book.

My mom saw the pic of me kissing a giraffe at the Richmond Street Fair on the blog earlier this year and found this giraffe and got it for me for Christmas. Figured I needed to take another kissing shot.

After my dad, mom and I celebrate Christmas at their house, we always head over to my aunt's house (used to be my grandparent's house) to celebrate Christmas with my mom's family. She's the oldest of nine so it's a really big affair. Ever since I can remember my holidays and family get togethers have always been 30+ people.

Every year my Uncle David decorates the house for Christmas. One room has the "kids" table (I'm the oldest of the grandkids, and I will sit at that table until I probably die). Here's a shot of the centerpiece that he created. Each of the wooden figures has a picture of each of the faces of the kids. We each got cute beanies. No pics of me in the beanie yet.

Here's a pic of my Uncle David with the centerpiece for the adult table. Yes, he and my Uncle Larry built a carousel from scratch. The animals are ornaments strapped onto boxes of cookies. The presents were their gifts to each of us.

After we grabbed our ornaments, we realized that the platform was designed like a Wheel of Fortune wheel and that the kids were going to get to play a game.

We broke into 3 teams and went 3 rounds. Here we are standing around the "wheel" - me, Jennifer, Jonathan, Sara, Scott, Candy and Mike.

Each of the teams received monetary prizes as our Christmas gift. My team of me, Jen and Scott came in second.

Pic of the tree - some years its pretty crazy with gifts covering the entire floor. This year was a bit better when more baking and less gifts.

The stockings...couples share stockings otherwise there really wouldn't be enough room.

For the past 4 years I have gotten two Christmas presents that are my favorite. One is from my parents - I get twelve gift cards individually wrapped designated by month in a container and I get to open the one marked for the month that my mom has written on the tag. YES!!! I wait each month to open each one.

My other favorite Christmas present is from my Auntie Jann. Every year the adult kids (essentially that means you have to be in or graduated from college) receive a puzzle of some sort that has to be solved to get her present ($). One year we received puzzle boxes that we had to solve. Another year we had key locks on each of our boxes, and she gave us a container filled with 200 keys and we had to find our individual key to open our individual box. This year we each received a bag (backpack, purse, etc) locked with a combination lock and three puzzles (sudoku, logic, crossword, number, etc) that we had to solve.

Each puzzle had one of the number answers highlighted. Once we figured out the answer we would have one of the numbers for the combination.

Christmas doesn't really start until about 6p with dinner so here we are at work trying to get the numbers to each of our combinations around 1130 p.m. I think out of all the years that we've done this, this year was the hardest.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas filled with the celebration of Jesus' birth, family and traditions.

Merry Christmas to Yogi

This year has been a big year for Yogi. He used to chase cats (I actually think he still would if they ran away from him), but this year he has made two cat friends. He was very excited to get them gifts for Christmas.

Here's the gift he received from Pooser (Dana's cat). He loved these bones.

Mo Mo (Brigitte's cat) with the Christmas gifts from Yogi

Yogi with his gift from Mo Mo anxiously waiting to open while I take pictures of him

Isn't this a cute pic of the two of them. Mo Mo was very interested in Yogi's gift.

Move over Betty Crocker

Well just for one night...Baking really doesn't rate very high on my list of favorite things to do. Love to cook, hate to bake. Hate is probably too strong of a word. I just don't really enjoy it - I guess its because its messy and sticky and I'm not a big sweets person.

Anyways my mom decided to give her 8 siblings each a tin of cookies for Christmas so I decided to help and try my hand at baking a few different things this afternoon in my super small kitchen. It turned into a 8 hour process - not sure if that's because I made 5 different things or because I'm just slow at baking. Headed to the grocery store in the late afternoon - when you don't bake, you really don't have baking stuff in the house. Although, I do have the baking tools. KitchenAid Mixer is pretty fun.

Welcome to Shannon's mini-mart

The first thing I tackled was English Toffee. First batch didn't turn out so well (probably because I wasn't listening when Gail gave me the instructions over the phone and of course I didn't write them down).

Next was Magic Bars (Jen's recipe)

Then came Chocolatety Raspberry Crumb Bars. http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=32066

Steph came over to keep me company and mix up some rice krispie treats.

Before I embarked on the final round of sweets, I took a break, and Steph and I went to Candy Cane Lane in El Segundo to check out the lights. So much fun seeing a neighborhood get in the Christmas spirit and go all out to decorate their houses. It's only a block and 5 minutes away so my break was pretty quick. Back to Baking...

Chef Colts gives his approval for my attempt at Beth's Spicy Oatmeal Raisin cookies that just came out of the oven. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Beths-Spicy-Oatmeal-Raisin-Cookies/Detail.aspx

My second attempt at the English Toffee. I think this batch turned out okay. We'll see tomorrow morning after it sets. I added some pecan pieces (I wonder if that is okay?).

Sam and Sarah taste tested everything and gave it their seal of approval so I'm guessing it all turned out how it was supposed to.

But....I still don't love baking.

6 inches gone

Hmmmm what could she be referring to....Did she chop off all of her hair? Lose a bit around the waist? Shrink?

Nah I just went to my hairdresser, Lori, and she cut 6 inches off the front and now I have bangs.

Why did I do it?

Well, I've heard that bangs are the rage right now so I guess I'm trying to be trendy (gotta look good when I'm going to work...). Also heard that it makes you look younger but since I still always get carded (and I don't believe in my case its because "we always card everyone that looks younger than 30") I'm not sure that's a good reason. Actually, here's how it happened.

Wednesday afternoon walked in to the Manhattan Transfer Salon where Lori works and as she always does, she asks, "what are we doing today?" to which I always respond, "oh highlights and whatever you want to do". Then we're sitting there catching up (I've been going to her for 8 years so we're pretty good friends) and randomly I ask, "what do you think I would look like with bangs". Seriously, I didn't walk in there thinking I wanted bangs (I really am the most unprepared customer when it comes to haircuts) or even that bangs were the rage or that they looked good on someone else. I guess when you're sitting in front of that mirror, random thoughts just pop out. So anyways, she says, "bangs would look cute, let's do it". She then takes the back of my hair and puts it over the front so I can kind of see what it looks like, but it really just looks like I have a tupee on so that doesn't give me a great sense but as I said before, I'm pretty easy going about my hair so I said, "sure".

And she chopped...




My hair does still have some curl in it but its straight in the above pic since she combed through it alot when she was trimming it. I do think I might be shrinking too - I feel very short in the pic.

Weekend Celebrations

Sorry I haven't blogged for a while. Here's a downpour (can you believe all the rain in Socal???) to make up for it...

So this past weekend was filled with celebrations.

Started Saturday morning with a surprise birthday waffle party for Shelly Zitzslberger (she used to be part of the Outlet before her and her husband, Matt, left sunny CA for cold MN. Anyways she and a few other Outlet alumni were in town for the weekend. I don't have the pics yet but will post a few later.

That evening was the 5th annual Outlet Christmas Party at Adam & Angela Blankenship's house. It was bittersweet for me as this was the last Outlet event that I would be planning with Jen and Diane as one of the "social coordinators". It was well attended and super fun. We rallied (well I forcefully encouraged) for fancy so there were quite a few who Check out the pics.

Here are Jen and I with Adam and Angela. We joked that we looked like we were dressed for a funeral. Good thing Angela was festive with her Santa hat.

Chocolate Fountain Station

The spread of food - Angela and Adam have a gift for hosting and presentation.

This year we had an ornament exchange. Here's Jen getting ready for the fun.

Everyone brought an ornament and hung it on the two trees and were given a number. Halfway through the evening, Jen drew numbers, and they got to go and pick an ornament to take home. Don't forget to check out Jen's blog to find out who won her cool Color Me Mine Outlet Ball.

Steph, Dana and I (sorry Dana figured the frontal pic was more appropriate for the blog)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm stepping down from my leadership role in the Outlet. The rest of the team surprised me with a really cool and personal platter. I love being a part of the Outlet and have loved serving with past and present Outlet leadership team members. I wouldn't be where I am today without God and this church family that he has blessed me with. Here's a shot of the current Outlet Leadership Team, minus Diane as she was at the High School Christmas Party. Check out the cool platter - it says "Thanks for plugging us in - Love The Outlet"

It was pretty exciting that John Mo (right) was at the party on his last night as a bachelor. Dan (left) was in town for the wedding.

Angela, Nickki and Allison looking super cute and dressy next to the revolving Christmas tree (sorry can't tell that from the pic).

We got a bit picture happy at one point and Adam thought up this "let's look fierce" picture.

Billy can't believe that the ornament that Steph picked was beautiful but weighed 10 lbs.

Let's Get This Party Started - Jen rallied the group, moved the dining room table and created a dance floor at Club Blankenship.

The Outlet doing the Electric Slide.

Billy "bringing sexy back" with Hollie and Nickki as backup.

The third and final celebration of the weekend was on Sunday evening at John and Lauren's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception in Yorba Linda.

Some of the guys decorated John's car by blowing up 120 balloons and fun sayings all over the BMW.

Jen was joking around and dancing against these windows at the reception and this picture was snapped and it looked pretty cool. She was cracking me up.

Newlyweds Lacey & Jonathan - included just cuz I thought it was a great picture of them.

Where's Shannon?

Getting over my post Thanksgiving cold.

Joining Facebook - was on a work con call where they said IBM had a presence so I figured I better check it out.

Started a Beth Moore devotional on Jesus : 90 days with the One & Only.

Finishing my Christmas shopping and updating my Christmas Log (yes I keep a spreadsheet, I know scary). I have one gift left to get then its time to wrap.

Watching Christmas movies - The Santa Clause (my favorite), Polar Express, Surviving Christmas, Christmas with the Kranks, The Grinch that Stole Christmas, tivo'd a few Christmas Lifetime movies to watch later.

Hanging with Pooser (Dana & Phil's cat). I think Yogi might be a bit jealous.