Merks & T-Man Party @ HBHQ
My December dream came true the other day when Charlyn and I made plans to have our kids make sugar cookies. Since it didn’t quite work out the last time I decided to call in the reinforcements and it worked out just fine and dandy. All that rolling, patting and marking that Maggie has done sure paid off.
But then she noticed that Cameron was nibbling on a cookie and the girl just went for it! She was practically taking spoonfuls of frosting by the end of it, but at least she had fun. Aside from the fact that Maggie ended up hitting (OMG!) Connor, it sure was a great visit. Both boys are so kind and gentle with Maggie. I noticed that Cameron stopped calling her Baby Maggie and I’m wondering if he now thinks of her as a BIG GIRL.
They got to run off some of their cookie-making steam by running around outside while we cleaned up and shuffled cookies from the oven to the cooling racks. I yelled a few ‘hold onto her hands’ and ‘go help Maggie’ from the doorway, but I think Cameron secretly liked being in “charge” and Mags liked running with the big kids. I probably could have toned down my order and cut the apron strings, so to speak, but my BABY insisted on wearing her 3 sizes too big cowgirl boots outside and I didn’t want to see her take a nose dive. Such fun and I feel a tradition starting…
In between the Cookie Making Extravaganza and Thomas’ visit, we squeezed in a few visits from Grandpa Miller & our friend Christina and even went to visit Sue (a.k.a. Ish) and 3G. Phew. By the time Thomas, Deneva & Lara arrived at our door, Maggie was in full-on excited mode. Days ago we’d wrapped Thomas’ present and she’d been itching to give it to him.
What she wasn’t expecting was for Thomas to take her down WWF style (Barry says it’s WWE now, what do I know?). I tell you, there was something in the air today because as excited as Maggie was, Thomas was right there with her….until she started doing her ultra high-pitched screaming. T-Man does NOT like that and never has.
The gift exchange went off with a bit of confusion (maybe Mags was confused about the WWF/WWE take down?) about what to do with the gifts. Thomas tried to open a gift for my mom, one that I don’t think he would have enjoyed one ounce and Maggie thought the box WAS the gift.
After the gift opening, which lasted all of five minutes, the two little chickens ran wild around the house and Deneva, bless her, kept checking on them when they’d be in another room. I suppose Lara and I are of the ‘if we can hear them they’re alright’ school. Devo did discover them having a party with the origami balls and glass vase in the kitchen. And by party I mean throwing them everywhere and hauling the glass vase from one place to another. This year Thomas/Maggie gift exchange was much more crazy than last year, I can only imagine what it’ll be next year!
doing stuff , friends , life , Merks , MMM , Nice People , Thomas
This past weekend Kara (a.k.a. Elfie) and Ryan hosted a holiday party for our group of friends and it was nothing short of delightful from start to finish. I appreciate my hometown girlfriends and when I think about Maggie making friends and maintaing friendships of her own, I hope she gets a taste of what it truly means to have friends that span all the seasons of life.
Some friends are ‘old’ friends in this group and some are ‘new.’ Kara, for example, I met when I was only months old and she was just new to the world. We don’t even remember meeting. Krista, on the on the other hand, I didn’t meet until 7th grade and she’s a ‘new’ friend. Everyone else falls in between that and their own ‘meeting’ stories are interwoven and have the overwhelming ‘we’re supposed to be friends’ tone.
We’ve since brought dudes into the mix and they mix and mingle just fine when we all gather. As the night wound down, the girls were in one room and the guys in another. They guys talked tools, the world problems and their jobs. The girls? We talked childbirth. No wonder the men stayed in the kitchen.
Kara and Ryan’s house was beautifully decorated and full of yummy food and tasty drinks. In fact, Kara even invented a drink called The Dirty Snowman. It was rather intense, but people kept going back for more, so it had to have been good! Kara and I got it in our heads that we wanted to create a make-shift photo booth and snap photos of everybody.
It felt like we were 10 again with some hair-brained idea that we were uber excited about. Like the time that we thought we were going mountain climbing and attached a rope to the a tree on a very, very dangerous rock wall. When an adult finally got wind of what we were doing/had done, we were told not to play in that area again. Or the time that we went to Hawaii in 6th grade and decided to bring our roller blades….that was before they charged you for luggage. Or the time that we decided to go hiking and camping, but ended up spending the night at my grandparent’s house (we were almost in college for that one).
Anyhow, everybody else went along with the idea and even subjected themselves to very hot Christmas lights, which I’m kind of surprised didn’t either catch on fire of burn somebody…now that I think about it. As our excitement grew and we contemplated all the areas in their house to use that would accommodate my lens capabilities – the bathroom shower curtain would have been AWESOME – and have good lighting, we landed on a corner in the living room. Ryan offered, and I accepted, to bring in industrial lighting….and come to think of it, those lights got really, really hot too. It’s a wonder that we all didn’t get burned in some way.
Once we got rolling, it was really fun, or at least I think the girls thought it was fun. Some of the guys had tortured looks on their faces, but since the girls had all reverted back to giggling, loud chatter-boxes, there wasn’t much room to argue. I’m quite pleased with what we got.
By the time we wrapped up the lights and took the last picture, it was time to move onto the gift exchange. Barry and I made out like bandits because we scored a cute dish towel/ hot pad and coasters that Marc and Lara made…SCORE!! Erin won the award for being the nicest of us all because she “stole” Kara’s gift of toilet paper. Erin also won the award for luckiest because wrapped in the toilet paper were scratch tickets. I am totally stealing that idea someday.
Great, great night with very sparkly people.
Thanks again Kara & Ryan!
friends
Hoffman Family
Krista called me a few weeks ago and asked if we could schedule a time for me to take some photos of their family. It worked out for us to meet up late last week and I’m really pleased how the images turned out. It makes it easy that they’re a pretty cute family. The weather wasn’t wet, but the wind was vicious. Poor Will was freezing by the time we finished up, but he was cute as ever. Enjoy!
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