Just because

Ok, I'm going to be up front. I just want to share a couple of cute pictures of my favorite two girls in the whole wide world before I share about our fun Christmas activities this year.

This is Maddie LOVING her pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes I made. I usually leave out the chocolate in a couple for Maddie, but forgot. Man was she happy about that! This girl LOVES chocolate. If you think this is messy, what until I share pictures from her birthday when she went to town with some chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Mmm.

 This is one of the girls' favorite past times. Maddie LOVES riding in the wagon, and Claire loves to pull her around. Sometimes she sets up a little "garage" to park her in. These sisters just LOVE to play together. <3 p="p">

Unfortunately, I would have loved to share some pictures from our Thanksgiving this year, but I forgot to take some. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and had five soldiers from Chris's platoon over to eat. We had quite a feast and were really pleased with how well we were able to pull it off considering we have a dinky table oven and a toaster oven that we baked things in. (We ordered the turkey already cooked. I don't even think it would fit in the oven if we tried.) So, we had a cajun turkey from Popeye's (mmm), mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, sweet potato pudding with a Tennessee whiskey sauce, a green salad with feta, craisins, walnuts, and a raspberry walnut vinaigrette, cranberry salad, and rolls. For dessert, we had an apple pie, pumpkin roll, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake bars (I don't dare cook a real cheesecake in these crazy ovens :(), and fudge pie. We ate well. :) Claire loved making some friends with the single soldiers too and played some xbox kinnect with them after dinner. It was pretty cute.

Claire playing the xbox kinnect with her new friends - the only picture I took all day.