Life as a Brandtito

We're in the Christmas Spirit Now!  Needless to say my dogs hate me.  Baking, Baking and More Baking... My Baking Bestie 

A Seminole & an Auburn Victory…. 3 of my 4 Sisters are happy campers….or at least half happy campers in Caleigh's case & 4 of the 5 Brandtito Bunch are ecstatic.  GO NOLES!! 

How I felt after Thanksgiving Dinner  A few snapshots from Thanksgiving… Ignore John's Mustache…I beg of you... And we also celebrated my first "Little" sister turning the big 23 this year…

We decided to up our game on Christmas Trees this year with not only having a REAL tree…but foraging thru the woods to find the PERFECT tree, and then chopping it down with our BARE hands…and by that I mean going to a tree farm and forcing John to cut it down with a saw while everyone else watches.  Everyone but John agreed this was a solid plan… So off we went in search of the perfect tree…on the coldest, windiest, most frigid day possible. We searched high and low, and voted down numerous less superior trees until just the right one was located.  Once we'd found it, we all stood around and cheered John on until it was cut down and loaded securely on the truck. Then we got the heck out of there in our warm truck and soaked up every bit of heat we could.  Our perfect tree is now patiently waiting to be decorated & the mini Brandt's are not so patiently waiting to get this whole Christmas show on the road. 

A week in review...photo addition               This week went to the dogs. Puffin Bear spent the week with us...much to the children's pleasure. Gavin loves Pup because "She's calm" and the girls love snuggling with her at night.  We put her in her dog prison (crate) after the girls were asleep each night however, because Pup likes peeing on beds. I have a feeling, this would ruin the whole girls love snuggling her at night thing.  The cold temps brought another furry face inside the Brandito Lair this week as well ... Unfortunately he has a similar love for peeing inside...so Bandit must stay in his prison at all times while indoors.             The children were introduced to Spaghetti Squash this week, which I must admit went much better than I'd imagined. They won't be begging for it anytime soon or anything soon, but no one feigned...

                                                        Annabelle's soccer season came to a close today! She finished out her first scoring season with 3 goals! VERY impressive!! Her team took 3rd place in their division overall. Annabelle treated (freely without being asked) Ava & Heaven to lunch at Cici's with her soccer goal winnings. She earned an extra $5 for her kindness and her original money was of course refunded.

               Heaven enjoyed her first "Juniors Only" Girl Scout even this weekend. The Pensacola Mess Hall sponsored a Crime Scene Investigation event for the older Scouts on Friday evening. We've been wanting to check out The Mess Hall for the last year or so, but it was one of those things that kept falling off our weekend to do list. Basically it's a hand's on Science Center where kids get to do "fun" (aka messy) experiments and the staff on hand tries to imprint the various scientific reasons for said messy experiments into the young minds. Microscope Lab                As the event was "CSI" themed the girls did various detective type centers. They had a finger printing lab, where the girls studied their own unique finger print techniques, they had a microscope lab where they tried to match up various items under a microscope, they had...