The Ditto House makes the rounds on Facebook

Over the past week or so, a number of my friends have told me that the picture of our "Ditto House" that we did a couple of years ago has been posted to their newsfeed on facebook. Dave and I have been so amazed at how this photo has been EVERYWHERE. Then today one of my friends messaged me on Facebook that she saw our Ditto House on Ellen's page. Well, I thought that she was just talking about one of her friends named Ellen. No, she was talking about THE Ellen. As in Ellen DeGeneres. Her show has a facebook page called, of all things, The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Click here for a link to it. I checked it out, and there was our house and our neighbors' house! In the 9 hours its been posted, it's gotten 28,093 likes, 7,315 shares and 1,986 comments!

Isn't that CRAZY?!

A McDonald's Monster Mash!

Evan had a family party on his actual 5th birthday last Friday, and then on Monday he had his friend party. My poor young son was very confused and disappointed when he didn't turn 6 at this second party. ;) Evan's cousin, his friends from school and neighbors all joined him at McDonald's for a monster party.

Evan's favorite thing to draw right now is a one-eyed monster, so we thought that this theme was perfect for him!

Our McDonald's did a great job helping Evan celebrate with Happy Meals and goody bags.

The kids watched Evan open his presents...

and had a great time in the play place!

You've always got to have a funny face pic!

Then it was time to sing Happy Birthday...

and blow out the candles on the cake, with Robbie's help :). (We had to move the cake to the opposite side of the table from Evan, and right by Robbie, because of a pesky heating vent that threatened to blow the candles out. That, plus the fact that my nephew just had a birthday and candles of his own to blow out, made it a little confusing. Sweet boy!)
No worries...we just did a round two!

Evan had all kinds of fun monster stuff in his goody bags he gave to his friends, including these design-your-own monster masks. Note the one eye on Evan's mask. :)
Glad you had so much fun, birthday boy! Love you!

The Muppets

I took the kids to see The Muppets the other day, and other than the fact that we had to sit in the first row of the theater because there were no other seats left, we LOVED it. We give it 10 Nosek thumbs up! It was really fun sharing with them something that I watched as a kid

The Three Amigos

About a week ago, Evan was able to have two of his friends over for a lunch playdate. They had some big fun playing superheroes and Star Wars...
cheesed for the camera...

made lots of silly faces for the camera, and then giggled when they saw the picture...

and then watched a movie and ate popcorn together.
Evan's a lucky boy to have such fun friends!

Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

Our young elves, with the help of Grandma and Mom, have decked our halls! They did a beautiful job (pictures to come soon). Dad and Grandpa decorated outside, and then, of course, I needed to decorate the blog (with a little help from Evan). :)

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Yay Christmas!

5!!!!!!!!

Our big boy remembered something very important this morning. The first thing he said to me today was not, "Good morning, Mommy!" He said, "I'm FIVE!!" That's right. This young man is a full hand of fingers now!

Grandma and Grandpa Orton spent the night with us! We all sat down to Evan's favorite breakfast, which is cinnamon rolls, bacon and eggs. Then it was time to open presents!

Evan has been very into Star Wars lately, so he got an AT-AT vehicle, Star Wars figures, a Darth Vader Transformer, and a General Grievous mask! Evan played for FOREVER with them, and his brothers and sister joined him which made him very happy!

After that, we put the lights and ornaments on the Christmas tree that we had set up on Thanksgiving night. It was so much fun this year listening to the kids remember the stories behind each ornament, many of them special gifts from their Aunt Karen, Grandma, Aunt Shirley as well as handmade ones from preschool and grade school.

Then we got ourselves all showered and ready to go for a special night out to celebrate Evan's birthday and to kick off the Christmas season. Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Karen, Uncle Jim, Robbie, Uncle Bill and our family all went to our favorite hamburger joint.

Here's Evan and I posing with his special monster birthday cake, one that he's had his eye on at our grocery store for about a month.

Our favorite 5 year old, our favorite 4 year old, the older kids and me!

I love my sweet nephew!

After we ate, we went to my hometown's Christmas Parade.

The kids got a front row seat. They were pretty excited about that. Can you tell?!





Young Robbie had a great seat too, on top of his dad's shoulders!

Brothers!

Sister and brother!



My handsome husband and me

My mom and dad

My sister Karen, brother-in-law Jim, and Robbie

Santa came, and the kids were so excited, but sadly this is the best picture I have of the event. I definitely need to work on my night time picture-taking.

The whole crew before we called it a night

Thanks for the special night out, Mom and Dad! Love you!

Evan's Birthday Eve!!

After a full day of playing football, cards, cooking, eating turkey, pictochatting, hiking, and setting up a Christmas tree, we were all pretty tired. Some of us took naps,

and then we all cuddled up to watch "Horton Hears a Who!"

It was Grandma's last chance to cuddle a 4 year old Evan...

because tomorrow that very same boy will be turning 5!!! FIVE!!! Wow, I can't believe my baby is turning 5!
Sweet birthday dreams, Evan!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ahhhh, Thanksgiving! The turkey turned out great, thanks to my sister Karen's yummy recipe.

Dave did a fine job carving it. :)

Moxie did a fine job supervising and cleaning up any scraps that happened to fall.

Caroline set the table and made place cards. Beautiful job, Caroline!

Evan provided the beautiful turkey centerpiece that he made in preschool.

My parents brought many yummy side dishes. Here's our family gathering for Thanksgiving 2011! We used the china that I inherited from my Aunt Shirley, the set that we always had Thanksgiving dinners on at her house. We miss you, Aunt Shirley!

After the big meal, Dave and my brother, Bill took the kids on a hike at the marsh behind our house. Don't you just love Bill's hat? (OK, you're right, it's Caroline's!)

The hikers!

Our soon-to-be five year old!

Sweet Caroline!

and last, but not least, our handsome oldest sons, Seth,

and

Henry!

Doesn't this boy look huge? He's growing up so fast!

Our youngest and their favorite dad

The back of Bill's jacket after the kids finished decorating him with burrs. :)

He's just a big kid...Bill climbing a tree

After the hike, we rearranged the living room and set up the Christmas tree (and a few other smaller trees).

And after all that, we watched a little football. My brother was kind enough to dote on Moxie...she LOVES him!

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. Hope yours was too!