Ornament Party

Last night we had our annual ornament party.  Dode's family and I have been getting together each year to make ornaments for at least a decade.  Each participant brings a sample ornament and enough materials for the other ladies to make their own.  If you do the math, it seems like my tree would be drowning in ornaments, but they don't all last forever.  I always write the year and who brought the ornament kit and I love hanging them on my tree each year and thinking fond thoughts of my good friends.  Last night, Janice, Sheri, Vivian, Robyn and her daugher Caitlyn were the participants along with me. 

Hard at work crafting!

Dode was our long suffering babysitter (he's been doing THAT for a few years too!)

We ate some good food, including hot fudge cake and some yummy little caramel cookies I stole off someone else's blog.  Here's the recipe, and they're delish!   Caramel Tassies .  Janice brought Sharon's crab dip which was a delicious surprise.

We made some fun ornaments

Here's mine, stolen from this blog: Ribbon ornament

After the party, Janice proved she is the best Aunt EVER by loading  Isaac, Anastaya, Elizabeth, and Miriam into the BMW (that's Big Mormon Wagon for the uninformed) and driving out to Coupeville (1 1/2 hour drive, ONE WAY)  to pick up 4 of Randy & Lisa's kids to bring them over for a two night sleep over.  The kids were so excited! 

She got back to Arlington with her van full of 8 kids a little after midnight.  No one was ready for sleep, not even Janice who had been up since 4 am.

Janice slept on the bottom bunk.  Jenna and Miriam shared the top and enjoyed peeking over the edge at their fun fun aunt.

At 1:30 am,  I was the big bad mom and said, "Stop writing in your journals and go to sleep!"

 (In my defense, when there are 7 girls in one room journal writing is quite a loud activity). 

We had to pry everyone out of bed to help with the produce co-op this morning, at 8:00 am.  We had 39 baskets go out to 25 participants.  Hooray!  50 is my goal and it's looking closer and closer.  The truck driver decided not to come up our driveway again which is a very wise choice!  He brought the pallet up on his hand truck but got stuck in a loose gravel patch where we filled in a pothole.  The poor guy!  Hopefully he doesn't decide we're more trouble than we're worth.  Today we got:  sweet potatoes, white asparagus, cauliflower, blood oranges, bosc pears, braeburn apples, avocados, bananas, green beans (3 pounds each), carrots, english cucumbers and red grapefruit.  It's a lot but this week we could order an additional hostess pack since it's the week before Christmas.  I can't wait to dig in!