Best 9 of 2016

These are my best nine pictures on Instagram for 2016! 

Christmas Baking

Our elf, Little Rodney, left the boys a Ninja Bread kit this past weekend. The boys thought it was epic (their word...not mine). Haha! They were excited when it was time to bake them but even happier when it was time to decorate! They are already asking to bake more cookies so they can decorate them. We are doing sugar cookies next.

Each boy cut their cookies once I rolled the dough. 

This was the first time they used the cookie cutters. 

And each did a great job!

The icing was tricky. The kit didn't make much and I was worried we would run out.

But we had plenty! Miles decided to take a bite out of his before he iced it! 

And Carter ate an entire cookie before the icing got to him.

The kit had one little bag of sprinkles so I pulled out the m&m's and more sprinkles. 

 They ate more sprinkles than they put on the cookies. I really thought they all would have tummy aches because they ate a lot of cookies. 

Next we made reindeer bait. It's really called bunny bait but we change it with the holidays. We've had bunny bait and for Dr. Seuss's birthday we had barbaloot bait. 

We all love this mix. It's Chex cereal, pretzels, golden oreos, popcorn, m&ms, melted chocolate and sprinkles. I added marshmallows this time and they are tasty too! 

We mix everything together and drizzle the melted chocolate over it. Then we add the m&ms and sprinkles. 

I asked Michael to get some pictures of the boys since my hands were in the mix. I never know what I may get when he get my phone.

See!?!

And this..you never know when he is taking a picture. 

The boys were eating it before the chocolate even set. The good thing about this is you can add  anything you like to it and it will be tasty. 

Now on to the rest of my Christmas baking...

What's Up Wednesday

Monday night we had...

and Miles was super excited. He is my pizza boy! 

The rest of the week I'm cooking. We had a turkey breast from Sam's last night and it was delicious. I made stuffing and veggies to go with it. It will  be fresh veggies and leftover turkey for today and maybe more tomorrow night!

How lucky we were with Hurricane Matthew and our trip to the mountains. 

This is Wal-Mart after they lost power. It looks eerie! There were so many people without power for several days and our town looked like a war zone. We had tons of trees down and that means tons of power lines down. Thanks to all of the line men who worked long hours to get everyone up and running again. 

This is at the top of the drive way at the mountain house. It was a HIKE to get up there. We all had such a fun time. I'm  ready to go back. I'll post the rest of the mountain pictures soon.

The WEATHER! It's been on the cooler side since the hurricane and it's been wonderful!

Getting ready for Halloween. I'm already sick of candy and we have only been to one fall festival. We have our church's trunk or treat Sunday night and then we will have our neighborhood trick or treating Monday night. It's always so much fun to see all of the kids dressed up. 

Lakeview Club had the Mad Scientist at their fall festival showing some neat stuff. The dry ice was fun to watch and then the boys made slime. 

The boys enjoyed their corn dogs while we had Boston Butt Bog. It was tasty. 

The main attraction was the Game Truck. All of the kids were in hog heaven with this. It held 20 something kids inside and had 5 or 6 different game consoles. There were 2 on the outside my boys played.

Here's my Green Lantern and my ninjas. We confused most workers with two ninjas. They didn't pay attention to the blue and the red. They thought were kept doing 2 of everything. 

No much at all. 

Deep cleaning the house. 

This is so true! I always think my house is a mess but I'll watch 1 minute of hoarders and I see that my house is really clean.

I'm sure Michael has said this to me...several times. 

Amen. 3 boys are messy. 

The holiday season! Bring on Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas! 

And...our trip to the Great Wolf Lodge. 

I have not been watching much recently. I've watched some Dancing with the Stars and The Voice. The Bachelor Show - Ben and Lauren hasn't been all that great. 

I've ready several good books. Colleen Hoover is still one of my favorite authors and I've started reading more Robyn Carr. I still love a Jill Shalvis book at well. Currently I'm ready a Christie Ridgway book and it isn't that great. 

Usually whatever the boys are watching on TV or when they are at school it's nice to have the house quiet! 

It's yoga pant and legging season!! 

Haha! I love this. I have no idea what we are doing this weekend. We have church Sunday and the truck or treat. That's going to be fun!

Not much! 

Bonus Question:

What's your favorite Halloween tradition?

The Halloween parade on our street. 

When we first moved in our house 10 years ago our neighbors warned us about Halloween and the amount of people that would come down our street. Back then it was just for the kids on our street but now half of the town shows up. All of the houses who want to participate set up card tables near the road and hand out candy instead of everyone ringing door bells. All of the kids walk up and down the street trick or treating and everyone has a blast! Even the adults! 

Riverbanks Zoo

The boys didn't have school Friday thanks to parent teacher conferences. Michael took the day off so we could take the boys to the zoo. They were excited! The weather was perfect. It was sunny but breezy and not humid. After we saw the first few animals we saw a pattern. They were ALL SLEEPING! The lions were snoozing, the tiger roamed around, the monkey's were sitting on top of the rocks sleeping and then the koala was sleeping. 

The koala bear was the cutest little animal. He looked like a little old man praying. 

We walked to the farm section. Most of the animals were not there. The goats were out so we checked them out. I think this one was sleeping or either she really liked resting her head against the wall. 

This was Michael's favorite. He really liked the under bite! 

This is what the cow was doing. I'm sure it was sleeping as well. She was perfectly still with her nose on the barrel. 

Thank goodness the giraffes were awake! They were fun to watch. 

I tried to get a good picture but this is all I got. 

And of course we had to feed them. It was $4 for two little hand fulls of lettuce! Haha! But, the boys had fun.

The sea lions were fun! We missed the feeding but we watched them swim around. 

Michael and Miles watched for a long time.

And we had to go in the reptile house. I was the crazy who hollered when I finally found one of the snakes in a display. He was hidden with his head stuck out staring at me! 

And Miles liked the penguins. One little baby jumped in the water and took a bath. The rest stood perfectly still. I guess they were tired too!

And one last picture before we left. These three didn't complain one time. We had such a great day!