The past couple of weeks...

We have been super busy the last few weeks, but it's definitely starting to look a lot like Christmas around our house.

We always put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving.  The kids really are great helpers when we do it, if you don't mind getting ornaments everywhere and have lots of glitter all over your clothes!

Just getting started!

About halfway through...

Maggie's handprint from last year

Oh, and our Elf on the Shelf (Buzz) showed back up again that same weekend.

The kids have a blast finding him in the mornings.

That same weekend, the south KC crew showed up at our house for some turkey dinner.
Brian and I cooked the turkey for the first time by ourselves, and it turned out wonderful!

Too much food, but lots of good conversation...

Silly Tiffey, probably shouldn't be doing that 7 months preggo!!

Shhhhh, I won't tell anybody!

My wonderful family!

St. Nick came to our house on Friday.

He brought us lots of yummy muffins, and some clementines, plus Colin got a ninja turtle figurine and Maggie got the movie Tangled!

In other news...Maggie had a whole week of getting green cards at school (it's a good thing).

She was so proud of herself, she wanted me to take a picture of her with her last green card of the week.

Please excuse the "I've been at school all day" hair.

Speaking of crazy hair, this is what I was dealing with one morning last week.

Her hair is a ratty mess in the mornings.  Any advice on how to control it, I am all ears!

Then, last weekend, we had Tiffey's baby shower at her church in Grandview.

It was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time.

Tiff got lots of thoughtful gifts and Baby Parks is getting spoiled already.

Phoenix (5) and Maggie were the kids at the party.  

They were big helpers when it came to decorating for the shower.

A couple of the glowing preggo ladies at the shower

Our main activity at the shower was for the guests to help create an ABC book for the baby.

Each guest got a page with a letter on it.  They drew something on the page that started with their letter and then wrote out the name of the object.  

They had lots of fun with it and some were very creative with their pages!

Hard at work

Even the kids got involved

A group shot of everyone at the shower

The ladies in the family

We have plans to go visit Santa later on this week, plus we are getting together with our neighbors this weekend for some Christmas fun.

But, on a much bigger note, as of tomorrow, I am officially done with all of my coursework for my PhD degree.  This means, I have my comp exams and my dissertation left to finish, which I hope to be done with by this time next year.

It's been a long road, but totally worth it for my family's future!

Thanks for everyone's love and support! I couldn't have done it without you.