Our Christmas

Here are pictures from our Christmas in a nice little movie for your enjoyment! ;) We had a nice Christmas at home. The kids were up bright and early as evidenced in the pictures by their bed heads! I actually took all the pictures while still in my night gown, although you will NOT see a picture of me from Christmas morn! Dom gave me a new camera, which I was not expecting, since we weren't supposed to get each other anything. When we have "lots" of money, we buy each other gifts. When money is tight we don't and just plan to eat our favorite foods on Christmas, which means seafood!! But he has "owed" me a new camera since last Christmas when he took my camera to work with him and dropped it. I've been able to still use it, but the LCD is broken. So I was pleasantly surprised with a new camera. A very nice one that I'm not sure I will every truly understand how to work, because it is a little complicated.

Dom and I enjoyed our seafood dinner of peel & eat shrimp, crab legs, & lobster. Always look forward to gaining a few pounds from all that butter! The kids had their little smokey hot dogs, summer sausage and by request from Alex, mac & cheese. I usually make cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Christmas morn, but Alex had requested bagels which he doesn't get to eat on a regular basis, so it was an easy breakfast for me to make. After all the dozens and dozens of cookies I made the week prior, I was glad not to have to bake another thing.

I decided to make lots of cookies this year, more than ever before. I invited a few friends over to exchange cookies with and also for all of our kids to ice cut-out sugar cookies. The kids had fun and created a nice little mess, but my friend Tammy's oldest two daughters cleaned up for me. That was nice! I made way too much, as I still have tons of cookies after giving some to three of my friends, the mail carrier (who always gives things to my kids on holidays and lollipops on a regular basis), the nursing home where we went to sing Christmas carols, and I sent some to work with Dom for his co-workers to enjoy. I doubled every recipe and tripled a few things. There were buckeyes (tripled), PB cookies with a Hershey kiss on top (that some child keeps eating just the kiss off of and leaving the cookie behind), orange cookies (my sister's recipe), a chocolate cookie with PB in the middle, snickerdoodles, brownies with white chocolate drizzled on top of and then sprinkled with crushed candy canes, two-toned brownie with the chocolate part on bottom and a light brown brownie (minus the cocoa) on top with M&M's, this delicious chocolate/caramel candy thing that tastes just like a snickers bar, & peanut brittle (triple). I think that's it!!! Oh, and don't forget the sugar cookies with icing!!! Whew, was I tuckered out after all that baking!

The kids and I enjoyed singing carols in our neighborhood and going to a local nursing home to sing to the residences there. The neighborhood caroling was kind of a bust, since it was rescheduled to another night due to rain and then the night we did it, it was freezing!! Think 30's, burr. My neighbor put hay bales in the back of a trailer that we towed behind my car. So she and I plus my kids and her son rode around in the trailer. We only hit two houses for a couple of reasons, one it was freezing, two we got a late start because the song sheets she had printed were missed placed and we had to figure out which songs we were going to sing. The kids were a little disappointed that they didn't get to sing at more houses but we still had the nursing home to do. The day we were to do that, all the kids woke up coughing. Alex had already been sick and had been to the doctor, but then all the kids came down with it. But we went anyway, in hopes that I could at least deliver the cookies, but wasn't sure if I should go in with the sick kids. I met two other friends there and they went in ahead of me, while I stayed outside with the kids waiting for them to came back out and tell me whether the staff thought we should stay outside or not. They told us to come on in, just keep our distance. So the kids were able to sing, and were glad of that. I'm glad we were able to hopefully spread a little joy there.

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas as well! Here are those pictures set to music from Micheal W. Smith's Christmastime CD, a medley of I Saw Three Ships-Joy To The World. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

May the blessings of our beautiful Savior be yours throughout the season and in the coming year.

Domenick the Christmas Donkey

Here is a song that Domenick found on the internet a few years ago. We got a laugh out of it then and continue to get one each Christmas when we hear it again. I wanted to share. I set the music to photos of the kids from the past few Christmases. Enjoy!

Jinginy Jing....

Happy Thanksgiving

From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.

Here are the pies I made yesterday, pumpkin, apple, and butterscotch. Quinn helped me cut out leaves to decorate the apple pie with the left over pie dough. The butterscotch pie is my grandmother's recipe that she used to make for the holidays. It has been years since I have had it and thought it was about time I made it! The pumpkin come from my friend Tammy who grew the pumpkins, processed it and gave me enough to make this pie. She also gave me a whole pumpkin that I will process later. We tried growing pumpkins, Seminole pumpkins which are good for this area, that Tammy also gave me the seeds for. But we planted them a little too late in the year, and although they were growing great and producing beautiful pumpkins, our last frost killed the plant and my pumpkins weren't ripe yet. :(

We are spending a quiet thanksgiving at home. It would be nice to spend it with family, but that's not happening this year, maybe next. (Hint, Hint)

So, I hope all of you are enjoying this day of thanks. We have much to be thankful for, health, family, friends, and I am sure there is more if I let my mind ponder longer, but its' time to start rattling some pans. Wishing you all the best.

The Bellavigna Family.

Cute Kittens

This is what greeted me this morning. Three adorable little kittens in my hamper. I had to go grab my camera.


Here is those same three adorable little kittens snoozing on my chair. If you remember another post way back in the beginning of CasaBellaBella when I introduced our critters these kittens look identical to those kittens. They are little "minnie me's".

Here is the mama cat. Notice what she is looking at, the gerbil cage. I have been chasing her away from this every morning lately. Now those adorable little kittens are not always so adorable. Remember my last post where I said I couldn't turn my back for a moment. That's right, there's a story there. I left my post in the kitchen to take a potty break, a girl's gotta go, I returned to a screaming little Anna girl in the kitchen and next to her feet on the floor was a piece of the gerbil cage. Ahh! I frantically started looking for the gerbils who were not in their cage. And we had three adorable little kittens running around. Quinn found the first kitten with a gerbil in it's mouth. I was hoping that we were quick enough to get the gerbil out of it's mouth before any damage was done. Not so lucky. Onto finding the other gerbil. Again, Quinn found that one and again we were not lucky enough. Alex had to bury his gerbils. :(

A few days ago, Dom brought two new replacement gerbils home. One is black and one is gray. I then had to research how to tell the sex of a gerbil, because Dom didn't ask at the pet store. And I was hoping we did not have one male and one female. The kids of course where hoping that we did. I think, after much research and much fondling of the gerbils, that we have two males. Whooo! New names for the new gerbils, Zack & Cody. We had to stay in the same theme as the last two gerbils.

Children Are A Blessing

From the Lord, right? That's what the bible tells me in Ephesians. "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward", Eph 127:3-5. I have to remind myself of that when something like this occurs.

Anna took a dry erase maker and colored all over my kitchen floor, walls, and doors. I can't turn my back for a moment. But do you want to know what I was thanking God for as I was cleaning up this mess? Mr. Clean Magic Erasers!

I Voted

Now all I can do is pray.