Following the Kirks

As you can tell by the word annual, this is our Kirk family tradition. We have an ugly sweater party every year for Christmas. We deck out our whole house, garage, ourselves, and have a great time with friends and family. I usually make everything home made with some help from my mom and all her and my grandma's recipes.  This year I wanted to make it as simple but still cute as possible. I decided on a chili bar as the main entree.  I also delegated everyone that would help to make my favorite chili they make. SCORE! Way less work for me! Muahahahaha!  My dad made his tri tip chili, my mom made her white chicken chili, and Brandon made his pulled pork chili.  Besides the fact that we always make way too much food, the chili was definitely a hit. Of course the chefs tested everyone on who they thought had the best chili. They are all delicious in my eyes, obviously!  I did pitch in a little and made some appetizers and corn bread! Oh and I did all the decorating...

Merry Christmas. When you ask Zeke what Santa Claus says, those are his exact words. He is very into what noises animals make so I figured to warm him up to Santa we would tell him what he says.  We always go to see Santa Claus and the Easter bunny with some of our friends. This year was no different.   The different ages and speculations as to how the kids would react to Santa is definitely suspenseful.   This year I bought all the kids Santa Pez dispenser to keep them from crying. I gave them to Santa to give them.   It worked!!!!!! For the most part.

GIRL!!!!!! Yayyyyy! We are having a little baby girl.  I had a feeling since I was sick for the first 4 months that it was either a really big pain in the ass boy or a girl. We went to one of our local gender reveal locations to see if they could tell us what we were having. They said coming in at 13 weeks and 6 days would be no problem.  Unfortunately, the umbilical chord was right in between the legs and the baby was facing my back. They scheduled me for another appointment the next day since we had a gender reveal party planned.  Same story as the night before, they couldn't tell. I scheduled myself another appointment the next day, but started doubting their abilities and getting nervous they wouldn't find out in time for our party.  I called another place and she got me in right away. After 3 trips to the bathroom, 3 glasses of ice cold water, and some jumping around, she found out what it was.   Because we planned on waiting to find out with our friends an...

Or the other way around! After our quick trip to NH, I felt slightly dominated. Let's start with the day before our trip when we were trying to clean out the fridge and finding something to make for dinner was a bit challenging. Well we did it! Mashed potatoes, corn, and chicken. Not bad right? Until the next day..... Our flight didn't leave until 9PM but both Brandon and I were texting each other all day about our upset stomach rendezvous! Brandon gets home from work and immediately hugs the toilet for an hour. I, on the other hand, was going in and out of feeling good and not.  We managed to make it to the airport and board the plane in one piece.  A little piece of advice: just because your slightly under 2 year old flies free until they are 2 does not mean it is comfortable or feasible!  When he was younger it was definitely doable but almost 2 was extremely challenging. Prepare for landing........or more like me getting sick in a seat with the fasten seatbelt sign on...

I knew this day would come and had a feeling it would be early on in my blogging life. I haven't blogged in over 2 months!  Bare with me.....I will be posting lots of posts to catch you all up.....since December!