New Year B.B.Q

The ringing in of the New Year continues. Another celebration of the year to come and Birthday's. It was a beautiful warm Saturday and Mark our BBQ guy arrived at 5:30 A.M to start his custom smoker and get the meat going. It was a all day event complete with horse shoes , DJ and games for the kids. The turn out was great about 70 people came to celebrate and eat , and eat we did all the food was great. Mark competes in BBQ competitions and this was a practice round for his next event, if you ask me the way it turned out I think he's definitely got first place! What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon! 

Our Winter Trip to Pinetop

Jacob and I just got back from the mountain's , what a wonderful trip! We left Sunday the 28th and picked up my Mom on our way up. Dad and Darius would come up Wednesday after his hockey game and came back Sat Jan 3rd. The mountain's had got hit hard with a big winter storm over Christmas. The roads had been opened and in much better condition that they had been so the ride up was good.  The weather was beautiful, warm during the day and cold at night. The boy's played outside all day everyday. We had a nice snow bank on the hill in front of the cabin and we made several sledding runs as you'll see from all the pic's. Jacob and I started a snow fort on Monday and Darius, my dad and Jacob finished it on Thursday. The boy's had so much fun! It's so nice to get the boy's together. When I asked Jacob what his favorite part  of the trip was he stated " having the Family together". He was absolutely right. Of coarse Tim , Jaimee, Mike and Joe were missed. Thanks to Mom and Dad for making our week extra special.

I love Christmas!

What a wonderful couple of day's! It's so nice to spend time with family and friends. We spent Christmas eve at Tim's parent's house and Christmas day at my parent's. We had great food and good company. This year was nice because we all told each other to take it easy this year. Let's focus on the kid's and do gift's for each other with more heart, homemade. I think slowing thing's down and spending more time on making thing's for eachother and less time at the stores was great. It also seemed to somehow make the day more special. The focus was on the family and not what was recieved or not received. Thank's to our family's for making this Holiday so enjoyable! 

1st place float!

We did it, 1st place in the parade! Yay, there were over 20 entries and we "swept" them with our float. It was so much fun! There were plenty of helpers to help . We had about 40 people walking with the float handing out candy and 20 kids and Mrs. Claus on the float. And what a entrance we made, Strobe light, train sounds, train horn , bell and even smoke coming from the stack. Well worth all the hours and soul that everyone put into it. Looking forward to next year!

My Christmas Tree!

   Well here it is , Our Christmas tree ! I actually put in up last weekend and it looked OK. Thanks to my cat I had to redo the whole bottom 1/2 of the tree. She really enjoyed laying under it and playing with it. That is until she decided to chew the wire on the lights! Let's just say she won't be chewing through anymore wires. She's OK but did get a little surprise ( hello electricity). So with the whole set of bottom lights out on the tree I had to re-do it. Which ended out working great because then I was able to add the snow effect. We usually sprinkle it with this fake confetti like snow, what a pain it ends up all over the whole house. So this year I thought I 'd try using the stuff that's like what they fill stuffed animal's with , it's called Buffalo Snow. I must say I love it, check it out for yourself!

   

The float's almost done!

It's been a few day's since my last entry, as you can see we've been working on the float. The parade is Friday night and the crew has been working on our float everyday. 

   We got the siding up and painted on Sunday and wouldn't you know I woke up to rain at 3:00 that night. Well the float fared the rain and only minor repairs were needed. 

  All the kids are planning who's standing where and what they will be doing. The plan is the little kids are riding in the passenger cart dressed in their P.J's. The bigger kids are going to be standing at the table dressed as Elves building toy's for Santa. Everyone's so excited for the parade. It will be lot's of fun. So say tuned for more pic's and hopefully some good video footage.

Electric Light Parade float

time to start the Annual Garcia Christmas float, The theme this year is " The Christmas Express" . Yup It's a train complete with Engine, passenger cart going to Santa's workshop where the elves are making toy's. At least that's the plan, as you'll see we just started.