You Better Watch Out!

You better watch out.. you better not cry- I'm telling you why!
We had a very interesting morning at the old Butikofer homestead. It is not rare for us to see a deer or two out by our house (Hench the hundreds of dollars in trees, flower, and strawberries that get eaten!!) BUT normally we do not see any bucks. Believe it or not Prancer and his harem were at our house this morning! I found this the PERFECT opportunity to tell the children that "Santa must have sent Prancer to figure out how to get to our house since Christmas will be coming!!! And the rest of the deer must be listening at our windows to see if we are being nice and talking kindly to each other." It went better than I thought. Ellie went out of control, I know you can't imagine this, saying that then the deer run down into the trees in the holler and tell the elves what we are doing. LOVE IT! Boy that Santa Baby can come in SOOOOOO handy! So you better be good for goodness sake!
I know you can't see this but the buck had 4 points and he was HUGE!!!

For those of you who forgot the names you have for Christmas...Here is the list! (Thanks MOM!)
Rob-Patrice
Billie Jo-Chelsea
Tim-Allen
Rick-Rob
Max-Billie Jo
Olivia-Noah
Allen-Rick
Noah-Max
Patrice-Olivia
Chelsea-Giselle
Giselle-Tim
And girls, Patrice and mom included, I have thought of two different craft projects that we can do over Thanksgiving. (Sorry Max you have a child now and you have to tend him!) 1st: The board with hooks on that says "The stockings were hung..." I think Olivia may have this? 2nd: A Christmas picture frame. I got one from my friend for my Birthday, a little decoupage and some paper and we are good to go. What do you think?

It's Great to be Eight!!!

Well we made it! Even though I was still scrapbooking at 3:00 am the night before we made it to the stake center and had the baptism all over by 10:30 am. There were so many family members who made the long journey to support Ellie I felt so fortunate. She looked beautiful and had the day she deserved. She also had two other kids from her primary class that were baptized as well. The one interesting fact of the day was that the water heater went bazurk and the water was HOT!!! When Ellie went in she said it felt like a hot tub! When she came out and I helped her take off her wet clothes they were still hot.



Sunday was a great day as well. Chelsea and Max had Jack blessed in our ward since everyone was here for the baptism. Max did such a nice job and Jack just slept right through it all. Then we had Max and his family come over and we had a lunch at our house. It was just what every McNeil likes; FOOD FAMILY and then a little more FOOD! Ribs anyone?

Trick-or-Treat!

We had a great Halloween! The girls all cooperated so well and we scored some great loot! I was in charge of Ellie's class party and spend all day doing that. Tess also had a pre-school party and Mia just went with the flow all day. The other mother that helped with the school party invited us to go trick-or-treating with them in their neighborhood. They get this wagon and drive the kids around Wild Willow.(You don't get that in Vegas!) The kids loved it and I thought they deserved to get as much candy as possible now that all of their teeth are fixed (for the time being). Mia loved saying "trick-or-treat" which made the people love her even more and put twice as much candy in her bag. I am sure it weighed ten pounds by the end of the night and she said "it's to heavy mom!" Then we left our friends to make a few important family stops. The fudge fairy AKA: Aunt Dixie was the top of Tim's list. Once we got there we received bags of fudge and caramel and caramel popcorn. SCORE!!! Then on to mom's. The girls had to do some poses in front of the "Halloween" tree. Mom had this cute vinyl lettering saying that read, "Grandmas act like they don't know who you are on Halloween!" She played that role right up. Ellie of course got into the character or a cat. Mia tried to act like a cat even though she was a lady bug and Tess was just a cute cowgirl. Last stop of the night was Aunt Jo and Uncle Bill. Full size candy bars for those who go the extra mile. Tim is rationing the candy to the kids so I am sure we will still have plenty when everyone gets here on Friday! Love you all.... 48 hours and counting!!!