:iagree:A 7 year old is too young to be reading or watching this one, IMO.

I do a printed Christmas letter enclosed with a picture card. I use computer printed address labels. Other than having everyone sign the letter before I make the copies there is nothing hand written. In my opinion, Christmas cards are an opportunity for telling everyone what's going on with you and yours. I love receiving them! If someone wants a closer relationship with me than that they are welcome to contact me on Facebook, by e-mail, phone, or send me a hand written note by mail and I will happily respond.

Here is ours.

Flashlight tag. Sardines but use glow sticks to mark the kids and require that the glowsticks/bracelets remain on the outside of clothing.

We have USAA too, liability only on 3 cars and our insurance doubled when we added our teen driver. Ouch!

I did manage to be wordless, except for the titles. Home and Farm(not our farm but still farmish).

Here is my Pinterest Christmas board. Thanks for sharing everyone!

This is the recipe I use. It says sweet potato pie but I substitute the same amount of pumpkin for the sweet potato. I also use evaporated milk rather than regular milk. I can't see why it would make a difference but the recipe in the Southern Living cookbook I have called for evaporated milk.

Dd8 and ds10 are in bed with lights out at 9pm-ish. Dd13 & dd16 are in bed at 10pm-ish. Dd8, ds10 and dd13 are woken up at 9am. Dd8 and ds10 are often up earlier. Dd13 doesn't get out of bed until forced. Dd16 leaves for school at 7:30am.

Check out Pinterest. It's my favorite place to Christmas "shop" for ideas.

DD8 is my go-go girl. She loves to run errands with me while the others would rather stay at home. Usually, she and I do the grocery shopping together.

I haven't yet but I will be after Halloween. I bought 6 of them at the produce auction. Right now they are wildly painted and sitting on the front porch. Next week I'll be baking, mashing, and freezing them.

This week I finished The Endless Forest by Sara Donati. I enjoyed reading a series that was complete. It was nice that I could read it all and not wait for the next book.

I made two kinds of pumpkin seeds this year. Here is my blog post about them with links to the Martha Stewart recipes. There are also recipes for pumpkin cookies and pumpkin scones on my blog.

This is our menu from last year with the recipes for some of the items. All of them were winners and I'll probably be using them again this year.

Hats, gloves and scarves. Warm is important. You want a coat that will keep you cozy down to 20 degrees at least. As far as shoes, warm, comfortable, and waterproof. You don't need serious snow boots but you don't want to walk around in heels or cute flats.

This week we'll have: roast chicken, butternut squash, and garden salad beef stir fry with rice shrimp scampi with linguini, breadsticks, and garden salad leftover black bean and butternut squash chili. On Friday we are meeting my sister and her family for the weekend so the two of us will be planning those meals together.

Ds10 and dd8 each have a DS. There is a desk top computer upstairs that they have access to. They also use my laptop. There is a Wii in the family room that they use frequently.

Here is our recap from this week and the picture highlights of our field trip last Friday.

I'd go with roasted chicken or shrimp scampi. Although, low country shrimp boil is super easy prep and very fun to serve and eat.

roasted chicken and veggies taco soup pizza meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and corn salmon and salad chicken enchiladas

Here are mine, home and farm.

:iagree::iagree: I've used the AG for K through 8th grade.

I have a gray/black/white mix of granite. It hides everything. I only wish my white cabinets were as use friendly as the counter top. If you want to see it you can go here.

You might try reading a book that has a sequel or series or pick an author that has written several other books that your ds might enjoy. My ds10 read the entire Redwall series after we listened to the first book on cd. He has also loved books by Gary Paulsen after we read Hatchet.