Life with my sister

 There are several of our loves celebrating birthdays this week and in the coming weeks.  I thought we would give a shout out to them. We are blessed to have another year with you!  Our Aunt Suzy is first up on the calendar. She is our grandmother's sister and a wonderful aunt, advocate, teacher and friend to all of us who are blessed to be in her clan. We had the pleasure of celebrating with her last year on her birthday. This picture is from that fun surprise party at the Clinton Library. We love you, Auntie! It is the birthday season for aunts. Our mother's sister is celebrating a milestone year soon. Woo Hoo. We love TBEO, our Aunt Janet. She is always smiling and has such a positive spirit to share with everyone who comes in her path. What a blessing it is to call The Blue Eyed One our Aunt. Aunt J, I wish I could make you our special strawberry cake to celebrate :) And who can forget an uncle as dear as this one. We love our Uncle Joe ("UJ...

I love that God blessed us with this special guy 5 years ago. We celebrated him in December, but I am still in catch up mode. We have had some fun parties  and birthday fun with Henry Patton.   This is what 5 looks like...welcome to 5, Henry!  When you turn 5 you need big boy clothes...so he got his first Under Armour hoodie so he can look like the big kids at Valley View. Bless it.  And when you turn 5 you get your first big boy Bible. This is the coolest Bible too. It is leather and the illustrations are the movies we watch....it is Bible perfection for Henry. Blowing out his candle before school in his cool, 5 year old way. I love celebrating this guy.  All ready and excited to take Smurf cupcakes to pre-k in his new hoodie as a 5 year old. It was a pretty rocking morning in Henry's world.  He wanted a VeggieTales party at Pump it Up. So, I had the cutest cake made. He helped pick it out and design in. It tasted like we...

Christmas Eve/Christmas morning at our house means Jesus, Santa and Nana & Papa! Henry is always excited to see them drive up before dark on Christmas Eve.  We love our little Christmas Eve pajama and ornament tradition. I actually made our pants this time and that was a fun experience. Randall and Henry gave me a camera ornament and I gave Randall an elephant in a box singing "I want you to want me" and Henry got the best ornament in the history of ornaments...a Santa semi truck singing "Christmas Convoy". I love this little tradition we have. I know they moan about it sometimes, but one day they will look back on this and appreciate me, surely! Every year I take this photo and put it on the tree. This will be our 6th Christmas of this...and I cherish all 6 of these pictures so much. One of the best parts of our Christmas season is our Jesse Tree. This was Henry putting the last ornament on it before bed on Christmas Eve. We put colored ...

We took Henry to Branson for a little Christmas fun the week before Thanksgiving. He loves Dolly Parton and the books he got from her in the mail each month for the first five years of his life. It was like a farewell event for us to go to the Dixie Stampede as the last book arrived for his 5th birthday the following week. We loved Imagination Library. It was a treat each month and I honestly think it has helped cultivate his love for books. The main reason we took him to Branson was to ride the Polar Express. He knew nothing about it. We surprised him with these pajamas and told him to put them on. He was very confused because we had not even eaten supper yet and we were in the truck in the mall parking lot. We told him to look out the window at the train on the tracks. We told him then. In true Henry fashion, he got a bit anxious, but he was speechless and in awe for a few minutes. He could not express his excitement because it was just too much!  We boarded the train ...

Skutt Family Christmas is always too much fun. Each year there is that one funny gift that gets the most attention. One year it was knitted hats with beards, a personalized deviled egg tray, the annual calendar with the wrong birthdays, etc. This year the fun was on Claire Allyn. It it was a t-shirt and it was sheer perfection. The humor is lost on those who do not know her and the situation, yet for those of us in her circle...it was hysterical.  Beyonce. oh, for the love of Beyonce. It could not be worded more perfectly, if Claire had written it herself. "Beloved by the elderly" was the best part of the whole shirt....because to Claire we are all the elderly and she makes us love it, even though we really don't want to! I love my Beyonce loving baby cousin more than words!!  Grandaddy and his basketball team, as he lovingly calls them. I think Henry is about to be the only one shorter than him. Anna is quickly gaining on him! I know she is taller than me and...