Winter Wonderland

A couple weeks ago we visited friends and family in Utah.  They have been hit by some major snowstorms, receiving 2-3 feet of snow with each storm.  We haven't received any snow at our house, so the kids were ecstatic to enjoy the mounds of snow left in Grandma J's yard.

A1, stuck in the snow (look at the pure joy the snow brings)

A2 decided to help out with the shoveling (the driveway was clear, so he tried to uncover the grass)

What an amazing snowman!  These kids are talented!

I am so glad that we were able to enjoy the snow without having to do much driving in it and that we don't have to deal with it at our house!  Snow is nice to visit, but not to live in.

AC Gilbert House

As a Christmas gift to ourselves, we bought an annual pass to the local children's museum, the AC Gilbert House.  It is a series of buildings, each with a different theme.  Each room within the building is a different theme within the theme of the building.  The outside playground was huge!  There were so many things to do: A1 loved climbing the rope nets, A2 loved sliding down the 3-story tall slide, and L2 enjoyed banging on the xylophones made out of wood and steel pipes.  The kids had quite a good time exploring the place.  We will be visiting quite often, I think.

the Asian room in the Animal House

the African safari room in the Animal House

Watch out, L2!  A wild animal approaches!

the over-sized porch leading into the Dinosaur House

A1 and A2 are so silly!

the outside playground

Christmas 2012

Christmas was so fun this year.  We decided to stay in Oregon and let the party come to us.

My parents brought my youngest sister (yay for Aunt Meggie!) and spent the weekend before Christmas at our house.  The kids were so happy to see Grandma and Grandpa!

When A1 heard that we would have visitors for Christmas, she made a gift: she wrote her own version of "12 Days of Christmas" and presented it to each of them.

A2 was especially glad to see Aunt Meggie (she's his favorite person, and the feeling is quite mutual - I feel a little bad for Megan's boyfriend that he has to compete with such a cute little guy for her heart).

On Christmas Eve we skyped with R's family and opened a few presents with them.  It was so nice to see them and share some time even though we are so far away.

Can you see Grandma and Grandpa J?

opening presents while skyping

And Christmas was wonderful with just us.  We took our time, we tried to focus on what was really important, we even took a break in the middle of opening presents to share with others.

our Christmas (yes, that is a bike for A1)

L2 was completely adorable opening presents for the first time.  He seemed to instinctively know that wrapping paper is for tearing!

Hoping that you had a merry Christmas and were able to focus on Christ's birth and find joy in the season.

Homemade gifts

This year the kids and I decided to make presents for the grandparents.  My kids beg to "do crafting" (as they call it) almost everyday, so turning their new passion into presents was the greatest thing they could think of.

My parents have game night at least once a week.  All of my siblings (we join too if we are in town) gather in my parents' basement around the game table and play game after game after game late into the night.  Snacks and sodas are heavily involved, and I have often heard both my parents complain about water spots left on the table from cans and glasses.  So we "did crafting" to make some coasters to protect the game table.  A1 and A2 drew pictures and I decoupaged pictures of each of the grandchildren onto tiles (wouldn't you know, I forgot to take pictures of my coasters), glued some cork on the back, and (ta da) coasters!

As for R's parents, we turned our recent family photo shoot into wall art for them to hang.  I found a cheap way to turn regular pictures into canvas pictures (I love Pinterest), so we could provide them an entire gallery!

We loved making gifts.  I think this may become a new family tradition!

Santa Claus is coming to town!

I know I say this over and over, but life is going really well now that we have settled down into a job and a house and we aren't waiting to move on to the next part of our life (like we were during school and residency).  We can focus on the little things that lead to family traditions.

This Christmas started one such tradition: we were able to visit Santa Claus!  The kids wrote letters last year, and they have seen the TV specials, but this year they actually got to sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas.

A1 loved it!  She told Santa that she wanted a sewing machine, a flute with a case, and a movie.  She still believes in Santa, but is starting to question certain aspects (like how does he get to all the children in the world in one night and she noticed that the presents he left this year were in the exact same wrapping paper as the presents R and I gave the kids and his handwriting looks suspiciously like mine).  We may need to have a talk about him before next Christmas.

A2 also loved it!  He told Santa that he wanted a flute with a case (he has to be the same as his older sister), a movie, and a game.  He wholeheartedly believes in Santa, no questioning at all.  I think that may all change once A1 no longer believes, though.

 L2 would have nothing to do with Santa, which was okay.  He still has plenty of time left to join in the Santa tradition.

9 months old!

L2 hit the 9 month mark in December.  He is just the cutest little thing to ever live!

He dropped to the 50th percentile in height and weight, but his head circumference continues to be off the chart (gotta hold in all those brains!).  He finally perfected crawling forward (he could crawl backward for the longest time, but then would get stuck against a wall and cry until I turned him around - facing the wall - so he could get away), started pulling himself up to standing, and discovered his tongue (he now sticks his tongue out all day, twisting and feeling it, leaving pools of drool everywhere he goes).

We love you, sweet L2.  You are a wonderful addition to our family.

Lost: One Tooth

For about two weeks, A1 complained that all her friends were losing teeth, why wasn't she?  Then one of her teeth started to get wiggly.  She was so excited!

And I decided it was time to get off my duff and make her something to hold her teeth once they fall out.  So I looked around Pinterest (what did people do before Pinterest to find ideas?) and combined a few of the ideas out there to make a Tooth Fairy pillow.

It has a ribbon so she can hang it from her bed and a pocket to hold the tooth in the back.

This little pillow makes it easier for the Tooth Fairy to find the tooth and trade it for a prize.

And I couldn't have chosen a better time to make the pillow.  Within a day of receiving the finished pillow, A2 promptly lost her wiggly tooth!

She is such a big girl now!

A1's Cupcake Wars

We watch a lot of Food Network at our house.  I love to cook, but even more I L.O.V.E. to eat.  My kids have picked up on my love of food and prefer to watch Food Network over any other channel (including the Disney channel).  A2's favorite program is Good Eats and insists that we cook just like Alton tells us to.  A1, on the other hand, is a huge fan of Cupcake Wars.  Something about trying to bake and decorate the perfect little cake sets her heart a-flutter.

So Cupcake Wars was the perfect theme for her birthday party a few months ago.

(Yes, that little cupcake goes inside the little wrapper.  Yes, it kind of looks like an ice cream cone.  Yes, I cut them all out by hand.  Yes, it took me two full days to get the invitations ready.  No, my husband was NOT happy about that.  Yes, my mom has since given me a paper-cutting machine that will make this process so much easier.  Yes, both my husband and I are eternally grateful for that new machine.  Why do you ask?)

The girls started by making aprons to wear throughout the party.  I bought cheap white aprons and sewed velcro strips along the front.  Then I made ruffles with coordinating fabric and sewed the corresponding velcro strip to each of them.  I also made flower pins.  Then when the girls arrived they could put the ruffles in any order and place the pin wherever.  And thus they were ready for baking!

We started by cutting out sugar cookies.  I found a box of various shapes for really cheap and let the girls do what they wanted with the dough.

While those cooked and cooled, the girls decorated little cakes.  I made cake platters for each of them (a tutorial will be forthcoming), made mini cakes (I baked them in a small Pyrex bowl to get the right size and shape), and covered them with marshmallow fondant (I don't like the taste of real fondant, but one of my greatest friends, Jenna, gave me this recipe, which is both easy to work with and very tasty).

The girls each decorated a cake with small bags of frosting in various colors.

(Don't mind Alicia and me in the background gabbing while the girls made cute, cute, cute creations!  Also as part of this parenthetical, I would like to thank Alicia for helping out with the photography during the party.  She is amazing.  You can definitely tell which pictures she took (the ones that look professional) and which I took.)

A1 really enjoyed decorating with frosting.

I made A2 his own tiny little cake so he could be part of the action too.

Then the girls decorated their sugar cookies with those same bags of frosting.

Those girls did some amazing work.  We definitely have some very talented artists among us.

Time for the birthday cake.  I made a giant cupcake to go with the Cupcake Wars theme.

My husband insists that I include the total amount of sugar that went into this party: 7 boxes of cake (yes, I make my cake from boxes, not from scratch!) and 9 pounds of powdered sugar (the fondant gets its stability from powdered sugar).  This was not a diet party by any means, but it was SO. MUCH. FUN!  We were also going around our neighborhood for the next week trying to find people to help us eat so much cake! *smile*

Happy birthday to my sweet, smart, talented, beautiful girl.  We are so blessed to have you in this family.  We love you!

Hello!

Just a quick post to say hello and hope you have a happy day!

A2-isms

This sweet, smart, curious, funny little boy really keeps me on my toes.  He has some of the greatest insights about the world around us.

We were discussing the music we were listening to in the car.
A1: Is this song one of the Hymns? {our Church music}
me: No, it's not that kind of song.
A2: Then is it one of the hers?

One night as I tucked him into bed and kissed him goodnight, he pushed me away and said, "Mom, stop kissing me!"
I replied, "But I like kissing you!"
He immediately rolled over and said, "Could you go away?  I'm trying to sleep."

I'm going to have my hands full as he gets older and more curious about the world and with a stronger opinion about how things work!  But I wouldn't have it any other way.  I love him dearly.

Halloween 2012

We had a great first Halloween in our new house.  Once again, I love the fact that I have a space to decorate!

We're still working on the outside of our house, but the pumpkins added a bit of fun!

Unfortunately, I was not really on top of things in October (that pirate ship birthday cake really took it out of me!), so we didn't get our jack o' lanterns done until about 15 minutes before we walked out the door to go trick-or-treating.  We bought A1 and A2 each a pumpkin and let them decide what they wanted to carve into it.

A1 decided she wanted a witch.

A2 decided he wanted a dragon.

The kids decided they didn't want to go as a theme this year, so they each got to choose their favorite thing to be for Halloween.

A1 chose from her many princess dresses, and came up with this warm Rapunzel costume.

I didn't get a picture of her hair from the back, but we tried to recreate Rapunzel's braided look topped with 10 or so flower clips.  It turned out really nice.

A2, following his recent trend, decided he wanted to be a pirate (what is it about four-year-olds and pirates?).

Trick AAARRRRRR treat!

L2 didn't get much say in his costume (he's not saying a whole lot in terms of fashion these days).  He makes an adorable Tigger!

All set for trick-or-treating in our new neighborhood:

What a great time and place for real, house-to-house trick-or-treating!  We love Oregon!

A1 Picture Day

Picture Day happened about a month ago.  A1 was so excited to get to wear her new clothes and her new necklace to school.  I think she looks gorgeous!

Our BIG Accomplishments

L2 had his six month well-child check, and he is doing magnificently.  He remains in the 75th percentile in height and weight and is off the charts in head circumference (we have yet another lollipop baby!).  By this time, A1 and A2 had both receded to below the 5th percentile, so it looks like we are going to have a big person in this family after all!

Isn't he the most adorable thing you have ever seen?!

In other news, we have recently discovered Lowe's Build and Grow Clinics.  Each month Lowe's offers some kind of project to do with your kids.  If you sign up on the website, they provide the materials and tools for free.  We have had a blast building a Shrek onion cart and a firetruck.

Putting the wheels on our onion carts

I highly recommend looking into your local Lowe's to see if they offer this fun activity.  Our kids were so proud of themselves that they were able to build their own toys and that they got to use actual tools (a small hammer) to do so.  Let your kids be proud too!