Happy New Year!

I tried to be on the ball over Christmas but I fell behind at the end. We had a wonderful time having Eric home all day during Christmas break and seeing Nate and Kristin as well as Lisa. We got to say good bye to Renae who is off to Rexburg for her freshman year. We're going to miss her lots because she used to come visit us everyday for lunch. Her job was about 5 minutes away so we got to visit with "Aunt Renae" lots of days and its sad that she's so far away but she is soooo excited to be away at school. We love you Nae Nae! :)

The kids are so fun and so busy. I have to share a few funny things that happened lately. Marcus LOVES the toilet. The girls were never this interested with the toilet bowl but that is difference #1 between boys and girls. Story #1 - Eric was on kid duty and I was upstairs. I heard a commotion downstairs and decided to see what the trouble was. It turns out Marcus had gotten into the bathroom, lifted up the seat, climbed up the stool and into the toilet. Splish, splash, sploosh standing in the toilet. How fun! Story #2 - Almost the same senario only I was in charge and Marcus beat me into the bathroom before I could remember to close the door. I turned around and saw him with one arm holding up the lid, the other fishing something out of the toilet. When I got closer I saw it was a clump of toilet paper with another in his mouth that he was sucking the water out of. Yaagghhh! Gross!!! There you have it - Marcus' favorite activity when Mommy is forgetful (which is a lot!)

We wish you all a Happy New Year. May you keep all your resolutions and goals! I'll try to do the same. :) I just won't tell you what they are so you'll never know if I did or not. :)

Sing Christmas Carols

We had a party!!! We hosted a Christmas Sing and had everyone bring cookies and a songbook. We supplied yummy cranberry punch and homemade hot cocoa. It was a lot of fun. The kids ran around and played and we sang quite a few classics. A fun thing worth repeating! Whose house next year?

Build a Snowman

Well Frosty has had to wait as well - we've kept pushing him back because the lack of snow on the day it was time to make a Frosty. We had snow on the 18th but it was sooo cold that the snow was just powder. (That night we got freezing rain and things were a little slushy the next afternoon!) we could't put Frosty together. Oh well. I have a feeling that we will have ample opportunities to create a snowy friend in the coming days and weeks. We actually delivered goodies to the neighbors instead.

Stuff and Send Christmas Cards

We started this process but actually finished that up today. Sorry no pictures because I didn't have any batteries. If I did have one to post it would show Cora plastering the envelopes with as many return address labels as she could before I noticed and handed her another envelope. It would show Marcus grabbing the table cloth and about pulling everything off of the table. You would see Jodi very studiously placing the return labels on and then carrying the mail around the house. If I could record the sound for you Jodi could be heard every day at bedtime telling me how we forgot to send the mail to our family! We do love you all even though we can't get you a Christmas card before Christmas day!

Decorate a gingerbread house

On Day 16 we made our gingerbread house. The girls weren't so sure at first but once they saw all the candy out and realized what we were doing they were on my lap and in the frosting. It even wound up having fence posts and a mailbox and a Christmas tree.

p.s. I've recently discovered the use of a glue gun to put the gingerbread together - I'll never go back!

Make carmel popcorn and watch Miracle on 34th St

I feel like we have a lot of Christmas movies on our list but there are so many and some that have already been traditional family movies that I just try and add another activity onto that. I tried a new recipe for carmel corn and its yummy! Its a crunchy recipe and is supposed to store well in the freezer. Here it is:

12 qts popped corn
Preheat oven to 250
Combine the following in saucepan:
2 c brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine or butter
1/2 c corn syrup
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
1/4 tsp salt
Bring to boil and boil 5 min.
Remove from heat and add 1 1/2 tsp baking soda.
Mix well and pour carmel over popcorn.
Spread on cookie sheets coated with cooking spray.
Bake for 20 min - stirring once. Remove and break apart.
For a richer treat use less popcorn.
I used 10 qts and that was 3 cookie sheets worth.

Read Twas the Night Before Christmas around the fire

We built a fire in our fireplace and opened up 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. We will have to read it later too but it was fun to sit around the fire and read stories. I love story time and kids need as much as we'll give them!

Dec 13 Decorate the tree

Our tree is actually a work in progress. The ornaments move
from moment to moment and room to room. One even came with us to church today. It started out with ornaments grouped low in one spot but once Marcus woke up from his nap we realized the tree could only be 2/3 of the way decorated. Put 'em up high. His sisters are good ornament police but he pushes right back. What a loving bunch. Having a decorated tree just makes the house feel more like Christmas!

Dec 12 - Go get a Christmas tree

This was our tree adventure. Eric and I had different opinions about what our tree should be like. I wanted it to be FREE with lots of possible character and he wanted it to be the typical PERFECT tree. Some friends of ours have some pines they need to cut down and I thought By golly lets cut one down and top the tree and voila free tree! Wahoo. Eric turned up his nose from the start but I finally talked him into tromping through their woods. As is evidenced by the picture with a certain retailers reflection I had to let go of my purse strings for the sake of Eric's special tree memories. We have it up and it is beautiful but one of these years I'm going to introduce him to the joys of the character tree. We'll just wait and see.
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Read Polar Express and watch the movie

I LOVE this book!!! We opened this as our Christmas book tonight and Daddy read them the story. They even got to watch the movie. I'll always love the book better but the movie is good too. The girls love the "Hot Chocolate" song and take turns singing
hot-hot-hot
hot-chocolate
Mommy got to go make a gingerbread house for Enrichment so I missed this one but it was a good activity for a night with Daddy.

I don't know if I've mentioned it but we open one book every night and read that Christmas book together at bedtime. Thanks to the library our Christmas book collection is quite expanded!

Make Christmas cookies and deliver them

We made these buckeye candies and they were easier than I thought. Death by chocolate and peanut butter would be the way to go! The girls "helped" and Marcus climbed onto the table to "help" before I could get him off with my peanut butter covered hands. I don't have a double boiler and so I used my glass Pampered Chef bowl over my small pan. I am being so creative with these advent things. (to toot my own horn!)
We didn't get a chance to deliver anything yet - Daddy was gone all day so we'll wait until he can go with us. The neighbors already wonder what he does for a living. :)

Watch The Santa Clause

I added make ornaments to this because I thought just plopping ourselves in front of the TV doesn't make the greatest of memories. I made some Bakers Clay and we used cookie cutters to get our shapes. I totally forgot we're out of straws and I was at a loss until I remembered I had ziti noodles and they worked perfect for punching the holes. Such a smart girl am I!

The kids had fun and Cora found out quickly the dough had 1 cup of salt and she didn't like it.

Santa Clause was well - just that. I did have to reinforce why we celebrate Christmas at prayer time though - we aren't celebrating Santa Claus - Who is it we celebrate at Christmas? John. Cora is quick on her feet even if she's confidently wrong. Cute girl. We are so grateful we can celebrate the birth of Jesus. Without him we would be nothing!

Drink hot cocoa and eat a candy cane

We used our candy canes as stir sticks for our homemade hot cocoa. Jodi corrected Daddy (as usual - she argues or contradicts EVERYTHING!) because its "warm cocoa." Our adorable strong willed daughter.

Write Christmas letters to family

We have family all over and Sunday is a good day for writing letters. Jodi loves to write her name on a piece of paper, fold it up and hand me the "mail" she wants to send. I need to be better about actually sending these cute scraps of paper. Merry Christmas!

Putting up lights - the pix

Here are the pictures I had a hard time with yesterday. The face Marcus is making is a pretty permanent face - he's always happy and excited about something. Right now its especially lights.

Decorate the house for Christmas

We had fun getting out the boxes full of Christmas "things" and its fun to watch the house transform into something festive. We didn't get everything put up (mostly because we haven't gotten our tree yet - I think that is Day 12) but the girls were really excited about the stockings. Jodi and Cora have been talking about Santa coming down the "chiminy" for several days now. I've gotta get my mom to finish Marcus' stocking and then his can hang too. Here is the inbetween-math (rather than aftermath which I still need to clean up!) of our decorating as well a shot of the floor we put in ourselves.

Gotta love Cora's face! They are very good at the cheesy faces and they're excited for their stockings.

I had to put in a picture of the pillars - that is what caught my eye on the house in the first place. I imagined wrapping them in white lights and pine garland at Christmas. Well this year its this darling homemade holly and ivy instead. I spent a lot of time today cutting out those pieces and sewing them together. I'm rather pleased with myself I just wish I had a better shot of the whole thing.

Put up Christmas lights

I've got some cute putting up lights pix but due to technical difficulties I can't seem to get them right at the moment and I'm too tired to try any longer. I"ll fix it tomorrow in daylight hours. Lights are fun though - they totally set the mood.

Write a Letter to Santa

Letters to Santa Clause for Day 4. (okay so I add an "e" and I'm not sure if its just my need to spell things correctly or that Disney's movies have cemented this spelling in my mind but I think I'll keep it Clause with an E just like Anne Shirley.)

The girls rather liked this activity because they love to color so much. I think Jodi had more fun decorating the outside of the envelope than "writing" the letter but it was a good way to spend 20 minutes.

Watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer

Day 3 had to be a switcharoo. It was meant to be a snowman building day but we steadily watched the snow melting all day - more green grass than white snowman building stuff. Instead we pulled out a paper that said - Watch Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer. What a great classic movie - Eric and I even have Rudolf flannel sheets if that's not too much information for ya. :)

Make a paper chain countdown

Here is day 2 - making a paper chain countdown. Cora loved using the glue stick and Jodi only wanted to color/draw on the strips of paper. Jodi cried when I told her we'd get to tear the papers off. "Nooo, I want to leave it the same!" Cora loved posing with the chains and our trick now is to keep them out of Marcus' reach for a few days because that boy can reach when he'd determined!