Christmas in Action

Because church was on Sunday this year we let the kids look through their stockings before church and then waited until after church to open an presents. We all got back into our pajamas and pretended it was still Christmas morning. The kids were spoiled again this year...

2nd Grade gift exchange

Liam's class did a gift exchange this year. Each boy had to bring in a boy gift that cost under $10 and each girl the same. Liam got a science kit. One he had to dig for hidden gems in a block of sand, another he made a volcano and the last one he grew crystals.

Have a Seat

If you sit/lay down on the floor at our house Adele takes that as an invitation to sit on you. Here are a few of the times I could capture. Some of the pictures aren't that great because you have to be quick with this little girl. No time to make sure you have good lighting or focus. As soon as she sees the camera she starts running for it.

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas...

I was so excited to get ready for Christmas this year. For the first time in my life I was itching for Thanksgiving to pass so we could decorate the tree and listen to Christmas music. If you don't know, that is really strange for me. I am very picky about Christmas music (I don't think every musician needs to put out their own cheesy album) and I can't stand it when stores start decorating and playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving. The town decorated their main street and practically all of the light posts in town right after Halloween. At first it bugged me but it looked so pretty that that didn't last long. I think that was what inspired me to get into the Christmas spirit a bit earlier than I normally would. And the fact that it is freezing and all of the trees are completely bare which just makes me think of winter and Christmas.

So just a few days after Thanksgiving our tree was up and decorated. We bought our first (semi) full sized, pre-lit tree. It is the perfect size for the number of ornaments we have.

We put it on a box so that Adele can't reach all of the ornaments and then put the non breakable ones on the bottom because no matter how often we tell her not to touch we often find her touching away! The morning after we put it up she found 3 loud jingle bells and she carried them all over the house jingling all the way. She is always fascinated with what she'll find. Liam and Jonas (our official ornament hangers) had a blast looking at each ornament and hearing about whose they were and where they came from.

Nate and I wanted to do an advent calendar this year. We found some online that you could buy but I really wanted to make something. So we came up with this little plan. We bought a pack of Lego Mini figs as the fillers and I made my own little boxes to put them in using scrapbook paper I had on hand. Then we just piled the boxes on the mantle. At some point I am going to add in little notes of things we can do on a few of the days like watch a Christmas movie, or hang mistletoe, deliver treats to friends, Christmas FHE, drive around looking at Christmas lights, stuff like that. Here is what they look like:


Liam and Jonas are both part of a Christmas program the Primary are putting on for the church Christmas party. They are going to be shepherds. The leaders asked us if they had bath robes and since Liam and Jonas don't I came up with these costumes by cutting up a $3 bed skirt we found at a local store and some Walmart clearance fabric. They were excited to try on the costumes and jump around.


Our Elf on the Shelf Johnny returned this year on December 1st. Liam and Jonas were SO EXCITED to see him! They talk to him through out the day and make comments about needing to behave so Johnny will give Santa a good report about them. Here he is hanging from the strings of the blinds. Silly guy! I hear other elves are much sillier and get into much more mischief than our Johnny. We'll see if he gets more wacky as it gets closer to Christmas.


I printed out this cute Christmas themed subway art and happened to have a frame on hand that matched it. I used scrapbook paper to make it look like it was matted.


I have been having so much fun doing little Christmas crafts and making our house look a little more festive!

BANGS!

BEFORE

Adele's hair is getting so long. I am never sure what to do with it to keep it out of her eyes. Often we will pull the front back into a little clip (and she is finally at the point where she doesn't pull it out right away - at least most of the time). But of course the clips fall out so she'll be running around with her bangs in her face. It drives Nate crazy! I think it must drive other people crazy too because I hear lots of comments from other people like "Oh, Mommy needs to pin that hair back" or "Mommy needs to cut those bangs". The problem I have had is that it is not just her bangs that hang in her face, it is pretty much all of the hair on the top of her head and I was NOT going to cut the whole top of hair into one huge bang. Plus a couple of months ago when we were considering cutting bangs I Googled it and found so many pictures of poor little girls whose parents tried to cut their bangs and they ended up with bangs so short they were practically at their hair line. I was terrified! So we put it off and kept trying to pin the hair back until yesterday when Nate mentioned again that we needed to cut her hair. I wet her hair, pulled it back and made a tiny line of hair in the front and told Nate that was all I was willing to cut. He said "lets do it!" So we did. And here you have Adele with her bangs:

AFTER

(this is taken with Nate's phone so it is a little blurry)

I am still trying to get used to seeing her with bangs but I love that it is easier to see her pretty eyes and of course I still think shes the cutest little girl I've ever seen!

New Word

Adele started saying a new word today - Baby! She has been carrying around her baby a lot lately. It is so sweet to see her acting like a little mommy. She hugs her, rocks her, gives her kisses and gives her to us so we can too. But she will only let us have her for a short time before she demands her back though. :)

Mischief Managed

I thought I would record some of the mischief Adele has gotten into lately.

My sister in law introduced me to Pinterest (Thanks Whitney!!). I get easily spend hours on this site. This day I was only on it for 5 minutes before Adele accomplished this...

A whole package of baby wipes all over the floor. She was so proud of herself. Now I try to limit my Pinterest time to when Adele is asleep or I know she is strapped in her high chair.

There are always markers lying around the house because Liam especially loves to draw. She usually can't get the cap off but obviously this day she did!


Liam was keeping his bag of Halloween candy on the stairs because there is always a gate at the bottom when Adele is awake so she is never on them. But sometimes Mom forgets to put the gate up in the morning when she brings Adele down from her room...

She had opened at least 6 suckers and was happy as could be!

Deal of the Century!

Some friends in our Branch told us about this fireworks store in town that was selling all kinds of discounted, overstock items they bought from amazon.com. They said there was baby stuff, kitchen stuff, everything! I went to check it out right away and they were absolutely right. This store was chock full of stuff and people. Nothing had prices on it so you had to ask one of the workers how much they wanted for everything. They had a couple of jogging strollers that I was interested in. They both appeared to have never been used with tags still on them (but out of the box). We have been going to a local recreation center that has a nice outdoor running track a few times a week and I have been pushing Adele around in our regular stroller - mostly walking because it just isn't made for running. They told me they were both $50. One was a Jeep brand that only had a stationary front wheel. I have tried those before I can't handle them. The other was a Chico. I called Nate to ask him what he thought. I hate spending money like that without talking about it first. I described it to him and he looked it up online and told me to get it - he couldn't find it for less than $350! So I did. Here she is:

And Nate modeling the cute backpack that came with it. :)

Adele loves riding in it. When I first put her in it and pushed her around in the living room she was all smiles and when I tried to take her out she was not happy! We had talked about getting a jogging stroller before we saw this one and I didn't want to spend the money on it but at this price it was hard to pass up. I am so glad we did. It has been really nice to be able to run with Nate. The track has a grass area in the middle of it with a playground. It is one of our new favorite family activities to go running. Liam and Jonas get to play around and then when I am finished running (and Nate is finishing up his run) I let Adele run around for a while.

Halloween Party

I volunteered to help with the Halloween party in Jonas' class. The school is right in the downtown area so there are a lot of little shops. Every Halloween the kids get to go trick or treating to the downtown stores. It was really cold but Adele and I bundled up to go hang out with Jonas and his class. I cannot believe how many kids there were. They bus kids in from other areas to come trick or treating in our downtown. Crazy! They must go through bags and bags of candy. After trick or treating we went back to the classroom for a pizza party.

Jonas was Darth Vader. He did have a mask but it pinched his nose or something like that so he had me carry it the whole time.

He's a little excited about all of his candy!

I have decided that it is nearly impossible to volunteer for class parties (and actually feel like you are helping rather than distracting) when you have a 1 year old. She was dancing around which encouraged the other kids to dance around, trying to touch all markers/crayons/pencils she could find and was dying to try out the teacher's fancy camera.

Heaven...

I feel like we are officially grown up because we bought our very own mattress! We have gotten by over the last 10 years with hand me downs, a bed in a box (yes, the mattress came in the mail in a box and when we opened it up it sort of inflated) and air mattresses. Our very first major purchase after getting a real job and moving to Kentucky was this beauty. It took us months of visiting different stores and trying them out (while our children ran around the store like wild animals) before we decided on this one - a Sterns & Foster something or other. After about 2 days of sleeping on it Nate decided he pretty much hated it. I kept trying to convince him that it was just because it was a new mattress and we needed to give it some time. The return/exchange rules are that you have to sleep on it for 21 days anyways. He kept leaning towards those memory foam types. I was pretty worried that we would get one of those (having never slept on something without springs) and really not like it but be stuck with it. When we tried them in the stores I didn't think they were all that comfortable. But after visiting some more stores and trying out more mattresses (while our children ran around the store like wild animals) we decided we would get a Simmons Comforpedic Loft - it helped that right as we were deciding they had a sale that dropped the price to about half what it was when we first started looking. This is where the title of my post comes in...seriously HEAVEN! The first mattress we bought had a free gift of two fancy memory foam pillows so I feel like I am wrapped in the stuff. I have never slept better! Nate likes it too. :)

Snaggle Tooth

Liam (finally) lost is 4th tooth. This tooth was dangling by a tiny piece of skin for WEEKS! A few different times I threatened not to give him any food until he pulled his tooth out. Nate tried a few times to get it out (with Liam's permission but he had to stop as soon as Liam said so). Eventually he pulled it out himself. It is funny to hear him speak without his two front teeth.

Pumpkin Carving

It was a lot of fun carving pumpkins this year. We hadn't carved any since we lived in Illinois in 2007. I let Liam and Jonas pick out their own pumpkins and I picked one out for myself too. I also got a small one for Adele that I thought she might want to play around with. Nate didn't want one of his own, probably because he knew he'd be carving most of the boys for them. I made them pull all of their own guts out. I love the feel of all of the slimy stuff inside but they were pretty grossed out. :)




We kept reminding them that this was part of carving pumpkins. If you want to do the fun part you have to do the dirty work too! Adele supervised the whole thing. We roasted the seeds but they didn't turn out that great. I had fun doing it though.

Here is what we ended up with...

Liam's pumpkin

Vanessa's pumpkin

I tried to get a picture of Jonas' pumpkin at one point but we had some listening issues and I had to give up before I got too frustrated. So there is no picture of his. :(

What we did was Liam and Jonas would tell us what they wanted - round eyes, scary eyes, lots of teeth, etc and we would draw different things on paper until it looked the way they wanted. Then we would transfer it onto the pumpkin and carve.

For mine I got a book from the library that had lots of different ideas of things you could do with pumpkins and gourds that didn't involve making faces. This was my favorite idea. The book's was much fancier. Maybe next year. We also decided that next year we are going to let/make the boys carve their own and see what they come up with.

Kentucky Apple Festival

I had the Kentucky Apple Festival on our calendar even before we moved to Kentucky. Our landlords sent us some brochures about different things going on in the area and I was so excited when I heard about it. Apple pie, caramel apples, apple dumplings, funnel cake, arts & craft booths...all sounds good to me! Nate had to work on Friday so I took all three kids out myself. It wasn't the "big" day so it was much less crowded. We planned on coming back the next day with Nate but I thought it was a good idea to let the kids ride some things while there weren't so many lines. They had a blast in this blow up fighting ring. Seriously, I wish we had one of these at home. Then I could send them out to the ring to have it out whenever they are bickering and there would only be minimal damage.


Next they wanted to go on this thing - I can't think of what it is called -

This was the best! They had so much fun.

Adele just sat in her stroller and watched. It wasn't long before she had had enough and we went home. Not before we got a caramel apple though.


The next day we went again with Nate. It was freezing and there were way too many people there so we didn't stay long. The lines were massive for everything so we didn't bother waiting in line for many of the foods we wanted to try. I have learned a lesson for next year - go on Friday and enjoy everything and stay away on Saturday. :)

Park Day

One day during Liam and Jonas' fall break we went with Nate to one of the campuses where he teaches (they had different breaks..bummer!). It is about an hour away from where we live and is bigger than the town we live in. We walked around the downtown area at first (and found a very cute little quilt shop), had a picnic lunch with Nate and then played at this very cool park that is right next to campus until he was done teaching. It was so nice to have a break from our little town!

Pigtails!

Miss Adele's hair is long enough for pigtails! yay!

Crazy hair Day

Adele woke up from her nap one day with CrAzY hair so Liam and Jonas decided they would join in the fun!

The Office

I have a lower cabinet in the kitchen that I use for all of the plastic dishes that the kids use so that they can get their own cups and plates when they need them. Adele has other uses for this cabinet and the dishes. She has claimed it as her personal office and will empty it of any dishes I put in it (and leave them anywhere around the house she feels like). We have deemed it Adele's office.

Are you wondering why the insides of the cabinet doors aren't painted? us too!

Liam had an office too!

Dublin, CA - October, 2005