Christmas Pictures

Still behind...but here are a few pictures from this Christmas season:

We had an advent calendar (courtesy of my mother) for the first time this year (should have been included in the traditions I listed last week...) and each day had a little slip of paper with something simple and fun to do.  The kids LOVED it and looked forward to it each day.  We opened them after dinner each night and got to do lots of fun stuff:

Drinking Hot Chocolate with candy canes:

 

Coloring Christmas Pictures:

We even got to go visit Santa one night:

No, we didn't pay the $20 bucks to get a picture with him, so this is the kids in line:

We had a "polar express party" with the boy's joyschool group and Samantha got to come since it was at our house:

We made treats for those same joyschool friends:

We played lots of Wii with Granna:

ate dinner at In & Out on Christmas Eve:

We acted out Luke 2.  Noah was SUPER sweet!  He kept putting his arm around "Mary" trying to help her and saying things like "It will be okay, I love you."  Micah is a king.  That is the only crown we had!  And Samantha wanted a real baby (Hanna) in her tummy at first, so that was the best we could do and made her quite happy!

There were other things that we didn't get pictures of....always true I guess.  It was a really fun month / / week.   I will try to post Christmas morning next week!  (-:

Merry Christmas Nanna!

This was our gift to my Mom this year. The music and lyrics were written by an incredibly talented friend of mine. Once she'd written the song, she spent 3 hours with my kids recording it and then hours more editing it. Her talent is AMAZING. My kiddos can't really sing, but she has this method of getting things "just right." I added the pictures to the music for a slideshow. It is now my kids favorite song to listen to and I'm loving the memories. So is my Mom! If you are in So Cal & are interested in having one made let me know and I will put you in touch with my friend. Oh, and Samantha's last line is "I love you to the moon!"

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Halloween Day

Sam had a temp of 103, but was so so sadden by the idea of being left behind that we let her go. We made her stay in the stroller the whole time though so she didn't get close to any other kiddos. She only made it for about 15-20 min. and then asked to go to bed.

On the way out the door:



The beginning of the neighborhood parade:

The very first candy stop:
Right before we split up (I took Sam to about 3 houses and Cory went ahead (much faster) with the boys. Gotta love the boot Tinkerbell insisted on:
The loot:

Halloween Festivities so far.

I LOVE FALL!  I love the cooler weather, the leaves, the soups and hot cocoa.  I especially love all the traditions.  This fall has been the best b/c the boys are finally old enough to remember some of the things we did last year and our little family's traditions are starting!  I'm LOVING it!  They remembered that last year we made ghosts out of milk cartons and asked to do it again this year.  So we did:

They remembered that we decorated our door for Halloween last year as well and want to do it again, so we did that as well:

Easter Fun

So, I haven't blogged about Christmas, Thanksgiving or the 4th of July (yes, 4th of July 2010), so I thought I'd better get our Easter post down right away or I'd never get to it either. I love Easter. It rivals Christmas for me.  So, we had a fun week:

Today we made resurrection rolls and talk about what Easter actually means. We also had a ham and cheesy potatoes dinner, but I forgot to take pictures of any of it. They boys enjoyed the rolls though. They thought it was fun that the marshmallows disappeared, but I'm not quite sure they made the connection to Christ being resurrected. We read a few scriptures about it, but Micah's only comment was: Well Mom, marshmallows can't be resurrected, only people can b/c Jesus was a people!

Here is what cute Hanna did during all the activities:

 

Valentine's Day 2011

Carving Pumpkins

Halloween

New Year's Day

I forgot to mention it in the last post, but my brother Curtis and his family came up for New Year's eve and then stayed for a few days.  We hadn't seen them in over a year, so it was a really nice visit.  The boys enjoyed playing with their cousin Kayla who is about 1 1/2 years older than them (and who has twin boy cousins on her mom's side that are 1 1/2 years old than her...funny), and it was great to meet their adorable little baby, Chole who is about a month older than Samantha.

The highlight of New Year's day was making cookies with Nanna:

Notice Micah eating the dough in this picture (we didn't even realize he was doing that until a few minutes later)...yeah, he wasn't too into decorating the cookies...he just wanted to eat them.

And this is how we bribed the boys to get their pictures taken (we had a professional photographer come to the house on New Years):  Ice cream!  Yep, it was only 10:00 am, and my boys were eating ice cream! 

New Year's Eve

We had SO MUCH fun on New Year's eve!  First we had a dance party in the dark with lots of glowing jewlry and such.  They boys still talk about it.

Then, we set up the tents in the theater room and watched Cars, ate popcorn, and drank juice.  The boys were in heaven!  The idea was to have them fall asleep in their tents watching the movie.  I mean, it was late for them!  But no, they wouldn't have that!  The rest of the family left around 10:30, so we turned off the lights and snuggled with them while we finished the movie...

11:15....Movie over....still wide awake

more snuggling....tickling backs....singing Jesus songs....12:00 am....still awake

I finally left I was so frustrated, but Cory stayed in there with them all night.  They did eventually fall asleep, but I guess he says they woke up a bunch all night long.  Silly boys!