Catch Up 5! Thanksgiving, Live Nativity and Ginger Bread!

Here I am doing a another catch up post. I think this is the last one before Christmas which is good since Christmas was 3 days ago! The first pictures I have are from Thanksgiving this year. We went to my parents house this year and had a beautiful time. Dave and Melissa brought these cute little turkeys made out of cookies and candy and put one on every plate. They also brought the packing peanuts that you can lick and stick and let the kids make pictures out of them before dinner. Emma said she was thankful for books, so she made hers look like a book. Unfortunately I only have a couple of pictures, but here they are.

Then, on December 5th we went to the live nativity in Alpine with Dave & Melis and Jan & Jen. It was really cool. There is a family that has a couple of barns and they get a bunch of people to dress up and help out. The first barn has a bunch of animals like camels, sheep and donkeys as well as people pretending to be craftsmen from the time of Christ's birth. The second barn has a group of people in the loft that are singing hymns. You can hear them as you walk up to the barn. Then you go in the barn and they have a little manger scene set up with a man, woman and a baby all dressed up like Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. It is a wonderful experience and I really enjoyed it. Emma seemed to enjoy it as well. Matthew of course was not interested in seeing the baby Jesus and wanted to go back and see the animals. He was freaking out a little, so Daniel took him out. It was really nice though, despite the cold.

Seeing the animals!

More animals. Bugsy was loving it!

Seeing the baby Jesus. Emma is on the left hand side of the top picture in the beige coat.

The last thing for this post is our annual ginger bread house making night. We actually did a night for the kids to make ginger bread houses a week before we did our house. Then on the 14th of December, we let the kids decorate cookies for a couple of minutes and then we did our own. It was a lot of fun and we didn't even stay up too late!

Here are pictures of the kids as well as one of the ginger bread house.

Catch up 4! Christmas Decorating!

I'm back to my "catch up posts and this one is about decorating for Christmas. We usually decorate the day after Thanksgiving each year. However, this year we decided to do it the day before Thanksgiving so that we could help my mom the day after. So this year we did it on Wednesday the 25th of November.

Emma was so excited to get out the "Little People" manger out and play with it. Bugsy wanted in on the fun too, and they actually played together pretty well after we explained to Emma that it belonged to both of them. That kept them pretty busy most of the time until we were ready to hang the decorations. They had fun helping to do that and it all went pretty well actually. We had a nice time and even finished pretty early this year since we were only doing our tree instead of mine and Jan's. Here are pictures.

8 Years Together!

8 Years and counting! I miss you love and we can't afford it! Happy anniversary!

Catch up 3!

We have had some fun times together lately. First on November 10th we made a paper mache volcano. We were trying to complete a "circle of learning" project. It is a program that PBS does where if you read a book, watch a show, and do a project that all teach about 1 topic, then they send you a free book. Unfortunately, I still haven't written in to get my free book yet, but at least we had fun doing it.

We started by constructing a base out of an empty Downey fabric softener bottle and some wire. Then we did paper mache over the top of that and waited for several hours till it dried. Emma loved the paper mache. She had a great time getting her hands all goopy, as well as my pants, my shoes, the floor, her pajamas, etc. Bugsy mostly watched and tried to pull the whole thing apart. It was fun!

While it was drying we made a dinosaur and a palm tree out of some clay she had brought home from her Sunday school class. (yes, I know, my sculpting skills need a little work) Then we painted our volcano which Emma also loved helping with. Matthew was of course trying to put his hand in the wet paint the whole time. Then, after the paint dried we put the baking soda and vinegar in and watched the "explosion" which was a little less than awesome. It did bubble up and the kids enjoyed it, so that was the important part. All-in-all we had a great time doing this project together.

Another fun thing we did on December 9th. Emma was asking me all day on the 8th if we could have a tea party, so I told her we would have one the next day when Bugsy went down for his nap. When I finally got him down on the 9th, part of me hoped that Emma wouldn't remember that I had promised her a tea party because I had so much to do. She did of course remember as she almost always remembers things like that, and now I am so glad that she did. We ended up having a quick little tea party together and it was so great to spend some time with her. We both had a great time laughing together and I'm so glad that I took time to play with her. I need to do it more often. She is such a sweet little girl, and I know I am going to look back and wish I had spent more time with her. Oh well, at least I took time that day, and we have even done it again since then. That's twice in 1 week. That's pretty good! :) Here are a couple of pictures!

Catch Up 2!

On October 27th it snowed!!! Emma was so excited and of course wanted to make a snowman. We decided to get all bundled up and go out and build one. Emma had snow pants, but I had not purchased any for Matthew yet, so he had to use Emma's old ones which are of course pink. Besides that, his coat is enormous, so he basically ended up looking like a big bundle of snow clothes. He was darling, however, he was not excited about being all bundled and not able to move. He was really excited to go outside though. Here are some pictures.

Emma loved the snow! She was having such a good time rolling around and making snow angels and helping build the snowman.

Matthew did not love the snow so much. He didn't like the fact that it was cold and he kept falling down because of the fact that he was a big marshmallow. Poor little guy. He was totally ready to go in by the end.

Here's the finished product! We had a great time building it. Of course, because of the fact that it was a fairly warm day, the snowman inevitably crumbled an hour later. Oh well, we had a great time, except of course Bubbers!

Some Serious Catch Up!

And I'm not talking about the tomato base condiment either! :)

I have needed to do several blog posts, so I am going to start back in October and work towards December. Hopefully I will catch up with a couple of quick posts.

In October, Emma's preschool class had a field trip to Hee Haw Farms. Daniel had the day off that day so we decided to take Bugsy and go as a family. We also took one of Emma's little classmates in our car. Her name was Kiersa and she was darling. Emma loved having a buddy to stick with.

They all seemed to enjoy seeing and petting the animals. Bugsy had just started doing his "cheese" face as you can see from the pictures above.

We got to go on a tractor pull. Bugsy was excited until he discovered that he did not actually get to ride on the tractor and had to sit in the trailer behind. Then he was way bugged. Emma and Kiersa had fun though. We each got to pick a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch to take home with us.

Emma LOVED the big white slide. She was even brave enough to go by herself. She also enjoyed jumping in the little hay trampoline thing they had there.

This is Emma's whole class on the tractor and then a close up of Emma and Kiersa. We all had a great time!

Inadequate!

Have you ever felt inadequate? I can tell you I have felt inadequate so many times in my life, but I don't think I have ever felt it as much as I do now. On Sunday I was sustained as relief society president in my ward, thus my feelings of inadequacy. I believe very much in revelation and I do believe that this is where the Lord wants me, but I cannot fathom why. For the 12 days after I met with the bishop until last Sunday when I was sustained, I kept thinking maybe it was just a dream, but I am quite certain now that it is not. :) I feel the weight of the responsibility that this calling entails and it makes me feel a little unhinged at times. Believe me, I have been very humbled lately. How do you wrap your mind around something like this? I know it will all come in time, but it's like getting new job and you don't know how to perform any of your duties yet. I feel quite lost at this point. However, I do believe that "whom the Lord calls, He qualifies." I know that the only way I am going to get this is with His infinite mercy and help. I do have a testimony of this work and am grateful to be able to serve in this capacity. I will just have to keep praying to understand how to do all that I need to do. :)