Ringing in the New Year!

We had a fun time on New Year's Eve this year. We went over to Dave and Melissa's house and had Newfie New Year. Daniel served in Newfoundland on his mission. They are 3 1/2 hours ahead of us of. Thus we celebrate the new year at 8:30 PM and then put the kids to bed so they are not so tired. It works well for us, and we have a good time.

Melissa had purchased candy necklace kits that the kids put together. Matthew and Mieka were more interested in eating theirs than actually making a necklace, but at least they had fun. We tried skateboarding on the wii. Daniel was of course a pro, and I even did pretty well too. We also filled out papers for our goals for this year. Then we had a fortune cake that Melissa made. Each slice has a fortune that you pull out and read before you eat the cake. It was really cute.

At 8:30 exactly we brought in the new year with sound makers, poppers and of course the traditional banging on the pots and pans. Emma finally figured out how to make noise on the sound maker and was so excited. Matthew didn't get it, so he just made the noise with his voice while he held the noise maker up to his lips. It was really cute! And yes, he is wearing a princess type crown in the bottom left hand picture. He wanted to wear one.

We had a GREAT time! Happy New Year! (a little late)

Christmas Stuff!

Obviously I am still behind since it is January 13th and I am just getting to Christmas stuff. Oh well, better late than never.

This First Collage of Pictures was from Emma's Preschool Christmas program. It was on December 18th. She was so darling. She did so well on her dances, her songs and her karate performance (despite the fact that she doesn't like karate). She said her line slowly and loud enough for everyone to hear. She was wonderful. Unfortunately, I was having camera issues and missed her doing her line and the pictures and video did not turn out very good. Oh well, at least we got it. She was very excited to see Santa and did finally sit on his lap. She was shy, and so cute!

This next collage is from Christmas Eve. We started out at Steve and Jane's house. We had a delicious dinner and visited. Then just before we left, Tiago, Melissa and Emma sang "Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer." It was really cute

After that we went to my parents house for our annual kids nativity play. Emma was an angel this year and Matthew was a wise man. Melissa had sent us a file for a backdrop that we printed at our print shop and it all turned out very cute. Then my dad read the Christmas story, we exchanged white elephants and sang some carols. It was a lot of fun, and the kids were worn out by the end.

The next collage is from Christmas day. Emma was so excited this year and woke up a little earlier than she usually does. Matthew didn't get it at first, but quickly caught on to Emma's enthusiasm. By the time he realized he was getting new toys, he started to get it as well. He got a lot of tractors this year and was so excited. Emma got a rocket from her favorite show "Little Einstiens." That was her favorite that day, but in the days that followed, she discovered that her tea sets from Grandpa and Grandma Sperry were her favorite. She had several tea parties with daddy and quickly renamed him "Jolly Good" because he was such a good daddy and really got into it by using a British accent and using words like jolly good. It was so cute and Bugsy got jealous and decided that tea party was one of his favorite things as well.

This last collage is from Christmas morning at my parents house. It is a tradition in my family to have a large family breakfast instead of a dinner. It went really well this year. We brought a couple of food warmers from the rental center and that made it so we could all eat at the same time. Dad, Jon, Seth and Karla prepared all the delicious food this year, which was very nice of them. Then we opened presents and visited. It was very enjoyable.

After going to my parents house, we went out to Steve and Jane's house again and went sledding. It was a nice day, not too cold with a lot of sunshine. We had fun!

It was a great Christmas season once again and I am sad that it is over. Oh well, on to another great year!

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!