Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Eve is always a day for making fun and yummy treats at our house. For the first time I tried my hand at making some home made candy canes. They turned out really well. And yes, I know they only cost a few cents each at the store, but it's way cooler to give away "handmade" candy canes.

I also like to make home made Almond Roca. I call them Roca Rocks. Here the kids are dipping some pretzels in chocolate as they prepare goodies for Santa:

Then we carried on the McGiffin (my side of the family) family tradition of acting out the Scriptural account of the birth of Jesus. Tom read the scriptures while I helped the kids act it out.

Here's Kaitlyn the angel standing in the "clouds". (It's a big white down comforter)

Then, Christmas morning Alan and Sarah wait patiently in the Hallway for the time when they can come out and see the gifts.

And here is the Family Room after Santa has visited, and before we all came in to open presents. Santa left a little 2-wheeler bike for Kaitlyn and a full-size basketball hoop for Sarah. Alan got some nice starwars stuff, William got some cute baby toys, and we all got a Nintendo Wii and a Wii Fit. I swore I'd never have a game system in our house, but Santa knew I wanted to be able to do the aerobics andyoga with the wii. I'll tell you how that goes as I use it.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Tree...

As I've said in previous posts, we have two Christmas trees in our house. One is in the family room for the kids to decorate, and one is in the living room that I call my "pretty tree". I decided to put some "snow" on the tree this year in honor of all the snow my family is getting up north. These pictures don't do the tree any justice. It actually does look alot like snow is on it, even if it is just quilt batting :)

Alan's Gift wrap

These were the first gifts under the tree at our house. Alan used everything from an empty plastic spoon container to one of his Dad's old gun boxes. He even put some printer paper around one present and wrapped it with a belt of his. I guess I should've told him where the wrapping paper was. He didn't buy any of these gifts. These are his toys that he is giving to his family and friends. So even though it just looks like there's junk under the tree, we're keeping them there.

Candy Cane Cake

Kaitlyn wanted to make a "Christmas Cake" today. One of our favorite flavors is chocolate mint, and so I thought I'd try out making a chocolate mint cake. I just used a chocolate cake mix and added 2 tsp of "peppermint extract". You can also add some crushed candy canes. For the shape, I just baked the cake mix in an 8" square pan and an 8" round pan. Click on the picture below to get the details on how to make the shape.

I also added 1 tsp peppermint extract to the white frosting I made to give it a candy cane flavor as well. It was delicious and fun to make!!

Sarah's homemade Basketball hoop

Sarah and Alan have been learning to play basketball at school. Sarah told me before church today that she loves basketball, and that she wants to be a basketball player when she grows up. She then proceeded to build herself a basketball hoop out of some of the PVC pipe that I let the kids play with. Here's a picture of her "hoop". She also decided to use one of the giant soft blocks I made a few years ago as a the "ball". I think Santa knows what to bring her now.

YAY!!

Tom is finally home. We're so happy. It's Christmas early with him home now. I don't mind if I get no other presents this year. Just to have him back is enough. He's going to take the next 3 weeks off of work. We're all so excited. Each of the kids are going to have a special "Daddy and me Day". They all missed him so much. He's a super hero in our house right now. And now, after two months, I think I might be able to relax.

William the Conquerer...

Alan loves to build little traps around William to see if he can get out of them. Today he used some PVC pipe and joints we have. Sorry the the video is a little dark.

Simple Wall Art Nativity

I made this in Relief Society about 2 years ago, and this year I had the idea to hang it on the wall. I thought it looked so cute that decided to list it with my other nativities in my Arts Of The Heart biz. It probably won't sell, but hey, it's worth a try right?

You probably can't see it very well, but here it is in our front room hanging on the wall behind the tree and next to the door. (This is our living room, where I decorate my "pretty tree". The kid's big tree is in the family room where I let them decorate it, and the decorations from the bottom half of the tree go missing by mid December)

Frosty morning

Because it never snows here, or it hasn't in nearly 8 years, a frosty morning is as good as it gets. Here they are showing me leaves that had a layer of frost on them.

My poor winter deprived children couldn't figure out why the leaves didn't stay frosty when they brought them inside. They figured out that if they put them in the freezer they will stay frosty. So, now we have a jar full of leaves in our freezer. I suppose if it does snow, we will have a snowball or two in there too.

Dancing Elf Roses

So, Ben and Mary did this on their blog, and of course I couldn't resist putting it on ours. Sadly, they won't let you put more than 5 pictures up, that's why Tom's not in the dance. To see yourself as an elf, go here www.elfyourself.com

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Decorating the Tree

We decided to go ahead and decorate the tree before Tom came home. Since the kids and I are the ones that do it mainly anyway. It was a lot of fun. It's been a tough 2 months and we needed it.

William loved dumping out the ornaments and playing in them. That's why our ornaments are plastic.

William likes potatoes

Here's a video of Tom feeding William potatoes. Or rather, William feeding himself with Tom's help. It was nice to have Dad home for 3 days.

William is ONE!!

I can't believe our baby is already 1! Friday, November 28 was his first birthday. He also shares his birthday with Uncle Johnny. Happy 31 Uncle Johnny!!

Thanksgiving

No picture with this post because I forgot my camera. Thanksgiving started with the kids and I driving up to Atlanta to pick up Tom from the airport. He was be able to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us before having to fly back to school in Missouri. We came back home and got ready to go over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving. I made the Turkey because our friends didn't want to cook a Turkey, but I couldn't have Thanksgiving without the traditional fare, and besides, Turkeys are the easiest thing to cook on Thanksgiving-just put it in the oven.... Anyway...
We got ready to go over to have our friendly feast and when we got in the van, we realized we'd locked our keys in the house. What's worse, the spare key wasn't in it's usual spot. So, we had to go in through a window. I had the bright idea to pry open the window screen with a small, rusty, dirty, hand shovel. Tom went to work on our heavy duty storm window screens. Unfortunately, the shovel slipped and hit Tom in the face and he split his lip open. It was pretty bad. We finally got in the house and when he looked at his lip, Tom realized he needed stitches. But, because we had the Turkey for the feast, we had to go over to our friend's house first.
One of our friend's is a nurse, and he took a look at Tom's lip. He thought it needed stitches too, but thought he could do it. So, Tom let him. After dinner we cleared off the giant island counter they had in their house, and turned it into an operating table.The missionaries were there and were video taping the stitching "surgery". Tom was a really good sport. Poor guy. He finally gets to come home for a few days and this happens. Four stitches later Tom was all sewn up, and we all sat down for pie.

It was quite an eventful Thanksgiving. Oh, and while the kids were playing, the little boy who's house we were at broke his arm. So after we left, they had to make a trip to the ER for him. We should've just waited on Tom's stitches and all gone together and let Tom get stitched up by a real doctor.
So.... that was our Thanksgiving. We're just thankful we're all together.

Getting ready for Turkey day

I know it's a little late, but we've been a little busy this week. Wednesday night I had the kids help me prepare the stuffing for the Turkey. I have happy memories of doing this with my family the night before Thanksgiving.

We always make the traditional , old-fashioned sage stuffing. It tastes like Thanksgiving to me. Alan got to use a knife for the first time and cut the celery. Sarah got to use our onion slicer, and Kaitlyn put all the ingredients in the pan to cook. William sat and looked cute.

Cake Mix Cookie Cut Outs

If you've read my blog for very long, you might've noticed that I love to bake, and that I especially love to try out new types of cookies. Tonight, for a fun little activity, we wanted to make some cut out cookies. When you have small children, sometimes the quicker things are, the better. I have alot of cake mixes from the commissary because they often sell them for .59 cents each. So, I thought I'd try to find a good cut out cookie recipe using a cake mix. Here's what I found:

Cake Mix Cookie Cut Outs

1 cake mix-any flavor

2 eggs

1/4 cup of oil

1/2 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients together until it forms a dough. Roll the dough out and cut out desired shapes. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

The cookies in the picture are made from two cake mixes. I made one yellow cake mix batch, and 1 chocolate cake mix batch and swirled them together. The chocolate ones were neat because I've never made chocolate cookie cut outs. Yummy!

In case anyone wants to know, the pinwheel cookies were made by rolling out some yellow dough, and then rolling out some chocolate dough, then stacking them on top of each other, then rolling them together, then thinly slicing the roll.

Reporting live from Noah's Ark...

One of our favorite Family Home Evening Activities is acting out the scripture stories and video taping them on our old video camera. The kids like to do it in a "news reporter" style. We pretend like we are "live on the scene" at a certain place in scriptural history. The reporter is usually me, and I'm usually behind the camera "reporting" as the kids act it out. We hook the camera up to our TV, and we can see it as we record it.
First, we all decide what story we want to act out, and then we find it in the scriptures and read it out loud to make sure we get the story right. Then, we and go and collect things from around the house that will help retell the story.

Here they are getting the family room ready to report on the story of Noah's Ark. The blankets on the floor are supposed to be the water that covers everything. Kaitlyn is collecting all the animals to go on the couch Ark. William practices his standing skills.

They have a lot of fun doing this, and they're funny to watch for later FHE nights too.

What we've been doing since my last post...

Our ward had a "Mexican Fiesta" yesterday. I was in charge of the decorations, and so I decided to have fun and make alot of the decorations. I had the kids help me with some of it, but mainly I did it.

First, we made some "pinch pots" out of salt dough to put flowers in as table decorations.

They helped me color them when they were dry.

We also made dozens of tissue paper flowers. Which were suprisingly hard for my kids to make. So I made most of them.

Then I thought it would be fun to make some mini maracas out of some of my scrap would. I used my scroll saw and sander to turn a 2x4 into the right shapes, and then using the largest drill bit I had, drilled a hole down the middle through the top of them, put some rice in the hole, then plugged the hole with a wooden dowel. After alot of saw dust and some parts of my fingers sanded, here's what I made:

I also printed out and then painted some large "traditional mexican" images to hang on the walls.

The activity went well. We had good food provided by the Buenrostro's-a family in the Spanish branch who own a mexican restauraunt. They brought ingredients for us to build our own tacos, and they brought some home-made "Horchata" which is a yummy mexican drink. We also had a pinata at the end of the party and Alan was the lucky one who gave the pinata it's final hit.

The kid's enjoyed themselves, and the activity was well attended.

Here's what I felt like doing by the end of the party:

William's walking!!

William has been taking one or two steps on his own for about 2 weeks now. Just last week he started taking more steps. I finally video taped it this afternoon. As you can see he can't go very far, and he still prefers crawling, but he has officially taken his first steps at 11 months old.

Alan's Alphabet

This is Alan's very own alphabet. He worked on it last night and this morning. Notice how each letter has it's own specific symbol? I was so impressed with it I thought I'd brag about my boy by putting it up on the blog.
He wants you to try to decode this riddle below. You'll have to click on it to enlarge it to be able to clearly see each symbol.

William wants to get a better look at himself...

I was in the kitchen the other day, and realized that I hadn't seen my little guy in a while. I called his name, and heard him make some happy noises in the bathroom. I walked in the bathroom, and this is what I saw:

He had climbed up the stool I have for Kaitlyn, up into the sink, and was trying to climb closer to the mirror. He also had the hand soap dispenser and was happily tasting it.

So, I finally got out his play pen to keep him in when I can't be with him every second. Thankfully he can't climb out of that... yet.

Book of Mormon Challenge

So, you think you know the Book of Mormon pretty well? Take the challenge on this website. It's in the style of "Who wants to be a millionaire" Tell me how far you got. The highest I got was a 7 the first time, then I got an 8, but you know me, I had to keep trying to make a 10. It took me several tries to make a 10.

http://www.bookofmormonbattles.com/More/BoMCgame/index.html

Preparing a bedtime snack...

Kaitlyn likes to pretend she's making food, and William likes to bang on the pots and pans. Here they are having fun in their cute little pajamas.

"How Can I be"

Happy Sunday. This makes me think of Sunday afternoons. I remember gathering around my parent's piano singing with my best friends and my brothers.

Happy Halloween!!

Well, since it's Halloween today, we'll be doing various things, and I'll be adding to this post as the day goes on.

So, starting this morning, I made little shapes in Alan and Sarah's sandwhiches in their lunches.






Then, Kaitlyn, William, and the little girl I
babysit got a pumpkin ready to carve.

After school Alan and Sarah got to help carve their pumpkins. Here they are getting the "goo" out of the middle.





Here's Kaitlyn playing with the shapes that came from the Jack-O-Lanterns, and seeing how they fit back inside the pumpkin.



Here they are all lit up outside.



Here they are in their costumes. Alan's costume is a cheap storm trooper costume that I glued craft foam to it to make it look more real.

Kaitlyn's costume is red unitard that I just sewed a tail to and then glued dots all over it. Sarah's costume is an old ballet costume we got from a friend that we converted into a witch's dress. We added the green hair, hat, broom, and rainbow socks to finish the look. And William's costume is a store bought pumpkin costume.


We took the kids trick or treating in our neighborhood. We live only a block away from a friend in our ward who throws a Halloween party every year. We always go trick or treating down to their house and back.
On of our good friends came over with her little boy just as we were getting ready to go trick or treating, and they went with us. Her husband had to work tonight, and she wanted her son to have some good friends to be with. I was happy to have them come. It made me feel alot better to have someone else with us, because I really missed having Tom around today. I think the kid's were happier with their friend with them too.