Christmas

Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year.  On Christmas Eve I made cinnamon rolls and sugar cookies.  I shouldn't say that I made them because I had three very helpful helpers.  The cookies for Santa turned out beautifully.  There were some with more sprinkles and icing than cookie but that's ok, Santa liked them just the same.  That evening we watched The Nativity and Mr. Kruger's Christmas then took a cinnamon roll over to our neighbor who doesn't get out much anymore.  The kids had been dying to open just one present all day so we let them open one from thier great grandparents.  They were thrilled with their gifts.  Shortly after it was off to bed.  They actually went quite easily. 

Christmas morning was exciting, although Katie couldn't have cared less about her presents.  All she wanted were the candy canes and M&Ms in her stocking.  The boys were busy dividng presents up between themselves not realizing they each had a separate "pile".  Later we went to Pueblo to have Christmas dinner with Dean's family and open some more presents. 

Saturday we drove down to the Valley to see my family.  We had a good dinner and opened a few more presents then played Family Feud on the Wii.  Dean, Katie and I left Sunday morning but the boys stayed for the week.  I'm starting to miss them.  I hope they're doing ok and Aaron and Tami too. 

Manicures and Fat lips

Sunday evening I walked into the family room and saw this (see left). It was so cute listening to Dean and Katie as he was painting her nails. Katie loves to have her nails painted. In fact when I was potty training her I used nail polish as a bribe. I would tell her to come sit on the potty while I painted her nails. It worked, she would sit and do her business while I painted her nails. Dean did a nice job. He had cotton balls, q-tips, the remover to fix any mistakes and best of all, my blow dryer to dry her nails so they wouldn't get messed up. Too bad she scratched the polish off one finger like an hour later. I was going to her an after picture and forgot.




This is my poor Eric. Today at recess he fell off the monkey bars. His left eye has a bruise on the outside and the lip speaks for itself. Ouch!! The school called Dean to let us know what happened and he came home with a sticker that said, "watch me, I bumped my head".
We put ice on it but it didn't do much good. I hope it looks better tomorrow because the third graders are performing their Christmas concert. He was practicing his songs so it didn't affect his singing ability.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Today I worked really hard taking down Thanksgiving decorations and cleaning the house before I put up the Christmas decorations.  My least favorite part of cleaning house is dusting.  There was a time when I dusted religously but these days I'm lucky to dust in between holidays.  I'm happy to say that the Christmas decorations are all up. 

We've always had a live tree but this year Dean's grandparents gave us their prelit artificial tree so we decided to give it a try.  I must say it was super easy to put up and I loved not having to string the lights.  I had gotten all of the ornaments out of the box and laid them on the floor when I got a call from my sister Robyn.  I went in the other room so I could talk without the noise of the kids.  By the time I was finished the kids had put almost every ornament on the tree.  It was so cute.  The oraments only went about half way up the tree and there were multiple ornaments on each branch.  In fact there were ornaments hanging on ornaments.  I did do some rearranging and it looks pretty good.

Wednesday night was our Relief Society Christmas dinner and tonight was our ward party.  Both were very nice and of course had good food.  I love to hear Christmas music and see the reinactment of our Savior's birth.  There's nothing like it to get yourself ready for Christmas.  Now all I have to do is wrap the gifts that I have and finish shopping for the rest.  I'm taking a half day off work to go shopping with Dean on Tuesday.  What could be better than taking off work to shop? 

Feelings of Gratitude

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and there are so many things to be thankful for.  I've been inspired by my friends on Facebook who are posting daily about what they are thankful for.  So here it goes, a short list of some of the things I'm thankful for (beginning with the very obvious and after that, no particular order)

My husband and children
Everyone in our families
My parents, who are serving a mission in MD
The gospel
A home that keeps us warm and safe
Food in the pantry
My new job
My calling in Primary
The good health of my family and myself
Friends
My dishwasher
The sweet prayers of my kids
Nature (but today I could have done without the cold and rain.  I was running around grocery shopping all day.)
The weekend
Funny movies
A good book

The list could go on and on.  I'm grateful I have so much to be thankful for.

Halloween

Here's a few pics of Halloween. The one of Katie in the bathtub was taken after she got into the face paint. She had the paint from head to toe.

Weekend Update

My first update is that my kitchen floor is now installed!!  Thanks to Dean and his brother Mark I no longer have carpet in my kitchen.  I love our new floor!  The color is awesome but now I really need to change the color of my cabinets.  I had forgotten how many times in one day the kitchen floor needs to be swept.  Having a dirty kitchen floor drives me crazy.  The carpet didn't show all of the crumbs and playdough and moon sand so vacuuming a couple of times a week was good enough for me.  Now I'll have to be more diligent at keeping the floor clean.  The kids love it too.  Katie and Charles have been sitting on the kitchen floor playing for a long time. 

Here is Charles, my foot model, showcasing our new kitchen floor. 

Next on the update agenda: Trunk or Treat.  Our ward trunk or treat party was last night.  The kids were very excited to finally get to wear their costumes.  Eric was an awesome Dracula.  Dean painted his face and I slicked his hair and sprayed it black.  Katie was afraid of him.  I couldn't get her to stand next to him for a picture.  Charles was going to be a skeleton until he found Commander Cody from Star Wars the Clone Wars. He was really excited about being a trooper until he saw Eric getting all made up. He was really jealous of Eric so he pouted for a long time.  I finally sprayed his hair black and Dean painted a scar on his face but he was still sad.  Katie didn't want to put her ballerina tutu on but when she did she started spinning around and dancing.  She loved it.  Everything was going great until the end.  I put Katie in the car to come home and she started coughing so hard she threw up.  Luckily she had a jacket on so her shirt didn't get yucky but her tutu wasn't so lucky.  Now I get to clean vomit out of tulle.  When we got home the boys had to shower to get all the paint and hair dye off.  I was worried for a while because the black wasn't coming out of their blond hair easily and the paint would NOT wash off.  Eventually we got them clean (mostly).  Eric still had a few black traces on his face for church.  I almost forgot this part of the story.  I had been cutting out pieces of poster board for teeth and fins to decorate our car as a shark.  I left the scissors out and Katie got hold of them.  I hadn't realized until I got on the floor to finish cutting and I found a huge lock of hair. She cut a huge chunk ofher  bangs off.  You can't really tell in the picture but her right side is bare and she has bangs on the left side.