Christmas-ing

We got home from Park City around noon today. The kids were eager to set up the tree. I said "Not until the house gets cleaned up!" (which I had said we had to do before Park City but didn't quite finish...) So those that wanted to Christmas up the house had to unpack, clean their rooms, practice, and such. Abi worked hard since she was the one who wanted the trees up the most. As she vacuumed up the front room, she thought she saw an earring that looked like my gold and diamond earrings that I had let Natalie borrow for a few days (since her ears were infected). Someone one of the earrings was on the floor in the front room. Abi realized what it was after she had already vacuumed it up. She called Natalie over to see if she was wearing both earrings... nope. It must have fallen out when Natalie was wrestling with Joseph in the front room. Ok, so we start to try and pick out the dust and dirt from the bag and set it out on paper towels along the floor, and we shake and poke through it looking for the earring.

No luck. Finally we cut open the bag. Still nothing. Natalie kinda looks through those again and I go to the vacuum to see if it is stuck in the brush or the hose somewhere.

After having no luck during our previous 20 minutes of searching, Natalie said a prayer for God's hlep, and shortly after than, there we gratefully found it in the hose. Whew! Then we finished vacuuming, and THEN we were ready to bring up the trees. Two lights on the white tree were out, and have been burned out for the past 2 years I think, so this year we finally decided to get it all the way off. Abi and I cut the wires with scissors. 

It took a while, but we did it. The lights on the bottom of the tree still work, but they are a soft white and the white strands of lights I have for the top are bright LED lights... so next year we might cut those off of the bottom so that all the lights will be uniform, but we called it good for today and finished putting up the tree. The boys helped decorate. Everyone was in their Santa Hats. 

And done - we've got our two trees up and once again I didn't have to do very much of it, so yay.

Happy Halloween

It was a fun Halloween day. Hopefully it lived up to all the kids' excitement and expectations. 

They are downstairs eating junk and watching Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets right now. Corey went to pick up Abi. This morning for school, they eagerly got out of bed to get ready. I drew a frog on Lily's face last night (thanks to this idea!) and tried to touch it up a bit.

The markers kept bleeding into the white paint... and the eyes had rubbed off by the end of the school day. 

We'll have to experiment and maybe get real make up supplies for next year. Or maybe we'll do some fun stuff for Christmas. But it lasted through the night and survived the day at school. But Lily was good with that and wore a black hoodie. Lily is also really excited that she's learned the rhythm and beat for how to play the cup game. She said she taught that in one of her classes today. I'm sure it was mostly a party day. I don't think Abi dressed up for school, but she and her friends dressed up like Alvin and the Chipmunks. She was Simon. 

The elementary kids were thrilled that the fun day of days was finally here - Halloween! Here's a cute picture of all the excited kids at the bus stop this morning - 

Free candy and imaginative costumes. The elementary kids were excited for the school parade. This morning we couldn't find the washable markers, though, so I used black permanent marker for Daniel's Incredibles mask! We'll find out tonight if it comes off!

Owen is going to be an astronaut tonight, but I put that he was going to be a Ninjago Lego guy for school, and he changed his mind a few times (he wanted to be a pirate, then a vampire, etc) but I said he had to stay with the Lego Ninja. 

His 2nd grade teachers plan a musical program around all of their costumes. Here he is on the back row, in front of the pumpkin -

He did a cute job in the program. 2nd graders are cute. 

Just Katharine and I stayed for the program, but Corey and Peter came to the parade too, which was before the program. Parade at 9:15, then program at about 10:00. We saw all the kids in the parade.

Daniel has such a fun personality. Most of the kindergarteners seemed nervous and were not smiling, but not Daniel. He came up and gave Katharine a hug and then continued on his way, waving to all his fans ~

It was outside, again, and it was chilly but not too bad. After D, we saw Owen and Natalie, but Sophi's class skipped in order and she came before Natalie, so I was looking for a Jolly Rancher and not Cleopatra, so I missed getting a photo of her but we did wave and give a hug. Here she is with her friends trick or treating tonight ~

Our neighbors did a pizza dinner for the neighborhood and the kids went over there, but I didn't. Corey was in the shower and I was nursing Katharine, cause it started at 5:30 right when we got back from a bike ride. Probably our last one of the season! It was snowy and cold for most of the trail, but it was nice to be up there one last time. 

I got a personal best on the ride up! I did a few parts that I haven't been able to do before, and I really did them this time! I didn't pause or stop to adjust my wheel, I was proud of myself! I listened to this on the ride up (well, I listened to part 1 on Sat, this time I was on part 2 and I loved the things she talked shared about parenting. It is a must listen! Start at 25:00, so good! So, it was good, cold, but good. I miss fall already. I'm going to try and go to Corner Canyon for one more ride tomorrow, and then there's snow coming Wednesday morning and for 8 of the next 10 days. We're going to need to find a new daily hobby for the winter since biking will be mostly out. Unless we get a fat bike! Maybe I'll take up snow shoeing? Corey's thinking of getting a pass to Momentum for rock climbing. He and Wes might go in the morning. Ok, sorry, back to Halloween. So Corey showered, I nursed K, she fell asleep and so he stayed home with her and I went out with kids - Lily borrowed a dinosaur onesie for Wes so he could be twinners with Peter. 

They called themselves "The Dinosaur Brothers". Checking out some of the loot - Pokemon cards!

We have a pretty great neighborhood for kids to trick or treat in. 

Lily as a Christmas Tree, Natalie as a Jolly Rancher. Lily didn't get candy, she was just being festive and walked around with us.

Getting lots of loot!

One neighbor was dressed as "Your Fairy Godmother" and the kids lined up to talk with her, like they would for a Mall Santa, and she granted them wishes and gave them candy and some kids (like my 3 girls) got jewelry! 

Running from house to house. 

A neighbor Dave has a tradition of making flat bread - 

And some neighbors next to him had hot dogs to roast and smores!

Another neighbor was serving up hot cocoa and apple cider. It's just a pretty amazing neighborhood and place to live. We love it here. 

Tonight as Owen was trick or treating, he nostalgically said "I'm going to miss Halloween tomorrow..." I'm sure he will. Corey's back with Abi - time for scriptures. We're still going to make it to bed by 10! It's our new modus operandi for survival, and it is working wonders. We've only done it for like the past 6-9 months I think, but it's great. It's still a school night, so party is over - Bye Halloween! We'll see you next year!

Christmas Eve Tradition

I'd say that one tradition that we are consistent with is that of sleeping under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. (You can see Natalie there telling Ethan to go to sleep so Santa can come...)

Sleeping around the tannenbaum isn't something that Corey or I did growing up. But the kids did it in 2007 and they're the ones that deserve the credit for keeping it up through these past 10 years. Here are those little kids in 2007 - 

Sophi ready to have visions of sugar plums dance in her head.

This year they wanted Owen to join them. And it was a lesson learned. Sure, he seemed to snuggle up fine, but it did not work out well for Santa's helpers.

Note to self for when they want Daniel to sleep over with them next year: Just say no.

 

It is now 3:00 a.m. Christmas morning and we're not done yet going through gifts or wrapping them. Owen was still awake at 1:30 (cute little face) and so was Wes. 

Wes was reading but said Owen was the one to blame for keeping them both up. 

Owen liked Lily's dog Bunky Bunky.

Lily! Go to bed! Taking one last picture at midnight and saying goodnight for the last time (I wish) 

So at 1:30 I took Owen upstairs and we lay down on the floor with him in our room. (He doesn't want to sleep in the crib anymore, so he's kept with the toddler tradition of sleeping at the foot of our bed on the floor - like Sophi and Natalie.) I set an alarm for 20 minutes, enough time for Owen to fall asleep and for me to not be too deep in sleep and unable to get up and finish our Santa work. Corey is still wrapping things and taking photos and putting them on the computer. We both bought stuff, he took it all and wrapped it at his parent's house, and took photos along the way then put post-its on the presents. He's almost done wrapping I hope, and then we'll go through it all and make sure things are equally distributed.

Update - Picture taken at 4:45 a.m. At 5:30 we were finally done and headed to bed. 

Corey asked if I thought we should go through and take off the post it notes with numbers and replace them with the kids' initials or name. I said no. That would seriously have taken us another hour. Let's just go to bed.

I hope we work out a better system for next year, cause I'm too old to pull all-nighters. Unfortunately Santa had to resort to the sugary carbs via the plate of cookies left out for him to keep his energy up until the job was finished.

I hope we get a nap tomorrow. To all a good night.

Practice Bingo & Blog Books

We got some good snow yesterday and today. Yesterday Corey came home from work early so I could take his car to violin, and I was so glad, cause it was a crazy sliding mess on Wasatch and that would have been me in the van had I taken the van. It was bad everywhere. It took us 45 min to get to violin and before we came home, I went fresh market in Holladay and got several weeks worth of Pink Lady apples for myself. The stores have ALL been out of pink lady apples - Target, Smiths, and Walmart. I  decided we need to plant some pink lady apple trees for our future food security. I have been very sad for the past two weeks that they were all gone everywhere, but I found them by chance after violin last week at a store in Holladay. I got like 40 today, so now I'm ready for winter. More snow came last night and I shoveled the driveway this morning for my exercise. I took Lily to jazz band this morning and the freeway was at a standstill with traffic - a few drivers in little sedans that were slipping and sliding everywhere, and a bus had stalled or something. With the snow I didn't go climbing today, but I DID go yesterday in the morning with Corey. Corey and I both like taking Lily to jazz band now. Corey commented "We went from neither of us wanting to go, to both of us wanting to!" haha, hooray for Momentum, and yay that Abi stayed home sick yesterday and was able to babysit. So yesterday I did the pink V1 - and I did it twice! Once on my own and I was able to do it again with Corey watching. There are more to try next time, but I'm really proud of how good I did! My fingers, palms, and muscles are getting stronger and tougher. Climbing is definitely more fun than just lifting weights at the gym, and it's interesting too. 

A neighbor offered a few tickets to the Savior of the World play tonight and Corey took Lily, Natalie, and Owen, and they picked up Abi from GMS and went to go see it (Corey stayed in the lobby and worked). Owen seemed to feel like he had been tricked into going, cause it wasn't fun. "That was sooo boooring..." He's a good kid. For the Thanksgiving break, Owen's trumpet teacher had given him a "bingo" chart for his review songs. It was really cute and it helped him enjoy that part of practicing. He got bingo by playing his trumpet laying down...

and playing it in the bathroom... (this bingo practice chart doesn't work for piano players, ha)

He played a concert for his stuffed animals, played a song outside, played along with the cd, a few other squares were to play with pinky up, on the shortcut, as fast as possible, with pinky up, play as slow as possible, and stuff like that. Owen used his free space today too. It is cute. Owen is a good little trumpet student. The pocket trumpet is getting a bit small for him, so we'll probably get him a cornet trumpet soon. 

Another thing from yesterday - I was going to run errands, but had a change of plans when Mel told me there was a blog2print cyber Monday deal (promo code HOLIDAYSHOP gave 50% off!) So I worked on that until 2:00, then, since Abi was home, and I ran out quickly to find a new white tree. Abi insisted I go try to find a new one, since our old one has busted lights and the base is messed up too, has been for a few years. So I did that, went to Home Depot, then Lowe's, then Walmart, success at Walmart, yay. Back home I focused the rest of my time finishing the blog books and Abi got the tree up. The deal expired at midnight, but I finished books for Joseph, Melodie, and Ethan of their mission blogs, and I also got two for us of 2020-21 and 2021, I still probably have enough blogged to fill two more books, I could order (2021-2022 and 2022) but I'll do those later next time there is a 50% off deal. There will probably be one in January for the new year. But yeah, it was a little painful - cause Melodie's book, when I went to review it, EVERY EMOJI she used in any of her letters was a full size photo! So I had to delete her book, then go back to her blog and I went though every post to delete her emojis... I probably missed a few, but I called it good, then uploaded it again, and so I was able to do hers and Josephs and it was getting late, but I did Ethan's too - but I asked him for his opinion on a few things, like photo images and book cover color (I didn't ask J and M) and so he couldn't decide and at 11:30 pm I was done and said he better say what he wanted cause I had to finish up. I think they will look nice. I had planned to make those back in September, but I never did, so I wasn't sure I was going to do them for Christmas after all, but good job to the Blog2print advertising committee, you pulled me in with a deal I couldn't resist, and amazingly I got it all done and they should be here by Christmas. They were still pretty expensive, even with 50% off, so those will be their main gifts at Christmas, but it will be good. Good job me for my labor of love in putting those online. I mostly did the blogs so I could print a book for them. I'd like a book of my and Corey's mission letters, but sadly, those are all handwritten. They are in a filing cabinet downstairs at the moment, so I have a lot of work to do before I can print up books for us. Someday. 

Tree Is Up

Abi was ready for it, so yesterday the kids put up the tree.

I told her they could get it out after they cleaned up the front room, so she cleaned it up. Then they brought up the trees. Then she brought up ALL the boxes of decorations and....then they messed it up. And it will remain a mess until Christmas. Cause the little kids take off all the ornaments. Good thing the ornaments are plastic. It makes them break less-rapidly. The kids are happy wearing Santa hats

"Are you guys getting ready for Christmas?!?!" They've been in the Christmas spirit, playing outside in the snow, sledding, and drinking hot cocoa.

They went sledding with Iveth's kids yesterday.

We haven't had them over for a long time, so that was fun.

Everyone's clothes were soaked when they got back, so they played while I threw things in the dryer. And they all played dress up.

Asis the rapper, and Sophi the model

A few more pics - potty training Daniel isn't going great. He's not interested in conquering #2. I think he's too comfortable in pull ups, so we're trying the underwear approach. We'll see how it goes.

And a picture of my snuggly Peter from last night. I love this baby boy.