Friday, December 31, 2010

Haircuts and A Frosty Morning

Amber and I went to get our hair cut Wednesday night. The last time mine was cut was last October. It was gross. I had about 7in chopped off. And my hair is still long. haha Amber had her layers trimmed. Turned out cute!
Before

After

This morning we woke to find the backyard covered in a layer of frost! I told the girls to get warm clothes and shoes on so they could go stomp around in it. This is our "snow". I think it's pretty sad. Amber and Jade were excited to find a bowl full of rain had been frozen. And they wanted to throw rocks in the pool to see if it was frozen, but I said a very definate NO! lol Now they're eating hot oatmeal to warm them back up. =)


Wednesday, December 29, 2010

In Other News:

Jade made this pillow for her Bobo. She did such a great job on it! She did ALL the sewing, cutting, and even stuffed it herself!

This apron was made by Amber for her Grandma. It not only has pockets, but there's also darts, tricky "L" seams, and facing she did by herself! We started out a bit rough, but Amber quickly got the hang of it and did a super job!

I made these for the girls. Obviously. haha They're wood plaques to hang in their rooms. The letters and black pictures were from my mom's cricut back in July. I didn't want to put their names up on the doors or walls since we don't own this home, so thought this would be a fun/cute way to display them.

And one more thing....I don't have any pictures yet, but I now fit into size 6 jeans!!! Hoorah! This is a major accomplishment for me. The last time I wore a 6 was before I got married 10 years ago!

Christmas!!!

I tried to upload my pics from Christmas Eve/Day to create a slideshow....buuuuut my computer is retarded and won't let me. So if you want to see ALL of them, you can go find me on facebook. And IF you're my friend, I'll let you look at them. lol Shelley's family came and spent Christmas Eve/Day with us. We had so much fun recreating our childhood Christmas! After dinner we read "The Night Before Christmas" Robertson syle (by replacing choice nouns in the book with funny new ones drawn out of a tin!). This is the first time my kids and Shelley's family has done this so it was quite fun to see their reactions to the new nouns. ("the dirty diapers were hung on the chimney with care....haha) After that, we went into the living room and everyone got to choose their favorite Christmas song to sing - youngest to oldest. And I was forced to stumble through one song after the other. It was baaaaad.
While singing, we had a mysterious knock on the door and found Christmas PJ's!!! The kiddos all ran and changed, we sang a few more songs, tried to take pictures of the kids (the babies were soooooo tired!), put the cranky babies to bed, and popped in Claymation Christmas. Then after setting out the stockings, cookies, and hot choc for Santa, the three oldest girlies were sent to sleep in Jade and Paisley's room. Fun time for grownups!!! hehe I frantically finished the girls' skirts (I enlisted Shelley to do the gathering and seam trimming.....I'm nice - I know) while David assembled Pie's stroller. We woke the next morning to find that Santa had indeed visited our home and left some wonderful gifts for us to find - including my cell phone and camera! No, not new ones. The ones I've been using for awhile now.... Umm, thanks Santa? We also discovered that poor Celeste puked sometime during the night and slept in it. And Paisley walked through it to get out of the room. Special. A quick clean-up later (thanks Dave!) and we were ready to open presents!
















Everyone got what they wanted and happily played with their loot while Shelley and I made rolls for dinner.

We headed to Jami's once everyone was dressed and clean. Dinner was delicious! Ham, potatoes, rolls, green beans, jello salads, broccoli rice, veggies, pies....Fabulous!


















And after a short recess/clean-up, we had more presents to open!

We all had such a great time together! Thanks for coming up, Shell! And thanks for having us over, Jami! Enjoy the pics I chose to post..... =)

Monday, December 20, 2010

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Saturday, December 18, 2010

Christmas Parties

I LOVE this time of year!! So much merriment and cheer! We've gone to a couple Christmas parties: the ward party and a party with friends last night. The ward party was okay. There was turkey, baked potatoes, and rolls provided by the ward and other sides/desserts were brought by members. I brought a big dish of green beans. The other sides were a very large assortment of salads - jellos and greens. The turkey was given out one or two small pieces at a time - though about 2 min after David and I were out of the line, a whole huge platter of turkey was brough out (there were only maybe 10 people left in line at this point....). I thought that was strange for the turkey to be sooooo rationed out and then have tons of it leftover at the end. Ward members acted out the Nativity and we all sang the songs together. There was the coolest Nativity set built from cardboard though. They had a few life-size camels, Bethlehem city silhouette, and the manger - straw roof and all! I thought that was neat. And there were extra costumes for anyone else who wanted to participate. Amber dressed up as a wiseman. Jade was too anxious about the whole thing to dress up. And Paisley had fun rolling around on the floor with a cup. =)


The other super fun party we went to was last night. It was an Ugly Christmas Sweater party! Hahaha! For those of you who know David and I, you'll know we of course went all out on our sweaters! It's just what we do. We found our sweaters at Goodwill and then had fun uglifying them. We totally won the prize! There was a "real" white elephant gift exchange (real meaning some random thing either found around your house or under $5) which was a blast! David and I brought a cool ceramic rooster pitcher and a weel-barrel carting gnome - both filled with candy. We ended up bringing home the pitcher (I really really like it! But I didn't open it, David stole it) and 3 bottles of very flat club soda. Well, actually, we didn't bring the club soda home....we hid them around the Lefler's home. Hahahaha!!! You're welcome Allison! =) We also played charades and Mafia. I'd never played Mafia before, but it was really fun! There was quite a bit of "heated" arguments trying to figure out who the mafia players were. We had such a blast! I'm so grateful to have good friends who know how to party!

Dave and his friend Elliot =)

The hubby's. For some reason, we never did get a picture of all the wives....

Aren't we festive? Haha

Play Dates and Dinner at Grandma's

This past Sunday was my grandparent's annual tree-trimming party! We were very very late - my car died and David had to go get a new battery - but we made it and ended up having a good time anyways. The tree was already decorated, but there was another box of ornaments out so Amber and Jade finished up. Afterwards, they pulled out a few games/toys I remember from my own childhood - and I'm sure also from my dad's!
I didn't get a picture - but the angel on top of the tree is the same one my dade made in kindergarten! It's been on my grandparent's tree every year since then. Maybe someday I'll inherit it as it would be a very special way to remember my dad.
Tinker Toys! So fun!
This witch puzzle was my absolute favorite!

Paisley and I went to play at Molly's house on Tuesday. She and Lucas are becoming good little friends and had a lot of fun playing next to each other. Molly made them a picnic lunch; it was sooo cute to see them eating together! A while after this picture, Lucas ran over the food trays in his cool tractor. What a maniac! Hahaha!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Gooooo, Jaderaders!


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Monday, December 13, 2010

Family Pictures

We FINALLY got our family pictures taken for the year! And David was more cooperative than he's ever been. It's a Christmas miracle! Haha. He really hates taking pics. But my friend Molly was able to get a bunch of great ones. Thanks again! =) Here's a sampling (I posted all of them on facebook):








Friday, December 10, 2010

The Best

The BEST Christmas Songbook in the whole wide world:

The BEST Christmas Storybook in the whole wide world:

The BEST Christmas Movie in the whole wide world:

And thanks to my very wonderful Mom, I now have all three. THANKS, MAMA MAMA!!! =D

Oh, Amber Smamber!


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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

My Sweet Girls

I sure do love these three girlies! They are such cheerful little lights in my life.