Advent Calendar, date with Scott, Elisabeth goalie

Last year I got an Advent calendar as a white elephant gift! We put it up this year and added a Popsicle stick to each calendar pocket with a Christmas activity written on each one. We are so busy with life and everything that's going on in December that I wanted to keep it pretty simple, including some christmasy activities that we'd be doing anyway*, while doing some service activities because those are the ones that are the most meaningful, that they'll remember and it is the season for remembering Christ and so it seems fitting. Here are some of the activities in our Advent Calendar:

-write a christmas card to grandparents
-carol at nursing home
-drive around looking at christmas lights
-watch a christmas movie (3x)
-make a christmas craft (2x)
-make a christmas treat
-decorate gingerbread house
-read christmas stories
-act out the nativity
-watch 'joy to the world'
-call Grandpa and play christmas songs for him on the piano
-go christmas shopping for your 'secret sibling'
*we had several things on there that we had to do anyway like "go to annabelles christmas piano recital" and 'attend elisabeth's christmas choir concert" and 'christmas work party' and 'christmas neighbor party' and 'church christmas party' etc.

In addition to our advent calendar, we are also continuing our tradition of many years now, of doing a little christmas devotional each night where we sing a christmas song, read a christmas scripture and story; we do this each december in place of our normal family scripture study time;  I have a '24 days til christmas' binder with everything that I need for these Christmas devotionals so it's not complicated.

Some of the pictures below were taken of our advent calendar activities, and others are just random pictures; like this one that Charles took of his linkin logs :).

And dad was taking a nap with the girls, but then they got up and left him alone with their stuffed Belle doll :).

 I experiment a lot with recipes because I love to come up with new things and healthified versions of yummy treats. I try not to experiment when we're having guests over because there have been a couple of times where the recipe did not turn out well. Like these molasses cookies below:

 LOL!!! I still get all teary eyed just looking at this picture because it cracks me up! Molasses cookies are one of Scott's favorites, but apparently my healthified version didn't work on this one. But, I think I know where I went wrong and I am not giving up, so we will try again :)! Oh and the picture below is what happened to the cookies when we tried to get them off the pan with a spatula; they broke apart into soft crumbs. Still tasty though! And we squished the crumbs together into balls and still ate them!

 Oh thank heavens for a winner! I had to redeem myself so I made these snickerdoodles too that I had experimented with previously and liked. They are healthier than most but still not totally healthy :).

 Elisabeth played goalie for the first time ever this past week with her indoor soccer team. She did fine. She was goalie for the first half of the game and there were really only 2 times when the ball even got close enough for her to have to move around in the goal and get it away. So, of course, she said it was boring. But had she been in the goal the week before when the other team was all over us, I'm sure she'd feel differently.

 Scott had quite a few vacation hours he needed to use before the end of the year so he was able to take off the week of Thanksgiving, plus just about every Friday in December and he'll have the week of Christmas off! I've been loving the extra time he's been spending at home! One day, while the three oldest were at school, we walked up to an Indian buffet by our house and had lunch with Nora and Jane...they didn't eat much :).

 Another day Desi watched the two youngest girls in the morning/afternoon (we swap sometimes) and Scott and I went to the temple and then had lunch at a Thai restaurant -- my first time eating at a thai restaurant.  The temple had a beautiful large nativity displayed on their front lawn. Thanks Desi!

Visiting Daddy at work

Before I jump into my post, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to my dad who turned 88 today! Happy Birthday dad! We love you!

Scott's office moved from Broomfield to Denver a couple of weeks ago. He started riding the bus and he suggested the girls and I take the bus down one day, while the older kids were at school, and meet him for lunch. So we did. The girls were a bit chilly waiting for our bus to arrive so they snuggled with each other for part of the time and part of the time they each snuggled up to one of my legs. Our two girls were the only children on the bus.

 Scott met us at the Union Station. I took the picture below just outside of the Union Station.

 We ate lunch at Chipotle, which was a couple of blocks away, and then we went back to the Union Station to wait for our bus.

 I love Nora's facial expressions.

 At the Union Station, they have a light rail that's not yet completed but people can get on and look around and check out their future routes. So here are the girls, on the light rail.

 Love the girls faces in the one below! :)

 It felt different to ride a bus where we're sitting around lots of other people and there are no car seats or seat belts. Overall, they enjoyed their bus experience and we loved seeing daddy midday!

*Side note: we finished listening to all 7 Harry Potter books on cd! We listen on roadtrips and as we drive to and from school and other activities and it's been so nice! We'll have to start up a new series soon. We listened to the first Percy Jackson book so I think we might keep going with those. If any of you have other suggestions, send them my way! 

Around the house, AB recital, E orchestra concert

Can you find Charles in the picture below? Jane and Nora like to snuggle with him.

Saturday afternoon, once chores etc were done, Elisabeth and Charles sat down on the couch and turned on a BYU football game. They are their father's children.

Annabelle had her second piano recital this past week. She played "Joy to the World" and did a duet with Elisabeth playing, "Away in a Manger". You can watch those at the end of this post.

Elisabeth is accompanying the fifth grade orchestra this year and they had a Christmas concert this week. The day of her concert was busy. Thursdays are always busy anyway because all three kids have piano lessons, and we have two different piano teachers so we drive back and forth. Then we threw in this concert...Elisabeth was supposed to be there at 530 and it began at six. Well, she finished her piano lesson at 530 (Charles finishes at 6pm so Scott picked him up on his way home from work), we drove over and on our way, while stuck in heavy traffic, I asked Elisabeth if there was some sort of dress code for the recital; she was wearing sneakers, turquoise pants and a white shirt with a purple tank over top. She looked at me in horror and said, "Yes! Black and white!" Oh great. I explained to her that with it being 540, there was no way we had time to go back home and make it to the recital in time; they were in opposite directions and we were stuck in traffic. I could see tears in her eyes and I tried to come up with some other plan. I tried to think if we would pass a Target or Walmart or anything like that but nothing was coming to mind. Then I remembered there was a thrift store coming up. I told her to take off her purple tank so she was in a white t-shirt and then we parked and I ran into the thrift store an found her a pair of black pants for $2.70. She put them on as we drove the rest of the way and we got there about 5 minutes before the concert began. It only lasted about 15 minutes, which was actually very nice, especially considering I had to take Nora to the potty twice during those 15 minutes because, I quote, "I have to go potty bad!" and "I have to go poop bad!" Scott and Charles didn't make it; Charles got out a few minutes late and we knew they'd miss most, if not all, of it.

As we drove home from orchestra, Elisabeth and I talked about how next year we'll probably need to cut something out of her schedule because she's got way too much going right now with weekly piano, school choir, orchestra and soccer, monthly student leadership and activity days, and baking buddies every 6 weeks. She said she'd be fine letting go of orchestra...it wasn't challenging for her as the pianist and she ended up sitting around a lot during practice with not much to do. The nice thing about orchestra for me is that it's during school; whereas choir is before school, and sometimes after, which gets tricky, especially considering we don't live within the school district boundaries.

Annabelle and Elisabeth practicing, "Away in a Manger"


Annabelle playing, "Joy to the World" at her recital.

Trimming the tree and homemade stockings

The day before Thanksgiving I had to make a Costco run and while there I picked up a live Christmas tree. They were only $30 and they are big and gorgeous fir trees! Now my house smells like pine, which is divine! Like my rhyme :)? I crack myself up! lol!). We stuck it outside until the day after Thanksgiving when we brought it in, and set it up in our living room.

We sang along to Christmas music playing on Pandora while we decorated the tree.

I love watching the kids find the 'perfect spot' for the ornaments.

And Dad put the star on last. Beautiful. I love Christmas lights. They are a good reminder that light casts out darkness and that Christ is the light of the world.

We've started a new-ish tradition that we'll pick up an ornament from the places we visit so that when we are decorating the tree each year, and we pull out those ornaments, we'll get to talk about memories from our family vacations. Our recent couple trip to Estes Park here in CO.

And actually, another couple trip, before we had kids, on our honeymoon, to Europe, and so we have the Colosseum. Gosh, I guess we need some from our family trips :). Maybe I'll order some online of  the places we've been. 

We box up our Christmas books with our decorations and we set them under the tree. The children look forward to reading these books, and so do Scott and I.

With the ornaments and the books also came the kids well-loved nativity lego set. We always ask the kids to keep this set in the living room and we've been doing something new this year; since the set is always all over the place in the living room, each night, after our family scripture study and prayer, we'll choose one of the children(have to have been sitting reverently and participating) to gather all the pieces and set it up the way they'd like on our end table where it will remain for the night. They LOVE doing this and it helps them sit quietly in anticipation of whose going to get to do it that night, so we like it too :).

 Friday morning I got my Christmas shopping done and later that day we took the kids out to Joanns Fabric and bought enough Christmas fabric to make stockings for all seven of us. The day after Thanksgiving, Joann's has all their Christmas fabric 75% off which a friend informed me of months previous. We all have the same print for the bottom (we found a Christmas fabric that already had batting inside) and then we let each person pick out the Christmas fabric they wanted for their cuff.  For all seven stockings, we ended up spending about $35 on material, so about $5/stocking, but they are individualized, big, and good quality.

We found a good stocking tutorial from the FabricWorm here. Oh, and I also got this rotary cutter pictured below for 50% off which I am so excited about! It made making these stockings SO much faster and easier! Scott and I started on these Saturday. We worked on these together; we each cut and sewed about half. And we burned the midnight oil, Saturday night, finishing them up.

Almost done! Just needs the iron-on applique! This one is Scott's.

All done!

We love the way they turned out and are pretty pleased with our work...we don't do a whole lot of sewing around here so even though this may seem very simple and easy to most, you know, a basic stocking pattern, this was no simple task for us and we got a lot of good use out of our seam ripper, if you know what I mean. But it was all worth it!

Thanksgiving

As previously mentioned, my kids and Scott had the week off from school and work over Thanksgiving. We hung around the house and got some projects done like Christmas lights up, truck load of stuff to ARC (thrift store), cleaned, organized, Christmas tree up, made stockings, got my Christmas shopping done, and made Harry Potter wands from chopsticks, hot glue and paint; we'll have more pictures on the Christmas stuff in the next post on Wednesday.

 We also made time to visit a Children's Museum, go on several walks/jogs together, and play games. "Work and then play" is a phrase we say often and we mean it. We work hard first and then we play hard and have a great time together!

The day before Thanksgiving we started cooking for the big day. We got together with two other families and one set of missionaries on Thanksgiving, so we made a third of the items. Thanksgiving morning, Scott and Annabelle made the family apple cider donuts; they've made these donuts for three years now, always in the Fall but not always for Thanksgiving. We ate them for breakfast Thanksgiving morning since we had just finished our sugar fast. Unfortunately, a couple of the kids had tummy aches later from eating all that sugar; I told them to eat something besides donuts and cereal (another special 'treat' dad picked up for the kids for thanksgiving; we had cheerios, mini wheats and granola), but alas, they did not listen to my wise counsel :). But I really have no room to speak because the day after Thanksgiving I went way overboard eating donuts, and several pieces of pie with ice cream and that night I paid for it, in a terrible way. I was on the toilet for awhile at 2am and I was so uncomfortable in bed with stomach aches, back pains, hot flashes and dizziness. The next day as I passed my nightstand and saw the bottle of the Peppermint essential oil and the consecrated oil, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of love, remembering how Scott took care of me in the wee hours of the night(and this wasn't the first time), giving me a Priesthood blessing of healing and then rubbing the peppermint oil over my back and stomach and feet.  

The next day, even though I didn't eat much and only ate real foods, my tummy was still feeling sensitive but it wasn't nearly as bad as during the night. Well, we live and learn, and sometimes we have to 'live and learn' over and over and over again before we really have it ingrained in our heads. My goal is to have a max of one serving of a sugary treat, once a week. We'll see :). I was the one in my family, growing up, known for her sweet tooth :). But that's doesn't mean I'm giving up on trying to be better, because I'm not. I'll keep on trying. It's a good goal. Now I sound like I'm trying to convince myself :).

Here are some of the other foods we made for Thanksgiving:

Scott made his traditional and wonderful Caramel Apple Pie.

I made, for the first time ever, my favorite, Pecan Pie. And this was a recipe that didn't use any corn syrup which I thought was pretty awesome. And so yummy!

I made a Cranberry Sauce, sweetened with pure maple syrup and cranberry juice.

We also made a holiday quinoa salad, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rolls and cupcakes for the kiddos. 

All the food was delicious and we had plenty and more! Mandie brought a couple of crafts/games for the kids to do after dinner. They really enjoyed working on their Thanksgiving Mad Lib worksheets.

I loved the pasta necklaces they made. Mandie colored various pasta shapes using rubbing alcohol and food coloring and they looked very festive. We had such a lovely day, visiting with our amazing friends and eating good food. There were 8 adults and 13 children in all.

And last but not least, we need to put a picture up of the Gratitude Tree. This is the same tree I made last year using old brown paper bags. The kids put on new leaves each day with something they were grateful for.
I love these scripture passages on gratitude:
"Counsel with the Lord in all they doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let they heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day." -Alma 37:37

This next one also just so happens to be one of my favorite scriptures; it gives me something to strive to be and to continuously work on and develop in my life: 

"And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive." -Alma 7: 23

If I had to make a top ten list of things I'm grateful for, it would look like this:
1.) Jesus and his gospel/Scriptures, the Bible and Book of Mormon/Living Prophet/Temples etc (this is what keeps me on track, brings peace, hope and happiness in my life and really makes me who I am which is someone who is trying to be like Jesus: loving, good, honest, service-oriented etc)
2.) Scott; he's my best friend, husband and the love of my eternity
3.) Children, parents, siblings and other family member; they bring me so much joy
4.) Good health; healthy body, mind and spirit
5.) Food...I just love it; and we need it
6.) A roof over our heads; warm, welcoming home
7.) Friends and neighbors
8.) Scott's job that provides for all our needs
9.) Cars/planes so we can visit family
10.) Internet; helps me keep in touch with family and I have so much knowledge at my fingertips

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!