Christmas Trains

We held our traditional train-making fest with our friends the Angells on December 18th.  We always enjoy getting together with them.  Here are pictures of the fun!

Christmas trains - free slideshow maker with music

For the Grandparents (and anyone else who wants to view concerts/recitals)

Well, I thought I'd try to post Christmas concerts/recitals before Christmas.  I'm doing it by the skin of my teeth, but I'm doing it.  :)

Here are Leah's 7th grade honors orchestra concert and her violin recital (in two posts).  We're grateful for the opportunity she has to be involved in an orchestra at school, and grateful she has a wonderful violin teacher.  Make sure you listen to her violin teacher play at the end of her recital.  We love Christmas music and it's fun to enter a phase of life full of it!

Recital part 2

Tree Farm & Santa Visit

December 1st we ventured to a tree farm to pick a tree and see Santa.  This is the first real tree we've had in several years.  I actually can't even remember the last time we had a real tree.  We are loving how it smells!  The kids enjoyed the animals that also live on the farm, and everyone enjoyed seeing Santa, even Amy.  Hyrum said that he thinks it was one of Santa's helpers though.  It might be because Santa had quite the southern accent and welcomed everyone with something like, "Hey buddy!"  :)

I Was Right...and this time I wish I wasn't

Well, the day after Amy unwrapped her Christmas gift, she broke the lamb to the only nativity set I left out in the open.  The rest of the breakable decorations I put inside the hutch this year.  We put a child lock on the piano room doors where the nativity set is displayed to prevent further mishaps.  This is also the room where the tree will go, so a child lock seemed like a good idea.  Well, the lock wasn't quite heavy duty enough.  Today I heard the piano room doors open with what sounded like a crash and I went running.  Amy was talking to herself and excitedly said, "Yay, you pushed it out!" (meaning the child lock) as she ran to the keyboard.  I ran and scooped her up to which she responded with a whole lot of giggling.  Is it good that she acknowledges she's a stinker?  :)

Musical numbers

We've had a lot of music happenings lately.  Leah participated in a solo violin judging with other students in the county.  She received a superior rating which we were all happy about.  She was very nervous before her performance and ended up playing so well I told her that she plays better when she's nervous.  :)  I've decided that Jared and I should always be her accompanist where possible because parents aren't allowed in the room when the student is being judged, but the accompanist of course is.

Kaitlyn had the opportunity to sing the first verse of "For the Beauty of the Earth" this past Sunday in our Sacrament meeting.    It was A Capella, so we recorded it again at home to share.

Here are both of their pieces:

We're very proud of both of them!

'Tis the Season...and what a season it will be!

Today I finished a phone call with my sister and then went to find Amy. Whenever Amy is missing and quiet we know it is a dangerous situation! I couldn't find her anywhere, so I went upstairs and said, "Amy, where are you?" She said, "in your room". I inwardly groaned because I had started pulling out the Christmas decorations and I didn't really want her digging into them. She wasn't in them...I opened the door to see torn wrapping paper everywhere and Amy staring at the gift my parents got her for Christmas. She was a very happy camper and said, "I want to play with the tea set right now!" I told her we needed to wait and wrap it back up. She said, "No, I want to play with the tea set right now!" I finally distracted her enough to wrap the present back up. I have a feeling this is going to be a very interesting (and maybe early) Christmas!

Field Trips & Halloween

Since it's mid-November now, I'll blog about October...yeah, that's how life is going right now!  :)

We had two preschool fieldtrips in October.  We went to the Atlanta Children's museum and a local pumpkin patch.  Hyrum and Amy played very well together at the Children's museum.  It was fun to watch Hyrum help his little sister.  It was also fun to watch Amy feel like she was a part of the group.  Her favorite thing there by far was an area built to look like a kitchen.  She loves to play house now.  When she went to the grocery store part of the museum, she had just about any food you would think of to choose from, but she insisted on "purchasing" every last banana at the store and wanted nothing else!

Fall Fieldtrips - slideshow with music

For our pumpkin patch outing we braved the cold.  We were freezing!  Our bodies have gotten used to the south, and so 40 degrees was almost miserable!  :)

For Halloween Leah dressed up as a candy corn, Kaitlyn dressed up as Merada (sp?) from "Brave", Hyrum was Spiderman, and Amy was a witch.  They each designed their own pumpkins.  Hyrum did much better cleaning out the pumpkin this year.  Last year he was horrified to touch the innards!

Halloween - picture slideshow

Primary Program Song

I had the opportunity for much of this year to be the Primary chorister.  So, for the Primary program I taught the older children both verses of "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" and the younger children the first verse of "Jesus Once Was a Little Child".  I combined the songs into a medley and added an instrumental part.  Leah played the violin as our instrumentalist and did a great job.  We tried to capture the essence of how it went tonight by having her play the violin and having Hyrum and Kaitlyn sing the songs.  We were much more relaxed at home, and so some of the song gets a bit casual, but you can use your imagination.  The song is long, but the point was to showcase both songs.

Preschool is in session

Hyrum started our preschool coop in September, and last week was our first week to host.  We had the theme of nursery rhymes and the letter L.  We started off by playing  a matching game with rhyming words:

By far, the most popular game we played was "Little mouse, little mouse, what color is your house?"  One of the kids would leave the room and we would hide the mouse behind one of the houses.  Then, the child would come back, we would say the rhyme, and the child would guess a color house to look behind until we found the mouse.  We had to play this several times because they loved it so much.

We practiced counting and estimating with "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe".  It turns out Jared's shoe hold 14 people, mine holds 7, and Hyrum's holds 4.

For our snacks, we had muffin man muffins, curds and whey (cheese curds and cottage cheese), Jack be nimble's candlestick (baby banana inside a bagel), and yes, we let Humpty Dumpty fall and then ate him.

For the letter L I realized that many nursery rhymes had a lamb in them (Mary had a little lamb, Little Bo Peep, Baa Baa Black sheep).  We took a lamb theme as a mini-theme for one of the days.  One of our activities was sorting black and white pom poms and then glueing them on lamb pictures to make one white and one black sheep.

Preschool October 2012 - free slideshow

We have a good group of kids this year and we're having a lot of fun!  We'll be hosting again in two weeks with  the themes of opposites and math.

More of the latest

This post is just to document a thing or two...

Amy's latest artwork:

Recently Jared took out a flowerbed in the middle of our front yard and added a new one.  We  need to water the transplanted grass and new plants, so Kaitlyn and Hyrum took advantage of sprinkler time (unheard of here):

Recent Things

Life keeps marching along.  Actually it feels like it is racing on.  Amid all the running around, we've had a few fun things to jot down.

My routine in the morning is to get up, get the kids off to school, then get dressed and make my bed.  One morning Hyrum came to me right after I got the kids off to school and proudly announced that he had made my bed because he saw it wasn't done.  Here's a picture of his handiwork.

I'm proud of him for wanting to help out!

Amy has recently learned to open doors.  This has brought her greater independence whether we want it or not.  We now have to lock the front door and we have to lock her bedroom door at night to keep her in (then we unlock it after she falls asleep).  Saturday morning I happened to see her coming out of her room when she got up.  She marched over to the stairs and with her hands on her hips yelled, "Hey guys...I get awaked!"

Today Hyrum said, "I know when we die...when the calendar runs out."


Friday Leah and I had a mom/daughter date scheduled to give ourselves manicures/pedicures.  While we relaxed Jared helped the other kids paint their faces.  We did that because at a recent school carnival, Hyrum really wanted his face painted but the line was forever long.  I talked him into skipping it at the carnival and doing it at home.  The funny thing was that after Jared spent a long time on his face, Hyrum wanted to immediately wash it off because he didn't like how it felt.  Funny kid!

Getting Old?

Last night Jared and I overheard Hyrum and the girls talking about when Hyrum will be old enough to join scouts.  He said, "Yeah, but Dad will be an old man by then".  Ha!

On another getting old note, Kaitlyn has come home very disturbed because there's a boy at school that likes her.  He has told her that he wants to kiss her to which she appropriately screamed and ran to the other side of the playground.  :)  Another boy tried to "guard" her by grabbing her, and the original boy said, "Get your hands off my woman".  Oh, dear!  Jared said he is happy to beat up said boy.  :)  Right now it all seems innocent enough, which is good because we're not ready for her to grow up that much!

First Day of School

Kaitlyn & Leah started the first day of school today.  Kaitlyn had to catch the bus at 7:10am, and Leah at 8:15am.  Both were excited and nervous.  Leah was especially nervous because she is starting middle school this year.  Another complication was that she was on amoxicillan for an ear infection and last night she broke out in hives.  This morning the hives were even more widespread and had gone to her face.  So, this morning we gave her a good dose of Benadryl and lathered her up with foundation and face powder.  Then she got a bit of blush to put some color back in her face.  I think we hid the hives pretty well.  She never knew she'd get to wear makeup so early!

Kaitlyn was excited to sport a curly head this morning.  We wish them both a great first day!

Zoo Trip

This week I took the kids to the zoo for one last summer trip since they start school tomorrow. It was over 90 degrees, but we still had a good time.

Zoo August 2012 - how to make a free slideshow

While we were feeding the birds I looked over at Hyrum and thought it was so funny that he was so determined to feed a bird that he devised his own method:

Hyrum also asked to see the zebras the whole time we were at the zoo since he had worn his zebra shirt. We never did find them on this trip, and so this was as close as he got:

Grandma/Grandpa Camp July 2012

The kids had a WONDERFUL time at Grandma/Grandpa Camp in July.  I'm so late in posting, but part of the reason is that I felt like I wouldn't be able to adequately highlight how much fun they had if I threw together a quick post.  The kids didn't even really miss us which tells us they were having too much fun to miss us!  They went to a Children's museum, swam in the pool almost daily, went to see "Brave", and completed a lot of impressive crafts.  Here are pictures of some of the crafts:

Rock Painting

Negative Space painting

Make your own paper!

Finger painting

Tie Dye t-shirts for all the grandkids

Grandpa sure knew how to entertain a boys heart.  He made a marshmallow shooter for Hyrum, Tanner and Landon.  I think this is the first true boy toy that Hyrum has.  He's delighted!

We enjoyed our visit when we picked up the kids.  I was surprised when I got home to see that I hadn't taken that many pictures.  I guess I was having too much fun as well!  Here's a few I caught:

Grandma Camp Visit - how to make a free slideshow

Some pictures I stole from Dean & Andrea's  and Grant & Rachel's blogs.  Thanks!  :)

Landon & Amy

Kaitlyn & Tanner

Playing Bocce Ball

Two piano duets

Arm wrestling matches

I had to highlight these last two pictures of Hyrum and Tanner (the twinners).  Too cute!

Thank you Mom and Dad for spoiling our whole family.  It was wonderful to see everyone.  We didn't get to see Dianne & Geoff because they are super close to welcoming a baby into their home.  We're super excited about that as well!

July Fun

The end of June and beginning of July have been full of fun for our family.  We were visited by friends from Connecticut, the Mason family and enjoyed catching up.  I forgot to take any pictures, except this one of Amy.  She decided to duck out of the visiting fun and we found her asleep in the corner cabinet.  She had shut herself in and conked out.

Jared's parents and sister Janna joined us for the 4th of July.  We enjoyed a quick visit with them.

4th of July - flash slideshow maker

They came down to pick up Leah, Kaitlyn and Hyrum for a week of Grandma/Grandpa camp in Pennsylvania!  Here's a picture of the start of their adventure:

Amy had a hard time adjusting to her siblings not being around to play with.  Mostly she got into a lot of mischief.  We tried to spend some good one on one time with her too, including a trip to Yogli Mogli and painting her fingernails and toenails.  This was her first time with painted nails.  She kept saying, "I'm a pretty princess".  When I finished her nails she asked, "Am I beauful?"

Amy's painted nails - flash slideshow maker

Yesterday Amy finally adjusted to entertaining herself, and she was very well behaved.  I even took her to 3 stores with no problem!  I was also finally having a productive day since she was cooperating.  I started sewing and went upstairs to press ONE seam.  That was my mistake.  Apparently she was done being good.  In the time it took to press one seam I heard a big crash and immediately knew it was my sewing machine.  I went downstairs and Amy was crying.  The machine was in a few pieces on the floor.  I made sure she was fine and then scolded her for touching the machine.  I know she's two, but she also knows she's not supposed to touch the machine.  I decided to take her to her room to impress that on her.  A few minutes later I went in her room and asked, "Did you break Mommy's sewing machine?"  She cried, "yes".  I told her she needed to say she was sorry.  She did, and then I asked her if she wanted a hug.  She came for her hug and then asked, "Do you want my rabbit?"  It was sweet to see what she presented as a peace offering.  We wound up the rabbit and had fun watching it walk around.  If only world peace were so simple.