It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

 So to continue to kick off this wonderful holiday season I decided to scan in all our past pictures with Santa. Clearly St. Nick doesn't make my kids too jolly. I haven't taken them yet this year, so we'll see how it goes. I just thought I should prepare you if it doesn't turn out too well.

This is the only one where Whitney isn't crying but she's actually sitting on Ty's lap, not Santa's. So it doesn't count. (this one is for you Ash)

Christmas Fun

I started our Christmas season a little early this year. Maybe it was because I was almost done with shopping by Thanksgiving. Maybe because we only had 3 weeks down here after Thanksgiving before we go home. Either way, we really love Christmas around here. Here we are decorating the tree. Forgive my pictures, my camera is about to bite the dust. :-(

 I think they are pretty happy with how it turned out:

I saw this awesome tradition and had to copy it. Instead of doing 25 days til Christmas I did 18 days til we go to Grandma's house. I know it's kind of a weird number of days but I had to wait til I could get enough books and it just fell conveniently on family night when we decorated the tree so we just started then. I had a few books already and at our library there is a non profit bookstore so I got most of the books for 25 or 50 cents which was awesome. The most expensive one was $1.50. I was super excited to be able to start this tradition at such a low cost. The girls have really loved opening something every night and we love books around here.

 We got invited to have dinner with some ward friends and also to decorate gingerbread houses. She made little individual graham cracker houses for each kid and it was a lot of fun. I think more candy got in my girls' mouths than on their houses, but that's the point, right? :-)

Have you started any traditions this year? What are your favorite traditions? Hope your holiday season is going splendidly and that you can spend time with those you love (or at least like a little bit)

Thanksgiving

So today is Thanksgiving. Of course we all have a lot to be thankful for. But mostly my top thing is life. Yesterday I went to the Library and on my way there, on a residential street, there was a pretty bad accident with a car upside down and people on stretchers on the ground. I had been really depressed about being away from family for Thanksgiving but instantly I wasn't so depressed anymore. I'd much rather have miles between us versus the veil. We are all happy and healthy and you can look at the positives in any situation.
Today was really special. I'm pretty much done with Christmas shopping (super early for me!) so I've been dying to listen to Christmas music. I refuse to before Thanksgiving, so the first thing I did was put on my favorite Christmas music and my Christmas apron and got to work. Tyhad to work at 4 so we decided to have dinner early. We got multiple offers to eat with other people but we decided to stay with our little family. I knew it'd be weird and probably feel more homesick to be with other families. Plus with Ty working we didn't want to travel and worry about being back on time. I've been sick the last couple of days and by this morning, I had almost lost my voice completely. It made it hard for me to bark orders at request help from Ty, but everything went really well and I thought the food was pretty good. I went pretty simple but did stretch myself to make Ty's mom's sweet potatoes and my mom's gravy. The only thing I regretted was making refrigerated rolls. My sister and MIL always make awesome rolls so I missed that.
I'm sorry my data limit is reached on blogger so I'm not sure what I'll do with posting pictures, but I'll figure it out soon!
Like I said I'm thankful for a lot of things. When I first found out Ty had to work today, I was sad and upset. But today I was thinking, I'm grateful he has to work because I'm grateful he has a job. How many people across the country are unemployed and would jump at the chance to work, even on Thanksgiving, if it meant having a job? I'm so grateful for the experience we had to have Thanksgiving with our own little family. It'll probably be the only time we do it. It  was so special and I felt so much love from across the country. I hope you all enjoyed the time with loved ones and got some yummy food. Whitney told me this was the best Thanksgiving ever and I was very touched. (even if it's the only one she remembers)
How was your holiday?

Halloween and Hobbies

Back at the beginning of October I was feeling a little unfulfilled. Life as a stay at home mom is important, and can be busy but you don't always have something at the end of the day that says "look what I did." I decided to start making hair bows. I knew some basics so I bought a few supplies and got started. It is lots of fun! I especially like that it #1 saves us money and #2 if I need something specific to match an outfit, I can just find matching ribbon and make it myself! I haven't made too many but I'm glad I started it. I made Halloween bows and here are some bows I made for the Utah game:

Now that it's Thanksgiving I guess I should post about Halloween! We had such a crazy day! We went to storytime and trick or treated at the library, lunch with friends, drove in crazy rush hour to pick up Ty from work, dinner with more friends, then trick or treated for real this year! It was a super crazy day but lots of fun. We all slept good that night! I didn't take many pictures I was too busy I guess. :-) 

Halloween Dress Rehearsal

Earlier this month we went to the Disney Store for their Halloween Dress Rehearsal. I really love the Disney store, and this experience made me love them even more!
Our Ladybug:

Rapunzel:

They made treat bags:

Got prizes and a treat (fruit crisps):

Then a costume parade:

It was so much fun and I'm so glad we went. The staff is so friendly and the girls felt so special.

This last weekend was our church Halloween activity. It was also lots of fun.

I made eyeball cake pops and displayed them like so:

It was a challenge to make them, but I'm glad I did!

One of the missionaries makes balloon animals and even though she refuses to talk to him, Whitney was thrilled for her purple horse!

I'm so excited that Halloween is tomorrow. Our plans are still tbd but rest assured that I will be posting pics soon of what we decide to do! I hope you all have a fabulous and very sweet holiday!

Conference

So every 6 months our church broadcasts a conference. More info here. Sometimes 8 hours over two days of older men talking can be hard for little ones to watch. My kids are getting older and I decided to try to get them as excited as possible for conference this time. I got lots of different activities and ideas (mostly from pinterest) to try, to see what would work best for my kiddos. I wanted to share them with you guys in case you need some ideas.

I wanted to try to keep it as church themed as possible so they could tell a difference in what we were doing. Wal-mart had all their school supplies on clearance so they each got a tote and folder to organize their goodies. They also got little princess books (not church related, but they were excited to have something new) I also got out our Noah's ark little people set. I know it's a stretch but it's the most gospel oriented toys we have. It was really good to have the toys in an isolated area and they couldn't be distracted by other toys in their room. They stayed in the living room the whole time They also got a little bucket to hold treats, bubbles, coloring pages, and new crayons. That was good for Whitney, but didn't interest Lindsey too much:

On each of these bags I put a picture of a topic like temples or missionaries. If they heard that word they could get one piece of whatever was in the bag and keep it in their buckets if they didn't want to eat it right then. I think this would be something better for older kids. The only time Whitney recognized it first was when Lindsey was sleeping.:

By far the best thing I did was the bubbles. Notice the music note? They were only allowed to play with them during music breaks. This is a big deal because we don't usually have bubbles around here, and they for sure never get to do it by themselves. I put a sheet down with all the bubbles, treats, etc I knew there would be some messes and I didn't want to stress. As soon as the music would start they'd jump up and grab the bubbles and when it was over, they'd quickly put them away.

In April Whitney memorized the Quorum of the 12 Apostles and first presidency and has kept up and still remembers them. I took these picture/fact sheets out of a book that we have and attached each apostle to a different treat/activity. This was a big hit. Whitney was so excited to see and identify who would be speaking and then would find their picture to see what it was attached to.
Here's puzzles (pictures I mounted and cut up from the Friend), not too exciting for my kids:

Before you think I'm a terrible mom and feeding my kids all junk for two days, I did include some healthy choices but I had to use our fake kitchen food so the real stuff could stay refrigerated. :-)

We have a tradition of pancakes or french toast for the morning session:

Last conference we had to watch the whole thing on our computer screen since we don't get it on tv here. Well, I got a cord to connect our computer to the tv and it was a very good decision to get!

In between sessions on Saturday we went to the beach to get our wiggles out:

It was such a great conference and I hope that the girls will continue to get excited for conference like I do. I know I felt very spiritually fed and I'm so grateful that we can hear advice from the Lord's servants so often! Do you have any fun conference traditions or good advice to keep the kids focused/entertained?

Pumpkin Patch

2 weeks ago we went to Bate Nuts Farm to their pumpkin patch. Luckily I have an awesome Visiting Teacher from church who not only told me about it, but picked us up and let us come with her and her nephew and a couple of her friends. Of course the girls had a blast, they have farm in their blood. :-) They had lots of fun activities including a petting zoo, hayride and lots of fun shops to walk through. It kind of reminded me of Gardner Village back home.

Here they are patiently waiting for their turn at the pony rides:

I thought Lindsey might be a little afraid when she got right up to the pony, but she hopped on with no trepidation whatsoever. She was happy as a clam:

Here are all the kiddos on the hayride. The girl on the right of Lindsey is 4 months older than her!

Here they are in the pumpkin patch.

It was really cool to see the huge pumpkins that are 100+ pounds. Since everyone around here loves everything baby, it was no surprise that the girls picked their own miniature baby pumpkins

It's the first year the girls have been able to go pick their own pumpkins not from a store, it was such a fun experience and I think it should be a new tradition! (I love traditions!)