Christmas Recap

We had a happy Christmas at our house. This year was fun because not only did Allison undersyand, but she was EXCITED... as in nearly pushing Brian down the stairs trying to get past him to see if Santa came. I don't have lots of photos (Brian was helping kids while I was mostly nursing Lindsey), but here are a few we did get.

Santa brought Allison a real camera all her own...

Carter was so excited about the firetruck from Grandma and Grandpa

Mommy made Allison 3 new princess dress-ups to go with the Barbies Santa brought

Carter + football = little boy heaven!

The kids big gifts were guitars built by Brian. They love them. Cute little story: We only wrapped the guitar bodies, so the necks were showing. After opening stockings Allison saw the necks and said to Brian: "Oh, Daddy! You're very lucky; Santa brought you TWO guitars!" She was even more excited after we checked the tags and found out that they were not for Daddy. Here's a quick little video of the kids playing with them before moving on.

Gingerbread Houses

We went all out for Gingerbread houses this year. We probably spent too much for one activity, but the kids LOVED it, and it made for a much nicer-than-normal Sunday afternoon.

Which, by the way, am I the only parent of little ones who thinks that Sunday is actually often the HARDEST day of the week? What happened to day of rest? But thats neither here nor there...

Allison and Carter both enjoyed building the houses. Allison did her own with my help, and Brian did the other with Carter's help... although Carter's definition of "help" was to eat as much candy as possible. Fun was had by all. Next year, I think its cheaper graham cracker houses for our kids, but we'll stick with the royal icing. That stuff really is the key to getting a good house built. :)

Allison thoughfully placing her gumdrop border...

Carter thoughfully eating all the candy within reach...

Yeah... thats my husband... :)

Halloween's Dress Rehearsal

The Disney Store here in Syracuse did a Halloween Dress Rehearsal event. Basically it was an excuse for little kids to dress up in their costumes, come to the store, play a few games and parade around (all in hopes of their parents spending a few dollar there, I'm sure).

Allison loved being able to dress up in her Tinkerbell costume, and she got a LOT of compliments on it. She enjoyed...

playing in the Disney Store as long as she wanted...

playing the "Banish the Villians" game...

"Freeze Dancing"...

parading around the store, waving... with BOTH hands.

And she loved getting to take a carousel ride when the party was all over.

It was a good day to be Allison...

Where've I Been?

Busy...

My kids are going to be SO cute this Halloween, if I do say so myself. All thats left is to finish Tink's wings (I need white knee-highs) and a feather for Peter's cap.

Decorating for Christmas

There are two two-year-olds living at my parent's house right now. And they love Christmas trees. We started decorating today, and my mom loves her granddaughters enough to give up her pretty, perfect tree and allow them to "help" her decorate it, which means no breakable ornaments, lots of ornamnets placed down low and pretty poor ornament distrubution. They had a blast. Here are just a few pictures of Allison and her cousin Emma decorating the Christmas tree.

They had a favorite branch...

They were very particular about their placement...

Reach, reach, reach...

I really do think that the holidays only get more fun and more magical when children join your family and start to understand and enjoy the season themselves.

Merry Christmas!

We took Allison to visit Santa. She loves Santa, but didn't want to sit on his lap all by herself.

Merry Christmas anyway!

The Quiet Encyclopedia

For Christmas, Allison is getting a quiet book. I made a couple a few years ago for neices and nephews and figured it was about time for Allison to have one. She's SO busy and hopefully this will allow Brian and I to actually pay attention to part of our Sunday meetings.

Little did I know when I started that Allison would be receiving not a just a quiet book, and The HUGE Encyclopedia Britannica of quiet books. The thing is 3 inches thick! I think I got a little carried away. There were just so many good ideas that I wanted to include.

At least this way I can split the book in two in another year or so and add a page or two (since I didn't use up all of my ideas) and I'll have two quiet books to keep two kids quiet at the same time. Bright side, right? =) Here are the photos!

Front Cover. Notice how its curved? That would be becuase its so HUGE!

Alphabet page. We have all the letter in the pocket on the front cover. They velcro on & off.

Getting dressed page & closet. It's got a zipper to play with and the doll clothes velcro on & off.

Lacing and tying shoes & counting/number recognition gumball machine. The gumballs velcro on & off.

The house is "Lift the flaps". Weaving page... some of these pages she'll grow into.

The balloons are color matching. They velcro on and off. I made a buckles page becuase Allison LOVES to play with buckles on her puppy leash, her car seat, the grocery cart...

Winter and spring themed pages. Build a snowman (velcro part) and button on the flowers.

Summer and fall themed pages. The apples snap on and off and the leaves velcro on and off.

Shape matching and hanging clothes on a clothesline.

Counting with beads and a peek-a-book page. When she's older she can braid the yarn hair too.

"Whats in mommy's purse" and a notepad for drawing. Some keys, dead credit cards and play make-up will probably go in the purse.

If you want to try your hand at making your own (its a great project, but its not really any cheaper than buying one, except when you make your own you get a lot more pages for your $30), here are some resources that I found and used to make Allison's.

• Anna Fowler's Quiet Book blog ... lots of good ideas and a work in progress. You might check her family blog for her post that shows all her quiet book pages on it.
• LDS Quiet Book Packets ... for purchase, but can give you some good ideas.
• Mommy Chic: Quiet Books
• How to make an LDS Quiet Book ... this one now has patterns for quiet book pages. The author of the book by the same name as the website gave permission for them to be publish on the website.

If you want to know more about how I made mine or what I used comment here or email me. =)

PS - this was my 100th post, and I just passed my 1 year blog-o-versary! Stay tuned for some blog candy... (aka: a give-away) =)

Happy Halloween!

We took Allison trick-or-treating at the mall. She LOVED picking up the candy and putting it in her little pumpkin bucket and, even though she was very tired, she had a blast!

Once she got a few peices of candy she thought she was done... she wanted to sit down and play with her bucket and two peices of candy. It was too cute.

She also loved that she managed to get her hands on a sucker, get it open and eat most of the way through it. Mmmm... yummy mess for mommy and daddy to clean up!

Happy Halloween! Hope you had a fun and safe one!