December, post 1: Fun at Home

 Decorating cookies

 Hard at work!

 Here's the Advent calendar.  I just typed up a list of activities, cut them up, and put them in each day's slot.  I had a master list that I could refer to also, which was very helpful.

 Making Nutter Butter snowmen...think I saw this on Pinterest.

 You can tell which are the Bean's...they are all done correctly with two chocolate chips for eyes and 3 M&M's for buttons.  Bubs was a bit more of a loose snowman interpretation.  :)  They all tasted good!

 This treat came from Pinterest too I think...there was a neat Nativity poem that went with it.  We gave these away to friends.  You can find the "recipe" and prinable here.

 And of course, our annual Gingerbread Party with our friends from the Robertson Reporter.  This was the first time I've hosted, and I had to make the houses, which I made from graham crackers.  And the Royal Icing was pretty easy to make...whew!

 This was after school was out, so the kids dressed themselves.  The Bean has a tank top over another shirt, and Bubs had on shorts.  In December. Although with the mild winter we had, that might have been weather-appropriate!

The finished products!

This year I had so much fun during the Advent season!  We always want to emphasize to our kids that Christ is the reason we celebrate Christmas, and I wanted to do that in a way that would be meaningful to them this year.  So I did an Advent calendar, and each day we put a piece of the Nativity scene on our little calendar and drew out that day's activity.  Some activities were purely fun, like the ones pictured above, and others like making a nativity scene out of toilet paper holders.  Others were chosen to keep us all focused on Christ, or on generousity toward others.  Some were sort of "filler" (I did have a little baby, after all!), like Nativity coloring pages.  Some of the more meaningful things we did included giving out candy canes to Target workers and telling them Jesus loved them (one lady was so touched she cried!), taping quarters to candy machines with a note attached saying something about being focused on giving, leaving money in an envelope in the toy section of Wal-mart with a note about celebrating Christ by giving, and donating some of our toys to a local thrift store.  The Bean and Bubs each picked a toy that was special to them, and we prayed for the kids that would receive them.  I didn't come up with all this on my own...I knew I wanted to do something like this but "borrowed" some ideas from http://www.lillightomine.com/.  I even used her printables...go check it out!  Bubs and the Bean had so much fun making treats and having Christmas fun, and the Bean especially loved "sneaking around" leaving money for people.  Bubs loved choosing people to hand out candy canes to...he's our friendly people person.  He even handed one to our local sports news anchor in Target.  :)  We had a blast with our Advent calendar this year, and I will definitely do it next Christmas!

November: Fall Fun, Grandparents Day, Thanksgiving Feast, Tree Decorating

 Loving on little sis...

 Ahh...the simple pleasures of childhood!

 Roar!!  Still loving the dinosaur costume. 

 Getting Baby Girl snuggled up in Bubs sleeping bag.  Our kids drag their pup tents and sleeping bags all over the house and set up camp.  :)

 Grandparent's Day

 Making a craft for the grandparents

 Grandparent's Day program

 Silly Bean all ready for her Thanksgiving Feast

 Guess the braids were bugging her...:) 

 Feasting...

With one of her BFF's at school...

 Our Thankful Tree

 Decorating for Christmas...it always looks worse before it looks better...

 How the kids like to disperse ornaments...

 Snackage...

The Bean's little tree for her room, which she decorated.  :)

We didn't have too much going on in November, but there were a few things to take pictures of!  First up, good old Fall fun: raking up leaves and jumping in them!  We do that a least a couple of times each Fall with the kids.  It's so fun!  And we have the added advantage of a sloped yard so they can jump in the leaves and roll down the hill.  I don't know how much actual raking ends up getting done, but we all have fun and make some memories.  :)

Next, Grandparent's Day at the Bean's school.  They usually have Grandparent's Day around Veteran's Day and do a little program in the auditorium.  The Bean was super excited that Mimi and Grandpaw got to come to her class and visit with her. 

Toward the end of the month the Bean had her Thanksgiving Feast at school.  They were supposed to dress like either Pilgrims or Indians, and thankfully the Bean's Halloween Indian costume from when she was 3 still fit!  (I really lucked out on the costume front this year!)  They had turkey, popcorn, grapes and cupcakes for their feast at school.  (That's what the original pilgrims ate, right?!?  With Caprisuns??) And they made placemats to eat on.  Also for Thanksgiving this year, we did a "thankful" tree.  I cut out leaf shapes on the die-cut machine at our church, and we each wrote down things we were thankful for on the leaves and hung them on our thankful tree.  (The "tree" was branches I found in our yard.) :)  It was fun hearing things Bubs and the Bean were thankful for...the Bean's list included lipgloss, God, and school.  Bubs list included peanut butter crackers, Daddy, and playing outside. 

And of course, most years after Thanksgiving Day, we start getting ready for Christmas, and this year was no exception!  We pulled all the decorations out and had fun getting in the Christmas spirit.  I always make hot chocolate and a snack...I can't really remember what the snack was, but judging from the pictures I'm guessing chocolate oatmeal cookies???  I do the "prep" while the kiddos eat and then they help me put on the ornaments.  Some re-distributing is usually necessary.  :) 

Now, on to December!

December fun

So as to not get any further behind on blogging, I decided to post all our December stuff in one post. This is kind of picture heavy...sorry!

We started off the month with a fun morning at the Robertson Reporter for our annual gingerbread house party. Or in this case, Pop Tart houses. :) Mom E was kind enough to prepare the houses and icing...I just had to bring a little candy. Last year Bubs had no interest whatsoever in decorating a gingerbread house, and he pretty much played with trains the whole time. This time he did much better and was more into the decorating. And neither of the kids ate as much candy as you might imagine, which is pretty impressive considering what a big sweet tooth the Bean has. The Bean's roof collapsed and Mom E had to do a little repair work, but other than that, their houses turned out very nicely. The houses were pretty much destroyed and salvaged for parts by the next day, FYI. The Pop Tarts and candy just sitting around was way too tempting!

Fast forward a few days in December to Christmas. We went to Mimi and Grandpaw's house for a few days and had a blast. The Bean got a lot of princess stuff, including a princess "laptop", princess sleeping bag, Beauty and the Beast DVD, and princess dolls. She also got a big doll house and doll house stuff...and she pretty much loved every single present! Bubs got mostly vehicle-related stuff, including a remote-control car, Thomas the Train stuff, a small racetrack, and toy golf clubs. And he loved it all. I got a Cricut, which I am super excited about trying out! RR got mostly money b/c he is harder to shop for. :) We had a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas morning and read the Christmas story from Luke 2. The kids actually sat still and listened!

Listening to Grandpaw read from Luke 2

Bubs stuffing his face with birthday cake...don't know what happened to his pants! As a side note, my brother is notorious for taking the last bite of desserts, or just plain being a dessert hog. So for fun/just to be mean, I grabbed the last half of his piece of cake and scarfed it down. This was followed by a small food fight between my brother and I. SOOOOO glad the kids weren't really paying attention. Didn't get any pics of my face or my brother's bald head smeared with icing...sorry!

Eating birthday cake for Jesus

And let's not forget about the snow! Sadly, the one thing I left at home during our trip to Mimi and Grandpaw's was our coats. Oops. So we really had to get creative to let the kids play in the snow. They have on a hodge podge of clothing/mittens/hats belonging to various people. Bubs caught on very quickly to the idea of throwing snowballs and was pretty good at it! He liked being hit and hitting others with the snowballs pretty equally. And I think he is part Eskimo. It's like he doesn't even feel the cold! He could've stayed out there forever if we would have let him! AC helped build a snow man and made snow angels. We all had a great time!

The glorious snow man (mostly the handiwork of Evan and my brother)!

The glorious snow man being tackled to the ground about 30 seconds after he was finished!

I have on my dad's sweatshirt and jacket, and my mom's shoes...the Bean has on Grandpaw's ski mask, Aunt Marianna's sweatshirt hoodie, and Grandpaw's tube socks for mittens. And I had even bought my kids cute hats and mittens this year!

Last little happening for December...Bubs is potty-trained! He had been showing a lot of interest and asking to use the potty from time to time for the last couple of months, and the week after Christmas he just refused to put on diapers. So I went with it, and he has had very few accidents since then. He's done really well, even when we're out and about. And he was accident-free his first day back at MDO, so that's a good sign! He's truly just trained himself. I've been very proud of him! And just in time, since baby #3 is due in July!

Christmas with extended family - last Christmas post, I promise!

My aunt Dianne took these pics, and I'm gonna hire her to take my kids pics every time...they sat there still and smiled for like 2 minutes straight!

This is an outfit I smocked/sewed last Christmas that we got a second year out of by adding a pair of pants...gotta love when you can do that!

The train was actually Evan's gift, but Bubs LOVED it. :)

The Bean got a baby doll w/ lots of parts (including a hair dryer) that she loved!!


These pics are from two different Christmas parties...one at my mom's side of the family and one at my dad's side. Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures, so there were none of the other family members that were there (sorry guys!), but I promise they were there and we all had a great time! Lots of good food and good times!