The Doctor is in!!

Mckayla and Isaiah love to build forts, what kid doesn't? Well they make forts on a regular basis, and this day was no different. Their fort consisted of this table. Isaiah said it was his bunk bed, and he was laying there so contently, as if this was the best fort they have ever made. As I looked over at him, I thought he looked like he was in the hospital, so I suggested that they play Doctor. Mckayla was all over that one, and Isaiah was content to be the one attended to. Note the wrapped foot, and Mckayla checking his heart. They crack me up. I love watching them pretend.

Rockin Old Mcdonald

This one is for you DAD. Matt is out of town, so while he is gone we thought we would send him some video of the kids playing in their rock band. Beware to all those who watch this video, it is sure to hurt your ears. Enjoy!!!

Sunbeam

Isaiah has officially graduated from nursey and is now a Sunbeam!! He was a little nervous to go in with all the bigger kids. He wouldn't let mom go. He was content to have Mckayla sit by him through singing and sharing time, and allowed mom to go to her class. We just bought Isaiah a new suit for church and Mckayla a new dress. Here they are sporting their new clothes.

Can I just say how much I love being a mom. I just think how lucky I am that I get to spend every second of my day with my children. I am completely in love with them. I am so thankful to a husband who feels it important for me to stay home with the kids, and provides for us so that I can do that. I am so not looking for them to start going to school and leaving me for most of the day. People always say to cherish these moments because this time will go by so quickly. I am not looking forward to the day that we have an empty house. There are so many moments in my day, when I just giggle at the funny things they do. They brighten my day in so many ways. My patriarchial blessing says my children will be great love and peace to me. I certainly feel that coming to pass, that is until they become teenagers, and then I will have to remember to read this post.

Family fun!!

Matt's brother Steve and his family came into town for the holidays. They came in on Friday night and left Sat. morning. Mckayla and Isaiah were especially excited because this meant lots of cousins to play with. Steve and his wife Heidi have nine kids, so it made for a fun night. They arrived friday evening, we had lots of food, we watched Kung Fu Panda, and played games. I had planned to have a nice breakfast for them in the morning. I had lots of fruit, and made Volcano pancakes. I don't know if you have ever made Volcano pancakes, but they are suppose to be fluffy, and grow really big in the oven. Well, I certainly botched mine. My sister told me she mix's her ingredients in the blender, just to make sure everything mixes up really well. I thought I would use my mixer. Mixer, blender does it really matter? I am here to tell you it does. I think I mixed mine up to much. They were flat, and barely etiable. I had two pan fulls. My guest were gracious enough to eat it all up, and then tell me it really did taste good. I was somewhat embarrassed with my homemaking skills. Oh well, we had a fun visit with family whether I know how to cook or not.

Happy New Year

New Years Eve was that of a quite one. Matt and I tried to get together with some family, but everyone had some other plans. We were actually wishing my brother Bill and his wife Dede were here. We so wanted to get together and play games with them. We still had a good time. We bought a bunch nibble food, and made steak and mashed potatoes to ring in the new year. We played games with the kids, and after putting them to bed, ordered us a movie on paperview (Hancock). On New years day, we went to the matinee with the kids (Despereaux)! Was a very cute movie. The kids enjoyed it especially Isaiah. Anything that has a knight, or saving a princess, he is loves it. It was a fun and relaxing day.

Better Late than Never (All of December festivities)

December was a busy month, hence the no posting until now! I don't know if any of you that have a 5 year old have had the same experiences I have, but Santa was pretty much scrutinized this year. Mckayla has been doing a lot of thinking, and asking lots of questions, and at times left mom pretty flustered in how to respond. Here is how one of our conversations went;

Mom- Hey Mckay, in your preschool class you will get to see a real live reindeer!
Mckay- (Eyes as wide as silver dollars) A real reindeer?
M- Yup, a real one, pretty cool huh?
Mc- Mom is Santa real?
M- ignoring the question and hoping she will move on to something else!
Mc- Mom, Is Santa REAL?
M- Yes, Yes, Santa is real!

Then a few days later she asks me how come daddy and I never got presents from Santa last christmas?

At Mckayla's preschool they had the chance to meet a real reindeer (Comet). Both Mckayla and Isaiah were excited to see one of Santa's reindeer. They got to pet comet, and ask questions. They loved it.

We also had the chance to see Santa a couple of times this December. The first time seeing Santa was at Matt's work party. Matt's work had breakfast with Santa, it was a fun time. We got there right at the start, and so we had the chance to see Santa enter the room. I think we saw him all about 2 seconds and Mckayla says "how come Santa doesn't have glasses on?" Maybe Santa has contacts like Mommy! This Santa didn't quite fit into the costume (with fake beard and all) I was prepared to give the Santa's helper talk. All in all it was lots of fun, they had lots and lots of games for the kids, and cookie decorating. The kids came away with lots of candy and trinket toys.

The second time seeing Santa was at Mckay's preschool. Not only was Santa at her school, but Mrs. Claus was there as well. This was a highlight for Mckay, because she got to have lunch at preschool, and visit with Santa. Normally Mckayla does not eat lunch at school, so that was definitely an added treat. Mckayla asked Santa to bring her a Belle dress up, Isaiah only request was Mickey Mouse keys he saw on the less than $5.00 isle.

I thought for sure Mckayla was going to say something about him having glasses this time, and actually having a real beard, but luckily these things were not noticed.

This year I decided to do a gingerbread house with the kids. They were so excited. On the box is this perfect gingerbread house. They make it look so easy. They have all the pieces ready to assemble. Candy and frosting to make the finishing touches. How could you go wrong. I do not know how they made it look so perfect on the box, but ours did not turn out as beautiful as the box showed. We couldn't get the frosting to stay in its place, it kept drooping down, and the frosting wouldn't hold the candy very well either. That didn't seem to matter to the kids they absolutely loved the end product, and had fun doing it. Mckayla said to me " I think this is the most beautiful ginger bread house." I guess that is all that matters.

On the Sunday before christmas we filled our mugs with hot chocolate, and bowls with popcorn for a snack in the car, and headed to Kirtland to the Nativity exhibit that they had going on. It is fun that we live so close to a church site, and participate with the events that they have going on there. They had 100 nativity scenes on display with many coming from around the world. This one is from Italy.

The only down fall of our family activity, was that it was bitter cold. I think we were the only ones out to brave it. When we got to the visitor's center they said it was 5 degrees outside, but with the windchill it was definitely below zero. There was snow blowing up all around and the first part of the tour, which was displays from other countries, was in a seperate building. So we had to brave it out in the cold to see that. Mckayla enjoyed it but as you can see Isaiah fell asleep on the way. He slept through the whole activity. They also had a little room for kids, that had nativity dress ups, and lots of little nativities to play with. To no one's surprise this was Mckayla's favorite part, and it took a little bit of coaxing to see the rest of the displays. I wish Isaiah had stayed awake, I think he would have enjoyed this part as well.

Here are some other pictures of the nativities that they had displayed.
My pictures do not do them justice, but they were beautiful, and they had so many that you would be bored with all the pics. After looking at the displays they had the movie Luke II.

I wanted to throw this pic in because I thought it was so cute. This is Seth having enjoyed a christmas cookie! YUM, YUM!!!

So I thought I would do a new tradition this year, we will see if it sticks. Matt loves for me to make Buckeye candy (who would of guessed). It is basically like a reese's peanut butter cup, except it is in the shape of the Buckeye nut. I normally make them for the first buckeye game of the season, but because he has been asking for them I decided we would make some for him for the holidays. Mckayla loves to help make them, and was very excited to do this for daddy. We all dressed in our buckeye gear (even me), and made buckeyes for Matt.

On Christmas eve we made cookies for Santa, the kids loved making them, and were so excited to see that Santa ate them, and left a thank you note for them. After making cookies we read the christmas story in the new testament, and used Mckayla's puppets that she had made in her preschool class. We then gave our gift to Jesus, and we each thought of something we could do in the upcoming year that would help us come closer to him. We wrote them down and put them in an envelope. In my family our tradition is that we have our family Christmas on Christmas Eve. Since we have moved away, and we do not have the opportunity to attend the party, we still exchange gifts among those in the family. So we got to open our one gift that was sent to us from family. Thank you to all those who had us for christmas. We loved our gifts, and are grateful to be apart of such a great family.

Christmas morning was very nice. The kids were so excited Santa had finally arrived. Here is a shot of our christmas tree, and all the gifts Santa brought.

Mckayla received a new Cinderella dress up with shoes, crown, and purse to match. She had requested the Belle dress, and received the Cinderella one. Maybe Santa ran out of Belle dresses this year, I know they have been hard to come by. I am glad he chose Cinderella, it is very beautiful.

Isaiah received the mickey keys he requested, and also a new bike to ride with his big sister. I can't wait for spring, they will have so much fun together.

Seth received a crawl and cruise jungle, which he loves. It has lots of noises when the ball rolls down the ramp, and lots of toys on top to play with.

We had a great christmas day, and we were grateful to be close to family, as we had the opportunity to go to Matt's parents house and have dinner with some of his family. It was a real enjoyable day.

Matt's family also had a family get together at a resort called Maumee Bay Resort. We stayed there for 2 days, playing and hanging out with family. It was so much fun. We went to the resort for this Winter Carnival. In one of their rooms they had a bunch of stuff for kids to do. They had a cupcake walk, bean bag toss, fishing game, grabbing for ducks, horse races, putt putt golf, basketball game, football toss, and many other games. With each activity you won tickets, and then you could enter them into a drawing. We had so much fun hanging out as a family. This resort was so much fun, because it had so much to do there. We enjoyed swimming, and wallyball. We did the christmas pagent, and opened presents. The most fun was just hanging out, and enjoying being with each other. It was certainly a great way to end the year of 2008.


Here Seth is among all of his cousins. He was the main attraction. I never knew he could be so popular at such a young age.

Trying to be crafty!

So long long time ago, when Matt and I bought our first home, we bought some tile to make a back splash in our kitchen, but we did not live in that home long enough for us to put up a back splash. So we carried these boxes of tiles from home to home, thinking that we would use them. Well when we left Utah to move to Atlanta we decided to get rid of the tile. My sister-in-law had just bought a vinyl machine and thought she could use the tile for gifts etc. This past summer when we went home to visit I took three of those tiles, and had my sister-in-law do me up some vinyl. I was so excited to put up the tiles, but was not sure exactly how I was going to do it. I wanted to hang each tile by ribbon, but the tile was to heavy and rip right off the ribbon. I wanted to buy the sticky stuff to apply to the back and stick it to the wall, but Matt thought if we had to remove it, it would be to hard to patch up the wall. The other day I was in the store and saw this black iron plate holder, I thought this would be perfect. So I came home and put it all together, and this is my results

What do you think? I am so excited at how it all turned out, and the only damage to the wall is a little nail hole that can be puttied if needed. Hooray!!!