Merry Christmas 2011

We had a Very Merry Christmas this year. This is our Family newsletter:

 I neglected to take any really good pictures of all our activities. Here are a few of the times I picked it up...
This is the gingerbread house the kids and I made from scratch! Yummy recipe. We're still picking at it. :)

 I always take a picture of the tree before we go to bed on Christmas Eve. I love setting up the gifts to make it look like there is more than there is. Did pretty good this year. :)

Our tree stand was melted last year, you can't tell that it's being propped up on one side by a cd case. *giggles*.

 I was blessed to be able to pay for all of our Christmas this year from my Etsy Business account selling patterns. Heavenly Father always provides a way.

We decided early on in our Christmas Preparations that we would start a new tradition limiting the gifts. The kids would get pjs the night before, one santa gift, filled stockings, and then 3 gifts from Mom and Dad representing the gifts given to Christ from the wise men.

Gold: Something Joyful (fun what they've been wanting)

Frankincense: Something Mindful (a game, book etc)

Merr: Something Meaningful (homemade, especially for them)

It worked out perfect. The kids were so happy with their gifts this year!

 Evelyn and her stocking. She got Princess PJS and a pink robe to sleep in on Christmas Eve.

 Egan and his stocking. You can't see his PJS, but he got Perry the Platypus fleece pjs. Love the antlers.

 Lego Building set.

 Easy Bake Oven from Santa.

 Princess Barbies! And a pretty girl with her eyes closed...

Trip to Utah Continued...

Coming from Logan to Salt lake we stopped to ride the "City Train" another one of Egan's must dos while in Utah. Here is a picture of the kids and Aaron waiting for the train.

 Egan SOOO happy to riding on the train. This kid just loves trains.

 Of course Temple Square was or destination.

Egan in front of the Salt Lake Temple.

 Evelyn. So gorgeous with the Salt Lake Temple

(Got a picture with her eyes open!)

 Aaron took this one of me and the kids. LOVE IT!

 Me and the Hubby! I love Temple Square. They were in the process of getting all the lights ready. Fun Fun. :)

Evelyn Lost her Teeth!

Evelyn lost her two bottom teeth! We're having a hard time getting her to keep her eyes open for pictures... this is the best I could do. LOL. She's still the most beautiful little girl in the world.

Evelyn struck it rich with the tooth fairy... the fairy's gonna go broke!

We sang quite a bit this Christmas "all I want for Christmas is my too front teeth." :)

Grandpa's Grape Juice

I grew up with homemade grape juice from Grandpa's (My Mother's Dad) little vineyard in Oregon. This year Grandpa Burt let us come and pick a BUNCH of Grapes. About 100lbs actually. He let us take home his steamer and gave me the recipe on how he's always done it.

Pictured in the collage are the grapes. There were green and purple!

There is no comparison from these Yummy homegrown organic gapes and the grocery store ones.

The kids helping us pick each individual grape off the vine.

The steamer draining the gorgeous juice into the jars.

I then added some fructose.

Put on the lids and steam canned the lids closed.

We made 48 quarts of concentrated Juice!

We gave some of the quarts away as Christmas gifts this year. Perfect!

I am so grateful to have learned this tradition to pass on to future generations. Grandpa has also taught me the art of whole wheat bread making, and the love of genealogy.

THANK YOU GRANDPA!

Thanks Giving SNOW

For Thanksgiving we took a trip to Utah to visit family. Our first stop was Logan to see Angie and Clint. Egan had been begging to see snow and boy did he get it! They built a sled hill with the snow off their back porch! Boy was it fun!

Snow Angels!

Super Cold!

Thank You Angie and Clint for the AMAZING fun Time!

Good Days

When uploading the most recent pictures I found some really good ones that I didn't know where on there! Evelyn took this picture of Aaron and Egan! I think we found another talent of hers!

Aren't my boys cute?

 Aaron took this one on a Saturday morning I think. Silly Kiddos.

 Egan had Crazy hair day at school the other day.. I'm pretty sure Aaron took this one that morning so he could capture his work on Egan's hair. That boy was so happy to go to school with a Mohawk!

Happy Halloween 2011!

The crisp air and beautiful colors in the trees really gets me excited for the holidays!

Its sad the year you no longer have a say in what your kids will wear for Halloween. This year Both kids insisted on what they wanted to be.

Egan wanted to be a cop complete with handcuffs and gun. I made him his shirt and pants with some fabric I found on sale, I already had the buttons and gold ribbon.The dollar store had a gun and badge, and wal-mart had a pair of handcuffs, I used a cereal box, electrical tape and foil for the his hat.  Total for costume: $8 and a few hours of time.

 Evelyn insisted on being a Fairy Princess Ballerina in Pink! So, thank you dollar store for the wings, crown, and wand. I used an old pink shirt she had and painted it up. The tutu was a costume already in her dress up box. I sewed together ballerina slippers that fit over her tennis shoes. With scraps and some ribbon on sale!

Total cost for Evelyn's Costume: $7 , 1 hr time.

 We carved our pumpkins for family night. The kids had to clean them out themselves, draw on the face and mommy and daddy carved it out for them. This picture of Egan is just so precious!

 Isn't funny how sometimes we look like the pumpkins we carve :)

My Darling Kids

They got to Trick or Treat twice this year once with our ward activity and once with Grandpa and Grandma Hill.

Now, on to November!

New Job......

So Aaron put his Resume Out there for a part time job to help us in saving for our long term future goals and he got a call from a company he couldn't not interview with. The wait was a long one but well worth it. Aaron now works for the portland office of: 

That's right.... 

 

He works in the finance department of the office off the warehouse.  

Its Funny, when we've told family about his new part time work the first thing they ask is.. "does he get samples?" 

We are happy to say..YES! Guess who's gained 5 pounds this month? The kids now ask Aaron when he gets home? "Where's the icecream?"  I prefer a man who brings home the icecream vrs. bacon! :)

Beach!

 We had had very busy week this last week with work, kids and ... and you know, everything. So we decided friday night that we would take an impromptu trip to seaside the next day to spend the day there just us. It was fabulous! I came away thinking "why don't we do this more often?" We are only a few hours drive away. 

I took a few pictures of the kids, Aaron took a few of me, but I have graciously not posted those bloated white pasty pictures. The kids had such a fun time! We played on the beach for 5 hours.

 Evelyn with her little bucket, we made a sand castle. Do you see Egan in the background running full speed into the ocean? The temperature was perfect, a warm sun, cold ocean and cool breeze.

 For some reason the kids wanted to help the ocean bring the water up to the beach, here they are taking bucket fulls of water up to the beach and dumping it out... Silly kids.

 We packed a picnic of yummy sandwiches, chips apples and cookies. Of course sand was everywhere, but we did our best. Here is Evelyn enjoying her Doritos.

 

Egan knew this was his opportunity to get real good and dirty, and boy did he take advantage of it. Every time we turned around he was literally rolling in it. He took a nice long bath when we got home. Here's hoping we don't find any more sand in his ears. :) We plan on taking this trip much more often. We had a blast. A much needed short vacation.

First Lost Tooth!

Egan came to us the other day with a suprisingly very loose tooth. Upon inspection, we noticed a big tooth growing behind the loose one. It took another 2 days to loosen enough to have it pulled out. Aaron, Egan and I were all too chicken to pull it out, so we tied a string around it thinking we could yank it out, again no one wanted to do the pulling. With the string around the tooth Egan just stood there looking like "now what?" Inpatient and irritated with the whole scene, Evelyn walked by in her sneaky way, rolled her eyes and grabbed it hard, the tooth came right out! We laughed so hard, Evelyn was one to finally do it. Egan didn't think it was funny at first, but then when he realized it was over and he could finally put it under his pillow he was happy. 

That night the tooth fairy left a dollar under his pillow. We promptly went to the dollar store and he chose to buy a package of ring pops which he graciously shared with his devious sister. :) 

These kids keep getting older and reaching new milestones. I can't keep up! This fall they will both be in full day school!

Egan's Tron Birthday!

Our Little Egan boy turned 6!
Its hard to imagine that its been that long since he was a swaddled teeny thing in my arms. Hes such a good boy and lets me still snuggle with him and carry him around. :) I'm so blessed to be his mommy in this life and on into the eternities. Egan is the light and the fire in our family and we wouldn't be whole without him.

Here is Egan, and everyone singing Happy Birthday! (mute blog music before playing)

This year was one of the years where we through a huge fiends birthday party for the kids with a theme etc. Egan chose TRON! (If you haven't seen it.. do!) Its one of his favorite shows, so we went with it.

He picked everything. He wanted cheese, meat and crackers, fruit and Cheetos. We had blue cool aid, fudge cupcakes and mint chip ice cream. I decorated the cupcakes with chocolate covered oreos lined with blue icing to look like discs with some printed out paper figures stuck in and blue sprinkles.

Aaron did a great job decorating the whole house with blue, orange and black streamers and balloons. I made party favors for the kids to play with, black Frisbee discs with glow in the dark paint on them (thanks to my awesome sister Harmony for her help!) I cut up swimming tubes and put black electrical tape on them to make a light cycle stick for each of the kids. They also went home with a goodie bag with glow in the dark bracelets, toys and candy from the light cycle piniata! I took apart a yellow winco motorcycle piniata recovered it in black streamers and painted it. Lots of fun. Egan was thrilled, we only got a picture of him hitting it! I also make a pin the guy on the light cycle poster game, but it ended up being decoration because the kids were having so much fun with other things. :)

Whack! So much fun!

Egan got exactly what he asked for! Thanks to everyone who brought such wonderful gifts! He got a Sam Flynn action figure, a real Tron light up disc, a light cycle stick that shoots out a toy cycle, a star wars gun, action hero figures, cars, balloons, candy and more! The grand finale of gifts that Aaron and I gave him was the Scooter! The neighbor kids all have a scooter and he'd been asking for one for a long time. He's already a pro on it... of course!

He's outside helping daddy put up streamers on the porch before the party.

Here is the most wonderful little boy a mommy could ask for. Darling, wild, spirited, talented, affectionate, passionate, smart, compact, adorable bundle of boy!

Fathers Day!

I think Aaron had a good fathers day. The kids and I spent some time on a few projects to show him how much we love him.

The kids and I went to the store and picked out a bunch of candy bars and then taped them onto this poster that says: " Daddy ("harward" written by Egan)

You are the best dady in the whole Milky Way

Mommy thinks your a Big Hunk

To us your like a super Starburst

Nerds aren't as smart as you

Your worth 100 times more than 100Grand

Thanks for being so Mr GoodBar to us

We Love You!

From your Twix Kids

Egan and Evelyn"

The kids did all the art and taping, I just told them where abouts to put them. I think it turned out cute :)

I designed two t-shirts that I thought would be fun. One of my Dad's businesses does sublimation so we were able to print them ourselves!
The picture below Aaron is wearing his property of shirt. Love it.

The kids were so excited to give him his final gift. Egan actually came up with the idea one day and we went with it. With a little cardboard, paint, paper and foil the kids made a Trophy!

This trophy is awarded to the "Best Daddy Ever!"

Aaron is truley the best daddy a kid could ask for. He is an example to me of a wonderful parent. I am always in awe at how much patience and love he shows our kids.

Thank you Sweetheart for all you do!

Happy Birthday! Evelyn's 5!

 Our sweet little girl turned 5 This weekend! Every other year we do a big party for the kids with friends and family. We had her birthday on saturday, with her cousins Anica and Linnea, aunt Olivia, Uncle Machi, and her friends from School Molina and Marcus.  Plus grown ups like Aunts, Uncles, and Grandmas :)

I made a castle cake for her. Picture really didn't capture her excitement. Lots of things happened that day.

 Little wrapped hot dogs, her favorite chips and juice. Neapolitan Ice Cream, cake, Streamers balloons.

 Hats and Friends.

 Pin the tale on the pony. Evelyn and I colored this a few nights before the party, we hung it up and when ever she passes it, she pets the pony softly with her hand and says "pretty pony" sweet silly girl!

She'd been asking for a barbie on a bike for what felt like forever, and on a date a few weeks before her birthday Aaron and I spotted one on clearance at Target! Love a good buy. And she loves her barbie bike too! She got a lot of ponies and fun toys from her friends and family. That head band she's wearing that she proudly put on her head herself, was made for her by her Aunt Lacey :)

Our Evelyn is such a silly fun girl. Her beautiful smile brightens the room. Her sweetness and kindness melts our hearts. I can't believe she's already 5! We are so blessed to have this wonderful girl apart of our forever family! Happy Birthday sweet Evelyn!