Christmas Comes But Once a Year

Christmas has come and gone! Here is the photo essay:

What the first picture really SHOULD be is a snapshot of how beautiful the snow looked falling down early on Christmas Eve evening. It would have been picture perfect.

Instead what we have is a visual of our first ever attempt at a family Christmas Pageant. Here are the kids in probably the only 2 seconds they kept their "costumes" on before they started running around the room (literally) while Scott read the Christmas story from the Book of Luke.

After Family Home Evening and dinner and making cookies for Santa, we let the kids open their Christmas jammies and their new ornament for this year's tree.

This could be my favorite ornament EVER that I've given to Scott. I wanted to try and find something that represented this year but couldn't find anything that worked. Since this summer's internship with Procter & Gamble pretty much was the main event of the year, I wanted to represent it somehow. So, I bought a plain chipboard bulb ornament at Michael's and bought myself some decoupage glue. I went through old magazines and ripped out any P&G products I could find and thus adorned the ornament. I lacquered them on, followed it up with a coat of varnish, and Voila!

After the kids went to sleep, I decided to make my first ever attempt at homemade cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. I found a recipe entitled "Best Cinnamon Rolls" in my new MBASA cookbook and gave it a whirl and they really were the best!

I rolled them out the night before and let them rise in the fridge overnight

(In case you're wondering about the single cinnamon roll without cream cheese frosting it is because Ethan is rather fastidious and does not like to be sticky and informed me that I COULD NOT put frosting on one for him because he does not like it)

Here are the kids with their loot:

Sophie was actually HILARIOUS this morning. She was so excited surrounded by all the presents that she was literally bouncing up and down and trying to lunge after everything!

And here is my loot:

My Pink Christmas gift!

I love it! I can't wait to find the perfect place to put it in our new place when we move next summer. Thank you Harmony, so much!

For those of you who are wondering what it was that I made for my Pink Christmas gift, here it is:

And for those of you who are wondering what "Pink Christmas" is, you really should check out this link! I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated to try it last year, but I'm so glad I decided to join in this year. Especially for such a great cause. It was an awesome experience.


Finally, here we are at the end of the day. Ethan and Grace are wearing their paper crowns from the "crackers" their Aunt Kristin sent from England, while eating cereal for dinner (after deciding they didn't like the Gumbo Scott and I had been working on all afternoon). What a good mom am I.

It has been a LONG day. I am finally feeling the repercussions of too many late nights and early mornings, and I've got a raging head cold. So, if this post is a bit lackluster, I apologize! I'll try to bring my "A" game next time. Hahaha.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!

A Month in Review...

Well, its been a while, and I know all of you have been eagerly awaiting the results of Sophie's RAST test. Apparently her numbers were all through-the-roof-high. As in, any numbers over 17 are considered "extremely highly likely to cause an allergic reaction" and Sophie's were 84 for egg whites, 33 for wheat, and 54 for milk. But only a 3 for soy -- which is ironic, because we've figured out that soy sauce is probably what sent Sophie to the ER in the last post. The nurse practitioner who called with the results also informed me that I would also have to cut all these things out of my diet so that they wouldn't pass through to her. Ummm. Yeah. Let's just say I couldn't last even one day on this diet. I finally broke down at 10:30 at night to have a bowl of cereal because I was STARVING. Luckily after doing some more research and talking to my real pediatrician, I realized that all these restrictions were unnecessary for me.

Since we've eliminated the allergens from SOPHIE'S diet, however, she's been doing much better. She's still pretty tiny, but she is putting on some weight.

Here she is in all her 10 month old glory.

Whew. Okay, that novella is done. Here is what has been happening during the rest of the last month.


Thanksgiving -- My WHOLE family came in town and we were able to have a lot of fun together. We were even able to squeeze in a family picture before everyone left. Here are some candid shots taken by Levi Gruwell, while the real photographer (my brother-in-law's sister, Shannon) snapped away. In retrospect I really wish I would have given Ethan a haircut prior to the photo shoot. And had him coordinate a little better outfit-wise with me, Scott and the girls. Oh well. Live and learn.



The Christmas Season -- Starting about a month ago, I resorted to using a strike system to threaten the children with. Basically, I told them if they get 3 strikes I'll call Santa and tell him they're being naughty. As successful a system as that may seem, it hasn't really done all that much to cut out their antics. To counterbalance the negative reinforcement, I thought I should do something else to get them to behave.

As a kid, we had a family tradition that during the Christmas season, any time we did a service, we could put a piece of straw in the manger of our nativity scene for baby Jesus. I decided to re-enact that idea with the kids, and for Family Home Evening a couple of weeks ago, I turned this:

Into this:
The kids have actually responded much better to this system than the strikes. And even better, they're even recognizing all the little services that I do for them on a daily basis! As in Ethan telling me that I could put a straw in the manger for making their lunch.

Wintry Weather -- We've experienced quite a bit of snow this winter so far. Including one really crazy snow storm last weekend.

The view from our front door.

The Kids -- I went for a parent's day at Ethan's preschool last week as they ended their unit on "Construction." And aside from being really nervous about the saw he was playing with at one of the stations, it was really fun to see him in his classroom.




Ethan and Grace enjoyed building gingerbread houses last week -- and enjoyed eating the candy even more. Check out that spread! We hit up the dollar store for all of the loot.




Projects, Projects, and more Projects -- My sister-in-law had twins right before Thanksgiving, and after they were born, I decided to make quilts for them. So, I made 2 quilts from cutting and piecing to hand-quilting and binding in about 2 weeks. Yes, I am insane. I managed to get their Christmas package mailed out this last week which is just in time because Ella was finally able to come home from the hospital this weekend and join Lucy after a miraculous turn-around from being in the NICU. I used 1930's reproduction prints for the fabrics, and I think the quilts turned out really cute. I'm now debating making some more just like them for my own girlie bugs.




And finally, I participated in Pink Christmas this year, and was excited to deliver my gift today. I won't post a picture just yet of what I made, just on the off chance that she reads this blog, but here is a picture of the wrapped gift.


My gift was delivered to me last week and I'm so excited about it -- especially because I'm determined that this will be the first gift ever in my adult life that I will wait and open on Christmas day. I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.


Well, that's about all that's been happening. I apologize that there are not more stories to keep you entertained. But with Christmas right around the corner, I'm sure there are some in the making.