all 4 love

Here are my four today:

Typical Claire, sucking her thumb and twirling her hair.

Jane goofing around with her pipe-cleaner glasses.

Proof Max is not feeling well-- he never willingly lays down in his crib

Hannah trying to catch rain.

My next goal is to get them all together...

We gave Dan's brother, Jeromy, and his family a Dessert of the Month Club "membership" for Christmas. The desserts come from our very own prestigious kitchen, and we deliver one to their house every month.

Our first dessert for the year was Chocolate Orange Cookies. I saw them on Ettore's menu and thought I'd take a swing at it. They are two chocolate sugar cookies filled with orange ganache and dipped in chocolate. I knew I had to have them for myself as well. If you love rich chocolate and orange, as I do, you will most likely love these.

I am pleased to report that our recipients were very happy with the dessert of the month.

Eleven more to go. My wheels are turning...

Orange Ganache
Chocolate Sugar Cookies (She calls them brownie roll-out cookies. I changed it a little but I mostly used this recipe.)

The rest of 2011

I've tried to write a post to finish up the end of the year, but it's hard without pictures. Turns out, I didn't take many.

Let me just give a quick rundown of events leading up to Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Our Christmas activities for our last week were small since we were getting ready for a long car trip up to Washington. We left Friday morning and rolled into Lake Stevens around 10 pm. We made pretty good time and the kids were great the whole way up. They learned good travel sense early in life, after all.

We enjoyed Christmas Eve, Christmas day and the day after with Dan and my family. Then Dan had to fly back home to work for the week. Me and the kids stayed and tried to play but we kind of laid low at my parents house most of the time. Claire was sick (someone always seems to be) and we just took it easy. We still had fun though.
My dad drove us all the way back to sunny Cali on New Year's Eve. We walked in the door just in time to ring in 2012 with Dan. The end.

So, my pictures are too random to compile into anything that makes sense, so I am just going to share a picture or two of my mom and dad on our last day there.

Here is my mom, with her own hair this time...

Cute, eh?

And now, on to 2012...

Bike demonstration by a pro

Max at nine months

Ok, ok. The break is over!
Kids finally go back to school tomorrow, and we are easing into the New Year.
I have much to say concerning our end-of-year happenings since I last posted, but right now, I want to talk a little bit about Max because he is officially nine months old this weekend.

I am pretty crazy about my Max. I love to grab and squeeze and kiss him until he squeals and squirms. His happiness is contagious. Hannah and Jane are constantly laughing around him. He is so fun and now he is getting funny. He is lovey-dovey and so, so cute. He is such a gift to us.

A few days after Christmas, Max started walking, and he hasn't looked back since. We decided that yesterday was the day that he realized he preferred walking to crawling. He's almost always walking now, unless he falls, which is often, but he always gets back up.

Here is a little video of Max walking and playing.

Activities past and future

Here is a recap from last week's activities, with a few minor changes...

Monday we watched the short Christmas videos from here.

Tuesday we were going to make salt dough ornaments but the day was chock full of crazy so we had to skip it.

Wednesday we had fun playing games.



Our snowman never did get his nose on right.
The marshmallow toss turned into an indoor snowball fight. No one was safe!
The girls had so much fun playing pass the candy cane (where you say something nice about someone and pass the candy cane to that person, going around until everyone has had a turn, in case you didn't know). They wanted to play it again that night and the night after.

Thursday we made wrapping paper with potato stamps instead of making gift bags, because there are some gifts that just need paper.



Claire "accidentally" stamped her rear end (???).

Friday we made graham cracker, not gingerbread, houses.



We also made an army of these mice to give to people.



I hadn't made these in about 25 years when I use to "help" my mom make them (and now you know I am at least 25). I should have made white eyes. These look a little demonic. Cute, little, demonic mice. Who wouldn't love these?

Saturday we decided to make our activity be a visit to Santa.



Claire gets the spotlight here. Her picture turned out the best.
(photo by Brian Mealey)

Today, Sunday, we made some little friends out of marshmallows-- marshmen.



Made from marshmallows (with a skewer or pop stick to hold them together), melted chocolate, mini M&Ms, Twizzler pull-n-peel licorice, orange Tic Tacs and Pocky sticks. Yummy fun.

For our last week:

Day 19- make gift for cousins
Day 20- service
Day 21- go downtown???
Day 22- final present wrapping
Day 23- Christmas games and movies in the car
Christmas Eve- nativity (in Seattle, if all goes well :)

Tomorrow, I'll list the Christmas books we read last week.

Upcoming events: Days 11-17

Day 11- Tonight, we bundled up and walked around our very own neighborhood to look at lights.
The first house we came to, two doors down from us, got "ooos" and "ahhs" just for having changing lights.
I love it when kids are so easy to please.
We went around a long block and came home for hot chocolate.

Day 12- watch one or all of these

Day 13- game night: pin the carrot nose on Frosty, marshmallow toss and pass the candy cane.

Day 14- make salt dough ornaments

Day 15- gingerbread houses

Day 16- make gift bags

Day 17- Christmas shopping

That's our rough draft anyway.

Recap of the week's activities

We had a great week. By that I mean the kids enjoyed every day of our Christmas activities.

Day 6- Our craft was cheap, easy and the kids liked it. Cake.
We just used the kits with the paper plate faces for a snowman, reindeer and Santa. Definitely works of art to behold.

Day 7- My SIL, Carrie, came over for a little while and we made these.

Too many of those got eaten by the wrong people (us), that's for sure!

In the evening, we had the girls dance recital.

One of the best parts about the recital was how excited they were to be in it. I could not get them to stop bouncing and running and jumping and squealing.
Happy girls.

They are in the same dance class so they had the same routine, same costume, etc.

They practiced their tap routine a little...

We just have video of their performance. I'm pretty sure it's one of those things only parents and grandparents can appreciate so we probably won't post it here, but I might...


Day 8- Someone doorbell ditched us Monday night (thank you!!!). The girls thought it was so fun that someone would do that, so they wanted to do the same thing for our secret service night. I don't think the person/people we did this for reads this blog so we're safe in our secret (I hope).

Jane, Hannah and even Claire were so funny as they jumped into our getaway van. They were laughing from the adrenaline rush, and the whole way home they were convinced the people were chasing us. I'd speed up a little and they'd laugh more. Totally worth it.

Day 9- We watched Grinch

Day 10- Ward Christmas Party.

I was very impressed with what they did for the party last night. The night was a Journey to Bethlehem. We took tours in small groups and witnessed the story of Christ's birth as told one at a time, room by room by a scholar, angels, three wise men (Dan was one), shepherds, Kind Herod, and an innkeeper. The final stop was the stable where we stood to "honor and worship" the baby Jesus. It was really special. The kids loved it, and they got to take a little figurine from each room to create their own little nativity with. Then we ate on the floor and had chicken salad in pita and couscous.

All of these were taken on my phone and it was very dark in some of the rooms...

*****
Some of the books we read last week were:

Christmas Oranges (retold) by Linda Bethers
'Twas the Night Before Christmas by I can't remember who and the book has gone missing.
Bob and 6 More Christmas Stories by Sandra Boynton
There Was No Snow on Christmas Eve by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Room for a Little One by Martin Waddell (my favorite)

I love Christmas!

Day 5- Candy cane chaos

You can't tell from this picture that the girls got a little crazy tonight. They always get that way when we have company over, but they definitely had fun sharing our little tradition with our friends. The FHE lesson was short and sweet. I don't know if any of it stuck, but oh well.

Tonight's book:
Finding Christmas by Helen Ward

This week's activities

This is what we have planned for the coming week...

Day 4 Christmas Devotional (tonight!)
Day 5 Candy cane cookies/FHE
Day 6 Christmas craft
Day 7 Christmas dance recital
Day 8 Secret service
Day 9 Watch Christmas movie
Day 10 Ward Christmas party

Should be fun!

Days 2 & 3

Day 2- Make snowflakes

Yesterday, we made snowflakes to decorate the front windows with. We've tried various materials in the past. This year, we used Viva paper towels, which are more like cloth, and standard paper. It's one of our simpler activities, but it's so gratifying to the kids as they open up and reveal their creation.

Day 3- Write thank-you cards to teachers



Instead of letters to Santa this year, we are writing thank-you cards to the girls' Primary and school teachers. I thought they wouldn't get into it, but they were excited about the idea.

Jane's card said:

Merry Christmas. You can do it. Love, Jane

I'll have to ask her what that means.


Tonight's book:

A Merry Little Christmas: Celebrate from A to Z by Mary Engelbreit

Books and scripture, in addition to our DBC (Days Before Christmas) activities

I thought I would share a couple of other things we do daily in December prior to Christmas.

Every year, we wrap up all of our Christmas books in gift bags. Each night the kids pick one book to open and read that night. They are books the kids know, but they still love to open them. Anything wrapped up like a present is awesome, you know.
We haven't quite built up our Christmas book library to 25, but we add a new one every year. Right now, we have 17. When we are done with those, we will just re-read what we've opened. The kids LOVE this tradition!
We will share the name of the book we read each night.

We are going to be reading these scriptures for our advent.

3 Ne. 12:6
3 Ne. 12:16
Matt 6:3-4
3 Ne. 12:9
3 Ne. 17:21–24
3 Ne. 18:6–7
3 Ne. 18:21
3 Ne. 23:1
3 Ne. 27:7
3 Ne. 27:29
D&C 89:10–11, 18–20
Matt. 22:34–40
3 Ne. 25:5–6
Mark 10:13–14
D&C 1:37
D&C 19:38–39
John 13:34–35
Luke 17:11–19
D&C 33:11–12
D&C 21:1, 4–5
D&C 25:12
D&C 35:26
D&C 108:7
D&C 76:22–24

Then, on Christmas Eve, we will read the scriptures of the Nativity while we reenact the story.

Happy reading!

Days Before Christmas -Day 1, decorate tree

It's time!

We started our Days Before Christmas activities yesterday with the decorating of our tree.

Did you know that Dan and I have not had our own tree for 8 years!?!
We have been around trees at Christmas time only because we've always been away from our own home for Christmas. Also, we never had a tree in New York because the first year I looked at trees I was shocked at how expensive they were* and I never thought it was worth it for the little time we spent there before traveling.

SO! This year, I was so excited to have an actual Christmas tree!

I love our tree.

It is real and smells good. It is kid friendly. It is big. It was only ten bucks.

Now we need a topper.

* I'm sure there are reasonably priced trees in NY but we were limited to what we could find and carry on our own two feet that first year. After that, it was a matter of the little space and time to enjoy it. We did have a substitute though.

Thanksgiving Vacation- Dan's birthday

We spent the night at Dan's cousin's wife's sister's house in Bakersfield Friday night. Amazing home, and that's all I will say about that.

We headed over to Micah's and Cheryl's house (the said cousins) and hung out most the day eating and talking. I was so happy to see Dan pick up a guitar and play.

He jammed. The kids played. I relaxed.

Later we went to Moo Creamery for a little birthday dessert for Dan. That is where I had my first milkshake with bacon in it. That's right. Bacon. In a milkshake.
It was good, in case you were wondering.

I looked but there was no "36".

Dan said his birthday was a good one. As (almost) always, it was on Thanksgiving break and he was with family doing lots of fun stuff. Except for maybe driving for seven hours to get home, but we'll try not to think about that part.

Happy Birthday, Dan! You are my hero.

Thanksgiving Vacation- Crystal Cove at Newport Beach

Friday was glorious.

We all went to the beach. The weather was so nice-- no wind, warm, sunny. I think it's a first for me to spend part of Thanksgiving break at a beach.

The kids had a blast...

So fun.

That night, Carrie took me on a date to Mastro's, a high end steak house. It was an experience. The food was delicious and we got treated so well. That may or may not have had something to do with her connections, but we decided we probably got treated better by our male waiters as two women without their husbands than with. Is that wrong of me to say?
Thanks to Carrie (and to her connections).

Later that night, our little/big family left for Bakersfield...