Hannah is 7

I told Hannah we weren't going to celebrate her birthday because then she wouldn't have to get older. She just said, "Aaawwww. Please?"

We celebrated anyway, twice.
Saturday, she took a friend of hers and her cousin, Noelle, roller skating. Noelle's whole family joined us too. Then, we went to Red Robin, followed by cupcakes at our house-- all Hannah's choice.
She had a great day.

(I wish we had pictures of them skating, but it was quite dark, and we were holding little girls' hands most of the time.)

Wednesday, her actual birthday, I spent part of the day in her classroom helping out and sharing treats. At home, we played outside, ate pizza, had dessert, opened more presents and read lots of books, which Hannah just loves! Another great day.

Hannah, you are simply divine.

~•~

I just want to say...

Max is 10 months old (yesterday).

He's a little crazy, and a lot loud, but his smile makes me melt.

Stop growing up, would ya?

~•~

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