Katie's Big Day!

Not too big of a day, but to Katie it sure was! Loren let her get her ears pierced for Christmas. She's been asking for awhile, and last night was the moment. Here are the shots....

Right now she is completely ashamed of me because I'm taking sooo many pictures.



Marking the ears with the marker...the excitement is building!!



Sammy watches with a smile!



Ouch!!



Ice cream makes everything better! She really was very brave and stopped crying right away :)



A hug from Daddy can't hurt either!



Sammy was enjoying the whole ordeal too...





Last but not least, a blurry close up of the newly decorated ear...

Christmas Eve

We spent a wonderful, joyous evening with Loren's family tonight. We started off with an absolutely delicious dinner of briskit and baked potatoes followed by some yummy Christmas treats! Next we sat in the living room singing Christmas songs, knitting, ringing jingle bells and playing with the train. What a wonderful start of our celebration of the birth of our Savior!

It's a Festivus for the restivus!

Happy festivus everyone! For those of you "normal" people, Festivus is a silly holiday on the Seinfeld show. Instead of a tree, there is a metal pole. Here is the best part....you get to tell all your family members how they have dissapointed you over the year. All in good fun of course! Every year (for the 10th year now I believe), we get together with Loren's family and fondue for Festivus. The fondue is not part of the show, but hey, it's fun and yummy!!

Popcorn Balls

Every year at Christmas, Grandma Verna slaves over the stove making syrup for popcorn balls. The rest of us scurry and stir like mad attempting to form the "perfect" popcorn ball. They taste oh so yummy too! Thanks GV for being the brains and the talent of the whole operation. We look forward to doing it again next year :)

Snow and Katie the missionary

We finally have snow!!! Here are the kids having some fun...









I got some new cookie cutters on Saturday. I'm so excited about these so I have to show them. It all started with a conversation with Katie in the car last Friday.
K: Mommy, wouldn't it be fun to make baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph cookies this year?
Me: That would be really fun. But where would we get cookie cutters like that?

Fast forward to the next morning at Carolyn's Cakes just browsing by myself. I look up on the wall and what do you think I see? Imagine Katie's excitement!

So here's the Katie missionary part....I am not aloud to say anything about Jesus to anyone in her class anytime, even at Christmas and neither is her teacher. BUT, Katie may say anything she likes! So Katie will be taking these fun cookies to share with her class at school tomorrow and while she is passing them out, she is going to share the real Christmas story with her classmates. Cool huh? We're very excited to find out how this goes! There are so many kids in her class that have never heard of Jesus and at least one whose Mom believes in Allah. Katie is very excited about this fun way to share about Jesus :)

O Christmas Tree

For the first time as a family, we hiked into the mountains and cut down a REAL Christmas tree! It was so much fun, we think we'll do it again next year :)



Here we are....I think this might be THE SPOT!



This is the one :)





Cutting down a tree is hard work!



And here is our Charlie Brown Christmas tree....and we love it!!

Winter is Here!

We had a great Thanksgiving with sweet family and to top it off, we got snow!! We're pretty pumped at our house. So to celebrate the wonderful upcoming Christmas season, and the new snow of course, Loren decided we should go ice skating. We've taken Katie several times and she loves it. Sammy has never gone. And being the one with less athletic motivation (we'll say), we weren't sure how long we'd be at the ice rink :)
Getting all suited up. And yes....it's true. Our children are THOSE kids whose parents make them wear helmets. We had to hang our heads in shame over this one.



Okay....we're having fun so far!!


Starting off strong...still on our feet


Gimme a break Mom, it's been a couple of years


After a few times around it all comes back to her and she's doing great!






And the verdict is..... we like ice skating!



One tired little ice skater. She did get quite a nice compliment from a boy we found out later we knew from church. He said, "WOW! She has the coolest hockey helmet!!" This was pleasing to her :)

The Christmas Train

Every year, Sammy's favorite thing is for Grandma and Grandpa to get out their train to go around the Christmas tree. It is a MUST that we talk about the train every day. It's better if we can go see the train. If that isn't possible, quite a bit of conversation about the train is required. Well.....yesterday was the day after Thanksgiving and guess what came out?? We have a happy boy :)

Uh oh, paper crafts....a holiday must be coming!

These cute little hand turkeys are so fun to make and so easy too. Even not-at-all- crafty, I-hate-coloring- Sammy had fun making them!



He does, however, enjoy glueing anything and everything he possibly can...



and, drumroll please.......


A beautiful turkey in the shape of Sammy's hand. This is a proud moment for me as a mother of a boy. He's completed a crafty task people.

Being the complete opposite, this one oozes creativity and craftiness from every single pore.



That's my girl!!



She takes great pride in her work, doesn't she?

Cookies and make -up..odd combo I know

This week we had a special visit from our friend Mrs. Dingfield. So the girls (Erica, Katie, Mrs. Dingfield and Kate) and Sammy too, had a cookie baking adventure. During the mixing, Sammy got out his guitar and was our live entertainment! We followed that up by trying on some new make up that Mrs. Dingfield so graciously shared with us. Thanks Ruth!! Of course during the make up portion, Sammy and Mr. Dingfield retreated to Sammy's room for some "guy time." :)

My 7 (very) random things...

Here you go Kate!!

1. My dryer broke last week. I told Loren not to buy me a new one.

2. Katie and I have become pioneers and are hanging our clothes to dry and loving it! Does that count as a separate one??

3. I am picking up Mindy and her family from the airport at midnight tonight.

4. I canned apples this summer (weird I know) and am loving all the apple goodies I can bake so easily!

5. I've already purchased my children's Halloween costumes for next year. You'll have to wait to see what they are :)

6. I ate dessert for lunch today....apple crisp from those canned apples :)

7. Loren just ordered the Peanuts Christmas music cd for me. It will be here Wednesday and I don't know if I'll be able to wait to listen to it!!

Halloween.....sorry, can't think of anything better!

OK, to avoid blogging 5 days in a row, you'll be getting a slideshow of not only trick-or treating, but some school "Autumn Harvest" activities. Our trick-or-treating pics were taken at the Waterford last night, which is the highlight of Halloween for us!

Autumn Program

Wow!! Three days in a row I think. This is some sort of record for me. Today was Sammy's very first school program. It was completely uneventful, aka, pretty boring. But it was very fun to see Sammy sing and be a real kid. He didn't cry or just stand there motionless either. He did pretty well. Good job Sammy! Daddy, Grandma Marilyn, Grandma Great and Grandpa Great came and shared in the morning with us!