Conversations overheard

(Scott was talking to Garrett last night about the importance of doing a thorough job brushing his teeth)

Scott: Son, you need to go do a better job brushing your teeth, you can't just spend thirty seconds in there and call it good.

Garrett: I DID brush my teeth already, though

Scott: Son, your teeth are yellow - they look like little blocks of cheese, you've got to do a better job.

(Garrett lets out a puff of exasperation)

Scott: You talk to girls don't you?

Garrett: WHAT??

Scott: You talk to girls sometimes, don't you?

Garrett: Ugh, no!

Scott: You never talk to any girls?

Garrett: Yeah, but not the way you're thinking!!


The level of abhorrence that Garrett automatically jumped to made me laugh out loud! It was a great conversation between father and son - one of those bonding ones!

Family Circus

Last Saturday we woke up to the slightest sprinkling of snow on the ground. But even though it was barely a dusting, as soon as Emme saw it he was happy and giggly and told me "see mommy, NOW it is Christmas time!"

He pulled his boots on and threw a jacket and hat on and was out the door without any breakfast; determined to make some snowballs to throw.


I went up to the nursery to get Duncan dressed and when I looked out his window I saw my own Sunday newspaper cartoon in the backyard...

Emme had left his little trail in the snow of his wanderings through our yard and it all unfolded in my mind like those old Family Circus cartoons where you see how distracted the little boy got while running a simple errand.

After realizing that there wasn't enough snow for a legitimate snowball fight, Emme decided to come inside for some hot cereal. But then it was right back outside to try jumping on the frozen tramp!

a memory - Teagan's last cast

 

Teagan got her cast off last Tuesday, which was a happy and a sad thing. She was excited to be able to shower normally again and to be able to take the new walking cast on and off, but she was sad to see her cool cast taken off.

 On Thanksgiving morning, instead of focusing on cooking the ham or the desserts like I should have, I painted lovely polka dots on her cast with some of her fingernail polish colors. It took a while because fingernail polish brushes aren't the biggest brushes out there, and some of the colors needed 4 or 5 layers to cover up the black underneath. The pictures don't do it justice; there are sparkles on some of the dots that made them look really great! She decided that if she was told she was going to have to keep this one on for another week, then we were going to paint little ornament toppers and hooks onto the dots to make them look like Christmas ornaments :-)

She loved the dotted cast, and who wouldn't? If you're going to have to wear one, why not make it fit your style?!

Updated Baptism announcement

Okay, we finally have a date AND a time for Owen's baptism! We are doing it a couple of days later than we had planned so that some more family can come to it.

 

Now I can finally make his baptism towel and picture frame with the date on it! We are so excited!

Hunting excursion

This past Saturday I took the three younger boys on a hunting excursion while Scott took the two older kids to their Lego robotics competition (they scored 10th out of 39 teams, by the way!).

 

The littles and I were on a mission to find the perfect Christmas tree.

 It was cold, and drizzling, but we felt lucky at the second tree farm we stopped at. (The first one didn't have anything that even remotely interested the boys or me.)

Duncan was the first to spot what he thought was the perfect tree.

 With a little coaxing from Owen, he gave up that dream and we found an 8.5' foot tree that we liked. So we started cutting, with each of the boys getting their own turn at wielding the saw.

 We brought it home and decorated it while listening to Christmas music on Pandora and playing dreidle.

They were so excited to show the big kids what they had gotten and to recant the fun we had traipsing through mud and sludge to find their perfect tree! It may be a little lumpy and bumpy, but it is theirs, so that makes it beautiful!

Letters to Santa

Today for school, since the kids got done with their math and other subjects so quickly, we did some Christmas crafts. We made our own stationary with thumbprint Christmas lights and then wrote letters to Santa.

 

They turned out spectacular!

 

Garrett was short and sweet - he hates writing, and not even a letter to the big guy up north could coax any extra fru fru out of him!

Emmett was a little disjointed in his thoughts as he dictated his letter. He was more preoccupied with the blueberry candy cane we were having as a school snack! I didn't understand the red bow part, or why he was asking Santa to bring a gift for me, but that's what he wanted!

 The biggest thing I was excited about was that he wrote his whole name for the very first time!! He is such a smart little man, but he is as stubborn as a mule and refuses to do the writing portion of his reading lessons. So getting him to write his name was monumental!

 Teagan's letter was written very much like she talks. Lots of fru fru, lots of friendly, lots of words :-)

 And Owen's came with a lot of questions. I'm not sure if Santa is going to respond to all of his questions, especially since I went and hung all these letters on our craft display wall instead of mailing them!

 The two older kids are both up in the "Santa's helpers" category of life already and I think Owen is teetering on the edge of being there as well. This might be his last year of unknowing so I think it is nice that Teagan and Garrett play along with my silliness - and I have a lot of it!

When Scott read the letters, he was excited that we had nailed their gifts so well in what we got for them. We're already done with all our Christmas shopping, so it's nice that we already know that they will be pleased with what we give them...well, everyone except Teagan. We didn't get her a ticket out to Utah to stay with her friends; and we probably won't! But we have at least one thing on every one's list that we are giving them, so I think that is pretty good. The gifts will be from us, not Santa, because we like to be the cool ones on Christmas morning - Santa leaves little gifts and we give the good stuff!

Afterward writing their letter, we made Christmas mittens. I love hand and footprint art and each holiday I try to add at least one new one to my collection. We already have angels and snowmen and Santa faces and wreaths, so this was a fun and brightly colored addition . I let the kids choose which one they wanted, and this was the winner. I was leaning more toward the reindeer heads footprint or the baby Jesus manger made from a footprint...maybe we'll do another one next week so I can have them do one of the ones I liked best :-)

We were doing this during one of Duncan's naps, so he missed out on the initial painting party, but I did pull him aside late on and helped him make one of his own so he could be represented on our craft wall right along side them.

my newest angel

My Wendi-friend has me hooked on so many things, and at Christmas my new love is my Mama Says nativity set. She started me off last Christmas by giving me the Mary and Joseph set and the goats. This year she added the little shepherd boy to it. I added a little angel girl to the mix and am loving them so much!

 Don't you love her pink shoes?!

 I bought a little creche at the dollar store to house my little collection, but eventually it will look something like this:

Little kids acting out the nativity scene; complete with little kid mannerism in the characters as well. Like the wise man who's checking out what's inside the treasure box and the distracted angel feeding a cracker to the goats. So cute!! Thanks, Wendi, for hooking me on to another great thing :-)

Some more of my favorites from Owen's eight-year-old shoot

 He loves being silly, and thought it was hysterical to have a pretend moustache...my little goof ball!