hunting for elves and a recital

 Friday was Will's last day of school until the New Year! I can't believe we are half way through Kindergarten already.... the months have FLOWN by. Each day my little baby Will gets older and bigger. It is such a fun age though I really love it. On Friday, to celebrate, we went with my sister and her kids (everything is funner with cousins!) and met my Mom at Gardener Village. We love to go to Gardner, it is a really fun historic mill with lots of great shops (not for kiddos, though) and they do a witches display in October and Elves during Christmas time. The displays are super fun and the kids have a lot of fun walking around to look at them. We did a little Elf scavenger hunt and then stopped off at the candy story to cash in for our prize! It was chilly, but we were bundled up and had a great time.

 I love this picture of my mom with 6 of her 25 (almost 26) grandkids! All the kids (except Eli) are smiling at the camera, I love it. This is such a great time of year and there are so many fun things to experience with your kids. Thanks for the fun day mom and Krista!

On Saturday, Will had his first official violin recital. We played at a Nursing home for some of the cute little old people. They really enjoyed it and Will did a fantastic job! He played his twinkles..... and then parts of Jingle Bells and Jolly Old St. Nicolas. This is not a great picture of him (I think he was a little nervous) or his sweet teacher Ms. Gina, but they did a great job. We LOVE Ms. Gina, she has seriously been the greatest teacher for Will. We are happy (and feel lucky!) to have found her and hopefully be able to stay with her for several years. She's awesome, if you are in the area and looking to start a child in violin, she's awesome!

I am so proud of Will and his violin accomplishments. He really is doing a great job and working so hard at learning to play. GOOD JOB Will!

all the who's down in whoville

This week was Will's big GRINCH play at school! He did fantastic. His line was "All the who's down in whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch who lived just north of whoville DID NOT!" They sang songs, told a shortened version of the Grinch story and all looked so cute. Before sending him out the door to school, I snapped a couple pictures in his "Whoville" costume. He looked so great! And of course, Eli insists on being in the picture, but when in the picture insists on squinting and doing crazy faces. This illustrates perfectly the difference between my children. I LOVE IT!

(Above) sitting on the stage with his classmates. I'm glad he had the santa hat on, he was easy to spot! (Below) At his desk in his classroom. I love to see all the little Kindergarteners. Will always seems so old to me, then I see his teeny tiny desk and remember that he is still my little buddy. My boys are growing up so fast.... how do I make it stop?

land of the cacti

 We just got home from an awesome visit to AZ to visit Liz, Scott's little sister. We had a BLAST! I didn't intentionally post the most unflattering picture of me ever, as the first one...... It just happened! Above, us in front of the Mesa temple. It was all lit up..... not quite like Temple Square, but it was still fun to see the temple, it is really pretty. Oh, did I mention i was FREEZING? Yes, I was. I thought AZ would be hot, so I didn't really go prepared for some chilly temps. Thanks for the blanket Liz!

 In front of the temple and reflection pool

 We did so many fun things while we were there. It was so odd to see palm trees lit up and Christmas decorations everywhere because it did not feel like December with all the sunshine and "warmish" days. We went to a really cool Luminaria display at the botanical gardens. It was awesome. It was so fun to see all the cactus and everything all lit up. We heard some really fun bands play and we laughed alot. Okay, we laughed hysterically pretty much the whole trip......

 I love the palm trees!!

 We got to see our good friends from MN, the Jenkins. It was SO fun to see them, and have a nice long lunch with them. ;) Their kids are adorable and getting so big! Shalee looked gorgeous as usual and I looked like I had just been hiking... which I had..... :) We ate at really yummy places while in AZ, my favorite was America's Taco Shop. It was so good, I was craving more of it the whole trip!

 We went on such a fun hike. It was pretty much straight up the side of the mountain, but it was great. It had a really cool view and the weather was perfect. It was a little windy and chilly on top of the mountain, but the sunshine was amazing! Of course Louie, Liz's cute dog came with us. He was a chap and did awesome at hiking.

 We loved all the different kinds of cactus. They are so unique and such strange plants. Scott even got attacked by a jumping cactus..... we counted 24 holes left over from the spines we pulled out. OUCH!

 This is the "jumping" cactus (above) and it literally jumped off when Scott got close to it (or when Liz kicked it) and stuck on Scott's hand! At the time it wasn't funny, but now it's a little funny remembering the whole event. :) Sorry Scott.

We had such a fun time. We ate awesome food, laughed A LOT, went shopping, sat in the hot tub, watched You Tube videos and laughed our guts out, and just had a blast. Scott and I enjoyed sleeping in and the little break from parenting (although we missed our boys terribly). Thanks to Glenn and Martha for everything and for watching our boys and spoiling them rotten while we were gone! Good times had by all....

And a special thanks to Liz (and Devin) for hosting us and being such a great sister and friend!! It was so fun to see you and spend time with you!! Love you!

gingerbread house

T

This day has been long anticipated since the day after Halloween. Will has been begging that we make gingerbread houses. I kept telling him "just wait, just wait, we'll do it, I promise!" I probably should have just let him go at it. But Gingerbread houses and all it entails can be a bit of work. This year, I secretly bought a premade house from Costco that comes with all the candy and such. Then I didn't have bags of bulk candy lying around my house for my eating pleasure! I loved it. It was great to just have it in the box until we were ready to use it, then pull it out with all the supplies, frosting, and everything ready to go in less than 5 minutes. Thank you Costco, once again you amaze me!

When Will pulled the activity out of our advent calendar and it was gingerbread houses he was SO excited. I made him practice violin, clean his room, and do all his chores BEFORE school, so that as soon as he came home, we could build our house. He was so obliging.... I need more positive rewards like that! Plus it was such a great time for the three of us (Scott was in St. George for work, otherwise, we would have waited for him of course). We got home from school and had the whole afternoon to spend on our house, and have fun together. I loved it and the boys had a blast.

 Every five minutes or so, Eli would disappear upstairs. Then he would sneak down and say "I'm right here mom!" I could tell he had been stealing candy and going upstairs to devour it. It was pretty funny. I wish I could have video taped it. Eli's job was to decorate a gingerbread man and then he just ate the candy. He loved every minute. He did NOT want to touch the frosting, so while decorating, he would just kind of drop the candy and hope it fell into frosting. It was pretty funny. I let Will do his own frosting and he did great. The boys had a lot of fun together.

 I love Eli's cheesy grin. I especially love that he always keeps a close eye on his big brother to see what he's doing.

 The finished product!.......

Whoever came up with this tradition was smart, creative, and loved to have fun. Seriously, sticking candy, with frosting onto a cookie house? That's genius.

Happy Holidays!

christmas is coming

I just have to brag for a minute. I'm so proud of myself this year. I was determined to have things all ready (or at least mostly) for Christmas before Thanksgiving. And I did it! I had all but 1-2 things all bought and ready to be wrapped. The things I have left are minor, mostly stocking stuffers. It feels so great. I love to do the wrapping, so I'll start doing a couple things each night after the kids are in bed. We've got our tree up, our decor all our and arranged, and yesterday I filled up our advent calendar with fun activities for every day until Christmas. I'm so excited. I feel like now I can really soak in the season and just enjoy it. I plan to do all my food shopping this week as well, so I'll only have to make quick trips to the store for fresh items and/or milk, but not much else. I'm really looking forward to this Christmas!
I opted to put activities in our advent calendar rather than treats. We all know we have plenty of treats this time of year. It took a bit more time and will require a little work, but it will be so worth it come Christmas day. The anticipation and all the fun activities and traditions are what make this time of year so fun for the boys. I ordered a couple new books and a Muppet Christmas Carol on-line, so those are three of our activities. I think the boys will really enjoy it this year. Some of our other activities are: make paper snowflakes, decorate gingerbread houses, do service, go to temple square, drink hot chocolate by the christmas tree, make christmas cards for someone special, play a board game, read the bible Christmas story, make sugar cookies.... to name a few. I also planned it out on my calendar so that I know ahead of time what our activity will be so I can plan for it.

Bring on Christmas!! I'm so excited. I love my family and this time of year. Now, if it would only snow......

......I never thought I would say I miss Cleveland's snow!!!