December: Part 1

December is going to have to be in parts because so much happened that month! It was quite busy, but full of fun. It will mostly be pictures with highlights, we'll see what stories I can recall :)

 Sadie is such a silly baby. She loves to lay on the floor. Just like this. For whatever reason. I'll find her on the floor with a toy or just watching people. It makes me laugh every time because I've never seen a kid do it like she does. 

 Sadie LOVES, L.O.V.E 's bananas. She has a banana a day, at one point she was going through two! As a family we went through more than one bunch a week....I was buying a LOT of bananas :)

 We made some christmas cookies and decorated them! 

We got the store bought frosting for convenience and boy was it bright! 

You will have to pardon the half naked kids, we did the frosting after baths... Its always funny to me to realize how much of what we believe to be 'right' is taught. The kids were loading on the frosting, not in smooth 'normal' frosting way, but big globs of frosting, covering the top 'as instructed'. I just see way too much frosting while they are probably thinking, "that is PERFECT!". Haha. Gotta love 'em.

 Lucy rolled a ball of playdough all by herself!!! She was pretty excited about it so we took a picture.

 I saw a friend make some christmas decor with glue and glitter and it was beautiful. So I gave it a shot. Mine is the tree in the bottom left corner. When the kids saw mine they wanted one too. Cole made Rudolf and the brown blob and lucy painted her blue present. That little man is Flat Stanley, something we are doing with the Moss side of the family. 

 On this particular morning I was taking too long making breakfast so Cole helped himself to the crumbs from daddy's late night snack....The breakfast of Champions :)

We listened to Christmas music everyday, for a good portion of the day. Unfortunately, 'listening' for the kids means this...

 getting to whatever place they can so they can see the video's of the kids music on Youtube....Their favorites (in case you were wondering) were the grinch song, and I want a hippopotamus for Christmas song. We've got those two down pat. 

 It snowed a few times those first two weeks of December and we decided to take advantage of it and have some fun!

 All Sadie wanted to do was lie down in the snow and eat it....

 This is Cole saying, "Polar bear paws". That was the only way to get him to put on gloves. 

 We got to try out the baby sled we were given by the Brown family before they moved! It was a hit and Sadie did not enjoy sharing it with Cole when he wanted a turn. She was content to sit in it the whole morning. Lucy loved pulling Sadie around and pulled her all over the yard and all around the park across the street.

 Cole and his snowballs. He can't quite make them but he will fill up his hands with snow and toss it at you! He thought it was pretty fun and we may or may-not-have gotten into some snowball fights because of it.

 We have a preschool group with this little elf, Elijah. They are so much fun! We got to have a christmas party at their house one day and Sadie was gifted this reindeer headband. It was the first thing she has voluntarily put on her head. Even still (I am writing this post in January) she runs around with it throughout the day.

Cole wore it the whole way home from the our friends home.

 Some of our good friends brought us this HUGE can of popcorn!! The kids were so excited we opened it before Daddy came home that night. (oops!) Don't worry, we have very thoughtful kids and made sure we saved some for him.

 While cleaning out some stuff from under our bed I found Sadie's treasure box. I had no idea she was stashing stuff under here! But here are all these things that I was convinced had been lost or thrown away. this is our Moses book, which I had been looking for. A sippy cup I was sure got thrown away. Sadie's caterpilar toy. Lucy's pink glove. An old watch. and a few other random little things. It was exciting for everyone but Sadie to have found this box. As I was pulling things out, she quickly started grabbing other things and began throwing them in the box!

 Our beautiful little tree. We got a fiber-optic tree, that is about three feet tall. It was perfect for us this year! The kids pulled it down twice and I wasn't too worried because we only have a few ornaments, and the only one that can really break has been glued back together so many times previous to this year that I wasn't overly concerned.  (yup, can you guess who is hiding in our tree? Little stanley the flat.) 

We made lots of yummy food in December, I got a recipe for bread bowls from a friend and they were DELICIOUS!!! I loved them, and they were very easy to make. 

 I though the kids would be excited about having little bowls of bread for themselves but they were NOT happy about it. I should've known, they are always weary when I say 'soup'....I promise I don't usually make gross soups :)

To make up for my blunder with the kiddos we made CornDogs later that week. They were FANTABULOUS!! Devin had gotten really good at frying these babies! 

And that concludes installment one of our December series! :)

Thanksgiving

Esperanza came out to Illinois for thanksgiving and I'm SO glad she did!

 Since the drive to the airport is so long we made a stop at IKEA before heading home. It was a good idea, I had never been and had been wanting to see what it was like. The kids LOVED it. We spent the majority of the time in the kids area.

These were their favorite toys, which they ended up getting for christmas :) 

While here Esperanza got to witness Snowball at his best. I think he escaped 4 out of the 6 days she was here. I found him in several places, I found him in way too many places that I was NOT fond of. Somehow he made it into our stovetop. I was so mad, I almost closed the lid and turned on the burners....but instead I took a picture.

Thanksgiving dinner was SO much fun to make!

 Here are our little helpers, they were pretty happy to be wearing the aprons!

And here is our dinner!! Stuffing, sweet potato soufle, green beans, turkey and rolls (that didn't quite turn out). The turkey was done in 1 1/2 hours! I don't know how that happened, but it was a miracle, because the kids were hungry and we all needed lunch a little early. 

Auntie Spwanza :)

Flat Stanley..

And dessert, we made a Pumpkin pie, a Peach pie, my grandma's Blueberry Cheesecake, 

and since we ran out of pie pans we made Cherry Turnovers instead. They were delicious!

 AND beautiful :)

Cole loved this blueberry cheesecake! He ate so much of it.

Devin got his Cherry pie :)

Sadie would only eat if she did it herself....from my plate!

The kids got to go see Frozen in theater the day after thanksgiving. Sadie stayed home with me and Esperanza. They LOVED it! It was their first time watching a movie at the theaters and they've asked us to go almost every week since then!

That night Esperanza and I went to see Hunger Games. It was GREAT! I was very impressed with how much better it was than the first one. I guess we'll have to make it a tradition to go see a movie whenever Esperanza visits :).

Thanksgiving was so fun and we were so happy Esperanza got to come share it with us!!!

November...

Was,  BEAUTIFUL!! 

 A couple of my favorite colors from around here. There were SO many colors and SO many leaves :)

This is from the park across the street. All those leaves fell and the wind blew them all into our yard! The kids loved it and I can't be frustrated about it because they had so much fun.

 November was Freezing!

 But we still tried to get out and play at the park, 

 Swinging in the cold didn't sound so fun to me but they still enjoyed it.

The silliness continued as always-

 Cole wanted to make a scary face

 Lucy's scary face

Sadie gets food everywhere when she Eats...literally.

Cole loves to read his scriptures. He looks so big in this picture, my little man. I love him. In fact he reads them so much Sadie has started flipping through them too, because she thinks it is the 'big-kid' thing to do. 

Sadie discovered she can get to the snacks on the shelf. Ever since then she has been bringing us the containers...or just going for it herself.

We needed something new to play in on those REALLY cold days, so we pulled out some old oats and had some fun :)

I can't remember what Lucy was upset about, but she put on the cowboy hat and turned away from me. She can be pretty cute when she pouts :)

We have a couple of rotary phones in our home (it was built in the 50's). Sadie had just discovered the cords and was having a blast.

Our favorite place in the house is by the 'fire'. We hang out here in the morning when we wake up and any other time of day the heater turns on. Sadie will sit here until her skin is burning hot. 

Even when it was cold all little man wanted to do was play with his sticks in the leaves. I was grateful for the push to get out but Lucy wasn't always so happy about it :)

So good story that I have to record. The kids were all drawing on our white board, Lucy wrote her name (unprompted) all by herself! She called me over to show me her name (below), I was pretty excited about it and then Cole wanted me to look at his picture. 

Cole: "Mamma yoot! A bum"

Me: "A bird?"

Cole: "No, a bum! Like this is a bum and points to Sadie's bum"

All I could do was Laugh :) So I went to get a picture before he spoiled it...

Isn't her name great!! I was so proud of her, she did it all by herself!!

Lucy: quotes and conversations

Sometime in late July early august:  you Went potty all by yourself. We were in a public bathroom and you said "I can do it" while pushing me out of the stall. 

August: You and Cole love to share, and love to be Simba and Nala, I think that is when you play together the best. 

"That's not being helpful or kind, that's kind if being a punk. "

       Lucy to Devin after he dumped water on their mud puddle

"I run like a Carnator mom"

"Mom, can we have a bigger animal? Not a hamster. I want a big animal I can play with...." That was early October. Since then you have learned how to play with snowball and I think for now you are content.

Oct 17

Lucy kicked Cole while walking by today. So I sent her in time out. While on time out she starts singing:

"Why did mom send me to timeout?? Because i kicked Cole." 

"MOMMY!?!" (This part she yelled randomly in the middle of the song)

"I'm in time out for kicking, Cole got hurt..."

"MOMMY?!?"

:)

About the leaves falling: "Did you know what? in summer after winter, the leaves blow back up into the trees!"

"No, munchkin, I had no idea that is how it worked"

"Mom, I wanna move back to Provo. 

Why?

Because that's where all the people are, and my friends. "

This about broke my heart...

... ... Poor thing, I'm sorry we don't have more friends....

"Uh oh it's rambasees" --Ramses :) from The Prince of Egypt.

Gwate right shark"

"Her hair is funny, it has zigzags."-- talking about Miriam, Moses' sister. 

Cole notes from October

Coles is protective of his sisters, a little boy was playing by Sadie and Cole went after him and put himself between Sadie and the boy. Then the boy almost pushed Lucy and cole ran over and told him to leave his Lucy alone.

Oct 2

Cole asked me"it's okay if Sadie has a raisin?"  ...five mins later Sadie comes over and spits out about a handful if craisins into my hand... :)

Oct 9

Almost al the way asleep and still gave me a kiss on the cheek :)

Oct 10

Can children survive in Goldfish?? I guess you will let me know :)

Oct 17. 

Daddy, you hulk! 

Devin throws a pillow at Cole...Cole turns around and says

"Stop, don't move." Gestures to behind himself," lamanites get him!!"

Then Cole says "wait, stay there," he runs to the doorway and starts fighting the lamanites so they won't get the hulk :) 

Oct 20

"Mom, what's on yo ice?" 

"That's make up bud." :) 

..guess I should wear that stuff a little more often..