Christmas 2014

I know the rest of the blog world was sharing their Christmas recaps, oh, a month or more ago, but I am just now feeling like we're getting back on track after the holidays. I thought about skipping the Christmas recap, but it was a fun season for us and Baby C's first Christmas!

On Black Friday we headed out to a nearby Christmas Tree farm to cut down a tree. We went with two other families. Six adults and eight kids in search of three trees. Santa was there too, so we got a quick visit. The only thing the girls asked Santa for this year was books. Loved that!

Miss A was not too happy to have to break away from her friends to get our tree, and Baby C slept through most of it, but Little J was such a little trooper. She helped E cut down the tree, then pulled the tree back all the way to the warming house.

This year was the first year Miss A was able to participate in the Christmas program at church. The children's music director is wonderful, and put together a baseball themed Christmas program that was very cute. She writes the play and songs, then sends a CD home with all the kids so they can practice. We listened to the CD every day in the car. The girls LOVED it. Little J was upset that we weren't still singing Christmas songs at church this morning. One of the songs had "glory, glory" in it. Little J sings it all the time, but glory comes out more like, "gory, gory." Makes me smile every time. 

Miss A also had a short program at preschool. My favorite part was when they gave all of the 3, 4 and 5 year olds bells and tried to sing Jingle Bells. I think every kid was singing a different part of the song. So funny! The teachers had them try again without the bells and they did very well.

We only had two weeks between Little J's birthday party/Baby C's baptism and Christmas, so we tried to fit a few Christmas activities in. Miss A and Little J made salt dough ornaments. This was our first attempt at salt dough, but it went pretty well. We hung a few ornaments on our tree and took a few to the grandparents too.

The weekend before Christmas we went to Wisconsin to celebrate with my family. Little J got a fever Friday night, then Miss A followed Saturday. They did pretty well for the weekend, but after celebrating with my mom and family Saturday they were a little extra tired on Sunday. After celebrating with my dad's family on Sunday Little J put herself in bed for a quick nap. Even sick, the girls had a lot of fun and were seriously spoiled by my family.

Christmas day we didn't have to do anything or go anywhere, and it was wonderful. We were all just starting to get over being sick, so it was nice to be able to relax at home. When the girls woke up we opened stockings, then made monkey bread for breakfast. We tried not to go overboard with presents, so Santa just brought each girl a book, a kid's nativity set for all three girls and some new plates for the family. Miss A and Little J are really particular about the color of their plates, so they were super excited to get some new plates. They also got a few gifts from us, but nothing too big.

Little J's book, Pete the Cat has been a HUGE hit!

The girls really liked playing with their nativity set. I packed it away with our Christmas stuff a few weeks after Christmas, but in the weeks it was out, they played with it a lot. There were a lot of strange guests visiting Baby Jesus, including Elsa, Anna, Belle and Boots the monkey.

We got Baby C a wooden block puzzle with insects on it for her main gift. We've gotten a nice wooden present for each of the girls' first Christmas so it can be something we save for them when they are older.

Halloween 2014

Halloween is over and there is SO much candy in my house! And I can't stop eating it! I've eaten many times the amount I've allowed the girls to eat. I may have to make these brownies to use up some of the candy. They look super tasty!

Before I crash from my sugar high, I thought I'd share a little more of our Halloween 2014 happenings.

We visited a pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago, and finally got a chance to carve the pumpkins Thursday night (there's nothing like the last minute). Miss A was willing to help, but Little J was less than thrilled to be touching the pumpkin guts. She didn't want her hands to get messy.

Also, I couldn't resist putting Baby C in a pumpkin. She's just the right size. I thought it would be totally cute. She disagreed.

Miss A's preschool class celebrated Halloween on Thursday, and Little J helped me hand out treats for trunk-or-treat. The preschoolers were adorable in their costumes. After trunk-or-treat we went inside and her class sang a few songs for us. So cute! There were also some very creative parents there handing out fun treats. I'm going to have to step up my crafting while I'm doing the SAHM thing ;).

Tonight the girls headed out for trick-or-treating. Little J was so excited when she went to the first few houses, she would come back and say, "I got candy!" Baby C and I tagged along to a few houses on our block, then came home to hand out candy to the kiddos. Miss A and Little J stayed out with E, and they met up with some friends who live nearby. After awhile he brought Little J back, but Miss A was really a trooper and stayed out for a long time.  

I'm a little biased, but I think they're the cutest bugs ever!

Halloween was a big success! The girls are already planning their costumes for next year. As of right now they want to be the girls from Despicable Me and E can be Gru. I think that would be super cute, but I have a feeling they will go through several other costume ideas before we actually get to Halloween 2015.

Rainbow Butterflies

I have wanted Miss A and Little J to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 for awhile, but until this year Little J just didn't quite have the hair. So this year I was excited that they could be Things 1 and 2. E was even going to dress up as the Cat in the Hat. But Miss A and Little J wanted nothing to do with that plan. They wanted to be princesses. We compromised on butterflies. Miss A wanted to be a rainbow butterfly, and Little J wanted to be a purple butterfly.

I really like to make Halloween costumes for the girls, but my crafting skills are a little more MacGyver than Martha. I can't sew, so I have to be creative when it comes to costume creation. Previous costumes include a cupcake, owl, peacock, octopus, witch and lion. For the butterflies I used this pin as inspiration, took the girls to JoAnn Fabrics to pick up supplies and started on some butterfly costumes. I made Miss A's costume first, and when Little J saw it, she decided to be a rainbow butterfly too. As I made the second costume I remembered to take a few photos along the way (until it got late and I got tired and forgetful).

I started with a big piece of black felt. I held it up against Little J to see how long it should be, then used white chalk to mark a line to cut. I made a big U shape to start, then used a t-shirt to measure a good size for the head/neck to go through. Next I started cutting out different shapes from other colored felt to make the butterfly design. I did one of each shape to start to make sure the whole rainbow would fit.

Luckily, I had a super cute helper throughout the process :)

After I had the design laid out on one wing, I cut out 3 more felt pieces of each color.

Here's where I stopped taking pictures. Oops! With all of the pieces ready to go, I laid out the design on the front of the costume then glued everything down with my hot glue gun. I went through a lot of glue sticks, but after our first outing everything seemed to hold pretty well. Once the glue dried, the girls tried on their costumes and loved them! They wore black leggings and long sleeved shirts under the costumes at a Halloween party we went to, then added big sweatshirts underneath at night. The costumes are easy for a variety of temperatures, perfect for Minnesota in October.

A super easy, super cute, Halloween costume!

Christmas 2013

A belated Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

We spent the weekend before Christmas traveling to Wisconsin to celebrate with my family (and came home with a carload of gifts... wow!), so we had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at home.  It was absolutely relaxing, restful and wonderful.  I tried to use the timer on my camera to snap a couple of family photos when we got back from church on Christmas Eve.

Our girls sleep in pretty well, so we got some much needed extra sleep on Christmas morning. (Santa's elves were up really late putting the finishing touches on a big Christmas present.)  When the girls did wake up, they opened their stockings right away.  We convinced them to have breakfast after that, before opening anything else.

We try not to go too crazy on Christmas, but Santa did leave a few gifts for each girl.  Little J has been so funny opening gifts for her birthday and now Christmas.  She has to throw away each piece of wrapping paper that comes off before moving on to the next piece.  It's very cute.

 One of Miss A's gifts was a real stethoscope.  Doc McStuffins is her favorite show right now, and she broke the stethoscope that came with her doctor kit.  This one is pink (her favorite) and it really works, which she thinks is super fun.  Everyone has had their heart checked many times in the past few days.

 The girls got a big, joint gift of a dollhouse.  I really like the one they got because each room is a separate piece.  There are a ton of different ways to arrange one big house (trust me, they've been arranging like crazy... maybe with some help from Mommy), or my favorite part, you can build two separate houses.  The dolls that came with the dollhouse were a little weird, so many princesses and Dora's family have moved in too.

Overall it was a fabulous Christmas!  We have two very happy (very spoiled) little girls!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I haven't been so good about posting my 366 project photos this year, but, so far I haven't missed a day!  Here are two pictures from E's birthday weekend.  We spent the weekend at a friend's cabin.  There were 6 adults and 5 kids.  It was a fun way to play, relax and celebrate E's birthday. 

These pictures show what a sweet daddy Baby J and Little A have.  They love Daddy, and Daddy sure loves his girls.  He's fun in a whole different way than anybody else.  Both girls are so very excited to see him at the end of the day (and so am I)!