Foster Family

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Holidays

Perhaps this post should really be called, "A quick recap of Christmas stuff in a few pictures."

As always, the holiday came and went far too quickly. We had a fantastic Christmas filled with friends and family.

We made our annual trek down to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. Always amazing.

We also had our Family Christmas party at my brother's house. So much fun!

My brother in law read a Cajun version of the Night Before Christmas.

I really don't know how much Bailey understood with the Cajun words and accent :), but she was seriously laughing her head off!

My cute dad would not be too pleased if he knew I took this picture -- and then posted it! You've got to check out his drink, though. It's kind of hard to see, but there is ice in his punch and it's shaped like dentures. Awesome, huh?! I'm not really certain how it all started, but years ago someone started a tradition? No, more like a friendly competition? Not sure what to call it, but we try to find the most unusual gifts we can and then regift them to each other. We often forget who has which gift, and then they pop back up when you least expect it. There is a humming bird figurine, a plastic mold to make a trout-shaped ice centerpiece, etc. (Shhhhh, don't tell, but I think I still have the Hotdogger hiding in the garage waiting to surprise the next birthday girl or boy..)
So, my sister totally won some notariety this year when she found an ice mold that makes denture shaped ice and gave it to my brother for his b-day. Sweet find!

A few days before Christmas, we met Steve's brother and his cute family for dinner. Buffet with awesome cousins -- my kids were in heaven!

Steve's dad had come from Arizona to visit us all for Christmas (yay!), so both of Steve's folks joined us for dinner.

Rachel's Kindergarten class did a super fun activity in the month of December to help them learn basic mapping skills. They made a big Gingerbread man in class one day for a treat, but when they sent him to the cafeteria to be baked, he escaped and ran away. During the whole month they tracked his travels and adventures. (All of us families had been informed ahead of time and had requested help from our family and friends from all over the globe. They sent postcards detailing their "Gingerbread Man sightings.") It was so cool. Right before the holiday break, they received some postcards saying he'd been seen locally, so they set a gingerbread man trap and caught him right back in their classroom.
This is a picture of the map and postcards that had been sent from literally all over the world.

On Christmas Eve my sister and her family came here to join us for our traditional Christmas Eve fiesta. We stuffed ourselves with amazing Mexican food and played all evening.

I'm not sure what they were scheming, but I love this cute little jammied cousin huddle. :)

Rachel and Bailey put our the magic reindeer food and all of the kids put our cookies and milk for Santa.

Elf on the Shelf

We started a fun new tradition this year - Elf on the Shelf. We put in a special order and this super cute guy came to us from the North Pole... by way of Amazon.com. Every morning when the kids woke up, they got to search for where our elf had hidden during the night. Sometimes they found him on a shelf or perched high on top of furniture, but other times the girls found that he'd been a little michevous during the night.

One morning he was hanging from the ceiling fan and had made snow angels out of flour.

Another day they found him on top of the refrigerator having a marshmellow snowball fight with some other Christmas friends.

One night he had been busy making paper snowflakes.

The girls laughed their little heads off (Bailey was even a little freaked out, to be honest) when they found that the elf had gotten into the clean laundry basket and decorated the tree with unmentionables.

Another night he enjoyed a little entertainment.

This was another gut-buster. Funny little guy. :)

We made play-doh one evening and he helped himself after we all went to bed.

Our little elf had to return back to the North Pole to report to Santa on Christmas Eve day. When we woke up on his last morning, we found his Nice and Naughty list.

It was a fun month having our visitor from the North Pole and the kids are really excited about looking for him again next year.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Finishing up Fall

The week before Halloween, our cousins came for a visit and we made our annual visit to the Pumpkin Walk.

We love looking at the pumpkin scenes and the kids love the picture cutouts.

Ended the evening with Pumpkin face pizza.

Kids all ready for the ward Halloween party. (Bailey is in her cooler version of her butterfly costume.)

On Halloween day our cousins came back up for a day of fun and evening trick-or-treating. (My sister makes those amazing costumes!)

Rachel's school Halloween costume parade.

Making oreo spiders.

Getting ready for an evening of trick of treating.

Tooth!

Miss Rachel lost her very first tooth! It came out on 11-11-11.The two bottom front teeth were both loose - one being quite a bit looser than the other. She lost the less loose of the two first.

The really great part; the part that is fits our Rachel's personality to a tee is that she knocked it out. Truly, she was screwing around and jumping around the living room. When I was a kid my mom called it "rough housing." :) She was bouncing on the couch with the little nubby part of a balloon in her mouth. She told me later that she was biting that one part and batting the inflated part back and forth with her fists. I'm guessing that the nubby thing caught on her tooth and with one last, strong punch the balloon went flying and yanked her tooth out in the process. She ran into the bathroom to grab a tissue because she could feel something "weird." When she came back into the room she finally felt the little spot with her tongue. I saw it all happen in her very expressive facial expressions. She felt the hole and started to panic. Both of us, like slow-motion turned at the same time and saw a tiny white tooth lying on the couch cushion. I saw pure terror in her eyes, so I jumped up and hugged her cheering about how she lost her first tooth. It only took a second until she was happy about it, too.

Here she is with the offending balloon and her tooth.

She was SO excited to put it under her pillow, but she was also really hoping to take it to school and show her class. Apparently another child in her class had done that. When she realized that it meant prolonging the Tooth Fairy's visit a whole 3 days, she decided to go ahead and put it under her pillow and bag the whole school thing.

The next morning she was thrilled to find a little glitter trail on her bed and a shiny gold dollar under her pillow. Hooray for our girl and the cute window in her teeth!

A Little Bit of Fall

This time I'm not going to even ask you to imagine that it's still months prior. I'm just behind. So, here's an attempt to fill you in on the happenings of Fall.

After Rachel got a clean bill of health, we had her birthday party with her friends. A few of her buddies weren't able to come, but we had some awesome little friends come and had a super time. This year she chose to have a Luau birthday party. They started with an outdoor treasure hunt - which we squeezed in between little rain storms.

The kids found their treasure -- leis, hair flowers, and treats. They played Luau themed games (some of them were a little bit of a stretch, but really, it isn't too hard to impress 5 and 6 year olds...), and ate rainbow cupcakes.

It was a fun party. Rachel has some very sweet little friends and she loves to be with them. Happy 6th Birthday, Rachey!

Another exciting thing that happened right after turning the ripe old age of six, was staring dance lessons. Rach was a little nervous, but decided she loved it the first day.

September also included a trip to the Park/Zoo with our cub scouts. They are a wild, squirrely bunch, but they're great! My kids love it when they get to join in on the fun.