What have we been up to???

What have we been doing with all of our free time this week? Well in between all of the "That's mine, give it back" and "I'm mad at you!" statements, we have done some fun things. The boys ended Christmas day with a hunting practice. They printed out a target and practiced shooting at it. They of course found a tree to climb!

On Monday we went to The Playground 4 Kids- a huge warehouse filled with inflatables and slides!

One of my Christmas gifts was a new desk to put in the living room so we could get the computer upstairs. I love it!!!! We had an empty desk downstairs and I decided to turn it into the kids' craft area! Connor is in heaven!!! He loves being able to sit down there and create all kinds of wonderful things. I am going to love having that mess downstairs instead of in my living room!!!

We are having a good week, but I am ready for them to go back to school!!! We are having some friends over tonight to ring in the new year and have a friends' wedding this weekend that we are doing the music for. We wish you all a Happy New Year!

Celebrating Christmas!!

The celebrating started last night with a slumber party in the living room. We made pizzas and popcorn and tried to watch a Christmas video. I say tried because the first one we chose was "A Christmas Story". Neither Andy or I had seen it in a long time and didn't remember the bad language so it got turned off within the first 5 minutes. The second one we rented was "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and it wouldn't run for some reason. So- Disney's "The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe was on TV and we ended up watching that. There were a few intense moments that we changed the channel for, but all in all they enjoyed it. We had read the book, so it was fun to hear comments like, "That's how I pictured it would look," and "I have been wanting to see this movie for a 150 years," (Connor).

Christmas day started with stockings, breakfast, and then presents. Some of the highlighted presents were a tie blanket for Kaelynn. And for the boys....... RED RYDER BB GUNS!!!! To fill you in on the excitment over these gifts, they are out right now shooting them. Carson couldn't stop talking about it all morning and had plenty of practice on how to cock it, shoot it, and put the safety on.

After a morning of playing with new games and practicing gun safety, we enjoyed a great dinner together. On the menu- ham, twice-baked potatoes, scalloped corn, and lefsa.

For dessert we made a birthday cake for Jesus and a pecan pie. They were both delish!!!!!!!!!!

As much as we miss family, we are thankful that God has blessed us with each other! We hope everyone has had a great Christmas and we look forward to a wonderful new year with new blessings! Merry Christmas!

Brothers and sister!!!

Happy 3rd Birthday Julianna!!!

The kids wanted to give their cousin Julianna who lives in East Asia a birthday greeting! It's hard to see the sign, but Connor wrote out Happy Birthday Julianna all by himself!!!!

Snow fort

Thank you to the city of Ames snow plows for providing my children with hours of snow enjoyment. They plowed all the snow from the street onto our property and we now have a 5 ft. pile of snow on the west side of our lot. This was the result of the hour of play on Saturday! Thanks to daddy for all his hard work!

Morning routine needs help

So getting two 5 year old boys out the door to go to school has become quite the stressful event at our house. I emphasize the word boys because I am feeling right now that their attention span when it comes to focusing on the task at hand is shorter than Kaelynn's attention span at the age of two!!! I truly believe that this is somewhat of a boy/girl thing. Anyways, whether I am right about that or not, the morning routine is needing some help. I realized that sending them off to school was pretty much an unpleasant start to the day -every day!!!

We now have a checklist hanging by the door for them to use in the morning. Unfortunately this idea came to me the day before Christmas break, so we will have to implement it in two weeks. Maybe we can practice it some over the break :) If anybody else has any great ideas for a stress-free way of getting your kids off to school- I welcome them!!!

Christmas Program video...

The post with the Christmas program video is now posted. You need to scroll down past the gingerbread house post and it will be next. I wrote the story and tried several times to get the video on and it finally worked today. It posted on the date it was created though! Enjoy!

Gingerbread Houses

Today was a fun day. Kaelynn and I joined the boys at school for a gingerbread house party. We decorated the houses and had a cookie snack and listened to two very cute stories about gingerbread boys. We had a great time and they all did very well on their houses.

I am trying to get the video of the Christmas program on the blog for those who weren't able to tune in on Sunday morning, but for some reason it isn't working too well. I will keep trying though!

Christmas Program

This past Sunday was the children's Christmas program at church. This year the kids sang in both services with the older children helping to lead the worship for the adults. I got the joy of being on worship team this Sunday and so it was a great joy for us all to be able to worhsip together. Connor and Carson's class sang three songs- Come On Ring Those Bells, Away In A Manger, and Baby Jesus We Love You. The last song is defintely the favorite song and I am including a video of that one as they seem to sing the best on that one. We are very proud of them!

Snug as a bug...

So I came home from my afternoon out to find two of my three children sleeping. The lump next to Kaelynn is Carson. He sleeps with a blanket over his head (don't ask me why). Vicki was watching them and Kaelynn went to lay down first. About an hour later she realized she didn't know where Carson was and went to find him. He was sleeping with Kaelynn :) We were out late last night and the kids were very tired this morning. This is defintely a first though. Another amazing part of this is that Kaelynn has taken a nap two days in a row. Yesterday she was down for three hours. This has not happened since she was at least 18 months old. I guess the exhaustion of the season is taking more of a toll on our family than it has in the past. Sweet dreams little ones!!!

Christmas baking

Christmas baking is in full swing around here. We started with one of the kids' favorites and also one of the messiest- almond bark pretzels. I was a little leary after the last few years, as their fine motor skills just weren't quite developed and they usually turned out to be more sprinkles than pretzel. This year I was pleased to see that the fine motor skills for sprinkling in a "not-so-messy" way finally developed (for the boys at least- Kaelynn was another story)!!! It was a much more calm and relaxed adventure and was actually quite fun. I tried to focus on really encouraging the positive and good sprinkling behavior and it was quite catchy. I heard many comments from the boys like: "Wow, that's a great pretzel!" "Don't these pretzels look lovely?" "Mom I sure love it when you cook with me." (That's my personal favorite!)

Notice the two pretzels on the lower right hand side of the picture. More sprinkle than pretzel is the two year old way!!!!

We made it through one cooking adventure and I am optimistic about the rest:)