When Daddy Stays Home

Daddy makes life fun... and crazy!!! It's been dumping snow and with all of his hard work shoveling, he couldn't resist making a sledding hill. Then he showed up with some flexible fliers!

He's a little more daring than mommy and gets the kids to push their limits. 

He does things I would never do... like sending a tiny one year old down a hill! Don't mind his pink snow pants... that's all we got around here.

 

Go Ella Bella! So brave!

We seriously have mountains of snow.

Mike is on a preparedness kick and bought a kerosene heater for power outages. It also comes in handy to warm cold hands in the garage.

Daddy is also known as Bob the Builder around here. We ended up with a few extra days at home, thanks to being snowed in and not able to go see my parents in Twin Falls. He made the best of it and set to work on transforming our messy laundry room into and organized mudroom!

Removing old trim and replacing it with board and batten.

Painting!

And the finished product! This is phase one... he plans on building us a bench with baskets underneath for shoes in phase two.

Beautiful! So much better than coats all over the floor.

Now don't try this at home.... while Daddy was hanging our new curtains he let the toddler climb the ladder. Yikes!

Baby Surprise!

During Maddie's school Christmas concert, I headed to the doctor for the 21 week ultrasound on my own. They couldn't re-schedule me till January, and we couldn't wait that long! So Mike went and recorded the concert, and I went to meet our baby.

I managed to not tell anyone for a whole week, and wrapped up a teddy bear with a bow under the Christmas tree. It was the first gift we opened this morning!

It's a BOY!!! We are so thrilled to have a brother for Ty to be buddies with. We feel very blessed.

Performances and Peppermint

You probably know I like alliteration.... and I like to clump things together so I don't have to do separate posts.
  

Maddie had her Kindergarten Christmas Sing on Tuesday. They sang Mele Kalikimaka and Jingle Shells in true Hawaiian form!

Unfortunately our camera is not good in performance settings and none of the pictures are clear, plus the videos are too long for Blogger to post. 

The girls also had their Christmas performances at ballet class. Again the videos are too long, but I got some cute pictures of my ballerinas!

Now onto the peppermint... we made peppermint play dough to give to friends and it smells delicious.

It has provided some good hours of fun.

Maddie received a coupon from Santa to get a free candy cane at the Peppermint Place in Alpine, so the first day of Christmas break we made the trek up there.

They used to have observation windows where you could watch the workers and big machinery mixing, pulling, cutting, and wrapping candy canes, but I guess that's a thing of the past. The kids were just happy eating their giant candy canes all the way home!

Magical

Last night Mike & I were reminiscing about this year with our little family. As we looked back through the zillions of photos we'd taken, I was so grateful that we captured the magical moments of their childhood through images. They are growing and changing too quickly! As my cousin just said in her Christmas letter, with children the days are long, but the years are short. We've had a few loooooooong, discouraging days here lately (does it ever seem like focusing on fixing behavior problems makes them worse??), but when I look back at the images, I realize we have a pretty magical life with these little ones in it. 

The kids acted out the Nativity with their puppets as Daddy read it from the scriptures.

We went on a hayride with the wonderful men & families Mike works with in his calling. The night was awesome, complete with a delicious dinner, hot chocolate, light displays, and desserts.

We played Christmas games one day, this one doing the actions the card says. They had a lot of fun melting like snowmen.

Ella (and her best little friend) came home from preschool with reindeer hats and reindeer food to put out on Christmas Eve, so they know where to find us!

Maddie and her friends made beautiful Christmas trees.

"Sleigh rides" have been a popular passtime of late.

Saturday morning the kids woke up to a new train set! Daddy has always wanted one and the kids were just as excited as he was to set it up around the tree at 7 a.m.!

As it got light we realized it was a winter wonderland outside, and spent much of the rest of the day playing in the snow.
 

The street turned into a snowman contest! Mike added a second head and our turned into more of a snow monster.... and after a few hours of leaning it bit the dust. But it was the tallest of the neighbors by 3 inches while it lasted!

Sickies and Service

We had big plans this first week of December. I love the magic of the season, especially with little kids. We usually start with a bang doing fun things from our activity advent stocking. On queue for this week were the Alpine Living Nativity, decorating Grandma Osmond's tree with her, and seeing the lights on Temple Square.

But then... life happened. The crowds were insane at the nativity and we turned around for sanity's sake, with tired kids and dire need for a potty. Then the sickies hit. Mike was able to still take the kids to decorate Grandma's tree, but I stayed home in bed fighting a stomach bug. Of course the girls' caught it too, so we spent lots of time convalescing at home, reading Christmas books and watching Christmas movies. And you know what? I started realizing that we can feel the Christmas spirit just as much, if not more, just staying home and being together! It reminded me of President Monson's talk from the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional...

"It is easy to get caught up in the pressure of the season and perhaps lose the very spirit in our lives that we’re trying to gain. Overdoing it is especially common this time of the year for many of us. The causes for this might include too many Christmas activities to attend, too much to eat, too much money spent, too many expectations, and too much tension. Often our efforts at Christmastime result in our feeling stressed out, wrung out, and worn out during a time we should feel the simple joys of commemorating the birth of our Savior."

We were still able to do some projects together. The girls each made a snowman craft.

We wrapped gifts together for our cousins.

Maddie read a book to Ella in their little nest.

This little cutie pie often puts her chins in her hands and looks at me like she did when we wrote letters to Santa.

Ty joined the fun by making himself a Santa beard with yogurt.

President Monson's talk also made me really think about what we are teaching our kids about Christmas. They know it's Jesus' birthday and we try to talk about him often, but I loved the next thing President Monson said:

"Finding the real joy of Christmas comes not in the hurrying and the scurrying to get more done, nor is it found in the purchasing of gifts. We find real joy when we make the Savior the focus of the season. We can keep Him in our thoughts and in our lives as we go about the work He would have us perform here on earth. At this time, particularly, let us follow His example as we love and serve our fellowman."

In fact, this really struck me and I realized we needed to change some traditions in our home. Rather than focusing on ourselves and all the fun we get to have, I hope to turn the focus to serving others, as Christ would do if he were here. I think it will really help us feel the true spirit of Christmas. I was talking to a friend about this and she reminded me of the tradition of putting straw in a manger for acts of service, hoping to make a soft bed for Jesus when he is born on Christmas.

I assigned Mike to this project and he made us a sweet little manger to fill with yarn.

The kids are already trying to think of ways to add more yarn. Hopefully it will alleviate some contention and foster kindness in our home. 

Another idea I came across from my friend here is a 12 Days of Service jar. We had some neat ideas for the weekend, until Ella came down with croup Saturday morning. Once again we had to postpone some activities, but we will get back on track soon!

If I hadn't gotten the message about service yet this week, I got it again at church. Our lesson was about following Christ's example and being "His Hands"... serving others as he would if he were here. This beautiful depiction of his life was shown and encompassed all of my thoughts and feelings of the week. 

For church we did a parent swap to stay home with the sickies. Mike took Tyler in his Christmas bow tie to sacrament meeting, and I got to go to young women's.

 To finish things off, this baby is officially half baked! I am 20 weeks along and finally feeling good, and we get to find out who is in there in 9 days!!!