The Days Before Christmas Part 2

 It's fun to have friends our age that live so close, so when we're having a crazy day we can call them to come be crazy with us! Haha, Fern brought her two over to decorate some gingerbread men with us, and succes, we actually did what we planned to do! Kalea took decorating her gingerbread man very seriously, while Brynlee was more serious about eating all the m&ms she could find. It was a fun morning with our friends and gave me a bit of a break from chasing my 2 crazies around the house.

 

After a fun playdate for the kids, I got to go have a fun playdate with my family. This year we continued with the enormous task of making hundreds of chocolates to give away and to enjoy ourselves. It's a lot of work, but it's one of those traditions that we'd really miss if we didn't do it. This year we added the chocolate covered raspberries that we enjoyed so much at the reunion in Bear Lake and they were well worth it. Also, this was my first year dipping the fondant. In years past I have been the roller, but I guess this year I must've grown up enough to do the more "adult" job and as you can see above, they look awesome- I'm not partial to my own talents at all...Ha! We also got way more done having two people dipping this year, so I'm sure we'll be making way more in the upcoming years.

While on the topic, a huge shout-out to my Mom for all the work she puts into carrying on all of these traditions for us. And a big thank you to my Grandma for starting a lot of these traditions way back when her kids were growing up. It's so much easier to see the meaning behind all these things now, as an adult, than it was when I was a kid, I appreciate it in such a different way. It takes a lot of love to carry these things on and what I realize now is that maybe I just thought my Grandma was awesome because she made such good food and her house looked nice, but now I understand how Christmas was her time to bring her whole family together, share her love through her cooking and share her testimony of the Savior through all the little details that are still etched in my mind. As the years go on, I'm hoping that I can pass on these pieces of her to my own children, so they know where they came from and feel a connection to her. I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of work!

The Days Before Christmas Part 1

We have had a lot of fun with family and friends this Christmas season. Maybe part of the "nothing happens in November" lament of mine has to do with the fact that I need a month of nothing before we get bombarded with visits and last minute plans and lack of schedules and craziness! It's good on all fronts though, I have stretched myself a little more over the last month and I'm really happy with how things turned out this Christmas.

Here is our house at Christmas this year. I wanted to focus more on what Christmas is all about this year, so I simplified the mantle a bit- much to Steve's dismay- "where are the santa and the snowman?" But he still liked it, he just missed our Christmas buddies I guess! Any new stuff I got came from our new Dollarama. I have to admit, that place can be dangerous and the close proximity to my house is probably not the best for controlling my spending, however, it made it much easier to change things up without breaking the bank and we got all of our stocking stuffers & candy there this year, which also helped keep costs minimal. Our nativity was from Superstore, I hadn't had one for the kids and thought this one was decent since it's wood and it was under $10, I'm not regretting that choice at all, they played with it everyday and were so sad when I put it away. Recently I heard comments from someone about how you can't decorate your home nicely unless you have money, which I found interesting since I don't have money in the way she was talking about. So, here are some tips that I have found to be beneficial for decorating for Christmas or any holiday that you want to celebrate. All I know is that it can be expensive, but I just make it a goal to buy everything either super cheap or use 40-50% off coupons at the stores that offer the higher quality things that I want. Haha, this has created the issue that my Dad noticed when they were visiting one time,
Dad: "Allison, why do you only have that beady garland stuff on the top two thirds of the tree?"
Me: "Um, because I forgot to take my coupon and go get another strand to finish it this year"
I'm not kidding, let's hope they have the one I need next Christmas! Also, shopping after Christmas for the next year is always a good idea, for example, I would consider Crate&Barrel one of the higher end stores that I really really like, but can't justify spending much money at unless it's a necessity purchase. This year, I noticed their Christmas ornaments are super cheap after Christmas and by that I mean, I bought 8 really nice unbreakable ornaments for under $4 total for our tree next year. Anyone with small kids knows how awesome it is to find nice ornaments that their kids can't destroy, so a victory for all of us, and someday my kids will get to take some of these ornaments with them, so a small investment for the memories.
I also shop the after Christmas sales at Superstore for some of their supplies and ornaments. 14 ornaments for under $3? Um, yeah I did. Tablecloth for next year for $3? Yes. All the Christmas napkins and plates I'll need for Advent next year? $5.
I buy nothing at full price when it comes to decorating unless it's from the dollar store. Simple, and everyone that came over this year really liked it, so it must not look that cheap. I also think that if you don't have a ton of space, don't try to decorate for everything and then stress about where to put it all after. Steve and I decided the first year that we were married that until we had the space, Christmas would be the only holiday that we buy decorations for. For the most part we've stuck with that, we have one giant bin of Christmas stuff and a small rubbermaid container with some Halloween stuff from Brynlee's 1st birthday. Other than that we don't do a lot through the rest of the year, unless me and the kids do a craft and tape it to the window, or use our window crayons to draw hearts or leprechauns, etc...
I also accept hand-me-downs when people offer, even if I may not use them. Case in point, my giant wreath on the inside of our door. Steve's mom changes her decor ever few years, so when she offered the wreath form one time, I hesitated and then after thinking about it I accepted it. I really thought it was too huge for any door I might have, but I could probably do something with it eventually. I started working on that in the weeks before Brynlee was born. Then she came and the work was delayed. Then last year I realized that I had a bunch of gorgeous glass ornaments from our first year of marriage, that I couldn't put on the tree because Kalea would rip them off, so I used them in the wreath.This year I added the wired ribbon that I bought for $.50 last year, and voila! A few years later it's done and I love it and I loved that Steve went along with putting the snowflake lights where we did this year, to highlight it. I made another wreath for the other side of the door with leftover burlap and random scraps of ribbon from my sister in law's wedding in April and my own stash. It turned out okay, I dunno if I totally love it, but it served it's purpose for this year. I did add a wooden, sparkly "FALALA" to it and it looked a bit more Christmas-y but I think I'll have to play around with it some more.
Websites like Pinterest, although addictive, also have some great ideas on the cheap. That has been an invaluable resource to me in all areas, since I caved in and started using it. But really, life is only as expensive as we make it, so if we can do something super cute for super cheap I am a fan, and if I can make it myself with stuff I already have, huge bonus.
Anyways, I hope my thoughts in this area are helpful to at least one person who reads this blog. I am such a slacker I'm sure nobody does anymore! Haha, more Christmas posts to come this week!

Oh What Fun... or something

Our kids have been pretty well behaved in public lately, it's shocking really. With the Christmas season upon us, we've found ourselves venturing to malls with the rest of humanity. Surprisingly, our attempt at a Santa picture this year was a huge success. Really, that has been the highlight of my Christmas season so far. I have dreamed of having a cute Santa picture for the last 3yrs- not that the ones of them as babies aren't cute, or last year's screaming faced ones... Anyways, this year, the Santa was actually jolly-looking and even joked around with the kids in line and spoke to them when they got to his chair- in years past we've been stuck with the skinny Santa that never smiles or interacts with the kids, so that was the first bonus. Second bonus was the fact that instead of looking completely vacant, Kalea looks super satisfied/happy and we distracted Brynlee from throwing a fit by giving her the box of North Pole cookies while sitting with Santa and then she didn't want to get off his lap! That was pretty awesome. I didn't feel like I got completely ripped off by the whole experience this year, and that my friends, is the magic of the season. Haha, totally kidding. From Santa's chair, the kids are ushered in to the North Pole bakery where they can decorate a gingerbread man. My kids were more interested in just eating the icing and sprinkles out of the little container they got, so the nice bakery lady gave them extra for us to actually put on the cookies!

Kalea loves to make faces when I ask her to smile for the camera right now, usually the squinty "cheese" face that gives her "Asian eyes" and a scary smile. It's pretty fun/starting to get really annoying.
After our awesome experience with Santa, we went and met our new cousin/niece, Quinn. She belongs to Jos and Jarom, and we didn't get pictures, but oh man she is super cute! Kalea and Brynlee were super gentle with her too, which is surprising if you've seen them around babies lately. After our visit there, we picked up lunch to take home and we ate while listening to Christmas music. It was fun. Later in the evening while the kids were playing nicely in their room (shocking) Steve and I were discussing the holidays and I was expressing some minor frustration about how hard it is to get stuff done around the house because I have to check on them constantly. Steve said, and I quote, "You know, Alli, you have to relax a little sometimes and just realize that you can't keep an eye on them all of the time, and that's okay." Ahem, behold the following...

I'm so glad I have a good supply of brand new sunscreen on hand, just for moments like this, in the middle of winter, when Brynlee might get a sunburn... The towel on the floor is actually covering the perfectly round circle of sunscreen that she was standing in, she's crying because she may or may not have gotten a spanking from her more relaxed parent. You can only imagine the conclusion to me and Steve's conversation, it may have included copious amounts of mocking and laughter and I told you so's. Oh and Kalea was not pictured because she was doing the "ugly cry" on her bed at this point, and really, who needs to see that?
In other news we are enjoying our mild winter (knock on wood) the kids have been able to get outside and play and it's been nice enough that they stay out longer than 5mins, which is great because it takes about 10 to get them all geared up to go outside. Oh and Kalea cut herself some trendy pixie bangs, you know, just because that's awesome right before Christmas...

Oh, and Kalea mostly hates getting geared up to go outside, so most of the time it's a 10min fight to put her jacket and boots on. She really is hating snowpants this winter, because they are pants and she would rather be a princess and wear her summer nightgown outside. Basically, she's awesome. Oh and Brynlee in top left picture, wearing nothing but a diaper under that sweater. Canadian much?
What else do we have to share? We hosted "advent" at our house last night with Steve's family, that was super fun. We even had Oma Behr skype in and tell us a Christmas memory and sing Silent Night with us. I love skype, it's so fun to be able to walk around with the laptop and show grandparents what decorations we have, and the food and have them be apart of our celebrations even if they live in a different city. Steve and I are really enjoying the fact that both our kids are old enough to understand Christmas for the most part now and that all of the fun traditions we enjoyed as kids, we can now pass on to them and start really creating memories as a family. I'm sad that I didn't get any pictures of the night though, I even had my camera out so I could be ready.

Haha, this is me trying to get a picture of the girls in their sweater dresses from Oma Stringham after Stake Conference last weekend. It was a gong show, and probably way too big a deal than it needed to be. I have hope that maybe next year we'll actually get some cute ones of them posing and being adorable, because they do it all day long until I pull out the camera.
Christmas cards are starting to pour in and it reminds me that I haven't done ours yet. Mostly because I haven't found a picture of us from this year that I actually really love, although a Christmas card with all of the "outtakes" from different photo sittings could be pretty hilarious, we've had some doozies this year. Anyways, Christmas is in full swing around here, and we are excited to share all our fun with friends and family. More posts to come, I promise!

November Review

I think the end of November is my least favorite time of year, for no other reason than the fact that it means Christmas and New Years are right around the corner and I now go from having very little to do, to having way too much to do! Before we get to Christmas excitement, let's enjoy a recap of November!

 This is the first actual birthday cake that I've made either of my kids. I tend to do cupcakes because I like having individual servings ready to go, to be honest I have no idea why I decided to do a cake this year, but it was dang good. I found a recipe for chocolate icing in our ward recipe book and it was amazing, whipped up so fast and was the perfect amount for this cake. Oh and please forgive my squiggly letters, the hole in my icing thing was on a weird angle for some reason.

So for decorations we reused what I had from Kalea's birthday, and that was a fantastic idea if I don't say so myself. I find myself loving these paper chains more and more every time I use them. they are whimsical and fun, and bonus, big bang for your buck since I bought my cardstock on sale in the summer I think it cost me something like $2, and that went a long ways. Also, the Happy 2nd Birthday banner was actually our Happy 1st Birthday banner, I just made the disc with the number 2 and put it on top of the "1st" disc, so no cost there.

 








This is Brynlee dancing, she takes it quite seriously and is a pro at Jazz Hands already, even though we've never taught her! She was putting on quite the show that night, couldn't have had anything to do with the amount of sugar in her system....

 She was SO excited to see a fishy on her birthday cake. It was awesome to see that this year, she was actually excited and knew what was going on, we're still working on teaching her how to blow out an actual candle, though, so she was kind of confused when we blew it out for her.

 Building a playdough tower on the kitchen table, this is usually a no-no, but I caved since it kept her quiet for so long. Oh and it's a no-no, not because I'm a lame mom, but because certain children have fallen off the table performing this task before...

 This is Kalea being super cute but not wanting me to take pictures of her... Above, she is wearing 2 layers of summertime clothing, her romper and Brynlee's sundress. Below, she got into my makeup and decided to make her face look "bootiful" except it just looked really dirty.

 

And to end things on a high note, this is the day last week that Brynlee fell asleep at 4:30 eating her early dinner. I figured they'd need to go to bed by 7 since they had woken up at 5a.m. that day, apparently someone needed to be in bed much sooner. You can't tell but her hand was actually still opening and closing, very slowly, as she slept, as if she were still picking up noodles. It was slightly creepy.

Anyway, that's our recap, here's looking forward to our busy month!

Look Who's Two

Brynlee turned TWO on the 4th. With Halloween festivities and then a birthday, we get to enjoy two pretty chaotic weeks of fun and celebration. This year I opted out of decorating for Halloween since my time was consumed with making costumes, I don't think the kids were too disappointed about that, in fact I am sure they didn't even notice. And, when they did notice other peoples' decorations, they were usually scared of them, so I don't feel a loss there at all this year. They did notice me singing "Happy Birthday" when I went in to get Brynlee out of bed on her special day, and both children screamed "STOP! NO SINGING" at me, that was pretty great. When we finally made it downstairs, they most definitely noticed all the fun decorations I put up for Brynlee's birthday, it was so cute, all morning she said "Wow! Look Mommy!" as she pointed to everything. It's nice to know that my late night with the "decorating fairies" was worth it, she literally pointed out every last detail, I think I earned huge awesome mommy points from her. Kalea was confused and exclaimed, "Mommy look, it's Christmas! Oh thank you so much!" I then had to explain that it was actually Brynlee's birthday, to which Kalea responded, "It's my birthday? Happy Birthdaaaaaaaaaaaay!" So all day long there were happy choruses of "For me? For my birthday?!" and "Happy Birthday!" and "No, it's not Brynlee's birthday, it's my birthday!" We kept things simple for the party this year and just invited the grandparents over to celebrate with us, I think that's okay when you're turning two. And since Brynlee shares her birthday with a cousin and an uncle, celebrating the day of with just our family was a bit easier to coordinate.

Brynlee is a pretty fun kid. She is extremely expressive both vocally and physically. When she really likes something, we know because she makes really intense faces and squeals with delight. When she doesn't like something we know because she will stomp her feet repeatedly and scream/shout, she also hits. But she is very quick to say sorry in a surprisingly meaningful way. I love the intonation in her voice when she says "I'm sorry Mom-E" the "e" sound, as one can imagine is quite high-pitched and super cute. She is definitely Mommy's girl and likes to be my shadow most of the day. She is pretty shy with people she doesn't know, but will follow Kalea anywhere. Brynlee also loves to run and squeal at the same time. On Sunday I took her out into the hall and she wouldn't stop, I couldn't get back into our church meetings because every time I went to pick her up she'd find a way to elude my grasp and start off running and squealing again. She is also very good at making huge messes all by herself, but she likes to help me clean them up, so I can't really complain about that. She likes to help put laundry away and has started helping me make Kalea's bed. Yeah, don't ask me how that happened. Brynlee is kind of a neat freak sometimes and will get super frustrated if she can't lay out a blanket for her dolls just perfectly, or wrap them up in just the right way. I guess I have to admit that some of her "Type A personality" comes from me because she makes the same crazy person frustration noises that I do. At least I know how to help her deal with it though, that's a blessing I never knew would come from being such a perfectionist about certain things. Brynlee notices everything and watches us all very closely. I think because she is so sensitive, she picks up on a lot of things that we miss sometimes. She also is great at playing up an emotion, she has the biggest most awesome pouty face and tries really hard to use that to get her way. Between her and Kalea I don't know how Steve is ever going to say "no" to those girls. Brynlee loves to dance, and will stop in her tracks to bust out some dance moves for a few minutes and then go back to whatever she was doing. It's pretty funny to watch. She loves making towers with our containers of playdough- no word of a lie, they hardly ever actually play with the dough, it's all about who can make the tallest tower in this house. It's fine with me, way less mess to clean up! She loves animals, specifically fish. She loves to make fish faces and fish sounds and basically, she's just all about fish. Her b-day cake this year had a big fish on it, just for that reason. She loved it! We have a tropical places calendar in the kitchen and she loves to point out all the different fish everyday. She still goes upstairs to see the fish at my parents' house, even though the fish hasn't been there for months because he finally "expired". Brynlee is also my child who gets caught sneaking snacks out of the kitchen most often. But, the nice thing is that she always gets enough for her and for Kalea, so at least she's sharing her goods with her sister.
We are so happy that Brynlee came to our family, and while she's by no means a "perfect child" we feel pretty spoiled to have her in our home. Happy 2nd Birthday Brynlee!

Full Plate?

K, so I have one complaint lately and I have to vent it because it's driving me insane. A few times in the last little while people have come to me with the report that a number someone or another has opted out of having me do this or that because "Allison has a lot on her plate" or "Allison has enough on her plate".... My question is, how does anyone know how much or how little I have on my plate right now? I haven't talked to anybody about anything even remotely plate filling lately. Are people under the strange assumption that because I have a seemingly important calling at church that it takes up huge portions of my life? Newsflash, it takes up a few hours every couple of weeks, and if I have to teach, a week of prep before the lesson. Other than that I have two wild children and a husband who is a HUGE help to me when he's not busy with work. Plate full? Not even close. Also, so what if I have a lot or a little going on, I'm not the kind of person that says "yes" to everything, so if I were to have a lot on my plate I would just say so and try to help out where needed when I don't have as much going on. But in all honestly, I have NOTHING going on right now! Gah! Drive me mental. On the point of children and on behalf of a majority of stay at home moms that I know, sometimes being distracted by something that doesn't revolve around the little ones, is great for my sanity. And in conclusion, do I come across as the kind of person that can't handle a lot on her plate? If so, kill me now, I do NOT want to be that person. That person is so annoying to me. This whole thing is so annoying to me. Rant concluded, if anybody needs anything let me know :)

Blogging Hiatus...

PS I dislike the new blogger interface and how I still can't figure out how to get my pix side by side, just in case you were wondering why my post looks insane!

You know how sometimes words and thoughts just flow together like a really pretty picture? Well lately my words and thoughts are kind of like my 3yr olds' finger paintings, all over the place and not super meaningful. Not that I'm not amazed by every single one, but they are just kind of thrown on the page, right? So anyways, in lieu of words, let's enjoy some pictures!

 

Entertaining the munchkins during family photos, from airplane rides to horsey rides. They actually cooperated pretty good for us, very surprising since they normally don't so much. Although when they were done with pictures they were DONE, and hid themselves under Nana's kitchen table!

They love to torment each other lately, just like in this picture. A hug might look, to an outsider, like a sign of affection, in our house it turns into a way to assume power and control over any given situation. Most hugs lately turn into headlocks and screaming and then wrestling to the ground and one or both kids coming to tell me that the other kid wouldn't let them go. And I thought all this was just a "boy thing" HAHAHA funny joke...

Fall has arrived so we have taken full advantage of the cooler days down in Fish Creek Park. We are so lucky to live in the city, but be so close to nature. This day we went with our friends down to the creek and the girls loved having permission to throw rocks into the water, oh man, the simple things.

Living with so many huge trees on our street has it's perks- we get tons of leaves to play in!

We are busy busy at this time of year and are trying to pack as much fun into these last nice days as we can. Regular blogging will resume after Halloween and before Christmas, I hope!