Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa

This is a video from our Christmas celebration with Grandma and Grandpa. Enjoy!

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Our awesome Primary Presidency

Our primary presidency has really been amazing. We have been in our ward for a year now and they are constanly doing little things to make primary special for our little ones. One thing that they do is "Spotlight" a child each week with a poster that sits outside the Chapel. Melissa was the Spotlight child a few weeks ago and was so please to stand in front of the other children while the leaders described her favorite things. She was just beaming. This is her poster:

Advent Calendar

I have been forgetting to post a picture of our homemade Advent "Calendar." Last year we bought the little boxes with the chocolate candy behind each door and window but the chocolate was SO nasty that we decided to make our own version of it this year. Ray, Melissa and Kayla made these for us. They are very crafty!The girls have a BLAST taking down the bags each night and eating their candy before bed.

Melissa's latest masterpiece

Some of you said I should post pictures of Melissa's latest masterpiece. Here it is! This was before our "poopy" day even started!

What a poopy day!

Today has been the crappiest day! Literally. Before bed last night I had to go out and reset our heater and found that the entire side yard is marshy and smells HORRIBLE. That meant only one thing. Septic problems. So, this morning a septic company came out to clean out our septic tank and found that our septic pump is broken. So, they will be back tomorrow to fix that. $$$ The girls are completely obsessed with the fact that someone actually goes around and sucks poop out from the "ground" as they put it. They asked for a hose so that they could do the same. YUCK! Where do they come up with these ideas?? A little while ago Kayla decided that she needed to poop in the potty like Melissa and took off her diaper to sit on the potty seat. Well, she had already started to poop in the diaper and the poop fell on the floor upon her removal of it. She quickly picked up the poop (with her HAND!) and put it in the potty, somehow resulting in poop all over the floor, the potty seat, her rear, legs, hands and belly. (her belly???) Fun times. After bleaching everything (except Kayla) Melissa decided that our house smells horrible and is trying her hardest not to inhale. I hope she doesn't pass out.

Christmas Parade

Melissa was in a Christmas parade this past Tuesday with her new dance school and we ALMOST froze our booties off! It was SOOO cold! For some reason no one was allowed to wear a coat, just layers under their oh-so-cute sweatshirts... those poor babies literally froze! Ray rode along with Melissa on their "float" and he said Melissa was a good sport about it, but her teeth kept chattering! Poor thing! It was fun watching her wave to everyone. Grandma came up for the parade and our good friends David and Eliza came too. We really enjoyed it!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was very peaceful and laid back this year. We slept in, traveled to Grandma and Grandpa's house, helped prepare dinner and ate and ate and ate! We really enjoyed ourselves. The girls helped prepare the sweet potatoes and Grandma's famous biscuits. They had so much fun!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Decorating the Christmas Tree

This is a video of us decorating our Christmas tree. Grandma, Poppa and Uncle Jeremy were here to help us! We decorated the Sunday before Thanksgiving and it has been redecorated at LEAST 200 times since then. We LOVE Christmas!

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The Nativity

The girls have been very anxious to set up our nativity scene and were so pleased to finally be able to "play" with it. I need to get one of the Fisher Price plastic ones so that they can actually interact with it. When I asked Kayla what the name of the baby is that she is holding, she, in a hushed, reverent, voice said, "Baby Santa." I guess it is time to start at square one!

Helping Mommy

Thursday afternoon Melissa came up the stairs with a bowl of pretzels and another bowl FULL of sour cream. She said, "I made you a snack, Mom." She was sooo pleased with herself! I asked her to bring it back down stairs for me and when she did, the sour cream bowl fell and made quite a mess. She tried really hard to clean it up, leaving a trail of water from the bathroom sink to the living room floor. She wiped and wiped and when it didn't work, she decided that the sour cream would make good finger paint. This is her "masterpiece." I think it is very pretty.

Making Pilgrim Hats

This morning we made pilgrim hats out of cookies, chocolate and marshmallows. They turned out REALLY cute! The two girls made 3 of their own and then Evan's mommy (Tia Ria) made the rest of them. We had so much fun! It was hard waiting for the chocolate to harden enough for us to taste them! We LOVE visiting with CiCi, Tia Ria and Evan!

Evan tasting some chocolate Melissa's hats

Kayla's hats

look how cute they are!

The Camera Loves Me Part 2

Just some more random "posing." They are so funny!

The camera loves me

Since attending their recent "photo shoot" the girls have been setting themselves in "poses" so that I can take their picture. They do it everywhere we go! They even say, "The camera loves me!"

Here is Kayla posing on the slide...

and here is Kayla posing with Honey

More posing with Honey

And Miss Melissa said that her dolls WANTED her in this shot. "In this shot???" Are you kidding me?

Our Poor Poor Pumpkin

Today was a sad, sad day at our house. Today was the day for "killing" the poor poor pumpkin. I told the girls that we were going to get the yuck and seeds out of the pumpkin so that we could cook down the pumpkin and freeze it for pies and bread and muffins. They thought it was a great idea until I pulled out the knife. They both FREAKED out! Kayla, "Don't do it Mommy!" Melissa, "You may not hurt our beautiful pumpkin! What about our paintings, we will miss them so much." (real tears here) I don't know what the problem is... they have real separation problems. Maybe they should see a shrink. The only way I could console them was to promise them that I would take pictures for them to visit on the blog like I have had to do for so many other things. These silly, silly girls. So, here is our BEAUTIFUL pumpkin. (which by the way, yuielded 13 1/2 cups of pumpkin!)

Photo Shoot

Well, we finally took Melissa in for her 4 year old photo shoot and (since we were so late) also had pictures of her and Kayla taken for Christmas... I will save the Christmas pictures for another post, but for now... here are some of the others. Both girls have such different personalities. We had so much fun!

Happy Halloween!

We had SO much fun on Halloween! We went to Eliza, Sadie and Levi's house for dinner and Trick-or-Treating. Terry made "yucky" dirt and worm dessert that the girls LOVED! They are still talking about eating worms. :) Trick-or-Treating was successful and Ray even got there in time for the last 2 houses! After we returned all 4 girls put on their pj's for a jammie party and watched a movie until it was time to go home. Thanks for your hospitality Terry and David! We had SO much fun! (The pictures are chronologically backward!)

Our accidental pirate!

This morning I woke up to Melissa screaming. Apparently, Kayla was stretching and accidentally poked Melissa in the eye with her fingernail. What a way to wake up! Ray had a flu shot on Friday and was REALLY sick last night, so he slept on Melissa's bed and the girls slept with me... well, I think this was the last time we will do that! Even with a King-sized bed, we are too close for comfort. SO, to make a LONG story short (as my mom would say) we ended up at the doctor and found out she has a pretty big scratch on her eye... Mommy saw it too! She has eye drops and will be wearing this "cool" eye patch for a couple of days. This has been a long day.

Trip to Grandma and Poppa's House

This is a LONG video from our most recent visit with Poppa and Grandma. Enjoy if you have time to watch it!

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Pretty Pretty Princess

This photo and memory deserves a post all of it's own. Melissa's friend Emma gave her a "Pretty Pretty Princess" game for her birthday and we took it to Grandma and Poppa's house because she just knew that all of her aunts and uncles would want to play it with her. Before we started playing Uncle Glenn told Melissa that he was going to win and she said she was going to win. As you can see... Uncle Glenn was correct. He SO won! He has "teased" her about it several times since then. I don't think he has much room to tease very many people with this photo on the web! He was a good sport and we actually DID have a lot of fun! (After seeing the picture Melissa told me that she would have made a Prettier Princess!)

I Love the South

I LOVE the South! When you are in the "true" south you see things like this... EVERYWHERE:

Halloween Sneak Peek

Kayla the Leopard Princess FireFighter Melissa

This is a little preview of what the girls will look like when we go trick-or-treating with Eliza, Sadie and Levi on Friday night. We went to our ward Halloween party this past Friday and had a BLAST! We are looking forward to Halloween!

Our Halloween Tree

Last week we made a Halloween Tree following the telephone description that my sister gave me... this is what we came up with!

Chocolate covered Bananas

The girls saw a picture in one of my parenting magazines of chocolate covered bananas and decided that we just HAD to make them. Melissa told me the directions and all of the ingredients that we would need. We decided to make white chocolate bananas and this is what they look like. They were SO yummy! Good job, Kayla and Melissa!