My First Clay Pot

I've been waiting for one of these for almost 7 years! I'm so excited to have my first real clay pot made by one of my children. Austin told me they were making them a few weeks ago and I've been so excited! He just brought it home yesterday. What a long project! The suspense was killing me! Austin would come home and keep me posted on what stage it was in and what colors he had picked out for it. Pink on the outside because, and I quote, "...you love pink Mama" and blue on the edge with a green inside because "...I wanted it to have more colors and I thought those would be nice together and that you would like it." Austin I LOVE it! Precious little souvenirs. I know right where I'm going to put it.

Christmas Party and the Missing Santa

Last night we went to our Ward Christmas Party. There was a great turnout. They had a nice turkey dinner for everyone and of course dessert and then a Christmas program. The kids got to sing a couple songs with the primary. The first song they got to dress up. We weren't in a very good spot to take pictures but you get the idea.

Austin was a shepherd. My sister Heather made Nativity costumes for our family one year so he wore one of the costumes from that. Hallelujah! An easy costume!

Dallin was a horse. He brought his stick horse with him since I was short on time and the only costume I could think how to make was a sheep (he was supposed to be either a horse, cow, or sheep) and he did NOT want to be a sheep. No way Mom!

Coen liked watching and managed to eat a fulfilling meal of 6 individual sized tubs of butter and one roll. Mmmm....Healthy!

It was a fun evening but as we were loading up to go home there were some seriously sad faces! They were sooo disappointed that Santa didn't come to the party! I couldn't believe how sad they were about it! He always came to the ward Christmas Parties in the past. I told them that since our ward was just divided a few weeks ago and everything was still so new and the party had to be planned really fast that Santa probably didn't have time to schedule in a time to visit. Wow!

They were still talking about Santa not showing up this morning! Luckily a trip to Cabela's was on the agenda today. They got to see Santa and Mrs. Claus...not to mention all of the reindeer everywhere. Some of the reindeer were so silly! They were sticking their heads through the wall to peek at everyone! Coen thought that was funny. Ahem...glad it was such a good joke! Their picture turned out cute. Next year we'll probably have a sad little girl like Coen was last year. This year everyone was the perfect age for four cute smiles!

Of course we had to look around for awhile and see all of the animals, listen to the "hunter", and get our free sample of fudge upstairs. The boys LOVE Cabela's.

I don't know if Claire loves Cabela's but she sure is cute anyway!

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

Look who is rolling over! Claire decided she was ready to roll from back to tummy and did it several times today. Yeah Claire!

Ready, set, go!

Getting those legs up in the air for some good momentum to get her on her side.

Once she's on her side it's a quick flip to the tummy. Sometimes she gets that little arm stuck underneath. Going to take a little more practice and a little more muscle!

And here she is in action:

Joyeux Noël!

I've been working on scanning my photos from my mission and ran across some fun ones from the two Christmases I spent on my mission. My first Christmas was in Calais, France just a couple months after leaving the MTC. I thought I'd be more homesick but it was surprisingly not too bad. We kept busy during the day caroling and delivering brownies and cookies with the Elders. Fun times. We ate dinner with the Bishop and his family where I was surprised with all of my Christmas packages from home. I didn't think I was getting anything but my nice Zone Leader drove all the way up to the Mission Office in Brussels to pick up my packages so I'd have a nice Christmas. The Bishop had them all stowed away at his house under the tree. It was the best surprise ever! I know I have more pictures from Calais somewhere but these are the only ones I have so far.

Eating our multi-course Christmas dinner with a family from church. Good food and plenty of time to eat! Nearly every French home at Christmastime displays a Nativity scene or crèche, which serves as the focus for the Christmas celebration. At this home, she had the most amazing crèche ever! She had formed mountains and hills out of brown paper and had people and animals tucked into small places all over. It was HUGE! I hope I have a picture of it somewhere.

Another multi-course dinner the day after Christmas. The food was delicious and we seemed to eat forever.

My second Christmas was just a couple months before I came home from my mission. This time I was in Charleroi, Belgium. By this time I had been in Charleroi for 8 months!

Can you tell what sport they like love over there?

I still get a "kick" out of their decorations. (No pun intended...OK well maybe! Ha!) Angels with soccer balls...or I guess I should say footballs! Original that's for sure!

Festive anyway!

They even covered the round cement balls with vinyl soccer balls during Christmas. This was a fun time to look at all the neat booths at the Christmas market. You could find some good escargot to eat!

There were lots of things to keep us busy. We sang Christmas carols out in the streets (that's me in the tan skirt)...

...visited friends and members...

...and went to the Ward Christmas party and got our pictures taken with Père Noël.

Throughout the Christmas season there are special traditional desserts. The Christmas season begins on 6 December, la fête de Saint Nicolas. Children leave their shoes out for Père Noël to fill. But there's also Père Fouettard who gives out spankings to bad children (sort of the equivalent of Santa Claus giving coal to the naughty).

Of course on Christmas Eve we had to stop and get a traditional Yule log-shaped cake called the Bûche de Noël, which means "Christmas Log." It's a chocolate cake shaped like a log. The cake, among other foods, is served at the grand feast of the season, which is called le Réveillon. Le Réveillon is a very late supper held after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. There is also a special sweet bread called cougnou or cougnolle. The shape is supposed to be like baby Jesus. This is what Père Noël handed out to everyone at our Ward Christmas party. It was a sweet bread with raisins and sugar chunks in it shaped like an oval with a round ball on each end. Mmmm...

Later in the celebrations you eat the La Galette des Rois, a round cake which is cut into pieces and distributed to each person. Whoever finds the charm hidden inside is King or Queen for the day. I was the lucky winner this time! The cake is actually really yummy, too. It is made with puff pastry and frangipane (an almond flavored filling). Some places here in the US (like Texas for instance) sell cakes similar to these around Mardi Gras. But let me tell ya...the ones you get at Albertson's just don't even come close to the ones you buy over there. Too bad.

So those are a few of the fun traditions I got to learn about and celebrate while in France and Belgium. I hope I have remembered them correctly. Seems like yesterday sometimes but it's actually been 9 years since the last Christmas I had there! Wow! My French readers will have to correct me if I've made a mistake or left out something important!

Joyeux Noël!!

(**I made a mistake about the 6th of december: it is Saint Nicolas who puts something in your shoes. Thank you Sandrine!)

Trimming the Tree

So anyway...we put up our tree back on December 3rd. I think this is the first year I hardly did anything on the tree...in my LIFE! Normally Tory and I do all of the branch shaping and spreading and then Tory puts on the lights. I then put on the garland and white crocheted snowflakes and icicles so that they are all evenly spaced. The boys usually put on "their" ornaments and any of the non-fragile ones and then I put the fragile and/or special ones up at the top.

Well this year Tory, Austin, and Dallin did the shaping and Tory did the lights.

Here's Claire directing traffic. She had a lot to say about where all the ornaments went. Just look at all that drool on the front of her. That little mouth was open the whole time. Cute.

All I did was put on the garland. I started with our popcorn garland. I LOVE the look of strung popcorn on the tree. It is a lot of work but here's a hint: You can save all that strung popcorn and use it year after year! Just store it in a giant zip-lock bag or a Tupperware type container and you're good to go! This is the third Christmas I've had mine and it looks just as fresh as the day I made it. Well...it DID. That's why I say I "started" with the popcorn garland.

After a couple days of catching Coen nibbling away on it and him not listening at all to the rule of "no touching and NO EATING" we had to take it off the tree. The temptation was just too much for the little guy who loves popcorn and couldn't believe he had an entire tree free for the taking. So I switched it with our white paper chain garland, which I also love.

Then the boys decorated the entire tree themselves. Tory helped with a few of the special ones at the top but the rest were handled by the boys. There are a few places on the tree where this is quite evident.

For instance...the blizzard of snowflakes. How many can we put on one branch?

Then there were a few places with a mass of frozen icicles. Brrrrr...

And here we have the congregation of some of the main characters in the nativity. But that's OK.

The tree might not look perfect and evenly spaced but I love it. I love that those six little hands placed every ornament. I remember we always got to do all of the decorating growing up and Mom even let us play (very carefully) in the tree with our little plastic Care Bear toys.

Some of my favorite ornaments growing up were our little clothespin nativity people. There was a Mary holding a baby Jesus, a Joseph, the 3 Wise Men, shepherds, and an angel, and even a Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. My Mom made them from little scraps of fabric and I thought they were so neat. I loved them so much that I had to make my own. I made them for Austin's first Christmas back in 2002. At the time I worked for a lady who had an interior decorating business and she would give me a lot of her old fabric sample books. I had quite the collection and they were perfect for making my little clothespin people.

Here are my clothespin nativity people. I would love to take a picture of Mom's original ones. I'll have to remember to do that when I'm at her house this Christmas! Mom's had little faces on them. I couldn't figure out how I wanted to do the faces so I've just left them blank all these years. Drives Tory nuts. He can't understand why I'd want them without any faces at all. I don't think they look THAT bad. Ha.

Dallin's Birthday Party

I finally had some time to finish a post about Dallin's party. It's been crazy around here! We did a carnival theme for the party. We made invitations to look like a bag of popcorn. I couldn't find any templates I liked online so Tory designed one. Since all of his friends live so close we decided it would be fun to hand deliver the invitations and since they weren't going through the mail we decided to use "real" popcorn on the outside. We used a ticket to hold the card shut.

On the inside there was a little poem I made up as well as the party info. It said:

"Come One...Come All!

For activities and more!

Cotton candy, popcorn

And treats galore!

Dallin's 5th Birthday Carnival

Will be tons of fun!

There will even be games

With prizes to be won!"

I thought they turned out so cute!

Six little friends came and they had so much fun. We had carnival music playing and they munched on popcorn while everyone arrived.

Each guest got a few tickets when they arrived and then we headed to the "carnival" to play games and earn MORE tickets! The carnival was in our garage. Tory had it all decked out. He lined all the walls with black plastic (mostly to cover all of his tools and keep everyone safe.) Then he hung up streamers and Christmas lights. Very festive. We played a beanbag throw with a clown face we made out of cardboard (1 ticket if you get it in the mouth, 2 in the nose, and 3 in one of the eyes.)

Then we flipped the clown face around and it turned into the penny toss game. (Tory's design. Very clever!) They got one ticket for every penny that landed on a circle. We also played an elephant stomp. I had several garbage bags full of balloons that were filled with 1, 2, or 3 tickets each. The kids had to stomp on them to pop the balloons and get the tickets. They loved this one! Everyone won lots of tickets!

Then it was time to cash them in! We had three bins of prizes worth 1 ticket, 3 tickets, or 5 tickets. It was fun to see what each kid just HAD to buy! The little bags of cotton candy were the biggest hit by far!

We ate corn dogs for dinner and had snow cones and "popcorn" cupcakes for dessert. A few of the kids had to be convinced that the popcorn wasn't real before they'd eat them. Funny!

It was very realistic I have to admit! The "popcorn" was made by cutting miniature marshmallows in half (I just used a clean pair of kitchen sheers) and then stirring them around in a bowl. The way they stick together makes them look like popped corn!

I made the cupcakes in my little rectangle muffin tins so they'd look more like bags of popcorn. The liners were originally a bright blue. Don't know what happened but they ended up being see through! Oh well! Don't look too close at the cake. When I first decorated it, it was standing up. Yep. It fell. So that's why the red lines are squiggly and the white frosting looks clumpy. So disappointing. But it could have been worse I guess! At least it was fixable.

We then opened presents and had a little time left so we played freeze dance with the carnival music. What a blast! Those kids can dance! Then someone turned on their glow stick that they had won and pretty soon they all had them going and had the best time of all! They went out to the garage and turned off all the lights except for the Christmas lights and played tag with their glow sticks. Gotta remember that game! They had the most fun with this.

Dallin sure had a fun time and was so happy that all of his friends were able to come. All of the little friends were so nice and did so good. Like I said before, this was my first time ever throwing a "friend" party. I can actually say I'm looking forward to throwing one for Austin now. So I guess that means it was a success! We did learn a few things that we'll do differently next time but all in all it was great.

After everyone had left we cleaned up a bit, played with some of his new toys, and sang Happy Birthday and opened presents with the family.

Dallin really wanted a "cool" shirt for his birthday. He and Austin also love building things out of wood so he got a couple wood projects to work on as well. Happy Birthday Dallin!

5 on the 5th

Dallin is 5 years old today! It's his "STAR" birthday, as my sister calls it, when your birthday lands on the same day as the number of years you are. Does that make sense? Like today Dallin is 5 on the 5th. Only happens once in a lifetime!

Last night I tucked him into bed and said, "Dallin tonight is the last time you will ever be 4. Can you believe you're going to be 5 tomorrow?" He was so excited. All day long he kept saying, "Mamma, am I really 5 now? REALLY, ACTUALLY 5?" So fun. And I was actually brave enough this year to throw a birthday party for him with friends. This was the first birthday party I've ever done. (I know, I know. Poor Austin hasn't even had one. But his will come next month.) I've actually had this party in the planning stage for over a year. I was going to do it last year, had some of the party favors all purchased and everything. But then I chickened out. And then I ended up so sick with my pregnancy anyway that it was a good thing I chickened out! And I've got to say...it made the planning quite easy this year! We did a carnival theme and it was a blast and so easy to do. It's late tonight so I'll have to post more of the party tomorrow.

For now I just want to remember our special boy Dallin who came to our family 5 years ago. We're so thankful for our tall, brown haired, blue eyed boy with a cute sprinkle of freckles and the best smile around. He is such a fun and happy boy. He is also such a good big brother who especially has a way with Claire. He LOVES that little girl! Dallin is a very patient person and is a very hard worker. He loves to try new things but is very cautious at the same time. He learned how to ride his bike without training wheels in ONE day back in October and was so careful about it that he only had one crash! Impressive! His latest thing is wanting to make sure his hair looks good. He likes to wear it spiked up just in the front like a little friend at church does. Dallin is also our little prankster. He sure knows how to joke! He has gotten all of us several times. He's good! From hiding plates of food at dinner when someone gets up to telling a good one...he gets us all the time! And he can keep such a straight face! This also comes in handy when playing hide and seek. He is a great "hider". We sure love our Dally Boy Blue and love watching him grow into the wonderful person he is. Happy Birthday!

4 Months Old

The tiny little lady is already four months old! Time is flying by too fast. December 1st was the actual day but she had her 4 month checkup today so I wanted to wait until we got her all weighed and measured for the big post. And here are the results....


December 4, 2008
Age: 4 mos. 3 days
Height: 25 inches (76%)
Weight: 13 lbs. 9 oz. (48%)
Head: 41 cm (50%)

So her weight averages have continued to slow down just like her brothers. Big babies at birth who turn out to be long skinny babies later. She was in the 80th percentile for her weight when she was born and even at 2 weeks but she's gone down since. But even so...she still has the most rolls of any of my babies. Love it! Those little legs and wrists are so cute!

Claire continues to be such a good little baby. Easy-going and very mellow. She knows how to fit right in and go with the flow. She is loving her toys now and grabs onto anything she can. Her favorite things to hold onto are her feet. And if she can't get to her feet or anything else then she'll just hold her hands together and look at them. She is still sleeping good and I would probably be moving her out of our room by now but...I would miss her. (And I still need to get a new baby monitor. Ours bit the dust after Coen.) Plus we have a big trip coming up and I don't want her to get too used to sleeping by herself in a quiet room. Are those enough excuses? We could also start her on solids if we wanted to but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. She's doing just fine so I'm going to hold off until she's at least 5 months old but we'll see if we can make it to 6. I really enjoy the no fuss/no preparation/no clean-up meals right now!