Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with Danny's parents this year. They came for my birthday party the night before and stayed over. They took Claire and Andrew to breakfast which the kids love and we finished up some last minute things for Christmas.

We tried to get a picture with Grandma and the kids, but it looks like only Grant was cooperating.

Jan made a prime rib roast for dinner and I made some side dishes including a new potato recipe that was great.

After dinner we opened presents with Danny's parents. The kids got a head start on opening some of the presents that they had been eyeing under the tree. As you can see in the background, Grant slept through most of the excitement.

Andrew got the Boba Fett helmet and gun that were on his list. The helmet is so big on him, it is quite funny when he wears it.

Claire got an American Girl doll and a Disney Belle doll that she just loves. The American Girl dolls are being collected and stored in her closet until she gets a bit older. Claire isn't exactly gentle with her dolls.

We couldn't forget to put out cookies and milk for Santa. Unfortunately, we didn't have any carrots to put out for the reindeer. Hopefully, someone else remembered those.

Holiday baking

I really like to bake (and eat) dessert items. This year, we've had a lot of fun baking together. First, I made one of my favorite things - sugar cookies.

I actually cut them out after the kids went to bed one night. I know - not so fun for the kids, but it is so much faster and cleaner. I figured that they were going to have lots of fun decorating them the next day.

We headed over to Grandma's house and met Chris and Elaina there for some cookie decorating fun.

Everyone was quickly involved with choosing icing colors and sprinkles. Elaina was really good at icing her cookies from edge to edge while Claire wanted to get to the sprinkles as quickly as possible, so she would plop some icing in the middle of the cookie spread it around a bit and be done with it.

Andrew was having a hard time with the girls because they kept mixing the knives into the different colors of icing. He enjoyed choosing different shapes to decorate each time.

We tried giving Chris cookies to decorate, but he kept eating them, so we gave him sprinkles. Picking them up one by one to eat proved too time consuming, so he resorted to the tip and dump method. Pretty soon his face was dyed bright red by the sprinkles.

Elaina is really enjoying herself here.

My mom organizing the finished product. Many of them were heavy on the sprinkles, but isn't that the point?

The next task was caramels. These are my mom's specialty. She was making them for my dad's work, so I decided to finally learn how to do it and make them for my friends. Basically, it involves a lot of stirring to make caramels. There are only 5 ingredients, but it takes a while to get them to the correct temperature.

We made caramel sauce, plain wrapped caramels, chocolate covered and suckers. My mom definitely has this down to a science.

Grant even joined in on the fun for the chocolate dipping.

Claire had fun putting them into the papers on the plate.

She, like my mom and I, did a lot of sampling of the finished product. Apparently, Andrew does not like caramels - what??!!

I got these cute boxes at Michaels and found a cute tag on the internet. This is one that Andrew signed for his teacher.

I simply signed our names on the tag for the ones we gave to friends. The kids had fun delivering them as well.

I also fell in love with pumpkin bread again. So, I had to make a few loaves to give away so that I didn't just keep eating it myself. Claire helped me mix up the dough. She really likes to help bake. This along with all of the other goodies around are delicious, but may be quite detrimental to my diet.

The Christmas card picture

I had an idea for a Christmas card picture this year that I thought was fitting for the season. I would dress the kids up like the nativity scene and it would be a magical experience for all. Well, three photo shoots later in our family room and I got a cute picture, it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I still love it. Here is the final product:

But let's review the outtake pictures of the fun. I took close to 300 pictures trying to get a good picture. I also tried several different poses. In case you were wondering, the Joseph costume is from last year's Christmas play at church and my mom helped me make a quick Mary costume. Grant is just wrapped in a white sheet.

Andrew was having a wardrobe malfunction in this picture. The hat (I don't think it is called a hat, but I don't know what else to call it) is on wrong and his robe is all tweaked on the side. Not to mention Claire's lovely smile - this will be a recurring theme.

I asked them to look at Grant in the picture, but Claire is laying on the manger. Plus the flash went off when it shouldn't have and Grant is glowing white.

I asked them to lean down and kiss Grant, and now he is missing. Danny said that my directions were too complicated.

I tried a different background and it didn't work out. Plus what is Claire doing???? A baby head lock and what is with the crazy smile?

So I told her to move her hand and to smile correctly and this is what I got - hurt feelings.

This is the "I didn't know we were taking pictures" shocked expression.

Biting the fingers and wiping the face aren't good nativity looks. Also, Claire has a tattoo on her hand from a birthday party. I don't think that Mary had a tattoo on her hand.

But I did get a few other cute pictures.


Our sweet little baby Jesus - although much more hay was needed in this picture.

Andrew was by far the most patient during all of the pictures.

Claire looking in on her little baby brother. Next year Andrew told me that he wants us all to be in the picture. I told him we could do that - better get back to the gym.

It is starting to look a lot like Christmas

Christmas is in full swing over here! Danny got the Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving and we finished the rest of the decorations over the Thanksgiving weekend. We didn't decorate the tree until Andrew got back from Los Angeles (he went to visit his cousin Landon for the week of Thanksgiving). All of this is done with festive Christmas music. Danny loves Christmas music and has it on whenever possible.


Finally - a good group shot! Claire loves to hold her baby brother and asks to do it all day long. After decorating the tree (with help of course) we got them to sit in front of the tree for a picture.


Here are two super silly kids in front of their highlight for the day - an advent calendar. I made this at church and the kids can't wait to open a new compartment each day. Incidentally, notice the monkey backpack that Claire has on. It is actually a backpack that you put on your child that has a leash to hold on to so that your child doesn't run away from you in a public place. Claire thinks that it is fun stuffed animal backpack though. We remove the tail leash so that she doesn't trip over it. She has taken it twice for sharing time at school.

Gingerbread houses! We started this fun tradition last year, but this year they each got their own house to decorate. Here is Andrew putting icicles on his roof.

Danny is helping Claire with her decorations. When she found out that we were going to decorate houses she was SOOO excited.

Now Claire has the icing bag, which proved to be quite the mess, but she loved it. She sat there and just kept adding more and more icing and candy.

Putting the final touches on each house.

Andrew with his finished product. He started out wanting to decorate the tree exactly like the picture, but we both soon realized how hard that would be, so we did a hybrid design.

Here is Claire's completed house. She would have kept adding more candy if we hadn't run out. Even though it made a mess, the kids loved this activity.

Lastly, here are Claire and Ava after preschool with their reindeer hats (made from their hands) and Claire with her Rudolph nose. They are so cute together! They share a mutual love of all things princess.

Living with Claire

My sweet little baby girl has a big problem. The problem is that she is a walking hurricane. Claire has the ability to make a mess faster than anyone I know - well maybe with the exception of her cousin Chris. She tends to make these messes when you are busy doing other things. Not things that take a long time, short things like changing Grant's diaper, getting laundry out of the dryer, getting dressed, etc. These messes can also be overlapping meaning that there are multiple going on at one time. She does not clean up one mess before another one is created. Sometimes they even run from her room, down the hall, into the family room and around through the kitchen. I have photographed a few examples for your viewing pleasure:

Example #1: The evil scissors! Whenever Claire can get her hands on scissors she cuts things up into confetti sized pieces. Then the pieces are carried around and dropped from room to room. I started putting the scissors on the kitchen counter out of reach, but she figured out how to bring over a chair and get them down.

Example #2: Random collections of things. Here she has collected books from her room, pictures from the end table, and miscellaneous other items and placed them on the sofa and ottoman.

Example #3: The front door. This picture was taken after she walked in the door from school. She always drops her lunch box, sharing item (the camera this day) and her shoes just inside of the front door.

Example #4: The play kitchen. She dumps and plays with the dishes and food constantly. She usually has some type of tea party set up on the table. This area is always messy despite my best efforts.

Examples #5-6: The play dishes. As shown in these two pictures, the play dishes are played with and strewn about the house. She plays tea party with her dolls or whoever else will play with her.

Example #7: The dress up bin. Ugggghhhh. She loves to play with the dress up clothes, but she often empties the entire bin wherever it may be. In this case she pushed the bin out from her room and emptied it looking for something very specific.

I am working with Claire to clean up her messes, but she usually says that it is too hard. When I finally tell her that I am going to take away the items that are left out she will agree to clean, but only if someone helps her. I am certain that if she was left alone for 10 minutes she could and probably would have every toy out that we own. However, Claire is quite creative and loves to play make believe. We just need to figure out to tame some of that free spirit.