Remembering Decembering!

I need to catch up on December so you get the whole month in one post!

Let's start with a visit to Santa! Care Bear asked for a guitar which is what (surprise surprise), La La asked for too! Jaco asked for a nerf gun!

Nothing says Christmas like elementary school music programs! I was so happy that La-La's school did not ban the holiday and the kids sang songs about Christmas! Jaco & La-La's school opted to be a little more "politically" correct and just had a holiday program but it was still fun and the director put together an amazing play!

Grandma & Grandpa Finch arrived Friday December 10th for La-La's baptism. We were so excited to finally get them here and even more grateful that Grandma's cancer was taken care of so they could come!

La-La's big day was Saturday December 11th at 11:am. I let her plan her program. She had me sing "Baptism", Grandma Finch spoke on The Holy Ghost, Jaco spoke on Baptism, Care Bear said the opening prayer, Jamie Webster (friend from church) said the closing prayer, Jaco played his violin in between the baptism and confirmation, Daddy baptized her and Grandpa Finch confirmed her. It was a beautiful program and La-La was so excited for all of it. Aunt Michelle made her the beautiful white dress. The day was perfect and I am so proud of La-La for making such an important and good choice!

After La-La's baptism and confirmation, we braved the slick slushy wet roads to go cut down a Christmas tree. We had actually set up our fake tree right after Thanksgiving but it is old and has seen better days. It kept falling over and just did not look too great so we thought it would be fun to pick out a tree with Grandma & Grandpa! We heard about a place that sold trees for $10. The trees were perfect and gorgeous! I have to say, we chose our tree faster than any other year because it was pouring down rain and we were soaking wet and freezing! Thankfully there was not a bad tree to be seen!

After we dried off, had some warm cocoa, and shook the water from the tree, it was time to decorate it! The tree was so perfect it looked almost fake! We will definitely go there again next year! Inexpensive and perfect; hard to find in this economy! That evening, I had a choir concert for the community choir I have been singing with. It worked out so well that my parents came that weekend because they were able to come to my concert and I had a big solo! It went well even if Care Bear fell asleep. Then Sunday morning, Jaco and I performed "Silent Night" in sacrament meeting and my parents were able to hear that performance too! My mom has always been my biggest supporter and fan and it has been a very long time since she has been able to hear me sing in full voice. It was so fun to have her and Dad here! They had to leave right after sacrament meeting to beat the bad weather and it was sad to see them go.

The last two years we have done the 12 Days of Christmas for one of our neighbors. This year the kids really wanted to do it again and I wanted to do it without spending a lot of money. Someone told me that they have seen people do it by giving a piece to a Nativity set each night and since I love Nativities, I thought it was a perfect idea! I searched for an inexpensive 12 piece set and did not succeed. I decided we would make our Nativity! Each night, I printed off a coloring page Nativity piece, had the kids color it, I laminated it, and we delivered it to an older couple that lived up the street from us. We could not have chosen a harder house to be sneaky at! They had a million windows, security lights, a security camera, and a loud barking dog! We got busted the first night but we kept it up anyways! The kids were thrilled when they saw their artwork hanging on the front door. Since we knew we were already caught, we revealed ourselves Christmas Eve when we hand delivered baby Jesus and sang them Silent Night. We had the missionaries over that night so they came with us and helped us sing. It was really fun and my favorite 12 Days of Christmas so far!

On Monday December 20th, we were invited to go caroling with 3 other families from our ward. Jaco has asked to go caroling for years and we all had a ball sharing Christmas music and goodies! We had a lot of snow that day so at each house there was some sort of snowball fight. Justin just happened to instigate most of them! After caroling we went back to the Webster's house and enjoyed each others company and more tasty treats!

On Christmas Eve, I had to work so Justin took the kids sledding with several other families from our ward. I know, not fair but such is life! It actually wasn't so bad to not have to listen to the kids asking when they could open presents all day long! Notice Care Bear's outfit in this picture. That is what happens when Dad is on charge! She had 3-4 pairs of pants on and as many shirts so she wouldn't get cold sledding!

As I mentioned earlier, we had the missionaries over for dinner that night. Justin has been on call several times since we moved here but has never actually been called in...until that night! Of course! He had to go into the ER so we killed time by watching Emmit Otter's Jug Band Christmas. Once he got home, we ate dinner, gave each elder a Nativity ornament, watched The Nativity while listening to "Breath of Heaven", read Luke II, and said family prayer. It was a great Christmas Eve! After the elders left, the girls wrote letters to Santa and the kids opened new jammies and slippers. Care Bear wanted to know what Santa does if he has to pee while out delivering presents. She answered her own question when she decided he just held on tight to the side of his sled and peed over the edge!

We told the kids they could not get up Christmas morning until at least 7:am. About 6:am, I started hearing excited little voices and by 6:30, they could not wait any longer. We let them go see what Santa brought and they were so happy. Cody loved his new purple murple and being allowed in the house! Jaco was quite disappointed when his main gift from us was just an old toy I wrapped. I had ordered several things online all on the same day, but the Nerf swords he wanted did not make it in time. Note to self, don't order from the Hasbro website! SLOW delivery! The rest of the morning was spent playing, eating, and napping for me! We went to Christmas dinner at the same house we had Thanksgiving. If you remember, we had to hike up to their house in the snow that day but for Christmas, the roads were clear with no snow! We had fun with them and the kids especially liked their Wii karaoke game!

New Year's Eve was spent at a party at the church! There was lots of yummy food, games, and good company. Jaco loved playing Guitar Hero in the gym and playing ping pong and the girls had a ball taking care of this cute little girl who thought it was pretty cool to hang out with "big" girls! It was the first year that all 5 of us stayed up until midnight! Guaranteed if we had of stayed home, Care Bear and Daddy would have crashed way before the clock struck midnight!

Whew! December 2010 is now officially done...if you made it all the way though this post that is!

Frozen in Time!

It has been quite cold for us the past several days. As a result, there are hundreds of frozen waterfalls and icicles hanging from the cliffs that border the Columbia River. On Sunday January 2nd, we took the long way home from church to check out the ice up close. The kids collected icicles and I had a ball taking way too many pictures. I even went back for more the next day! I couldn't help it! When I see something beautiful in Mother Nature, it is almost like a physical need I feel to stop and take a picture. Someday I hope to get a really nice camera but for now my Nikon s620 does a great job! Most of the following pictures were taken at the bottom of a large waterfall. The spray and splash from the falls froze on the vegetation surrounding the water. I was able to capture the sunlight shining on the ice so it almost appears to have lights coming from the inside.


Sunday clothes are not very warm!

I love this picture of La-La. She is such a pretty girl!

Look at these blue eyes! Love them, and the girl who goes with them!

We stayed so long, the sun went down!

I can't imagine a better way to spend the sabbath day. Church first then enjoying The Lord's beautiful world!

Jesus is the Reason....

...for CHRISTMAS!(Christmas 2006)

Every year I try to add a new nativity to my growing collection. It is my little way of trying to keep the true meaning of Christmas in our home. I have small ornament nativities, a teeny charm one for my charm bracelet, large porcelain sets and a little of everything in between. I even have a couple kid friendly ones. One year the set I added was a cookie cutter set. I have to say, it feels a little weird to eat baby Jesus! I have purchased some of them and others have been gifts.

My many Nativity sets are my favorite Christmas tradition!

Thanksgiving or was it Christmas?

With all the snow and cold, Turkey day felt almost like Christmas!

We had hoped my parents would be here for the holiday and La-La's baptism but Mom was still recovering from a bad allergic reaction to iodine and did not feel up to a long drive yet. (We have scheduled La-La's big day for December 11 when my parents are planning to come!) So instead we invited ourselves to a friend's house, the other Dr Justin works with. They were happy to share the day with us and I was thrilled to not have to cook and clean the entire meal by myself!


Our friends live at the top of a steep driveway and after Monday's snow and ice storm, we could not drive all the way to their house; although we tried and ended up sideways stuck in a blackberry bush! We knew we would have to hike so we came prepared with all our snow gear and a sled to haul the food! So after getting unstuck and parked a little better, we burned lots of calories hiking and sliding our way up the hill.

While we finished cooking and preparing dinner, the kids had a ball sledding down the driveway. I even snuck a few runs in myself! I told them I was going to take pictures of the kids and just happened to slide down the ice once or twice!

Dinner was delicious with all the fixin's and the most amazing sweet potatoes I have ever had! They were so rich and delicious I had three servings! Just so you know, I usually do not eat sweet potatoes. I have never had sweet potato pie but I imagine what we ate, tasted like it!

After dinner, we talked while the kids played and then we all enjoyed pumpkin and apple pie made by yours truly! For me it is not Thanksgiving without the pumpkin pie I grew up on. Once you try it, you will never be happy with store bought dense pie! Just to be nice, here is the recipe!

Pumpkin Pie
1 cup pumpkin
1 cup sugar
2 cups canned evaporated milk (one can plus about 1/4 C regular milk works just fine)
3 TB corn starch
½ tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp salt
2 egg yolks

mix all ingredients except egg yolks in a microwave safe bowl. Cook in microwave on high for 3-4 minutes, stir and repeat until mixture is pudding consistency. Beat egg yolks in small bowl, add small amount of pie mixture to eggs, stir and add to pie mix. Cook for 3-4 for more minutes and spoon into baked pie shell. Cover pie with wax paper to prevent a thick film from forming on the pie and chill in refrigerator for several hours. Serve cold with whipped cream

It is truly the best pie I have ever had!

Around 8:30, we decided to brave the steep hill in the dark to head home. Jaco opted to sled down the hill. At one point the driveway became quite steep so all of us told Jaco to stop sledding and walk with the rest of us. He chose not to listen and went flying down the hill. He would have been fine except for the parked car that was in his path! We watched completely helpless as he barreled right for the car. We heard him slam into it and waited for the screaming to begin but by some miracle, he was fine! He said his body just kind of wedged under the car but no pain to be felt! I was picturing blood, bruises, and or broken bones!

We made it home safe and sound, had more pie, and went to bed happy, full, and grateful for small miracles among many other things!

Care Bear's Castcapades!

If you remember in previous posts, Care Bear broke her leg on July 29! She had been jumping on our neighbor's 24 hour old trampoline when she got popped up, hyper extended her knee, and broke her tibia across the top of the bone. Care Bear has always been a very busy active girl so we almost looked forward to her having to sit still and be calm. That only lasted for a couple days and once the pain eased, she learned how to move, and our busy little girl came back in full force!

First she figured out how to scoot with the cast held out in front of her. Inside, outside, grass, carpet, asphalt, it didn't matter! She scooted across anything. In fact, she managed to wear holes in two of the casts from scooting so much!

Then we were able to borrow a child sized walker from a friend and she became vertical again. She liked the walker for few days but then she learned how to hop. She could hop clear across the room and decided not to use the walker because the walker just slowed her down. She climbed rocks, hills, slides, and learned how to swing with a long leg cast on.

She ended up with 4 different casts. We went from pink & green to pink and purple to solid purple, to solid blue. Thankfully Dr Daddy was able to change the last two for free! The first cast change came because Jaco spilled water on it and the other times was because she was just so busy! Playing outside in the mud and weeds is not very good on casts!

45 days after she broke her leg, Care Bear had the cast removed. She hated having the casts cut off and screamed and screamed each time! I guess I expected her to be all better when the cast came off but that was not the case. It took almost a week before she would really walk and she limped for several weeks after that. Now two months later and she walks pretty normal but she still limps and hops when she runs.

Having a child with a broken leg is an adventure I hope to not repeat! I am so glad she was able to heal and pray it will all be a distant memory in the not so distant future!

Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Hannah Montana, the Dead Bride, and Percy Jackson!

This Halloween season got rolling for us at an adult game night with couples from our church. The house we went to was completely decked out in everything Halloween from a dead guy who jumps up from his coffin, to a spooky talking butler, to count Dracula. It was a ton of fun until we got the text from Jaco saying La-La had thrown up all over our friend's couch. (We had shared a baby-sitter and all the kids were at their house, not ours!) Thank goodness the party was pretty much over!

Justin and I dressed up as a BP oil worker and the oil spill. The party was dimly lit and since I was in all black, people did not know what to say to me. They couldn't figure out who I was and then with just the whites of my eyes showing, it was a little eerie. I had fun and was just happy that Justin agreed to dress up!

One of the nearby cities did trick-or-treating Friday the 29th. It was from 3-5 and included all the downtown merchants. It was fun and nice to do it in daylight hours and the weather was perfect!

Jaco had wanted to be Harry Potter but I was not on the ball to find him a robe in time so HP was out. He has been re-reading the Percy Jackson series so I suggested dressing up as Percy and Jaco loved the idea! I hand painted the shirt, made a lightning bolt with duct tape and cardboard, painted an old sword gold, and glued some feathers to some old converse tennies and BAM...Percy Jackson came to life!

La-La decided really early on that she wanted to be a dead bride. I found fun material at Jo-Anns for the veil and we recycled a white dress that was getting a little too used, tore it and made it dirty and we had a perfect wedding dress! Add some black and white make-up with a wig from last year and La-La became the prettiest dead bride I have ever seen!

Little Care Bear chose to be Hannah Montana. We already had a Hannah dress but then this sparkly dress was found and she just *HAD* to have it. I agreed that it was perfect so with the sparkles, some much loved make-up, and an itchy wig, Care Bear magically turned into Hannah! She even won cutest costume at her school!

After trick-or-treating we came home and carved pumpkins. I helped the girls with their pumpkins but I was very proud of Jaco because this was the first year he took full responsibility and did his 100% by himself!
Look closely at this picture and you will see mama cat walking on the roof above us! We had no clue she was there until we looked at the picture on the computer!

Spooky glowing creations!

Saturday night was the ward trunk or treat. It was supposed to be out in the parking lot but since we live in the great northwest, it was raining! The party was moved indoors and I did feel a little weird with my dug up graveyard directly in front of a portrait of the Savior.

The girls had fun making sucker ghosties and coloring pictures. Care Bear decided to take a break from her itchy wig and went as a cute monkey.

Jaco throwing bean bags at a large pumpkin face

Justin did not feel like going as the BP gang so I went all out as a witch. So many people had no clue who I was until either Justin talked to me or the kids called me mom. I handed out the candy from our room and some of the kids would not take candy from me. I wasn't even saying anything! One little girl was obsessed with my nose, it was so cute! I used tole paint on my face and neck so I was able to match it to the rubber nose. To get the nose to stay on, I filled it with modeling clay and it was sticky enough to hold my honker in place!

Finally on Sunday the real Halloween was here! Poor Jaco and Care Bear woke up Saturday night throwing up so trick-or-treating was questionable. Thankfully they both perked up just in time to pound the pavement since we had not received enough candy from the previous 2 nights!

I decided it would not be fair to have our fun Halloween dinner on Sunday with two sickies, so we waited and extended the holiday one more day to Monday night! Pumpkin brains, bones, severed toes, graveyard dirt and blood to drink! When I told Care Bear the menu before I made it, she told me there was no way we could really have it because stores do not sell severed toes, blood, and brains! Guess I got her!

Hope everyone had a fun and sweet Halloween! I know we did especially with it lasting several days!