Christmas Vacation

Our Christmas Holidays were lots of fun! We had Grandma and Grandpa over for Christmas and enjoyed our time with them. We also had a chance to catch up on some projects--school and otherwise!

Mama (picture taken by David with his new camera!)

Annie on her Christmas bike!

Jared on his Christmas bike!

Kathleen bike riding!

Peter riding his Christmas scooter!

Carina downloading songs onto her new MP3 player

Dad and Grandad playing golf on the Wii!

David and Peter building their new legos

Grandma and Annie having a tea party!

Grandma and Granddad Aldrich!

James playing with his new airport!

Jared playing with his legos!

Some of the projects we did!

David and this year's science fair project.
He dropped eggs in different wrappings to see which one would not crack!
It was lots of fun!

We also set up a corner of my room for the baby!

December Summary!

Well December was such a busy month! We felt like we had no time to breathe! It was one activity after the other. So now that the kids are on holiday from school, I have time to update the blog!

Kids decorating the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving!

Kathleen performing in her Christmas Chorus play!Kathleen celebrating her 11th birthday with a birthday party at home!

Annie's birthday cupcakes. I melted chocolate chips and made the designs and sprinkled them with sugar. When they were cooled, we put them on the cupcakes. Annie wanted butterfly cupcakes!

Annie and Kathleen birthday girls!

David in his first performance, "A Christmas Wizard of Oz" He was Woody!

Annie's reading class put on a Christmas play also!

Carina had her Christmas concert for Chorus and a fun Christmas Ball she attended!

So there you have it! A busy month so far!

Water Colors!

James enjoying his watercolors!

Purple was his favorite shade

Jared is a good artist!

Happy painters!

gratitude cake

For home evening on Monday, I made a gratitude cake! It was fun to do. Our theme for home evening was gratitude and I made a gratitude jar and we all wrote down on slips of paper what we were thankful for. Than I served this cake for refreshments. Jared really liked it since I traced his clean hand on the cake for the turkey! The toughest part was getting him not to push down too hard! I didn't want a smushed gratitude cake!

Baby's new quilt!

I have been quilting a blanket for the new baby. All of my kids have kept one of their baby quilts as a snuggly, so I wanted to give this new little girls one too! I got it done this week and thought I would post it on the blog so everyone can see it.

Here is a closeup, it is a butterfly pattern Kathleen and Carina liked.
I quilted around the butterflies and backed it with a nice soft pale green flannel. I also did the binding in the same green flannel. It should be nice and snuggly to wrap our baby girl in!

Fall decorations

I thought everyone would like to see the pretty fall centerpiece that
Annie created for our kitchen table! I love it!

2 years old!!!

I'm sure that everyone is aware of what happens when a kids turns 2! Life gets extra fun! This morning, I asked James to carry to toilet paper to my bathroom so we could refill the toilet paper supply. Daddy was showering, so James left it outside the door (so I thought..)

In reality, he used the toilet paper as a stool to climb up and get my mascara. Doesn't he look great in his war paint?

Later on, I was baking some bread and working on the computer while it baked. The timer went off and I saw James running to the kitchen. Knowing that this was NOT good, I took off too! He was at the hotpad drawer, removing hotpads so that he could get the bread out of the oven. I of course, relieved him of that responsibility, reminded him that that the oven was hot and shooed him to the other side of the room! All this and it is only 9:02 am!!!

Don't you just love 2 year olds! I do!

Jared just informed me, that now James is in the markers! Well better run!

James is 2

Our main even for October is James' birthday! He turned two on October 29th!
He was a happy little boy as he opened his presents!

James with his new trucks!

James smiling at Daddy behind the couch instead of the camera!

James with his new tool set

Mama defending James' ability to play with his new tools from his siblings!

James enjoying his strawberry shortcake.
He chose to just eat 3 helpings of strawberries!

Candy Corn Cookies

It was that time of year. Time to make the candy corn cookies again! I made them for the first time last year and blogged about it, so go back to last years post to get the recipe. It just seemed like a good time to make them again. They are easy and fun! Kathleen was my big helper this year. A new tradition???

Cutting out the cookies!

Emma showing off a couple of cookies

I did it!

I am happy to say that yesterday I got all caught up on my scrapbooking. (In August I printed out 1200 pictures to catch up the last 4 years..) This is just the family scrapbooks, not the kids, so I still have a little work to do. Plus, one can never truly stay caught up, because I own a camera and happily use it! But my goal was to get the pictures done before the baby came because afterwards there isn't a lot of spare time! I'm so excited for our family albums to be up to date now!

Nesting

I am now 27 weeks pregnant and I have decided that I am nesting! In the past 3 days I have made 5 loaves of white bread, a double batch of peanut butter cookies, a banana cream pie and banana muffins. And last week I made sugar cookies! This is on top of the regular meals and housework. My family is eating better than ever before. So either I'm nesting, or I really like DESSERT!

I do wish I could say that the treats lasted longer than one day, but sadly.... when you are feeding 9 people, they vanish quickly! Oh well! Happy Eating!

Soap Carving!

With school being closed for the past 3 days due to the flooding in our area, I had very, very bored kids! So what do you do with 7 kids who are out of their routine? I decided on soap carving. Peter needed to complete that requirement in his bear book anyway, so we carved soap! I got IVORY soap because it is really soft and even the little boys could carve with butter knives and not hurt themselves! They were thrilled about being allowed to carve!

James carving!

Jared working on his soap!

Kathleen made a canoe

David working on his bunny

Peter also decided to make a bunny

Annie made a shell!

Finished products. Kathleen's canoe, Peter's rabbit, Annie's shell and David's bunny. Jared and James' soap just kind of got carved into a million soap shavings. But they had lots of fun. The house smelled all soapy all afternoon and the soap wasn't to hard to clean up!