Christmas Eve and Day

We had a great Christmas! We ate too many sweets, got too many presents and had too much fun!
We went to Tawnya and Trevor's for Christmas Eve. Ghee and Papa were down from Utah to join us.
The boys love their Ghee.
Brooklyn got a Foofa bouncing ball and this is all we saw of her the rest of the night. It was a hit!
That night Santa came to our house and spoiled the kids rotten yet again.
First thing in the morning, Micah wanted to check to see if the reindeer food that he made at school was on the front lawn.
Ghee and Papa headed over early and watched them open presents. Here is Micah showing Papa his new Criss Cross Crash track.
Chad and Brooklyn teamed up to open presents.
Here she is trying on her new shoes.
Micah and I teamed up to open presents. Legos, yay!
Mounds of presents to get through.
Brooklyn opening the present that Micah got her. She loves it!

That afternoon, we headed to my parents house (no pictures sorry) and had breakfast and opened more presents. That would be three Christmases that we celebrated. We were spoiled spoiled spoiled! It took me about three days to make my house look like it hadn't thrown up on itself. Finally, we have all the presents put away and we are ready to settle back into real life. I love Christmas, but I also love when it is over. Hope you all had a great one too!

Insulin anyone?

First off, I thought I would share with you the view I have when I blog. Cute, right? I thought so.
Anyways, we are continuing our sugar diet around here. Today we decided to decorate a giant gingerbread man. We are trying to keep ourselves busy with all the rain and no school and somehow we always come back around to sugar. Bad habit. I will try to break that one soon, but for now we are just relaxing and enjoying the holiday.
Shelby was over and helped Micah. Actually, she did the majority of the work. I think she has a natural talent for it really.

He is coming together.
All done! Good job cousins. Micah has already made several chunks of him disappear. I think it is time that I get rid of some of this sugar before Santa stuffs our stockings with blood checkers and test strips!

What's Christmas without Cookies?

I worked all day preparing this dough. From scratch, only organic ingredients, with all natural food dyes and assembled the cute tree design on each cookie. Nope, I didn't, but grabbing the dough out of the fridge and using store bought frosting makes for just as much fun! You can ask my kids...and I don't think that any of us will miss the time we would have spent cleaning up all those dishes from an all organic, natural food dye cookie. Take that Martha!

A Happier Christmas Concert

You might remember the Fall Concert flop that we had. As a quick recap, pants that are not fully dry will ruin your kid's day and make for bad pictures of the day. I was worried that we would have a repeat of that day with the Holiday Concert, especially after the teacher said that Micah wouldn't sing during class and to top it off the concert was at 7:45 am. I prepped him for a while telling him that we had early school that day, he would be wearing church clothes and that I would love to see him sing. It all paid off today. He did a fantastic job! He was happy and sang every single note of every song! He was beaming and so was I. Even Brooklyn was up, dressed and happy for the whole thing. Yay!

Elfs and Crafts

So the other day I came along a blog where their family elf brought the kids their Christmas pj's early, so they can enjoy them for the whole Christmas season, rather than just Christmas Eve. I thought, hmmm....Charlie (our elf) that would be a great idea! So the next day, Charlie delivered. I told Micah to find where Charlie was today since he moves everyday. He found him and then I told him to look lower.
Lo and behold, our sweet little elf had brought pj's!
Micah is really playing it up for the camera. In reality, he wasn't really all that excited. Brooklyn was! She got pj's with a monkey on them! Man, those legs on her. can you believe they fit in skinny jeans?
Anyways, on to Christmas crafts. This one is super simple. Get root beer or sodas (since this is meant for kids) and glue the fuzzy red nose and googly eyes on the bottles. Take pipe cleaners and twist them around to look like reindeer. Simple and cute!
I thought of this one when I saw someone create a mustache cup. I thought, why not Santa's beard? I got the cup at Target for 2 or 3 bucks. At Michael's you can pick up paint called Gloss Enamel and you just paint it on. Let it dry for two days and throw it in the oven for a half hour. I will be keeping this one!
Last one I did was monogrammed ornaments. Super easy, can't fail craft. I went to Michael's and bought a four pack of glass ornaments for three bucks. Open up the top and pour in acrylic paint that has been watered down (about half paint and half water). Swirl it around until the entire bulb is covered. Replace the top, and hot glue a piece of marabou (the feathery stuff) around the top. Use a rub-on letter, which can be found in the scrapbook section, and rub on the letter. Choose a cute ribbon to go with it and you are done! This one is for my in-laws. Hope you like it Roberta!
This is Brooklyn's
This is Micah's

A Few of my Favorite Things

So I wanted to share a few of my favorite things, especially around this time of year:

I get pasty during the winter and this stuff helps me with a little extra glow. Plus side, some of them have firming cream in them and it smells nice!
Peppermint Bark! Yum, yum and yum. I haven't had any yet, but that is because I know that once I get it, I will eat too much. Anyone seen the big box they are selling at Costco for just 10 bucks? I had to resist and it was hard!
So I opt for these. They come in a smaller pack and are individually wrapped and Micah loves them, so I always have to share!

I ran into a bunch of "frugal living" blog recently and I am addicted (just a bit). The one called Totally Target is my favorite. I am at Target way too often and if I can save money in the process all the better. I found out about the Little People Nativity being half price and got Cuponk for $2 because of it.
My detergent. I know this sounds a little lame, but I love my detergent. It is the Arm & Hammer Oxiclean Power Gel and it rocks. It gets out stains like no other. If you spot clean with it, it is gone. I even pulled out old baby clothes and got out those gross yellow spit up stains with it. I haven't even mentioned the smell yet. I get people asking me all the time what I use because of its smell. Actually, the other day a friend of mine called because I gave her a shirt and her husband liked the smell of it so much, he had her call me to find out what detergent we used. Seriously, this stuff it great!
Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry sauce=easy and delicious dinner. I am not much of a cook. I am always looking for a short cut. I get this stuff. I cut up a little chicken, carrots, onion, and potatoes and let this simmer (adding chicken stock if needed) and serve it over rice. It is really really good.
Coupons! I have become a coupon cutter and user. I look forward to the Sunday paper and even have a coupon organizer. I never thought I would be the type to do it, but it is so fun to see the amount saved at the bottom of the receipt!
Christmas crafts are so much fun. I will have to post the crafts i just did. I always go for easy. I don't like when it asks for a lot of artistic skill. I can coordinate things just fine, but don't ask me to draw an elephant. I won't be cute! Instead, I made personalized ornaments, reindeer root beer, and Santa's Beard mug. Curious? Don't worry, I will show you later!
These kits are genius! I have to admit that even though I get them with the intentions of doing it with the kids, they are just too little to make a decent house. Shelby and I end up taking over. This year, I think I will buy them the Gingerbread Man Kit from Trader Joe's and let them have at it. I'll have to switch it for real icing though because the stuff they give you is just horrendous! Maybe I should set up this craft in the bathtub...

The Whirlwind Begins!

The kids have been chanting for more Disneyland, so yesterday we went. We go a lot, but most of the time we don't bring a camera because it is easier to travel light. With all the cute Christmas decor, I had to get a few shots.
We went with our friends Luke and Logan. I swear Brooklyn gets the goofiest grin sometimes.
We did Dumbo, which we don't normally do. The kids loved it!
We also got to see Santa and his reindeer. They took over the petting zoo! We had to wait about 25 minutes to see Santa and in that time, you can definitely tell who is on the naughty list and who is on the nice list. Is it possible for a two year old to be on the nice list? I am starting to wonder.

Anyways, what we really came for was the holiday parade. We had to sit and wait patiently, but the kids, I mean kid (Brooklyn fell asleep) loved it.
It was a nice way to kick off December.
After a full day, I headed home and dropped the kids off, then headed to the mall to get more Christmas shopping done. I was spent. I fell asleep halfway through my show (on the couch) and slept through the entire night! Here is to getting more sleep in and getting that shopping done.