Fun Christmas books

Here is one of my favorite Christmas books. It has a great message.

I love Christmas books here are some of the ones that I use to read to my class.

Here is the Christmas book I am reading now for my book club. I would recommend it.

A few more traditions

Another tradition that we started a few years ago was to have the kids make ornaments. Last year we did ball ornaments with paint, this year we did beaded ornaments. It was fun and easy. Now Olivia wants to make a few more to give to her friends at school.

We went to our neighbor's house yesterday for family night and made gingerbread houses. We try to make these every year. I think this is one of Olivia and Garrett's favorite thing to do. It turned out pretty cute.

Christmas Lights

Lights at Thanksgiving Point

We went to Thanksgiving point to see the lights. We thought it would be fun to go on a wagon ride pulled by the horses. It was so much fun. We were the only ones on the wagon. It was really nice. It was a little cold but we were bundled up and brought extra blankets. If you are going to go and see the lights I would recommend doing this.
It is a different experience see the lights and the lights are beautiful.

Down 30

So I finally reached my goal of losing 30 pounds. It has only taken me 7 months. So what do I want to do celebrate? I want to go and eat. Ah... A never ending battle. Plus there is temptation everywhere and I love desserts especially chocolaty desserts and cheesecake and ice cream and ...

But I am going to try and stay healthy and continue to lose weight. Now that I am down 30 pounds I can go and look for a new camera. That was my reward that I was working for and when Jere and I each lose an additional 20 pounds we are going to reward ourselves with a trip to Hawaii!!
(I know the reward should just be that we are healthier but sometimes that is just not a good enough motivator because did I mention I love DESSERTS!)

Look at these guys!

I went to take a picture of Garrett. Devin had to run in and say cheese. Can you believe Garrett is 5 and Devin is only 1????

Round and Round the Christmas Tree

Decorating the tree. The kids wanted to do this the day we got back from Vegas. It didn't happen until Tuesday though. They were so excited. Garrett keeps asking every day if Christmas is tomorrow.




I wanted to take some pictures so Devin came and sat down by the tree and kept saying "Cheese"





I love this picture. I don't have many picture with all three kids looking at the camera and looking happy.
All three kids got to put on the star.


Devin was so happy about the tree. He keeps pointing to the tree and saying "ball" for all of the round ball ornaments. He has also eaten some candy canes.
I know this is a lot of pictures, but I took 66 I was having a hard time choosing. There were so many cute pictures. We love Christmas.

Frozen Dinners

Yesterday after I got home from work, I had something in the crock pot going for dinner. I decided that since today was a calm day and December can get crazy sometimes that I would go ahead and make dinners that could be frozen. I made six different dinners and I made 2 of each. So that is 12 dinners that I made last night.(I know I am slightly crazy) I had one more dinner that I was going to do last night but didn't get it done. So I will do it tonight. So then we should be set for dinner for a while. I love having homemade frozen dinners in the freezer. It is so nice and easy the day you are going to cook the dinner.

I made Lasagna, Chili, Chicken Enchiladas, Cheesy Shells, Chicken Tetrazinni, and Cavitini. Tonight I am going to make Chicken pot pie. I will make two pies and freeze one.

It was a little crazy yesterday making all of this. My husband was a good sport when he got home and helped me clean up the mess.

Christmas Bonus

Thanks YouTube!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Devin was his usual self. Notice how he is standing? He really doesn't like sitting down to eat. And yes, that's sparkling apple cider.

For the last month, Olivia has been asking for a turkey drumstick on Thanksgiving dinner.

Garrett had his traditional fancy dinner of bread rolls, cheese sticks, and bananas.

And what better way to end the evening than round after round of Mario Cart Wii!

Thank You Pies

I love this time of year because it helps us to remember to show gratitude. So last night for family home evening we shared the the story of the Thank You Pie. Then afterwards, we took some pies that we had baked and gave them to the kids' church teachers as a thank you gift for teaching them. As we were talking about being thankful for others we got to color a pie and talk about the people in our lives that we are thankful for. I really enjoy Family Home Evening.
Thank you Pie Story
Pie Coloring Page

Then after we had delivered all the pies we came home and ate a chocolate pie for a treat.



Speaking of pies, did you know that at the first Thanksgiving they did not have pie, not even pumpkin pie? I had my classes do a Thanksgiving Webquest to learn about the first Thanksgiving. It was a really informative site. Check it out:

Thanksgiving Webquest

Reading about the the first Thanksgiving makes me grateful for living in this beautiful country where we have religious freedom and other freedoms. That is why they came here because they wanted to worship God freely and not how the king dictated.

Can't Leave him alone for a Minute

I was only gone a minute and came back to find this mess. And when Garrett sees him doing it what you think he does he joins in. BOYS!!!

Little Pilgrims

On Friday, Garrett was in a Thanksgiving skit at school and Olivia was in a Thanksgiving performance. Don't they make cute pilgrims.

Hopefully I will get a video clip on here but I can't find the wire.

Thanksgiving FHE

For Family home evening last week we made apple turkey and each feather(dum dum sucker) that they stuck into the apple we said something we were Thankful for. It was a fun lesson.



Then for our treat, we took the apples, and some bananas and marshmellows and we dipped them into melted chocolate chip and melted peanut butter chips. It was a fun family night. Garrett decided that with graham crackers you could take the chocolate and marshmallows and make s'mores like at Grandma Doolittle's house.

Book Club

I joined a book club. It was my turn to host the group at my house this month. I made homemade blackberry cobbler for the treat and chocolate chip cookies. We were discussing the book "A Book of A Thousand Days" by Shannon Hale. I really enjoy her books. I like books based on a fairy tales.


We started at 7pm. My kids and husband were banished to downstairs with the Wii. There were 12 people that came. It was fun to talk about the book, it was fun not to talk about the book, too. It was fun just to laugh.

About half the group left at 9 and the other half stayed until 11 pm. It was so fun to hang out with friends. I saw one of the lady's husband at the school today and he asked, "So did you read the entire book last night?"

Scary Family

We had the church Halloween party a couple of weeks ago. We got our picture taken while there. They just sent us the picture. I think it turned out really cute. I really love the one Garrett he looks so happy.