Christmas 2010 part 1

The girls in their new Christmas Eve pajamas.

Acting out the nativity. Melissa doubled as the star and the angel. This is her as the star. She makes me laugh!!
Jason worked on Christmas day, so we just had a movie marathon/manicure day, then celebrated Christmas day on the 26th, after 3 hours of church! My girls are champions with their ability to be patient.

Christmas 2010 part 2

Christmas isn't Christmas without some good food! Here's the traditional Danish pastry wreath we have every Christmas morning.

I made the girls this monkey bread on the morning of the 25th. Yum.
And here they are all dressed for church.

Graham Crackers

It's gingerbread house time again! Emily thoroughly enjoyed the candy.

Rachel and Sara hard at work. Sara had to have her water bottle on hand to wash down the sugar.

Ashley and Melissa not wanting a picture taken.

The completed village. From Left to right, Ashley's, Dad's, Melissa's, Rachel's, Sara's, and mine. Sara's roof says "Rachel is my friend". What a fun tradition!

O Christmas Tree

We spent our Thanksgiving in North Carolina with our good friends, the Jorgensens. Sadly, the only picture I took was of Jason taking the kids for a ride in the tractor mower. Perfect weather! No coats needed!

This is the tree we got this year. It's easily 10 feet tall. We went with a Douglas fir this year because the Frasiers were very sad looking. I love Christmas time! So does Sara, apparently. What a goof.

Whistling

While Grandma Parkinson was visiting, Emily taught herself to whistle. She does it all the time now, except when I get out the camera. This is the best recording I've been able to get. Keep in mind--she is only 10 months old!!

Halloween 2010

I love this picture because it captured how hard Melissa worked. She was so determined to get her pumpkin every bit as clean as her dad's. Sara is just singing while she colors.

The finished product.
The costumes were interesting this year. Ashley was originally not going to dress up, because I have an age limit on my kids begging for candy, but due to a church activity she was helping with, she was asked to dress up. So Sara was no longer the Britney of the Chipettes.

She was to be a monkey, and a very cute one at that.

Emily got to be the traditional baby Minnie Mouse. I love recycled costumes.

Sara's Fourth Birthday!

Sara turned four just before Halloween and had a very fun birthday. She still tells me every day what she wants for her birthday, so I guess I should start making a list for next year. Maybe it's a good thing Christmas is close! She did get some fun stuff, though.

Play-doh. Still a favorite of hers.

The very important pillow pet that she has been begging for since the commercials first started. She sings the pillow pet song all day.

Here's my new four year-old with her Winnie the Pooh cake. I ran out of red food coloring, so his shirt is a very pale pink. Sara loved it.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh

I was upstairs when I heard a lot of noise from my children downstairs. This is what I found them doing. They have had so much fun with their Grandma!!

NYC Part 1

Jason and I took advantage of his mom being in town to take a trip alone to NYC. We got fantastic deal on a hotel room on Times Square and just walked everywhere. Here's Jason at Rockefeller Center.

Next to Rockefller Center was the Lego store. Talk about some fun toys! I want the Harry Potter set. This dragon wound it's way all around the store and is entirely made of Legos. So is the city under it.

This was the view from our hotel room. Yes, that is indeed the Empire State Building. Not too shabby.

We woke up early to get to the early session at the Manhattan Temple, so this picture was taken in the dark of the early morning. It's the best I could do. The inside of the temple was so beautiful! So much attention to detail.

The M&M store. Those are all M&M's, and that's only about half of what they have displayed. Yummy.

NYC Part 2

The highlight of our NYC trip was Wicked. On Friday night, we went to the Gershwin Theater box office early to put our names in the ticket lottery. They chose 13 names out of roughly 200 who entered, and those lucky 13 got two front-row tickets to the show for only $26 each. We did not have our names drawn on Friday night, but Saturday, with the odds still very much against us, I had my name drawn! We were sitting right in front of the orchestra pit. What a great show!!!

I had to see the Empire State building and think in my mind "I was looking up. It was the nearest thing to heaven. You were there."

Our last adventure was to go to Central Park West. Sadly, the face of the Natural History museum is being redone, so it's all covered with a sheet printed with what the museum looks like. The rest of the building was very impressive. Too bad I didn't take a picture.

Central Park.

Book of Mormon Reading Challenge

The Book of Mormon Reading Challenge, sponsored by Deseret Book, happened this past summer and I am just now getting around to blogging about it! All three of these girls met the challenge to read the Book of Mormon 15 minutes a day for 60 days. It was a lot of work, but they each earned a $10 gift certificate for Deseret Book and have purchased a really fun looking game with their money. Ashley actually ended up finishing the Book of Mormon for the first time while doing this challenge. I'm so proud of my girls and this great accomplishment! I hope we can do it again next summer.

Ashley

I had to put this picture of Ashley up, too, because she's so beautiful. Happy Birthday, Ashley!

Ashley is 12!!!

I can't believe I am the mother of a twelve year-old! Ashley has been such an adventure in mothering and the older she gets, the more excited I am to see who she becomes. She had a sleep-over with three friends, and of course her sisters. They stayed up until 5 in the morning!!

Instead of a traditional cake with her friends, she wanted her favorite black and white cupcakes.
Opening some of her presents from us.

This was her favorite. A fun moon chair for her bedroom.

Chocolate cheesecake. Yum.

Crawling!

Emily is now dangerously mobile. Trouble!!!

Our New Ride

Jason and I have wanted a Sienna for a long time, and we finally got one! We traded in the truck and got this nice 8 passenger Toyota. We will be selling our old van and using that money to buy a little sedan. Both purchases will save us lots of gas money, and the Toyota seats 8, so now we have a little more room to expand. The girls love pushing the magic button that closes the sliding doors, the sliding door windows can be opened, and best of all--the A/C works! We love our new van!!!

School Has Begun

Another year of school is here. This year, I have three girls in three different schools. Rachel started 2nd grade in elementary school...

... Melissa is in the 4th grade at intermediate school...
...and Ashley started 6th grade--middle school! We had a crazy first day with a mess up at Ashley's bus stop that has yet to be resolved. They have her walking 1/3 of a mile on narrow streets with no sidewalks during hospital rush hour traffic and the bus went to the wrong spot to pick them up, so she ended up missing it. With some fights with the transportation department, we may get this fixed eventually.

What I Did Today

This is only a very small amount of the tomatoes and jalapenos I have picked from my garden so far. I spent 6 hours in my garden yesterday finding all my tomatoes under a pile of weeds because we were out of town and they got out of control!

I enlisted Ashley in the preservation process. She was the official tomato squisher. I love my Kitchen Aid!!!

Put the sauce on to simmer.

While it was simmering, I mowed the lawn and found a beautiful praying mantis.

Then I finished all my tomato products--6 pints of stewed tomatoes and four pints of sauce. Not a bad day's work with a teething baby.