Tree skirt

So the year that I was pregnant with Ethan, or the year he was born I saw in one of those parenting magazines where some one had a tree skirt that every year they would paint their kids hands and add the hand print to the tree skirt. I loved this idea and started it that first year with Ethan. I have done it every year and added each kid as they were born. They love this tradition to because every year when we get it out they measure to see how much their hands have grown from last year, and how much since they were a baby. Last year my skirt was looking pretty ragged because the one I started with was pretty cheep, and I couldn't wash it or the paint would come off.... SOOOO I had this great idea! I went and bought this great big piece of white felt, and giant pieces of red and green. Then I chopped up my old skirt. I cut out all those tiny hands, and traced them onto the red and green felt and stitched each name and year on each hand. I hot glued them on to the skirt. (yeah hot glue don't laugh! It was just to hold them still so I could stitch around them with out having to pin a million pins in it!) I stitched them  all on then I stitched a little green and red around the edge. Now every year I just need to add their new little hands. I have room for about 2 more years then we will start a new row! I love it it looks better then my old one and brings me happiness when I look at it! That and lots of memories of little babies and growing kids!

In this picture you can see a foot print. The year Hayden and Ruth were babies they were so little they wouldn't flatten their hands out for a hand print so we did foot prints for them that first year.

Christmas Tree hunting...

The weather was perfect for getting a Christmas tree today. We usually go the first weekend in December but since we had sick kids Thanksgiving and the day after we couldn't go to Prineville like we had planned so we thought we would go today since the weather was nice.  We love this tree farm. They are cheep and they have lots and lots of huge ones and that is what we like! BIG!

Ruth had a BLAST! She wanted to play in the mud more but mean mommy wouldn't let her!  She was really good for pictures though which is not normally the case! She would stay put long enough to get some good ones! (Yes I made these shirts for the girls. I also sold 4 at the bazaar!)

Sweet Amelia. I let her get her picture done first since she is the middle kid and always ends up going in the middle (some times we go youngest to oldest sometimes we go oldest to youngest....)

Hayden cute as usual. She only wanted to do silly face pictures but I lucked out with this one!

Love my baby Ruth! She was very smiley and fun today!  She loved doing the silly face pictures too.

Brock I have a hard time getting a NORMAL smile out of, he gives me lots of FAKE smiles but I finally got ONE! I love this smile too!

Ethan has a hard time doing a normal smile to... they are often fake. So this was as good as it gets. It is crazy seeing how big he has gotten. He is almost as tall as me.  I am sure he will pass me up this year!

 

Their favorite silly face one!

Here they are actually looking for and cutting down our tree. The others I took mostly because I haven't gotten around to getting family pictures scheduled and wanted something to maybe send out a Christmas card. I love how happy Ruth is in this picture though!

Ethan helping Amelia cut down the girls tree. Yes the girls and the boys have their own trees. Every year I tell them that if they get their room clean before it is time to go get our tree they can have one in their room. They also have to keep their room clean the entire time they have their tree or I take them down. They love it and so do I!

Ruth loved being out in nature and trying to get dirty and looking for pretty trees... we will see what she  thinks of having a tree in our house tomorrow... she already LOVES all the other decorations I have up! Lets just say all the non-breakable things will be on the lower 4 feet. I just know she will get something over there that will help her reach higher then she is tall.

Turkey Shirts

Yeah I made these turkey shirts.  I made one for Amelia too, but she left for school before I got pictures!

Hayden's 5th Birthday!!!

Hayden with her ice cream cake!!! She loved it and it was yummy! She chose cheese stuffed shells for dinner.

From us she got a kids V tech camera. Ethan has had one for years and it is kid proof and kid friendly. She has been asking for one for a while. So she got the pink and purple one! I also got her a little bracelet, and hair clip from the bazaar.

Grandma and Grandpa got her a Dora coloring book and a box with crafty things in it. She calls it her treasure chest. It is sparkly and has a horse on it so of course she loves it!

Emily's Wedding and Vegas

My little sister Emily was getting married the 29th of October and she lives in Las Vegas. So Larry and I bought tickets to go down for the weekend. It was a nice little get away for just the 2 of us. My kids wanted to go but lets get real... NOT a place for kids! Plus who can afford to fly with 5 kids? It was tight just for the 2 of us to go. But so so glad that we went! Luckily I baby sat a bunch this month so we had plenty of spending money. (We don't gamble, don't drink, don't go to dance clubs so it was mostly site seeing and eating which makes it fairly cheep!) Oh but I do have to say I did "WIN" $20. We were walking up a broken escalator and I found a $20 bill! It was out on the street so there was no way to turn it in to a lost and found so it was MINE! Sweet!

These are some cool statues at the Luxor. I was going to take a bunch of pictures of the cool buildings but my batteries were going low and then died while I was taking pictures at the wedding so there are about 8 pictures of our trip! Unfortunately some of what I saw is burned into my brain and I would like to erase those pictures!!!

Here is my beautiful sister Emily on her wedding day. She really is pretty you have to admit that. They got married in the Little Chapel of the West. I hadn't ever been to a weeding like it, it was short, but nice. I didn't get any pictures of her with her husband because again my batteries died. She also has a new step daughter who is so cute! I love her hair. She just turned 11 so she is right between my boys in age. Her and my neice Johnnie hit it off right away! I had lots of fun hanging out with Johnnie and my parents while we were there. There was lots of good food, laughing, and good times. We went on the Roller Coaster at New York New York and had lots of fun walking the streets. My only regret was NOT buying these shoes I saw and TOTALLY LOVED!!! I am very happy for my sister who found some one who makes her so happy! I hope they have a very happy life together!!!

Hopefully I will get some pictures of my crafts for the bazaar and blog about it after wards, but set up starts tomorrow so if I thought I was busy the last few weeks it just gets better from here. But this is the end result and I just pray it is successful! It is always lots of fun though so I am looking forward to it!

Hayden's 5th Birthday

So it isn't actually Hayden's birthday yet... but it is this coming Thursday. Which also happens to be in the middle of the bazaar. So we celebrated with friends Saturday. It was a lot of fun. Hayden planned most of it I hardly did anything. It was  a fairy party. They played Fairy Fairy Troll. (Duck Duck Goose)

This is a couple pictures of a game Hayden made up. It is fairy's get chased by the Alligators. All the girls were fairies, and would fly around and the boys were the alligators and had to chomp them. If you got chomped you were out, last one in was the winner. (I gave the winner of each round a piece of Halloween Candy)

Hayden "wanted" cake pops. (I say "wanted" because I kind of talked her into them. Mostly because I had been wanting to make some and I wanted to make some for the bazaar and I knew I would have enough left over I could sell them at the bazaar... You know just multitasking) They were yummy though and she got to help make them!

Oh she also didn't want ice cream (which shocked me because she LOVES ice cream) But I think the thought of getting to choose what ever you want made her think that this was the chance to get some Dora Popcycles! (Since I always say no to those things they are a total rip off! But that is what she wanted for her birthday party so that is what she got!) She will be having Ice Cream cake on her birthday. (Another thing to make my life easier during bazaar week. Although she LOVES that part too!!!)

Claire got her this play dough set which she spent the rest of her day painting and doing play dough.

Halloween

Halloween day my kids didn't have school. It was an inservice day. So I thought it would be fun to throw a Halloween party for the kids. I have ALWAYS wanted to do this and never thought we had a good time to do it between school and other activities that fill up the time. So since we had the whole day off I went for it. We played musical "chairs" it was really on papers.

Classic eat donuts from a string game!

We also played pin the face on the jack o lantern, and we had lunch I wish I had taken pictures of it. I made "mummies" (hot dogs wrapped like mummies), Brains, (jello mold), Lips and teeth (apple slices with mini marshmallows between two slices) and bones, (yogurt covered pretzels) I also made Skeleton cupcakes, and pumpkin rice krispy treats. It was all a lot of fun. Just don't ask my kids if mom will ever do this for them again.... I typically like to share the fun stuff we do but let me just say the party was FUN! But getting my kids to get ready or clean up after the party was NOT so I told them I may never do it again. Mostly because I had done all the prep work, went to Vegas and came home the day before, and needed to get a ton of other stuff done for the bazaar... Not my favorite Halloween, but the party part was a lot of fun. I probably will do it again, just not the day after I get home from a trip out of town.

I had a hard time getting excited about Halloween this year because we couldn't decide on costumes I really liked that were going to take little to NO effort on my part, like I said, I went to Vegas and I am getting ready for the bazaar that is literally days away! Finally I needed a last minute idea for Brock the week before for a party and I told him I could wrap him in TP and he could be a mummy or I would cut a sheet and he could be a ghost. All the kids loved his ghost costume so much we all were ghosts. It was super fast and easy for me so away we went! Even Ruth loved it! She didn't want to take it off and wanted to wear it every day after I had cut them up. Some times it was ALL she wanted to wear. It was kind of funny watching a tiny person run around with nothing but a tiny sheet on! So cute!!!

Pumkin Carving

We have a tradition of carving our pumpkins the Family Home Evening before Halloween. (We have our FHE on Sunday because I never know when Larry will be home Monday night and it is more important to me that we are all here then we do it on Monday...) Anyway we carved our pumpkins Sunday the day before Halloween. The kids had a great time. Ruth loved it!!!

Here is Hayden with her pumpkin. She wanted triangle eyes and a BOO mouth!

Ethan's attempt at a Voldimort pumpkin...

Amelia is all about eyelashes. Pretty cute!

Larry and I had just gotten back from Las Vegas. I will post on that later. My little sister got married on the 29th and so we flew out to be there. It was a very quick trip!