My big 4 year old

Vincent turned four today! He had some pancakes for breakfast (I made breakfast for dinner last night) and after we took the girls to school, he came home and had second breakfast. (I think he's a hobbit.) He has been playing nicely all day with cars, puzzles, and his little toy nerf gun.

He was a little sad the little boy who normally comes over to play on Tuesdays stayed with his mom today.

He is full of smiles and hugs and giggles today!

More parties

It seems like so long since I blogged, but I guess it's just been a couple of days.... Yes, I'm a compulsive blogger. I like to keep a record of what goes on here and hopefully at least some of the people who follow my blog like to read/see what we are up to.

*I'm waiting for some dough to rise so I can make some yummy cinnamon rolls. A friend said cinnamon rolls sounded good, so I'm making some partially for her, but mostly for me because after she said that, I wanted some! I love cinnamon rolls. The plan was to make a recipe that said they were overnight rolls, but to make the dough, they wanted me to wait for a half hour and then two hours before rolling the dough out. I put the bowl with plastic on top in a sink full of warm water and hopefully they'll be ready sooner. Even in the morning they are supposed to rise again after coming out of the fridge for another hour. I don't think this is my kind of recipe. It takes too long! At least I doubled the recipe so I'll have more cinnamon rolls for the work I'm doing... (And I'm planning on taking some to a few people tomorrow. =)

After Abby's birthday party on Wednesday night, I was in charge of teaching preschool on Thursday morning which was for the letter P and the number 16 and it was the day to celebrate Vincent's birthday with his friends since his birthday is Tuesday. A few friends brought him toys that were perfect for him.

One gave him this fun Lightening McQueen car that has a light when you push a button and makes noise. He loved it.
Another friend really made his day when he gave him this nerf gun. He was asking us for one of these. (One projectile is lost already.)
For our preschool, we did puzzles, colored pictures with the letter and number and a dot to dot penguin that had letters up to P to trace (I found them all online and put them onto one page). Then we made pretzels. I had them help me make the dough, then they each got a placemat at the table with some flour, and rolled their dough into snakes so we could bake them. They really enjoyed that. While the pretzels baked the boys played with planes that had propellers and pilots and one even had passengers and then we read a book about pajamas. We ate the pretzels with pink punch and cake pops after singing to Vincent. It was fun.

After school on Friday Elizabeth started making her pinata for her birthday party in a few weeks. She is so prepared and wants to get everything ready. She has games she planned out weeks ago and the invites ready to give to her friends that I printed in black and white and she colored. She wanted to have a Mario party, so she is making a chain chomp pinata.

I took the two bigger girls to the school movie night to watch Kung Fu Panda II. It was fun. Then I sent Andy to the store to get groceries for the week with a just the essentials list.

Abby is enjoying opening more presents from aunts and uncles a little bit at a time. I think she likes the attention.
Saturday night was another birthday for one of our nephews. He is three now. His mom makes the coolest cakes. The Calliou toy is on top, but there is a graham cracker road with oreos and a bunch of sprinkles. She also made him a felt party hat with his name on it and they even had an ice cream cake. It was nice to spend time with family.

Sunday at church I went to the beginning of primary to see what Vincent would do when they sang to him for his birthday. He isn't shy. It was fun.

Sunday night we had more cake for a nephew on the other side who turned five. We are so spoiled by so many parties where we are able to see our family and watch our nieces and nephews grow. I love it. On to a fun week. My list is a little shorter this week. Yea!

Abby's Birthday Party

Abby had a fun day today. This series of pictures is her trying to put these blocks together this morning. (I found that birthday shirt at JCPenney's when Olivia was little. The birthday shirt later on was on clearance last year and I had to buy it.)
I love the little face Abby makes in the last picture when she figured out how the blocks fit.She woke up to help me take the girls to school, played for a bit, and then took a super long nap while I decorated her cake, made dinner, cleaned house, started laundry, and a bunch more things. She woke up at the perfect time too. One of Vincent's friends came over to play for a little while and they kept busy playing while I did some of those things.

We picked up the girls from school and then dropped off Vincent's buddy before heading home to do more things on my list (missionary dinner calendar, preschool printing, invites for the Elizabeth/Vincent family party, and more) and I left the girls in charge of decorating the family room for Abby's party tonight. Vincent tore down a bunch of streamers and balloons Elizabeth taped up, so he took a long time out on his bed until it was time for dinner.
This is what it looked like before Vincent messed with the streamers. Pretty nice, right?This is what we ended up with. Elizabeth was (rightly) frustrated and kind of just piled them on.Olivia and one of her friends drew these pictures today at school. She hung them up on the wall.(The picture of the face was from a few weeks ago.) Abby took a nap until the party started, so she was nice and happy.
We ate our pizza spaghetti dinner with garlic toast made from leftover hamburger buns. The plates were pretty much wiped clean. I love when they enjoy the dinners I make!
Our game night buddies came over for the party, along with a family from church, both sets of grandparents, and Torrie (who got down with work early tonight. Yea!)

My dad let Vincent try his watch on. I think I like handcuffed Vincent. ;)
He looked like this soon after the handcuffs because he decided to grab Abby's maracas from her hands very roughly (and we didn't let him get away with it.)

Do you like how the shirt he picked to wear today says, "My mom rocks". Me too.

Elizabeth was the mediator for the little girls. Here is the cake I made and decorated. I got a cake decorating kit for Christmas and wanted to try it out. I think it worked pretty good. I need to practice frosting penmanship, but other than that, I think I did pretty good for my first try with this set.Abby enjoyed the polka dot cake. I ran out of red food coloring and forgot to buy more, so blueish green it was. I made cake pops in my cake pop maker and then baked them into the cake to make polka dots inside. (I'm using the rest of the cake pops tomorrow for Vincent's preschool birthday party.) I wanted it to be strawberry cake with red dots inside.

Abby liked when everyone was singing to her. She didn't blow out the candle, but she did swipe a little frosting from the edge.
Here she is having her cake and eating it too.
Abby took so long opening up her first present. She kept wanting to put the tissue paper back in the bag. She's a cleaning girl. My mom made her this neat pillowcase with her name on it and included a new pair of pink tights. We can always use more tights at our house!

After she opened the present, she started cleaning up the tissue paper.

Andy's parents picked out this fun bug shape sorter that teaches colors, numbers, and songs. When Abby pushes the ladybug in the center, the shapes all pop back out, but they are attached with string, so they won't get lost. We bought her this cat toy that rolls around and talks and makes kids chase it. It's a learning toy too.Abby loved the maracas that we found in the dollar section at Target. Elizabeth told Santa in her letter to him that Abby wanted maracas, but he must have forgotten. Elizabeth picked out a fabric flower for Abby and Olivia picked a little drum. I found a little xylophone to go with the musical set that I pretended came from Vincent.

We sure love this little girl!

Abby is ONE!

Abby is one today. How did that year go by so quickly?

Here she is a year ago.

She was our smallest baby at 7 #, 3 oz. Look at her now! She's still kind of small, but that just makes the clothes last longer. We'll see what she weighs next week when she goes to the new doctor. She's got a bunch of teeth, she crawls around and is into everything (but not walking yet!), and is so much fun!Olivia is the most excited that Abby is having a birthday, I think. She was telling everyone that in ___ days is Abby's birthday. We sure love this little girl, even though she gets into toys, food, and the garbage when the bathroom door is left open.

We Should Be Dancing!

Sunday morning the kids were all dressed and ready to go early, so while I put on Abby's shoes, I took some pictures of her (where she was taking her shoes off and not looking at me....the shoes stayed home.)

Olivia sat down and asked me to take her picture too. She's 6 1/2 now.

She'll be the only half in our list of ages after all these birthdays in the next week and a half. Elizabeth will be 9, Vincent will be 4, and Abby is turning 1.

The kids wanted to dance before church, so they turned on the music and made Abby join them. She liked it. Vincent came over to join the fun too.Sunday night at Andy's parent's house they put on a show for us too. They like performing for us.

Monday the kids had another day off (this one was scheduled, but it made a five day weekend with Thursday and Friday as snow days, in addition to the two hour delay on Wednesday.) We really relaxed all morning. Well, at least I did. I guess I do like having these grown up girls home during the day. I got up to change Abby's diaper and then went back to bed and they took care of everything. After I got up for real, I showered, made cookies, dinner (to go in the fridge for later), boiled eggs, cleaned the kitchen, started some laundry, made lunch, folded some laundry, and watched some tv on the computer. It was nice (and much more relaxing than that paragraph sounds.) When Andy got home we ate dinner, had FHE, put the kids to bed, and Andy played with Legos while I sewed.

Tuesday I had to really get to business! I made my list of all the stuff I needed to do this week and it always seems like too much. It probably is. I have to write it all down though or it's running around my head over and over. I like crossing things off the list when they are done too. Vincent played with a buddy here in the morning while Abby napped and then we went on some errands (and crossed four things off our list!) before picking the girls up at school and then we picked up a few more friends because their mom slipped on the ice Monday night and got some major bruising and needed to rest. We were going to take them home before going to the school's McTeacher night, but Andy thought it'd be okay to take them with us too (and it was.) I wondered how many people thought all six of these kids were ours, but most everyone knows who they belong to because pretty much everyone there was from the school. I don't know how I'd manage a 10, almost 9, 6 1/2, almost 4, 3, and 1 year old. I guess it's possible...

We hovered while Andy ordered dinner and got a table. A teacher swiped another chair or two for us, but Andy was still standing and Vincent and Rory shared a seat. Olivia's old speech teacher took this picture for me (She asked and I don't say no.)
Dinner went well and everyone ate all the food. Andy eventually got a seat just after he finished his burger, but I'm sure it was nice to sit down.

They were so busy! Having the teachers help at McDonald's brought in nearly a thousand dollars to our PTA last year, so I'm excited to see if we can top that this year. It's a great fundraiser because pretty much everyone can afford McDonald's, even if it's just dessert or splitting apple pies or something. Some schools have Teacher Night at restaurants like Applebees or Famous Daves, but I think this one is best.

I dropped our friends off at home and Andy took Elizabeth to Jujitsu (we had two cars for all those kids anyway). Then I read to the rest of the kids, cut Vincent's hair, and the kids had a bath before Elizabeth got home. Then I ditched them all and went to Kohl's. I love Kohl's. I found some new jeans for me that were on sale and a size smaller (hooray!) My old jeans were all worn out and I needed new ones.

Oh, I made Abby's birthday cake too. I can hardly wait to show it to you (you know, if it's not a total disaster...)

love and service

The ministry of Christ is truly one of love.

In this new compassionate service calling, I have seen so much love that others have for each other and how willing they are to help and lift each other when they need help.

Just today I passed around a sign up to help someone who hurt her back with her kids (a 4 year old and a newborn) and was thinking the worst case scenario that I might HAVE to do it all, but was overwhelmed with how awesome the sisters in our ward are. Out of the 14 things on the list, only two were left and I think we can figure that out.

What a wonderful plan to assist each other in the gospel.

The former compassionate service leader told me I would be surprised with how many people call and ask to help or just tell me that they are going to do something (like bring potatoes to funerals-luckily, I haven't had to be in charge of any of those yet!) I really am completely surprised by it every time.

Service:

Is it convenient? No, not usually.

Will it be easy? No, most of the time it will be hard.

Will it fit into the busy schedule? Maybe or maybe not, but can the schedule shift around? Yep. Most of the time it can give a little here and there.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. Uh-huh. Yes, sirree. Of Course!

We truly are blessed by giving service to others and it helps us to love those we serve even more.

Showering

Today was the day of showers. (No, not the ones in the bathroom. I prefer to keep bathroom and bedroom habits private. You are welcome.)
Torrie had a baby shower this morning that Shirley threw for her at her house with yummy croissant sandwiches and cake pops that Suzie made. The snow started to melt a bit today, so it was nice that the roads cooperated enough to let the guests come and visit.
Torrie and Brad are having a baby girl the beginning of March and plan to name her Reagan.
I was super excited for Torrie to open up the gift I gave her because I made a ruffle skirt that I think is just adorable for Reagan (and one for Abby as a test. =) Here is Torrie with the outfit I gave her.I found the cute lacy onsie and pink socks at Gap before Christmas on super clearance and they matched the polka dot fabric (that I found at Goodwill in a roll for cheap and still have a bunch more of!) perfectly.
The shower was fun, although we were sad that Sara couldn't come down from Cheney due to the weather being so icy until the day of the shower. We missed you, Sara!

Here is a close up of the ruffle skirt. I made the elastic in the back kind of big and then tied it in a knot so it can be adjusted to however big the baby is (or so she can wear it longer).

Here is Abby trying her skirt out. I know her outfit doesn't 'go' with the skirt. I just had to see it on her when I finished! She didn't want to pay much attention to me.

Saturday night we went to the baby shower for Torrie and Reagan at the ballet studio. Boy, was she spoiled! It is great though! They love her there. She's a teacher there and has been taking ballet (and other dance classes there) since she was seven (I heard the owner say tonight).

Since I didn't really need to watch her open presents, I organized the gifts behind Shirley and Torrie. Shirley wrote them all down and I folded up the bags and tissue paper and consolidated the fun outfits, towels, blankets, toys, books, and more into big bags and bathtubs. I am pretty sure this baby will be well clothed. (She would have been even without showers, I'm sure!)

A lady took my camera and took some pictures of Torrie opening gifts and snapped one of me while she was at it.

After the showers, Elizabeth and Olivia came with me to the grocery store. Fun stuff around here.

Craft Room Organization

I have been reorganizing my craft room a little here and there since I put Christmas away andAndy built the new shelf that Santa brought me (I asked for it.) I am not that into cutecontainers that cost more than the crafting supplies that I put into them, so the boxes are basicand mostly unchanged. I'm sure I could cover my boxes with cute paper or fabric, but then itwould take away precious crafting time. (That's my philosophy.) Also, I wanted a big shelf toFILL, not to decorate, so it's mostly functional and gets all the crafting supplies (and the otherthings) off the floor and out of my way. I guess everyone has their own system. My craft room isalso gift supply central, food storage, decorating totes, and more.
Here is the whole shelf. I know, it's packed....
I'll start at the bottom. This shelf has all my gift supplies. I like to buy things when they are on sale and then save them for when we have gifts to give, whether it's for nieces and nephews or other kid's birthday parties or baby showers. I don't like having to run to the store every time we have a party to go to and buying something at full price. (But we DO like to go to pretty much every party we are invited to. We are party goers!) The basket holds kid toys and the bags have some baby things.
This shelf is food, obviously. I made these can rotators out of old cardboard pop cartons. My in laws graciously saved them for me and I spray painted them after cutting out a rectangle in the back of them.
Here's an extra picture of my FREE can rotator. (And yes, I do use Cream of Chicken Soup. It's great.)

This shelf has some of my couponing stash. Crackers, cereal, and some granola bars along with a box of fleece, and my box of fabric that I use often to make aprons and other crafts.

The red basket on this shelf holds yarn, with some unfinished projects, batting, stuffing, and some fabric that is too big for the dresser that holds the other fabric. Oh, and my Indiana Jones action figure. (I had to have him. He's so much more manly than the Ken doll.)

The top shelf holds the pans I use for taking dinners to people, plastic cake containers so I can cover homemade cakes, all my sprays, and some extra pink party cups and plates and napkins (ready for Abby's birthday this week).

Across the room is this shelf that used to have sliding cupboard doors. It was stuffed full of kid art supplies, but I took everything down and rearranged things and got rid of some of the big plastic things that held little beads and markers to consolidate them much better.

The top shelf here is school supplies with my old backpack (from elementary school) full of extra -but used- coloring books.

The middle shelf has some games, jewelry making stuff, paint, and stamps. (These are things they REALLY need permission to use!)

The bottom shelf has more games (they aren't on the same shelf because this built in cupboard is in the corner above my sewing table), the bag has paper, scissors, and stickers (with more in the Tinkerbell box). The right edge holds iron bead supplies and markers with the iron bead boards on top.

In my imagination, I painted this cupboard and made cute little signs saying what goes where and it was adorable. In reality, that would mean extra work and extra time with the supplies someplace that kids can reach them. I voted the easy way. Someday I'll make it pretty.

Here is how I organize my scrapbooking stuff. We bought these big drawer sets when we were first married to use as drawers in our kitchen and since then, I've claimed them as craft storage. The top shelf is missing because I just organized what was in there to use to help me scrapbook. More on that in a minute.

The accordian folders hold cardstock and pretty 8 1/2 x 11 paper. The binders are kid artwork that I want to save. The first drawer space has my most used tools, second drawer has party supplies and some scrapbook stuff, the third drawer has my tape gun and punched out shapes. The next drawer has a set of cool scissors and old calendars (with all that we ever do written out on them. I use the calendars as reference when I scrapbook.) And the bottom drawer has old negatives and newspapers.

Under the window (with the lace curtain that was there when we moved in... and the pink foam insulation that we had leftover after we put it up in the family room to help block out the sun from my papers and insulate this room a little more) is the rest of my paper, a binder with stickers, and a binder with paper borders and journaling scraps, and my cutter.

This is how I organize my paper stuff. I save invitations from everything during the year so I can remember just what happened and when and where and all the details (and maybe put the invite in the book) along with cards people gave us (or made us) and big school pictures, and everything else you could think of. I arranged it all by date last week and lined them up so they will match up with the pictures I have lined up below. (Throughout the year, I lay the papers on top of each other in the top plastic drawer so they are mostly in order when I have to do this part.) This drawer holds 2011 papers.

This is the box with pictures from 2011. I order pictures from Winkflash and they print the pictures with the name of the file on the back of the picture and because my pictures are named with the date, it makes filing them to scrapbook that much easier (example: 2011_1225(003) would be December 25, 2011 and the third good picture of the day). After I scrapbook, the leftover pictures go back in the file envelope to be saved in the 'extra pictures' box and the leftover paper stuff gets thrown away or put in our small card saving boxes that each of us have.

The white drawer set is full of miscellaneous crafting stuff that I use for other things. Glue, staple gun, paint and wood stuff, etc. The blue basket holds fabric scraps.

I am considering just doing photo books, but I really do like having scrapbooks....

This system seems to work for me. What is your system?

Snow Day

Today school was cancelled, but fun was not.
Vincent had preschool with our friends who live down the road (the other moms have the boys Vincent's age as their oldest kid and there are just a few of us, so two of the three boys came to the other boy's house.) The parents down the road just moved here from Michigan last spring so they aren't too worried about snow. =)
We walked Vincent over with all our snow gear and Abby strapped to me in her snowsuit. While walking, I was thinking about what to do with the big girls and decided that on our way back it would be fun to stop by a friend's house and pick up her girls who are the same ages as mine to play. I called her to see what they were up to and then called another friend who was also on the way home and picked up her girls too.
As soon as we got home, Abby went down for her morning nap and didn't wake up until one of the moms came to pick all four extra girls up (she met the other girls' dad halfway).
The girls had a great time. They invited our new neighbor girl to play too. They were building a snow fort. Olivia was inside playing with most of the girls just before this and stayed in to help me get the hot cocoa ready.
Vincent came back awhile later. Work for many in our area was cancelled due to the roads and freezing rain, so Ben's dad was able to help and he pulled all the little boys home. Vincent loved it! (He's in the orange coat right in the front.) Ben's mom called me and told me Vincent wanted me to come and see him pull up in front of the house which is why I was able to get this picture. (I'm so glad I did!)
This is the winter gear strewn by the door when the kids were eating macaroni and cheese with berry blue kool aid for lunch. Just a few things...And a post lunch game of Twister before my friend came to pick them up.
The sister missionaries came to visit us today and pulled our kids over to a neighbor house so they could visit them. The plan was for Elizabeth to pull Olivia and Vincent back, but the girls left Vincent there eating chocolate and playing with their toys. (The neighbors are middle aged without kids at home, and we know them well.) We have sister missionaries from San Diego and Tonga. They are feeling the cold, to say the least!

Vincent, Olivia, and Elizabeth on our sled.

These kids should go right to sleep tonight!

What's for dinner?

Look at what I made for dinner tonight. They were so good that we ate them all! If you want to know how I made them, check out my food blog.

Elizabeth took the pictures for me. I had to sneak the very last one out in a baggie to share with my walking buddy so she could try them. The recipe made 56 of these little cheese filled raviolis.

This is what Abby ate. She loves pasta! I had no idea it was so easy (but time consuming-like two hours for all this) it was to make pasta! It would take less time if I just cut them up like regular noodles.

It was a fun experiment that I will definitely do again. Next time I think I'll make lasagna noodles like the mom of a friend suggested to me on facebook. I think I have just the tool to cut them a little curvy too!

I love kitchen tools!