Favorite Christmas Memories

We always make a Gingerbread house. We love this tradition. We go to Win-Co and look at all the eye candy and each person picks 3 candies for a total of 12 delicious dandies.

This year we used the chocolate-covered sunflower seeds as our Christmas "lights". So cute!

Jacob's add in was this gummy bear rappelling off our house.


We had some snow in the middle of December and it happened on a saturday so i ran to target and bought our very first sled. how could we live this long without one, kind neighbors who let us borrow one. no more, we are proud owners of the Avalanche Mover 2000.


on Chirstmas Eve, our children beg us to open the gift they bought for each other. we use this as a motivator tool to clean the house from top to bottom. numerous times during the day, you can hear "is it time yet?" to which we answer, nope, more cleaning ;) aren't we mean!

madeline gave jacob a webkinz toy, he was so excited. jacob gave madeline a littlest pet shop toy. for a fhe night, we go to target and the kids use their allowance to buy the toy. first, we walk around the store and pick out 5 things that we like. then we separate and make the agonizing decision of what to buy.

then, all the gifts go up here on our "gift shelf" so there is no lego shaking!!!! jacob is famous for this one! i sewed up these cute "gift bags" for Christmas. they are made out of fabric with a ribbon tie. super cute, easy, and reusable, yes!
this is what kept jacob occupied until 2 pm. when the kids woke up at 6:44 am i gave them a little pep talk about "savoring" Christmas and enjoying every moment. it only comes around once a year ya know.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

i bought this christmas village at a garage sale 5 years ago. we always put it on my grandmother's goldleafed table. i love the miniature people.
i bought some christmas ornaments and hung them outside with satin ribbon. i wanted something beautiful to look at during the day. my sweet husband is taking care of the night lights. he has put up over 8000 lights!!! i'll take a picture and post it later.

beautiful!
here is my cute girl with hairy! we love our cute little guy. hopefully santa will put something in his stocking. madeline made a cute stocking for him last year. he loves dog biscuits.

sorry it's been a month since i've posted. mytagbag.com business (cute temple bags) has been crazy, busy so I've been mailing packages. Merry Christmas if I don't talk to you before then!

Where the Wild Things Are....

The San Diego Zoo was amazing. The botanical gardens were incredible and having all the wild animals in the midst of it was breathtaking. I've wanted to go to this zoo for years and during the month of October children are free, yes!

We had the swine flu while we were on vacation in San Diego.

Jacob took this cool picture of the lion. Beauty is.... wild! Although his favorite picture was the one he took of the elephant's bum, he thought it was hilarious ;)

Do we look sick?


They were a little droopy walking over the 1600 acres at San Diego Zoo, but they took some great pictures and enjoyed the small breaks on the sky chair and express bus.
The orangutan's were adorable. We watched them for a half hour and took over 200 pictures of them.

Madeline entered this picture in the school's art contest. The topic was "Beauty is.... a big kiss!"
We are now mostly healthy, but Madeline threw up last night (I didn't even know because when they turn 10 it's all self contained !!!!!) But she still wanted to go to school so I left that decision up to her!

My friend, Wendy McDonough, took these AMAZING family pictures! We went down by the river last weekend. Stephen had been with sick the h1n1 flu but was a trooper and smiled for an hour!
My cute kids!
I love my sweet girl!

Halloween Party is coming to our house!

I love Halloween and this wonderful fall time. We are having a halloween party today and making spider cupcakes. We are playing a fun game of "don't eat pete", mummy may I, bob for apples, and spooky musical chairs.

Madeline and Jacob had their halloween parade at the school. It is fun to see the creative costumes children come up with. Some of our favorites were the milk carton of the missing student, a wheaties box of cereal, and a working traffic light.

Madeline and I are dressing up like pirates this year, arghhhh!

I hope it warms up a bit because it was SNOWING yesterday.

What we do for our kids....

First of all, I want to answer your deepest, darkest question!

It was about Swiss Days, remember all those Tag Bags that I spent all summer making. Well, it went super, duper, excellent, and very well! I made 176 and SOLD 168. Awesome! It was such a relief. It is a huge leaf of faith to sew up all these bags and hope and pray that others find them adorable and want to pay for that cuteness! mytagbag.com you can peak and see my new inventory!

Okay, back to the beginning of what we do for our kids.

I'm not a huge camper fan. I've mentioned about the whole YW camp Hycliff's which is a.k.a. for 100 degrees, no trees, and hikes at 2 in the afternoon with heat exhaustion.

Thankfully our campsite at Black Rock has a lot of trees and the north fork of the river that runs through it so there is a place to cool off.

The kids spent most of the 2 days down by the river in a van, oh sorry, that is a line from SNL Chris Farley. Which I might add is one of the funniest dudes ever! Don't you miss the 80's???

okay, I'm going off on another tangent. So we selected a very secluded camp sight which is close to the river and a cool black rock (hence the name). I spent my time cooking alot, I would just finish a meal and the dishes and the kids would run up from playing, down by the river, and ask "when are we going to eat, I'm STARVING!!!!" I spent at least a little time relaxing by the river and reading my reading group selection of "The Guernsey Literary and Potoato Peel Pie Society". It is very cute and worth the read.

I love the sound of water, the ocean, a river, and sprinkler. They seem to say, slow down you will get it done or not done and it's okay.


On Sunday morning before we left, Madeline was asking about when we would have a mother/daughter camp out? She loved the daddy/daughter one they had back in August. After I finished laughing, I mentioned that my idea of a mother/daughter camp-out is at a sight called "Marriott".

Do you feel the same or am I alone in this? Well, have a good day camper!

Life moves along

My parents are such amazing people. They were over visiting last week so I couldn't resist snapping a picture of them. They celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary on August 21st. My siblings and I have been blessed by their love and devotion to each other and to us. Thank you mom and dad for loving each other. Aren't they a cute couple? I love you!
The first day of school was on Monday. When Jacob saw this Star Wars shirt at Shop-Ko he knew what loves was at first sight. He has been wearing it for the last 3 weeks! Do your kids do the same thing? It is hard to save something so beautiful for a future day. Maybe he learned it from his mother who doesn't like anticpation.

Madeline wanted to make a new bag for school so she picked out some of my scrap fabric and sewed up this cute bag. I have horror stories of trying to sew things, ( hello swimsuit and blue striped pants that looked like a NY Yankees outfit) so I stuck by her and we finished it in 2 days. Good job Madeline!
This is a small stack of 70 temple bags. I am bringing 175 to Swiss Days this weekend. I was a vendor last year and sold 132 so I hope and pray that this year will be prosperous as well. It is always a leap of faith to invest in something you believe in and pray that others believe in you as well! Thank you mom, dad, cynthia, stephen, jacob, madeline, andrea, and denise for believing in me!
Jacob walked into our closet and pointed to Stephen's suit jacket and said "I want one of those!" You mean a church coat I replied. "yes, I see all the older boys at church with one and I want to wear one." So I was at Target and they had one.

Size 6 suit jacket $30
Red tie $6
2 Happy handsome boy priceless