LIGHTS!

Little America here in Flagstaff put up a TON of Christmas lights every year. We love to go, this year was the BEST EVER! It was so warm!

Kyla and I love the BIG RED tree. We were sad when we went to Temple Square and saw that they don't do their "red tree" anymore. Good thing we have a back up... :)




Ky, giving her favorite tree some love!!




The kids wouldn't pose by the Ginger Bread house for me, but they would all climb on this rock...

Johnny, Kyla, Zack,

Leo and Max.

It was still cold, just warmer than other years... but I guess the kids have been suffering from some cabin fever with all our sickies and quarantines. They would have stayed at the play ground all night, we had to drag them away with promises of hot chocolate.

Leo LOVED the slide and swing!

John Dude




Proof. Steve always gives me a hard time about all the pictures I take, he says, "if you don't take a picture, it didn't happen..." What? I just like pictures, OK?!




Kyla and one of her best friends, Zack.

They have a big fire, a few Christmas trees and Santa inside to warm up with.

Can you see Leo, he is trying to take off with the HUGE teddy bear!

Saturday at the Seamons'

Our Saturday was pretty low key this week. Kyla and I went to the Lollipop concert at NAU. It is just the Suites from the Nutcracker Ballet. We love it! It is only about an hour long so it is perfect for littler ones, and well, for me too... :) Ky really wants to take ballet, I guess it is time to find some classes... Any ideas Flagstaffers?

Dad and the boys hung out at home and worked a little and PLAYED a little too. One of Johnny's favorite games right now is Mario Cart. He is getting pretty good!

I thought this was funny... Ky and John both "plugged in" playing games...

Can't Catch Me, I'm a Ginger Bread Boy

We made our ginger bread house this week. It happens to be G week so it works well, except that the G in ginger makes a J sound... yeah, thank you English language, way to confuse my preschoolers!!

We didn't get the camera out until we were almost done and I was the only one still interested in working on the house... Kyla had moved on to ballet, Johnny was busy taste testing all the candy, and Leo was loving that he could climb on the table and no one made him get down... :)





See: candy eating and table sitting...

I learned a new trick, you can roll out gum drops... cool!

Kyla did the icicles, pretty cool, eh! She also wanted ginger bread people, we found these ginger bread marshmallows, strange? yes, but they work!

Kyla was begging ALL DAY to do the ginger bread house and "we are waiting for daddy to get home" only works for so long... So one time I suggested she draw a picture of how she wanted to decorate it, this is one of her "ideas." :)

Deck the Halls!!

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Christmas?! I love everything about the season. I will even store boxes and boxes of decorations, which totally goes against my "clean out and throw out" nature.

Steve calls our tree "the bush"... it is kinda short and fat. I say, PERFECT!











My favorite of favorites in the boxes of decorations are our nativities. I have always loved them, I remembered putting out my parent's nativity each year, carefully unwrapping each peace and arranging it just right.

Kind of by accident I started to accumulate nativities and now, I officially collect them. Steve gets me one each year.

These are a few of my favorites.

This is Steve's Grandma Hansen's, she passed away two years ago right before Christmas, it is a special one in the collection.





Steve and I got this one in Scotland.




My parents brought this one home from Mexico. It is made in a little gourd and closes up, super cool!

I LOVE that they can play with this one AND it has 2 shepards... 99.9% of nativities only have 1 or none at all. Shepards people, it says shepardS.

I hope seeing these will help my kids think more about Christ during Christmas time.

Fair Trade

I was trying to be festive, so I put some treats out on a plate on the table. Leo caught sight of them and climbed on up and had one. The problem was he was still munching on his lunch... Why was he wandering around with a mouth full of turkey? Well that is another story, which involves stools, a small table and pretending to be in a fancy restaurant, but the punch line is that Leo wasn't in his high chair.

So when he went up for the treat he just made a quick swap... I don't really blame him. Lunch meat or double butter pecan chocolate squares... hmmm, I'll go with the chocolate! They really were double butter, I made them in a hurry and DOUBLED the butter!! And not just 2 tablespoons instead of 1... more like one cup instead of a 1/2... Once I figured out what I had done, I was surprised they turned out at all... Steve says they are even better. But that is coming from the guy who thinks butter is one of the 5 major food groups.

Turkey trade.

Happy treat eating boy!

Just a Little Allergic Reaction

Johnny was taking amoxicillin for an ear infection he had last week. On day 7 of the medication he woke up with a rash, turns out it was an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin.

Thankfully he says it doesn't really hurt, we are keeping him on benadryl, and he is finally starting to look better.

It got worse before it got better.

POOR BOY!!

the plague

Yeah, we are headed to the doctor...

Tree Cutting

Our annual tree cutting... thanks to the Goodman's we actually have pictures of it this year.





We stopped to look at the Grand Canyon, OK the "Little Colorado River Gorge" but give it a couple miles and it is the Grand Canyon.

Notice Steve's grip on Ky... 1000 feet sheer cliffs tend to make us nervous parents.

Grand or not is is pretty cool!





We started walking back to the car and Kyla started crying... it took us a couple minutes to figure out what was wrong. She had pushed on a loose tooth with her tongue and IT FELL OUT! We spent a few more minutes looking for the tooth on the ground.

She was a little upset about the whole thing...

Here is her "Grand Canyon tooth"... we never did find the tooth, there were tons of these little white rocks though...

So now Ky has lost two teeth and lost two teeth. The first we replaced with a paper one and now the second is a rock, poor tooth fairy!

Ky decided it was OK because now she can say she is always at the Grand Canyon... at least a part of her is. :)

Seamons' Christmas Chaos

We got together with Beave's family for a little Christmas party while we were in Utah. The kids all had a great time, they LOVE being with their cousins!!

Kyla, Erika and Tess. Most of the cousins on Steve's side are boys, hence the chaos... :) Not really, my girlie girl can bring some chaos with the best of them!!

Johnny got an electric toothbrush and couldn't wait to use it... hey he wants good teeth OK?!

Our little CHEEKY MONKEY with some new monkey rain boots, he looks pretty pleased with himself, doesn't he?!

And our little holiday fam.

Best part of the night was talking with Grandma and Grandpa Seamons on their mission! We are super proud of them and LOVE them so much!!!

We ended up driving home through the WORST storm and road conditions EVER because we didn't want to miss this time with our family, definitely worth it!

SNOW

It snowed while we were in Utah... Yeah for the first snow of the year!

Ky and John ran right out to play in it!

SNOW ANGELS!!

"Hey kids come stand under this tree..." -Steve

Yeah that's Steve shaking the snow on Ky and John... he is such a fun dad!

T-day in Utah

We ended out C week with a long drive in the CAR to grandma's house. We left Friday night and made it in good time, we missed the storm that came later that weekend and we missed the deer who tried to kiss our front bumper...

Grandpa has a new "grandpa" chair, perfect for relaxing in front of the fire with at least two grandkids snuggled in for stories....

Aunt Liz helped the kids make a cool "Thankful Turkey."

We had lots of fun with cousins, at the end of the 9 day trip Kyla was still saying we didn't stay long enough.

I left my camera in the car when we went to the children's museum and when we went to see the lights at Temple Square... I'll have to beg some pics of those who remembered cameras...

C is for... Dad's stinky old socks...

We made these cats out of Steve's old socks.... Ky kept saying how stinky they were... :) Johnny was good with just a collar but Ky had to make some accessories for her cat; purse, dress, cupcake, hair flower and after all that John decided he needed a back pack, we made one and then Kyla's cat got one too. Camilla the cat was decked out!

Yeah, that is my sewing machine, out of time out, my mom fixed it when she was here... who knew sewing through hot glue could be such a problem... ;)

I was so excited about these cellophane window pics... for some reason the red worked better than the blue and yellow...

This is what our counter looks like after painting... SO HAPPY for washable paint!

T is for Tent

My parents were here last Sunday night when I was trying to figure out what to do for the next letter week... they had some fun ideas. For our Friday fun we put the tent up in the basement and watched Toy Story 3! I don't know what it is about a tent but it makes everything more fun! Ky and John slept in the tent... part of the night...

I just love Kyla's "bumpy hair!" She had braids the day before...

It's Sunday night... again... but this time I am alone... even Beave has deserted me. :) He left this afternoon for a work trip. So any great ideas for the letter C?

The Artists

Kyla and Johnny love to display their "artwork." Usually it is taped to the walls all over the house. I am actually OK with that but I saw this cool way to display kid's art and decided to make it for their room.

The paint I used was left over from an old bathroom remodel, it has been remodeled again since the red... the paint is down to the very end but I made it stretch, I wanted to match the stars I made a couple years ago and painted with the same left over red... plus it is RED so Johnny loves it.

They could fill up 100 of these, but we'll start with this one...

Give Thanks

I saw this idea online and wanted to try it, something cool for Thanksgiving. I'm not much of a sewer but I can fake it sometimes...

The great thing is I had all the supplies on hand; fabric, thread and frame.

This little surprise was Leo's handiwork, THANKS LEO!

It only took me 3 days... maybe 4.

And Ta Da, there it is!

Can you guess who said what? :)

We are richly blessed and are so thankful for everything we've been given.

Tomatillo Salsa

My parents came down to Flagstaff last weekend, it was great to have them here, even if it was a SHORT visit! They brought us some produce from their garden. THANKS Dad! We decided to get adventurous and make some Tomatillo salsa, it even fit into our T week... :)

Kyla loves "science" so she was excited to have a science day. We researched tomatillos online and found they can be green, yellow or even purple. The kids peeled the tomatillos and made some observations... they were all green, made sense since they were all from the same plants but a little disappointing to Ky, she was hoping for a purple one!

Cutting up the tomatillos was Ky's job, she was so proud of herself, I held my breath half the time, sharp knife... AHHH! Johnny's job was a little less nerve wracking, push the button on the food processor... :)

Then into the pot, and two little cooks stirred the WHOLE time!

Ta Da, Salsa!

I'm wondering if my Dad thinks this is going to protect his stash of Salsa he and my Mom made this fall... is one batch of fridge salsa enough? Hmmm, they may want to count their jars before I get there... :)