Halloween

Even though I don't love Halloween, I do love helping the kids decide what they want to dress up as and then making all their dress-up hopes and dreams come true by making the costumes myself. I don't often have time to sew for fun (anything other than mending/altering), and Halloween forces me to make it a priority. I also love that our kids are still of the age that they love to dress up and don't mind dressing up with a family theme.

Truth be told, they would have loved to dress up as the Frozen characters Elsa, Anna, and Olaf, but I convinced them it would be better to wait another year or two because there would be a million kids dressed that way this year. Thankfully, they agreed to be a little more unique. Since I've made several of the Disney princess costumes already, we opted to go with yet another and chose a Little Mermaid theme this year.

Our mean sea witch, Ursula

The cutest Ariel ever



Our adorable Flounder

I was thrilled with how the costumes turned out. Normally, I'm a sew from a pattern kind of person, but this time I made all three without any. I used an online tutorial for Felicity's costume and found some pictures I tried to imitate to make Bridget's and Dayton's. It also made it pretty easy when the base of both of the girls' costumes was a leotard and Dayton's was a hoodie.

Happy Halloween!

Easter Weekend

Holidays always seem to be full of lots of activities which can sometimes get a little hectic, but I like to look at it as lots of family time and lots of memories. Here's several pictures from our busy Easter weekend.

We had a great time dyeing eggs. It was Felicity's first time because we used to do it during her nap time when she would have been more of hindrance than a help. She loved it, and did pretty well. As usual, they wished there were many, many more eggs to dye.

Saturday evening we went to our dear friends the Underwoods for dinner and an Easter egg hunt. Unlike traditional hunts, any eggs the kids found had to be put in someone else's basket instead of their own.

As for the big day...we went to church, of course. The girls were so excited to wear their new dresses. I wish that I would have had time to make their outfits, but that just wasn't going to happen this year. Instead I chose a color scheme and bought them. I love how this picture turned out. Every time I look at it, I can't help but think how lucky we are to have such cute kids.

After church, we went to Nate's Aunt Linda's for lunch and an egg hunt. The weather was gorgeous, so the kids rode in a trailer behind the RZR to the river bottoms for the hunt.

 

Finally, we headed directly to my Aunt Jennine's house for the annual decorating of the chocolate marshmallow eggs and some visiting with my extended family. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures.

It was definitely a busy couple of days, but the kids enjoyed every minute of it. It was wonderful to spend time with both sides of our families as well as good friends.

Other December Happenings

Here's the rest of our December highlights and a lot of pictures:

Over Thanksgiving we installed a mantel on our fireplace, and here it is all decorated for Christmas. I did get Dayton's stocking finished in time too!

I spent an afternoon in Bridget's classroom helping the kids make "gingerbread" houses out of graham crackers and a ton of candy. There was plenty of candy consumed as well as brought home on the finished house.

As part of the décor for our church Christmas party, they asked families to decorate tables with items representing a family Christmas tradition. I chose to display our Christmas book advent basket along with the books we had opened up to that point. This is only the second year we've done this, but we love it! There are so many cute Christmas books out there, and I have a hard time not buying a bunch more. I'll probably add one or two new ones each year just to expand our collection. This year I bought The Polar Express and The Christmas Sweater.

Last year, our kids missed out on getting to see Santa due to some unforeseen circumstances, but this year they got to see him twice. The first was at Kneader's (one of my favorite restaurants) when we got to go have breakfast for dinner with Santa. Chunky Cinnamon French Toast for dinner and see Santa? Yes, please! Felicity was excited up until it was our turn. She bolted in the other direction and started to cry a little. I scooped her up and got her to at least sit on my lap next to Santa. Dayton slept through the whole thing in his car seat.

Our second visit with Santa was at a Christmas party with Nate's extended family. Felicity actually sat on his lap this time without any difficulty. She even ran back to him after her turn was over because she wanted to give him a hug.

Bridget has always loved Santa - even as a baby and toddler.

Even Dayton got a little cuddle from Santa.

As for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we spent it right here at home with just the 5 of us. We've traveled for the last 2 Christmases and decided after last year and even Bridget requesting it, that we would stay home. I didn't really want to travel with a new baby anyway. We enjoyed our traditional turkey dinner on Christmas Eve.

And then the kids got to open some new pajamas that night. Bridget loved her fleece Rapunzel PJs.

Felicity was pretty excited about her new cupcake PJs.

On Christmas Day we enjoyed watching the girls open presents. Bridget moved from one gift to the next pretty quickly but wanted to play with every single one later that day. Felicity was a little slower at opening because she wanted to stop and play with each toy after she opened it.

Dayton was content to just lay on the floor and watch everyone open presents.

My dad and Bev were going to come up and spend some time with us on Christmas Day, but my dad came down with the flu.

And to finish off the month...New Year's Eve! Our kids don't care about staying up yet, and part of that is probably because we haven't really explained that part of it to them because we don't want to encourage it yet. Heck, Nate and I rarely stay up until midnight either. To make it a fun evening, we've made fondue for dinner and dessert our New Year's Eve tradition. We had a great time and probably ate too much.

Definitely a great end to a wonderful year!

Happy Halloween

Our Halloween festivities this year were pretty much the same as last year. The only added activity was my good friend and Relief Society President invited us over the week before Halloween to paint pumpkins and have pizza with her kids and grandkids. She's definitely taken us under her wing lately, and I've really appreciated it. Sometimes it's hard to not have grandparents and cousins close by.

The Sunday before Halloween, my Aunt Jennine invited us over to participate in the Halloween activities and dinner she does with her kids and grandkids. It was lots of fun and we appreciated being included.

The day before Halloween was the Halloween party at church. For the first time in 4 years, I didn't have to be in charge of or help out with the party. There was a costume parade, chili cook-off, and trick-or-treating.

On Halloween, Bridget got to wear her costume to school for the costume parade there and had a Halloween party that afternoon. That evening we did a little trick-or-treating in our neighborhood and then took the kids to see Nate's Aunt Linda as we always have. This was the first Halloween since Nate's Grandma passed away, and I have to admit it was sad to not make our usual stop to see her too.

Here's the kids in their costumes:

Once again, I made Bridget's costume. She chose Merida from Disney's Brave this year. And yes, the red actually washed out of her hair very easily.



With Felicity's crazy curls, she makes the perfect Annie. I even showed her some clips from the movie so she would know who Annie was. Having a new baby made getting costumes made a lot more difficult this year, so my super-amazing friend Sandy (mentioned at the beginning of this post) helped me out with this one. I handed her all the materials and some measurements, and she whipped this dress up in an afternoon. Love it!

Not many people got to see Dayton's cute costume since he slept through the Halloween party covered up in his car seat, but he still needed to be cute for his first Halloween. He's definitely the cutest skeleton I've ever seen. I picked this costume up at a consignment sale for $2! Next year, he'll get a handmade costume too.

Happy Halloween!

4th of July

When it comes to holidays, two things stand out for me as far as making them special - family and food. Most of the day we spent together as just our little family of four, and overall we had a great holiday.

We started off the day with a festive breakfast - pancakes with fat free vanilla yogurt topped with blueberries and strawberries. Yum!

That afternoon, I had to make dessert to take to the family BBQ we were going to later. Being the cake lover that I am, I opted to go with a beautiful and delicious bundt cake and then made some homemade ice cream to go with it. Sadly, I didn't take a picture once we cut into it, but it was red, white, and blue on the inside as well.

While I was busy slaving away inside, Nate took the girls outside to enjoy the new pool we got. They love the water, and had a blast.

That evening we headed over to my Aunt Jennine's for a BBQ with several members of my extended family. We had a great time visiting, eating, and ended the evening with fireworks.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day was a busy day for us this year, but we really enjoyed the time we got to spend together as our little family of four.

We started off the day with yard work and running errands including a trip to the cemetery to put flowers on my mom's grave as well as my grandparents'. Then I made some cupcakes to celebrate Bridget's half birthday which also happened to be today. The half a year is really important when your only 5 (or should I say 5 and a half). She's a chocolate lover like me, so we did chocolate cupcakes and made cookie dough frosting. So good!

After Felicity woke up from her nap, we packed a picnic for dinner and headed to the Dinosaur Park. We'd only been there briefly in November on a field trip with Bridget's school. It was snowing pretty hard that day, so we didn't get to see much of the outdoor stuff. The girls had a great time, and we (mostly Nate) took a lot of photos. It really was the perfect time to go because the weather was perfect, and there was hardly anyone there since most people were busy with more typical Memorial Day activities like barbecues. Here's a few of the many pictures we took.

Easter Highlights

Our Easter weekend this year was packed full of lots of activities. Saturday morning we hurried out the door to go to the Dinosaur Park to use some passes I had that were expiring the next day. The weather was perfect, but sadly we got there and there were tons of people there for a big egg hunt we didn't know about. We decided not to fight the crowds and headed home. Boo!

Next, we headed to our nephew Walker's 1st Birthday Party (sorry no pictures). We had a nice lunch and visit, but were unable to stay for all of the festivities since a certain little girl was in great need of a nap.

While Felicity was napping, Nate took Bridget to the home of a family in our ward for a non-traditional Easter egg hunt. They had a little message about the true meaning of Easter and then turned the kids loose for the hunt. The catch was they couldn't put any of the candy in their own basket. Any candy they found, they had to put in someone else's basket. Bridget had a pretty good time and came home with plenty of candy.

At the non-traditional egg hunt

After Felicity's nap we head to my aunt and uncle's house to decorate my Aunt Jennine's traditional homemade chocolate marshmallow eggs and spend time with my extended family.

Nate decorated this egg all by himself. Who knew he had such amazing skills?

Felicity loved jumping on the trampoline and playing with her second cousins while we were there.

On Sunday we headed to church, as usual. I opted not to make the girls' Easter dresses this year mostly because I found cute matching dresses at Costco for a price equal to what it would have cost for me to make them. I just couldn't pass that up.

While Felicity was napping after church, Bridget got to dye eggs. I figured Felicity wasn't quite old enough for this anyway and wouldn't care if she missed out. Bridget loves dying eggs and always wishes I had dozens and dozens for her to dye.

Usually our Easter Sunday afternoon is spent with Nate's extended family eating tons of good food and the kids hunting for eggs. We had to postpone it a week this year, but here's a few shots of the girls gathering their eggs. I wasn't sure if Felicity would participate, but she ended up loving it!

Happy Easter!

Lots of memories with family, good food, and way too much candy as usual.