Our Christmas

This was definitely a Christmas to remember and treasure.  Most Christmases are, but this year was truly special in so many ways.  I don't know if it was all the extra effort I made to do lots of fun things with the kids, or the fact that they are growing up way too fast and I want to savor every moment, but we had a fun month of December and a wonderful Christmas day.  Granted, we didn't do something every single day like I'd hoped, just because I didn't always have the energy, but I hope that my kids will remember the spirit of Christmas and of Christ that they felt. 

Christmas morning 2010 brought us:

A visit from Santa, who did not disappoint.  Here is Aaron's pile (stocking).  He got a huge farm playmobil. set (on the floor).  That was a common theme this year, playmobil.

The night before I told him that if he would go to sleep real fast Santa might stop at our house first before our neighbors.  He was asleep in less than 10 minutes, amazing!  When he came out he was all smiles to see his pile.  Oh, and by the way it took Santa over 2 hours to put that playmobile set together (over 700 pieces!).


This is Aric's pile.  He got the Fireman playmobil set.  He absolutely loves fire trucks, so he got 2 this year!

He couldn't believe this was all for him.  Here he is showing us his police motorcycle.


Here's April's pile.  She is kinda grown out of playmobil, so she got doll beds for her dolls.  She thought it was pretty neat to find her dolls laying in the beds waiting for her Christmas morning.



All 3 kids got Zhu Zhu pets from Grandma.  Those things are funny.  At first I couldn't figure out all the hype, but they're interesting to watch.


Homemade Christmas:

We tried something new this year.  Each person in our family drew a name of someone else in the family to make a homemade gift for.  We didn't want to get a lot for Christmas this year, and wanted the kids to focus on others, so we tried this out.  It was a little tough with the 2 little boys, but for the most part the 2 older kids really understood and made some great gifts.

April had Aric and she made him this ABC picture book.  It has pictures of him or family or something he likes and it is tied in with each letter of the alphabet.


With the exception of me helping her pick and print up the pictures, and giving her some letter ideas she did this totally on her own.  She did awesome!


Aric had Aaron, and since he couldn't do much he just bought Aaron a harmonica (and we ran out of time).  This just about made Aaron's Christmas, I wish I would have gotten the sweet hug that they had after Aaron opened this up.


The Daddy had Mommy for a homemade gift, so he ended up giving her a 2009 copy of her blog book.  It is so fun to read!


Aaron had Daddy, and he was so excited to give Daddy his gift.  He built this box from IKEA, and even wrapped it himself. 

Aric had fun playing with all the little drawers, and was excited about Daddy's new box too!

This is Aaron building the box.  He was so excited to be able to use real tools, and even the Makita with Mommy's help.  Then he loved being sneaky, and keeping the secret of what he built for Daddy.  He did an excellent job!  It's a pretty cool box.


Mommy had April, and as soon as I drew her name I knew I wanted to make her one of these wrap around skirts that I read on Chocolate on my Cranium's blog recently.  They are so easy to make, just lots of fabric and some grosgrain ribbon for the waist!  I can't wait to make more, and April wants more too.  She loved it.  I even made a matching one for her doll (what she is holding in her hands).

It turned out so pretty!!

Christmas morning was grand, and so so fun.  I even let April try out her new roller skates in the kitchen.  It was so nice to have Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Marc her too!  We had yummy food all day long, and I even had a planned visit to the hospital for some baby monitoring later that day.  No Christmas baby though.  Oh well, at least we got to enjoy the day together.

Merry Christmas!!

Well, we have come to the end of this...



Tomorrow morning these cuties will be playing with lots of these (empty boxes) and the stuff in them...

But before the craziness of the morning comes, we want to sing you a chorus of "We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!"...



And wishes of a Peaceful Happy Christmas day...

Christmas pajamas from Grandma

Every year Grandma gives the kids Christmas pajamas.  Usually they get to open them on Christmas eve and wear them to bed, but this year Grandma decided that it'd be fun for them to have their Christmas pajamas to enjoy for a little while longer before Christmas is over.  We received a package in the mail with wrapped up pj's and an ornament for this year to add to their collections.  The mail box is very exciting right now, especially when it's early Christmas presents!


They LOVE their Christmas pajamas!

The pants were sewn by Grandma.  I think it's adorable how they are all matching. 
Aaron's shirt is green and it says:  "save time and skip my sister!"  He thought that was a crack up.

April's shirt is white with a sparkly snowflake on it, and there was a surprise for her dolls too!  Isn't that so cute?!  She was so excited to dress her dolls to match for bed.  Grandma is awesome!  She makes all the cutest doll clothes for April's dolls.

Aric's shirt is just plain red, but he looks like a very festive candy cane, and he loves his pj's!  For some reason I didn't get a picture of him by himself, but here he is opening his pj's.


Thanks Grandma!  You made us all very happy!

Brown paper Christmas stockings and paper poinsettia's

So, I have been trying to do something every day with the kids that has something to do with Christmas whether it be a craft, making treats, watching a Christmas movie or going somewhere fun.  We are also doing a lot of Christmas fun during Tot school/Preschool time.  It has been a busy few weeks, and I think I'm starting to get tired.  But, we have been having fun, and our walls are filled with some cute homemade things.

One night we made these brown paper Christmas stockings, I found the idea at Enchanted learning.
First I found some brown construction paper, and drew a big stocking on it.  Then the kids used some rolling paints.  I think these turned out looking very southwestern-ish.

Here is April with her swirls and lines.  She liked these roll on painters.

After they were done decorating and the stockings were all dry, I cut them out, punched holes, and they sewed the edges.  Aaron had more patience for this than I thought he would.  In fact, he loved it.  I think he thought it was pretty cool that he was learning how to "sew".

He stuck with it until the end.



Here's Aaron's finished stocking.  This was a fun project for all 3 of them.  Aric even liked trying the sewing, but I had to finish the sewing for him. 


To go along with the Southwestern theme of those stockings, I thought our Poinsettia craft night should be next.  Did you know that the popular Christmas tradition of Poinsettias came from Mexico?  We learned all about the poinsettia and this craft from the Discover Christmas pack.  April probably got the most out of this night's craft, she thought it was all very interesting.  I love the details she put on her paper poinsettia.

April's finished poinsettia.

I also checked out a book to go along with this craft called "The Legend of the Poinsettia".  April really enjoyed reading this story.  It's about a girl who lives in Mexico and the Poinsettia.




Aric decorated his poinsettia a little bit.  He knew it was a pretty flower, and that it matched the poinsettia plant we have .  I don't think Aaron even did a poinsettia, he wasn't too interested in it.  I glued and decorated his for him, and I made one myself too. 


Makes me happy!

Today...

Today

• Today we finally put up our Christmas tree, oh how festive our home looks now.  I love how it makes the whole house seem more Christmassy
• Today I was not feeling well (pregnancy related), we all stayed home from church (the kids are a little under the weather too), so it was a long day at home.
• Today I downloaded over 50 pictures that I took last week from all our Christmas fun we had during the week.
• Today I have much to be happy for.
• Today I was wondering if I might be having the baby, lots and lots of contractions.
• Today my boys seemed impossible every time I turned around, but I sure hope that they know how very much I love them even though I might have been super grumpy all day.
• Today I am ready for a break, glad this is the last week of school before a long winter break.
• Today I can't believe there is only 12 more days until Christmas, eek!  I'm not ready!!  I still have to figure out lots of gifts!  
• Today would have been a cool birthdate to have 12/12/10.  Guess this baby won't have that birthday (part of me was hoping).

We have finally seen...

...Santa Clause!

The kids had a fun time going to ride the Carousel and visiting with the big guy in a red suit this weekend.  They took a few rides on the horses, and stopped in for a visit on Santa's sleigh.  I love that they let us take our own pictures and it is so nicely set up.  Aric was the only one that wasn't too excited about getting anywhere near Santa.  In the second picture he doesn't even want to look at Santa, and then he started crying.  At least we got a good picture of the other 2, I love how happy they look.  

 

 

They have a game for the bigger kids called "The brass ring" game, and April had fun sitting on the outside horses and trying to catch a ring.  The first ride she caught 1 ring, and it was a white ring.  If they catch a brass ring, they win a free ride.  Well, the 2nd ride she managed to get 2 brass rings.  She was the lucky winner of 2 free rides, and very happy that she was able to get the brass rings!  I didn't get any pictures of her getting the rings, because it was so fast.  I like this picture of the motion though.

Here is Aric with Daddy.  I'm surprised that he finally was brave enough to sit on the moving horses.  I think this might have been his first time.  After that he wanted to keep going.

 

This is April's favorite horse to ride on, I think it's named Razzle Dazzle.

 

Ho! Ho! Ho!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas bubble wrap fun

 This activity was part of some of our preschool at home fun today.  I picked up this roll of festive bubble wrap at Target, and the boys have been waiting patiently to see what it was.  In fact they were so curious that they opened it up in the store!  So, I finally took it out today so they could have some popping fun.

I had originally just cut a small rectangle shape out, but we learned very quickly that 2 boys don't fit on one tiny rectangle.  If I had planned better I would have cut different Christmas shapes from it and taped them all over the kitchen floor.  Since, I didn't, I just ended up unrolling the whole thing and let them jump away.

They LOVED it.  Just put some Christmas music on and there you have a great way to burn off some busy boys' energy.  I've done this activity with plain clear bubble wrap too, and taped colors to the back side and had the kids jump on different colors, and it works best if you tape it down, as you can see in my pictures.  The bubble wrap moved all over the place.  Also, you have to buy the brand name stuff, or it just doesn't pop with little kids.  We bought the dollar store stuff one time, and were very disappointed with it.

Pop, pop, pop!!


Aric's little feet.  He liked it flipped over on the bubbly side better.

Aaron jumping all over the place

Aaron's feet in action, and yes apparently I need to clean under that corner of my refrigerator really bad.

They jumped for quite a while.

Then Aric decided to bubble wrap his brother.  Now they are just being silly!

After they got tired of jumping, I found Aaron in the kitchen just laying there popping bubbles with his finger.


After the bubble wrap fun we made some peppermint playdough, and it wasn't my plan, but the bubble wrap makes a great play mat for the play dough too.  The boys insisted on using it, so I cut another rectangle shape so they each had one.  It was a little flimsy, but stayed for the most part.

It made a great background for cute Christmas shapes.

Aric showing me his gingerbread man.

Aaron is making stars in the sky.

These boys sure love playdough!

I found the peppermint playdough recipe at Our Homeschool Fun.  I really liked this recipe, the dough was so soft, and smelled really good.

peppermint play doh

• 1 cup flour
• 1 Tblsp. vegetable oil
• 1 Tblsp. cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup water
• mix-ins this month—1 tsp. peppermint extract, Christmas colored glitter—1 tsp. each of red, green and gold

Mix oil, water and extract in a mixing cup or bowl—set aside.  Mix dry ingredients in small mixing bowl.  Pour all of the above into a medium sized saucepan and cook while constantly stirring over medium heat.  When play doh forms a sticky ball (will be about 3 minutes) remove from heat and knead on waxed paper until nice and smooth.  **Add glitter in this last stage of kneading.**  This recipe makes the perfect amount for all four of my kids to have a nice sized ball to create with.  I store it in a gallon sized ziploc bag and it keeps well for about a month even being used repeatedly. 

Merry Christmas!