NOEL

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year!

We had a wonderful Christmas, like always, and the kids enjoyed a two week break off from school.

We were so blessed to receive numerous boxes from family back in Utah filled with presents for our family.  Every year we are spoiled by great grandparents, grandparents, and others. We really miss being able to spend our Christmas with family, but all the awesome surprises they sent let us know they love and miss us just as much.  They were more than generous this year. The kids got far more than they should have. 

 

As every year, we don't dare put out any presents until the kids go to sleep Christmas Eve. Not a single present to be found until they get up in the morning to see if Santa came.  We had so many gifts this year we had to pile them over to one side and under the new piano Santa brought. Yes Santa brought us a new Digital piano! He even brought a huge power wheel truck for Ethen.

Had to get at least one pictures before they started taring into presents. We  video recorded our Christmas so that our families could watch our joyous encounter. Therefore, I didn't take any pictures of them actually opening their gifts and the great things they found. Wish I had taken a few more.  But at least I  snapped a few of them that morning.

Ethen was so excited when he saw this and the girls where just as excited.  Later in the afternoon, Scott took the kids out to test drive the truck. Since we didn't have snow and the temperature was  in the 50's it was a perfect opportunity to play with it. We found that it works better when there is more weight in the car. Which is great news for the girls because now they can ride with him.  whereas  before going out, we were not going to let them ride because  we thought they were too heavy.

 The kids spent the rest of the day playing with their new toys and trying on new clothes. I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing dinner for us. We enjoyed a wonderful early dinner of ham, potatoes, rolls, green bean  casserole, jello salad, spinach dip and veggies. We ate leftovers for a good 2 or 3 days. I was great.
Thank you to all of our wonderful families! You have out done yourselves in making our Christmas a joyous and wonderful day! WE love you!

Santa at the library

A few weeks before Christmas, the library had a family night to celebrate.  The kids and I had a wonderful time.  They read several stories and we sang lots of Christmas songs.  Then we got a visit from Santa and the mouse from "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".  While most of the families jumped in line to see Santa, we headed over to the craft table to make  some fun things and then had refreshments.  Each child had the chance to sit on Santa's lap and talk with him for a few minutes. Each child was also given a  book and a candy cane. It was a nice evening to spend together. Ethen  really enjoyed seeing Santa and telling him all the things we wanted for Christmas.

 Jingling those  J-I-N-G-L-E Bells

 Santa's Coming to Town

 Who knew old CD's could be so much fun?!

 We love this series of Books. We have almost all of them

Merry Christmas Jocelyn
You're on the nice list

Merry Christmas Elizabeth 

You're on the nice list

Merry Christmas Ethen

You're on the naughty list. 

But we still love you!

Trick or Treat!

Halloween is a holiday that I really don't care for. But the kids love it, so I  let them dress up and trick or treat, watch Halloween movies, and do crafts. Their costumes are usually a last minute thing that I find at  Goodwill or some other second hand store. I'm all about cheap! They get whatever I can find. But this year they  each had some money to spend and they wanted new costumes. We went to Wal-Mart  at the end of September when all the Halloween stuff came out and found some really fun outfits for them to wear. Both of the girls love the Monster High character and lucky for us they had plenty to choose from. Elizabeth chose to be Clawdine Wolf and Jocleyn chose to be Abby Abominable.  Ethen wanted to be everything he saw. We finally narrowed it down to 3: Buzz Light year, Woody, or Scooby Doo. He ended up with Woody. He loves his costume and wanted to wear it all the time. I let him a few times  too many and ended up having to sew  up a several holes in the seems here and there and  fix a  run in the back too. We weren't sure his costume would last till Halloween. He was wearing it out. Even the girls wore theirs a few times  as dress up. So I guess they were worth the cost since they are getting to wear them more than just on Halloween.

Our first trick or treating was 2 weeks before Halloween at our ward  Trunk or Treat.party. We went to a state park for the activity. I really like the idea of doing it during the day. The kids could eat, play, and trick or treat and not freeze  or worry about being out in the dark. It was a great activity and they got lots of candy.

Halloween was scheduled on Thursday the 30th from 6-7:30 pm  We joined a family from our ward, the Sessions, and went to a neighborhood that was packed with lots of kids and families. We all had a great time. And the hour and half was just long enough to go around a few blocks before it got dark and too cold. This year the weather was pretty good and the temperatures in the high 50's.  We couldn't have asked for better conditions. This neighborhood was very generous and gave lots of good candy. And several non candy like chips, restaurant coupons, balloons, etc.

On Halloween night, the college in town was doing Halloween event for families. You had to donate food or clothing to get into the event and everything was free to do. It was held in their gym. The gym floor held several bounce houses and lots of carnival like games.  The upper level was lined with dozens of business pouring out candy, coupons, and freebie items to entice  new customers to their business.   We spent about an hour down on the floor before heading up to the  trick or treating.  The kids had a lot of fun and we will for sure attend the event again next year.  

With all the candy from the three nights of trick or treating, we were able to refill our 40 lbs bucket  of food storage candy. The kids haven't had much of it and they will only get  2 or 3 pieces a week. Now I just have to keep myself from dipping into it while they are at school.

Clawdine Wolf

Abby Abominable 

Woody

Halloween crafts and goodies

I had the kids pick out some Halloween crafts for them to do a few nights before Halloween. Things to keep us busy during the Holiday season.   They each picked out a paper mache  shape to paint. They did a wonderful job. Elizabeth  did a witch with a cauldron. Joce choose a cat and Ethen wanted the  skull and cross bones. I picked out an owl and decided to cover it with scrap paper instead of painting. That same day they revived a Halloween care package in the mail from their Nana and papa with goodies and trinkets.  Thank you Nana and Papa, you always make our holidays so much fun!

|Some of the other crafts were pomp pomp spiders and Halloween character puppets. We watched several Halloween movies on Netflix too: Peanuts: "The Great Pumpkin", "Spooky Buddies",  and "Girls vs Monster",  All in preparation for the big night of Trick or Treating.

Pumpkin Carving

We were a little late getting pumpkins carved this year. We went to Walmart and let the kids each pick out a pumpkin, and one for  Scott and I.  They picked some pretty big ones too. They wanted even larger, but my rule was if they couldn't carry it, it was too big.

We spent one evening finding the designs that they wanted carved on the pumpkin. (Depending on what I thought I could carve) Elizabeth  chose Olaf from "Frozen", Jocleyn picked an owl, and Ethen wanted Curious George.  He loved watching Curious George Halloween Boo Fest on Netflix so he had to have him. I think we watched that movie at least twice a day for 2 weeks.

The next day we printed the temp lets, I then had the kids  tape them to their pumpkins and poke holes on all the outlines. That took a good deal of time. The next day I carved them. It was a lot of work, and had I had the right tools to actually carve with it may not have taken me so long to  get them done.  I did carve one for Scott, but I didn't get a picture of it. We wanted the Star of life.. I turned out really cool. 

Our pumpkins sat inside the house for the next couple of days. My battery candles were out in the garage and I never  got  around to getting them out.   So sad to have never seen them glowing out on the porch. They would have looked really cool.  There's always next year right?

Jocelyn's Birthday party

 Jocelyn chose  "The Littlest Pet Shop" as her theme for her birthday party this year. And this was the hardest theme to plan for. I was not able to find very many ideas or products bases on this theme. I really had to make up my own or use puppy and kitty themed ideas to  get games and decor. 

We invited 10 girls to her party and we had 6 come. It was a good number to have over.

We were planning on doing the party inside, but it turned out to be such a nice day we ended up taking some of the activities outside.

The party consisted of playing a few games, eating lunch ( while watching an episode of little pet shop), and doing some crafts.

Crafts: decorated animal bracelets, painted animal ceramics, little pet shop coloring pages

Games: Pin the hat on Zoe,  Fishing games, Puppy bean bag toss, pet adoption

Each child was able to bring home a small plush animal that they adopted, a small little pet shop toy from fishing, a painted ceramic, and a doggy bag with treats. Jocelyn recieved many little pet shop toys to add to her collection of toys, some coloring books, books, and money. It turned out to be a great party.

 Here is our dining room and kitchen decorated for lunch

We played several games out on the patio

 And they did crafts out in the grass by the patio

At the end of the party we had cupcakes  while she opened her gifts.

Happy birthday Joce. Your growing up way to fast. Love you

Hocking Hills State Park

A few weeks after moving, we had the privileged of  having some friends from Erie come and visit us for a day.The Augustynak Family.  My friend, JoBeth, found a state park on line that was about 30 minutes from our house. We planned to go hiking and have lunch at the state park for the day. The day was grey and a little drizzly, but it made for nice cool hiking weather.  It was a great adventure. There are six hikes that one can take around the park to see beautiful landscape and area history.  We began our hike on one of the most popular  hikes called, Old Mans's Cave. It was really fun. Lots of waterfalls and lots of cliffs and climbing stairs.

 Old Mans Cave

 Here's Elizaabeth, Allysa, and JoBeth coming down into the cave

 Can you say "Stair Master!" So many stairs up the cliffs.

 One of the waterfalls. Not much water right here, but people say that it's really impressive when they get a good rain.

 Scott and Ethen standing on the bridge over some waterfalls.

 Our second hike was to cedar falls. This was a very quick hike, only about 1 mile.

We took our lunch break between our hikes. We probably walked ago  2 or 3 miles that day. 

We would love to come back again and do some of the other hikes. And some of the locals encourage us to even go back in the winter time to see the water falls all iced over.  It is such a beautiful area. I am really sad that we did not find this park when we my parents were here. They would have loved it. So the next time  anyone comes to visit, this a must do if you like outdoors and hiking.