Merry Christmas

The kids last day of school was Friday. We are ready to start celebrating the Holidays! I am so excited to play, relax, and just enjoy each other. We wish you all a Merry Christmas! Click on the link to check out our rockin family.  Rockin' Jones

Disney on Ice

We took the kids to Disney on Ice as part of their Christmas gifts this year. We had so much fun. It was unbelievable.

We walked around downtown and looked at all the window displays before we went to the show. This Christmas tree in the mall is the biggest one I have ever seen!

If you look behind the tree those are escalators going up all those levels. I wish I would've figured out how many stories it is but it's a lot!

Here the fam is waiting for the doors to open.

The green army men parachuted in from the ceiling.

All the toys came out to dance to The Toys are Back in Town set to the music of The Boys are Back in Town.  Mickey, Minnie, Daisy and Donald introduced the show.

 Buzz Lightyear getting picked up by the claw.

And no show would be complete without Ken and Barbie dancing to Dream Weaver.

We had so much fun and the kids loved every minute of it. We are so blessed to live in a city that offers such amazing things to do and see.

Inspiration from a friend

I was reading my friends blog the other day.  She just had a darling baby girl. And as I was catching up on her blog I came across this quote she blogged about.

"With any major decision there are cautions and considerations to make, but once there has been illumination, beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now. Don’t give up when the pressure mounts. Certainly don’t give in to that being who is bent on the destruction of your happiness. Face your doubts. Master your fears. “Cast not away therefore your confidence.” Stay the course and see the beauty of life unfold for you."


This was exactly the inspiration I needed to hear/read at this moment in my life.  Our life is beautiful and Heavenly Father has made it better than I could have ever imagined, but sometimes I do give into my fears and let my doubts consume me.  I know we are where Heavenly Father wants us to be.  My family is thriving, Monte is home to be a father and husband, and life is just good.  Sometimes though, the homesickness and loneliness overwhelms me and I think what am I doing in Washington?  This quote has brought peace to my heart and a willingness to try harder.  Inspiration can come in all different shapes and sizes. I know Heavenly Father is willing to give me the inspiration I need, I just have to remember to ask.

Thank you Charlotte for being the one to help open my eyes.  The talk was given by Elder Holland and you can find it through Charlotte's blog here.  Also go to her home page and check out her new little baby girl. She is adorable and has one of my favorite names: Jane. 

Christmas Lights!

So my neighbor who's name ironically is Heather, totally rocks!  She is the one who took us kayaking and is always up for doing something fun.  Heather brought home some Christmas lights back when she visited her mom for thanksgiving. She ask if we had any to put up. I told her we had some but I wasn't sure if we were putting them up this year.  I told her she was welcome to borrow any of our Christmas lights. Today when we came back from shopping we pulled up to our townhouses looking like this.

She decorated both sides with everything we had, and everything she had.  She is so great. Monte said this was the most he's ever enjoyed putting up the lights hahaha! We are so blessed to have such amazing girls that live next door to us.  They are so good to my kids and a blast to hang out with. Now all we need is some snow! Thanks Heather for putting up all the Christmas lights, you're amazing!
P.S. Heather is also an amazing photographer. She took this picture of the townhouse with the awesome sun set in the background.

Christmas Table Runner

I really wanted to make a Christmas table runner this year.  I searched some blogs and found one I liked.  Here is the link to make the runner.  I enjoyed making the runner although it was a little time consuming to zig zag around all the circles and holly leaves.

It looks great on my table with my beautiful poinsettia Monte surprised me with.

Snowflake!

My sister Rachel showed me this cute snowflake that she found on pintrest.  I thought it looked easy and cheap enough to make so I gave it a try.  I learned from my last wreath to never go white on a white front door! So I went with a red snowflake for Christmas.  Monte and the kids helped paint and glitter, and Monte helped me glue everything at the right angles.

It was a fun project to do with the family. If you want to make one here's the link Snowflake.  So to make my snowflake red we painted the popsicle sticks red and then sprinkled glitter on them while the paint was still wet.  You could easily put the whole thing together and then spray paint. For me the weather around here is not conducive to spray painting this time of year.  Another little hint is I used red sparkly foam paper for my circles.  It was a lot cheaper to buy one sheet of foam paper than all the wood circles, and I didn't have to paint the foam.  I lucked out having it all match up really well. Overall this was a quick fun kid friendly project!

Fall Pictures

I finally got around to editing my kid's fall pictures. I really don't like school pictures. They have never turned out for us. So every year I take my own pictures of my kids. This year was fun because all the pictures were taken in our side yard.  We didn't get a family picture this year, but the kid's pictures turned out great.


Weston 1st grade.

 Logan 4th grade.

 Abbie 7th grade.

The kids actually didn't complain about pictures this year since it was just right out our front door and super fast. Hopefully we can get some family pictures this spring.

First Snow!

There is something magical about the first snow fall of the season. I love it! It transforms the brown left overs of fall into a magical wonderland.  The earth looks reborn with all the white.  And since we live in the pine trees it is even more magical, something about the snow on the evergreens is an amazing sight.

I wish I would've turned my flash off so the pictures would be better. But it is beautiful outside, picture perfect, if only the camera could capture what the eye could see. I love when the world is perfectly still. It brings a great peace to my heart.

 I stood in the snow soaking in the beauty and then wham a snow ball to my back also brought on the first snow ball fight of the season.  Monte and the kids had a very enthusiastic snow ball fight. It might have ruined my peaceful feeling of being one with the earth, but it filled me with joy. There is no better joy than watching your husband play with the kids, while their laughter fills the air.  I Love The First Snow!!!

Pumpkins

Okay well I don't have any pictures for a tutorial but I can do some explaining. It's super easy.

Step One:  Take a roll of toilet paper.
Step Two:  Wrap a square of fabric around it.
Step Three:  Tuck the loose ends into the toilet paper roll center.
Step Four: Shove a stick down the center of the toilet paper roll
Step Five: Add some leaves, raffia, and whatever else you want to decorate it.

Like I said way easy, but I'll also give you some tips to go along with the basic directions.  First we stuffed a plastic bag or the wrapper the toilet paper came in down the hole along with a few rocks to make it feel solid.  We also glue gunned the fabric to the top of the toilet paper roll.  We did this in sections working our way around the pumpkin. Then we cut off the edges of the fabric so not a lot of fabric was stuffed down in the hole. And we also glue gunned the stick and other embellishments on. We used regular toilet paper for the small ones and a paper towel roll for the larger pumpkin. We also made a medium size by cutting a toilet paper roll in half and gluing it onto a regular sized toilet paper roll. Enjoy making these fun pumpkins. I love them.

Visitors!

We had the best visitors ever this last weekend. Grandma and Grandpa! We had so much fun. I don't think we stopped moving for one minute, even in our sleep. I tried to fit everything I possible could into a weekend. It was an exhausting blast!


We Hiked

We took Grandma and Grandpa on several different hikes around the area. It was great weather for us and amazing scenery.

We Ate

Oh boy did we eat! Weston checked a book of ghoulish recipes out from the library. He wanted to make everything in the book. I limited him to two. We made bones, and spider cupcakes, or in Grandma's case girly cupcakes because she refused to make spiders.

We Trick or Treated

We went trunk or treating Friday night at our ward, and then on Halloween we went to Monte's facility and trick or treated to the residents there. It was a fun experience for everyone.

We Crafted,

Mom brought this amazing pumpkin craft for us to do. I had so much fun making these. I took down my Halloween decorations Halloween night so I could hurry and put these up.


We also enjoyed a fun date night with just the adults. It was a lot of fun to get dressed up and head into town for some browsing at the mall and a nice dinner at PF Changs. I wish I had gotten a picture of us downtown, but I left the camera at home and just enjoyed the evening.
Oh and last but not least we went Shopping! Oh boy did we ever go shopping. It was so much fun and Dad was a good sport to hang in there with me and Mom.  We did let him spend an hour at the Apple store just to ease our guilt a little bit.  Thanks Mom and Dad for an amazing weekend. We love you and miss you already!

Kayaking!

So, I surprised Monte for Friday night date night with this loaded on our car:

We had talked about renting one Saturday with the kids, but I went down to the college and rented the kayak for the whole weekend, had someone help me load it and away I went.  It was the funnest date ever. It was beautiful and so peaceful. We kayaked out on the lake until the sunset. The lake was like glass and perfectly still.  I am in love with kayaking.   We had so fun out there by ourselves, but it made us even more excited to take the kids Saturday.

We spent all day Saturday with the kids and our neighbor named Heather on the lake 5 mins. from our house. Heather won a kayak in a drawing 2 weeks ago and was the one who told me all about renting kayaks from the college. It was nice to go with someone who had experience kayaking. We had a tandam kayak and Heather had a single.  We spent all day switching kayaks around and taking turns.  It was one of the greatest days ever.  Tonight our muscles are sore, but the day was a little bit of heaven. 

The day was amazing and the scenery beautiful.  I think kayaking is our new favorite family activity. Days like this make you send thank you prayers all day long to Heavenly Father.  To be able to spend the day out on the lake with my family, surrounded by Heavenly Fathers beautiful creations, makes me realize what a blessed life I enjoy.

New Pillow Cases

I know of all the things to blog about pillowcases aren't that exciting, but I'm excited about them. This summer I wanted to change my bed spread without spending a lot of money. I found this white quilt at Costco and decided to go with it. I wanted everything white so all I had to do is change my pillowcases when ever I wanted a different look.  I like to changes in my decor so this works great for me.  I picked up some fabric awhile ago and finally sat down to sew up my pillowcases. So here's how they turned out.

Not a fabulous picture but you get the idea.  The green pillowcases behind also have a matching black edge on them.  Matching, matching green, how embarrassing (can anyone name that movie?).  My bedroom has a fresh new look and I will be able to change it on a whim for not that much money. I love it.

My Favorite Children's Author

Mo Willems!

The kids and I love Mo Willems books. We have read almost all of them through our library and I love them. I want to own all of them. I get excited to read his books to my kids.

The pigeon series is hilarious. Weston and I read this book over and over. We laugh about it and quote from it frequently.

Elephant and Piggie are Weston's favorites. This series is awesome for beginner readers. These are the books that really captured Weston's interest in reading. He would be so excited to read them that he would start reading them by himself.  Even though they are to easy for him now he still loves to check them out at the library and re-read them. I always have to limit him to 2 Elephant and Piggie books and then he has to choose some harder ones. 

Knuffle Bunny series is so cool because the background pictures are real photographs of New York City. The characters are drawn into the real photographs.  The story line is great too.

So if you are wondering what to get the kiddos or yourself next time at the library I would recommend anything by Mo Willems. 

Kid Friendly FHE Treat!

This is a fun easy treat to make with the kids. Weston loves to make these. We have decided to call them pretzel kisses. I really have no idea what to call them.

First layer pretzels on a pan and put unwrapped Hershey Kisses on top of the pretzels.

Stick them in the oven on low and wait for the chocolate to melt. Just watch them because I have no idea how long it takes.

 Next squish M&M's on the top of each Hershey Kiss. You have to work kind of fast so the chocolate doesn't harden. So it's best to grab a buddy for this part!

Let them set up a bit and then enjoy!

Conference

I love General Conference. It was so great this year and Monte was with us which made it even better!  As I looked around the room at my family watching Conference I realized how amazing and unique each individual member of my family is.  Monte and Weston were drawing, Abbie was knitting, and Logan was creating some bionicle creature, I was just sitting and enjoying every minute of Conference.  We were all doing our own thing yet we were brought together by the Gospel.  That's how life constantly works for us.  We are so busy with piano, swim team, Young Women's, Scouts, and school that sometimes we don't connect much during the day.  The gospel is the thing that keeps bringing us back together.  Family prayer and scripture study at night, church on Sunday, and FHE on Monday.  How grateful I am for the gospel and the time it gives me with my family. The Gospel is what centers our family and brings us back together at the close of the day.

On a lighter note I had to share Monte and Weston's drawings:

Weston asked Monte to draw a picture of him. Monte doesn't draw stick figures he draws the real deal. Sorry it scanned in so light, but you can kind of get the idea.  Weston drew President Monson sitting down listening to the speakers.

Quick Craft

I got this idea from my sister Rachel and will be teaching a class for my ward's Super Saturday.  Most of you have probably already seen this, but if not here it is:

Super easy and cute. All you do is print out the word faith in big letters with the words is like a little seed in smaller letters underneath.  Print it out on card stock so holds up better. Next use craft glue to glue little seeds on the word faith. A toothpick works wonders for spreading the glue and making the seed go where they need to go. Just sprinkle the seeds like glitter and fix them with the toothpick. Put it in a frame and you are good to go. Oh also I got the seeds in the bins at Winco.  I used celery seed, poppy seed, dill seed, and whatever else I could find that was little and looked like a seed.