Christmas Card and Letter 2011

Images of Thanksgiving

Handprint Turkeys

 

 Our Thankful Tree

  Jared getting up close and personal with the turkey.

The finished bird. It was pretty fabulous, thanks to all of Jared's prep work

 Gobble gobble cups (thanks to Marcelaine for the idea!)

 Anwyn was in charge of setting the table.

 Thanksgiving Dinner menu: turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, rolls, stuffing,yams, cranberry sauce, with pumpkin pie cheesecake for dessert.

We spent a nice Thanksgiving day together as a family. We are very thankful, especially for these cute kiddos!

October

October is a nice month in Florida. Cooler temperatures mean that we spend as much time as possible outside at various parks, or riding bikes or taking walks. Here are some of the other highlights of the month.

The Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin Carving

The girls and I spent the afternoon cleaning out the pumpkin. They had fun playing with the goopy insides. Jared was in charge of the actual carving, after the girls picked out the cat design. 

 

Halloween

This year we had two princesses (Cinderella and Rapunzel).

 

 We also had a cute duck...for about 10 seconds. Then we had a cute little boy who refused to wear his costume. Good thing we had traded with a friend for the costume and got it for absolutely no effort or expense on our part!

The second attempt at a costume for Zach. Any guesses?

He is a shape sorter! The only way he would wear a costume was if he didn't think he was actually wearing a costume, so I just pinned some felt shapes to his t-shirt and shorts and he was good to go.

We had fun attending a few Halloween events: our ward trunk or treat party, Boo at the Zoo, and an open house at a friends house. When all was said and done the kids had a good stash of candy. We were able to dispose of a good portion of the candy by selling it to a dentist in town (we sorted through it all and just kept a moderate amount of our favorites): for our two pounds of candy the girls each earned a dollar, a dentist goody bag, a small toy, and pizza for all. A pretty good trade off!

Remembering

October will now also be a time of remembering and sorrow for the loss of our sweet niece. We miss you, Allison!

Playing Primary

The favorite activity for Sunday afternoons at our house is "playing Primary". The girls enjoy reenacting the hours they spend each week at Primary. Sometimes this can be pretty elaborate and it often includes setting up chairs for all of the stuffed animals, little people, dolls, etc. Since I often teach sharing time it is especially interesting to me to hear their interpretations of the lessons. And a large portion of the time is spent doing singing time, of course.

Anwyn has the pattern of our opening exercises down pat. They say the yearly theme, and there are usually one or two birthdays to celebrate. Today, Anwyn actually wrote a talk, to be given by Miss Pig. Here are her words, transcribed.

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually,” This means that you need to be reverent and not braging. Beeing revrent meens being quiet and thinking about Jesus. Well in this case folding your arms, and bowing your head, and closing your eyes. Braging means that you are saying you are beter then everyone ellse. The scripcher also meens that you shold pray evry morning, and night, and when you can. In the name of Jesus Crist amen. 

  We talked about this scripture in sharing time and in a FHE lesson this month, and I think she has a good understanding of it!

In our primary we have weekly scripture seekers: children take turns sharing  their favorite scripture story. Anwyn completed a scripture seeker sheet for Miss Frog.

A scripcher story I like to read is…When Jesus visidid the nefits.

One thing I lernd from this story is…Jesus loves the little children.

Pleas draw a picher of the scripcher story.

Happy Birthday to Lily

Lily is four years old!

 

We had a fun time celebrating her birthday. Last Saturday we had a Tangled theme birthday party with a few friends. We kept the party pretty simple, but it was a lot of fun. You can see all of the party details over at my Nurture Mama blog if you are interested.

 

 

 To go along with the Tangled theme we made a tower cake--out of doughnuts!

The actual day of her birthday was busy and fun. In the morning we hosted the mommy preschool for Lily and her three friends. After naptime in the afternoon for Zach, the kids and I headed to the park to play. We invited everyone from Lily's sunbeam class (as well as the other sunbeam class) and we had cupcakes to share.

After dinner (homemade macaroni and cheese), Lily opened her presents. She got a few fun toys and books.

 She has been asking for a "kid umbrella" for awhile. Now we just need a rainy day!

Happy Birthday, Lily! We are so glad you are part of our family!

Doing the laundry

 This is the best kind of laundry to do. 

 

 

To the Hospital and Back Again

Lily getting rehydrated at the hospital

Last week Lily got sick; she couldn't keep anything down. We took her to the doctor's office on Friday and then we were sent to the Emergency Department. She received a few units of fluids, showing considerable improvement. We left the hospital after nearly 12 hours there. Lily is doing well and back to her normal self.

Puddle Jumping

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First day of pre-preschool

Lily and is participating in a once-a-week preschool co-op with three other little girls this year. Her first day was this last Wednesday. She was a little shy for the first day, but she is looking forward to a fun year!

Crescent Beach Trip

We took at trip to the beach yesterday. Here's some video of our trip.

 

Scrambled Frog Tales Trailers

Here's a trailer I made for one of our old family films.



Here's the second trailer for the movie.

The First Day of First Grade

Summer in Review

Summertime in Florida means heat and humidity. Fortunately for us, we found ways to beat the heat and enjoy the summertime.

We read lots of books. Anwyn finished the Magic Tree House series, discovered Ivy +Bean and Nate the Great, and enjoyed the familiar favorites of Amelia Bedelia and Elephant and Piggie. Lily loves to read picture books with mom. Zach enjoys board books. When he wakes up too early in the morning (before 7 a.m.) Kristi gives him a stack of books to look at in bed, while she tries to keep her eyes closed for a few more minutes.

We swam and swam and swam. We went swimming a few times each week. We have a community pool in our neighborhood, but we most enjoyed swimming with our friends every Friday in various pools in ward boundaries. We visited the splash park in Alachua twice. Lily took swimming lessons with Ms. Lauren and gained some essential skills. She mostly likes to hang out in the shallow end by the stairs, but she is confident within her limits. Anwyn got a few tips from Ms. Lauren and can swim all over the pool unassisted. Zach just loves to get wet!

 We went to the beach, which you can read about here.

We had a fun “un-birthday” party, which you can read about here.

We were creative. The children made lots of forts, built many block towers, drew and colored many pictures, played many hours of school, and made numerous things out of boxes and various materials. They have great imaginations!

We rode bikes and scooters and strollers just a few times, when we could stand the heat. We also jumped in a few puddles after the refreshing rainstorms.

We enjoyed an overnight trip to Orlando. Kristi and Jared each attended a session at the Orlando Temple, we ate dinner at The Olive Garden, we slept in a hotel, and went to IKEA. Anwyn saved her allowance and did some extra jobs around the house to be able to purchase a tent for her bed. It is pretty cool. 

We watched movies. Kristi and the girls went to see Cars 2 at the theater on the 4th of July. We came home and the girls played “flying race cars”. Kristi and Jared went to see the last Harry Potter movie. Of course we loved it; it is the end of an epic! We also watched all of the Star Wars movies except for episode III (that one is just too dark/scary for the children).

We played with friends. Especially the Kay family. We are grateful to have such wonderful friends.

We tied things. Many strings were used as leashes for pet (stuffed) puppies or kitties. Anwyn learned to tie her shoes!

We made music. Anwyn made most of it. She was very diligent about her practicing and made a lot of progress this summer. She played through all of the songs in all of past and current lesson books numerous times, and sightread a number of songs she found in our cupboard. She has been working on the right hand only of songs in the Primary Children’s Songbook. A significant portion of Sunday afternoons is spent singing Primary songs.

Zach (and Lily, too) also get a fair amount of time at the piano!

Kristi taught a few (or more than a few!) piano lessons, and worked on her new Piano Fundamentals blog. She also spent many hours thinking about new programs and curriculum and methods to improve her teaching.

We did brainy things. Jared especially. His research is going well; he loves what he is doing. He spends most of his days working with brain MRI and trying to figure out how to pull as much information out of the scans as possible. If you're interested, Jared will talk your ear off about what he does.