Christmas 2012

Christmas was so fun this year.  We're still a young enough family that we're trying to decide what our traditions should be, and since our kids are really loving donuts lately, I thought it might be fun to try making some for a special Christmas breakfast.  (Normally, our kids aren't allowed treats until after lunch).  I made this donut recipe for Christmas breakfast.  SOOOO GOOD.  The glaze was much richer than your typical powdered sugar and milk also.  YUM!  I made the dough the night before and let it rise in the bowl overnight in the fridge.  Then I pulled the bowl out of the fridge while we went through our stockings.  Then we all rolled and cut them out and let them raise while we opened presents.  The timing was perfect!  We had dinner with our neighbors.  I'm getting really good at rolls... I'll share after a few more experiments :)  Some pics below:

Singing a Christmas hymn before opening presents

The Frog found the pickle ornament this year!

anticipating his pickle prize- green tic tacs (they look like pickles, right?)

Peach riding on Hazel's gift from Nanie & Gampie, wearing a gift sent from Iris

Frying doughnuts

glazed mmmmm

kids wanted sprinkles

whipped cream filling. mmmmmmmmmm

Christmas 'n Crafty

I had high hopes of pulling off an advent calendar with an activity every day, but just couldn't get it together.  I need to plan earlier next year.  We did do a few of the things on my list though.

I went SUPER SUPER easy for neighbor gifts this year- something the kids could help with, quick and non-messy.  We made these little nutter butter reindeer cookies.

We made snow globes of the kids one day, but it didn't end up being that cool- it was more like a mom project and also they just weren't that fun with glitter that FLOATS.  boo.  They didn't get a lot of use and now they are still sitting on the kitchen counter, cluttering up my life and I can't decide what to do with them.  For some reason, I can't throw them away...

At my ward's play group, the kids made these little "snowman Nativities".  Isn't marshmallow baby Jesus adorable?

Our kids always fight over who gets to say the prayer at meal time (and usually we end up saying it twice...) so I made a little prayer chart so we can take turns.

I wanted to make sure we did this hand-print ornament of each child, so I could remember they use to be small once. Hazel's was tricky-  she kept digging her fingers into the dough, so I had to trace her hand on paper first, then cut it out and use that as a template.  Sadly, some of the lines from the paper got in the dough and hers has little blue lines in it.  Live and learn.

December Kid Pics

It took me forever to upload my camera pics because I felt like I wasn't taking any. Well, when I finally did it on Sunday I saw that I in fact had over 300!!

Peach and The Frog beg to have a "sleepover" every night and we have decided to let them do it on Fridays only.  (they always stay up WAY too late playing and most of the time, someone gets hurt)  Here's a shot of one of the more successful sleepovers- they both ended up in the trundle.

One of The Frog's most requested video games to watch Jay play is Mega Man.  Here he and Peach are pretending to be Mega Man and Mega Girl.

2 of my cuties:

Just a cold day on the trampoline.  Sadly, it's hard to jump when you have all your snow stuff on, and it's not getting as much use lately.  (it's also FREEZING cold!!  More on that in another post)

I thought I should document how Hazel spends half of her time during the day:

Hazel started smiling at 6 weeks old and it is SOOOOO cute.  Usually it's a big open-mouthed one, but they are so hard to catch because cameras are not worth smiling for...

I thought Peach looked so cute in The Frog's hat.

Both kids are always wanting their turn holding Hazel.  It's so cute.  Here, The Frog wanted to set her on his lap while he watched Jay play video games.

Trying to catch a Hazel smile:

Here's a good one!

PS. I LOVE these little knit Mary Jane- if anyone has a pattern, I would so be interested!  I don't think I can pull off copying them on looks alone.

Love this girl.  If only we could all pull off striped pants with such cuteness!

Overwhelmed!

I have so much to post about!!  It's overwhelming... I'm going to try and break it into smaller pieces, as Jay suggests.  Hopefully I will post one every day or so for the next while until I feel caught up!

As you may have guessed, having 3 kids is more time consuming than 2- particularly when one is an adorable baby (adorable is key.  It's hard to not spend lots of time just admiring when not feeding/burping/changing/putting to sleep) therefore this blog has suffered.  However, Jay and I are trying out a new sleep schedule that will hopefully help our productivity and the amount of time we can spend with the kiddos.  This has proved to be very true so far, but it hasn't increased the amount of time I can spend on the computer (because time with kiddos means no time for computer), though the house is finally starting to feel cleaner and we are finally eating good food for dinner again.

We are all alive and happy, in case anyone was wondering :)

Sleepy Phone Pics