Winter Fun

First of all, I forgot to post this on our Christmas post. So here it is--when Summer and

Claire decorated their cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, they were each given a paper plate to write a note to Santa on. Well, of course, that's what the older kids did, but Summer just wrote Santa's name. And Claire passed until next  year. I was pretty proud of Summer's work. We told her the letters, and she wrote them.

We've been getting quite a bit of snow lately. Here is our snow time fun. My favorite role--staying warm and taking pictures. :)

Pyper actually didn't end up going outside--except for just to sit on the steps and watch, but it was fun dressing her up in the snow clothes.

And I think she was a little distracted by something, but here she is with her Christmas crayons working on a project. She loves this little table and will crawl into the chair and off it about a hundred times a day. 

Projects

Lately, we've been doing a lot of projects. Here are a few that have been quite fun for us.

Summer has been asking how to spell words and names recently, so I decided to make some poetry magnets for her. She loves rearranging them on the fridge and can identify what each word/name is. This is how she set it up tonight:

We also made books of colors. I told the girls to go find something green (etc.), and they ran around the house to find something green. Then they brought their items back to me. They each got a turn taking a picture of their item of choice, and then they'd go find something of the next color. I printed out the photos, typed up the text, and cut it out. Then we put everything on the table and they had to match the color of the item in the picture to the color of the text (like purple, red, green, etc.) Then they got to glue the photos and text down onto their pages. I covered the pages with clear contact paper, hole-punched them, and tied some ribbon to keep the pages together. It was a lot of fun for them.

Here are a few pictures of Claire's book:

My hopes is that through repetition of seeing the color of the words with the letters, they (mostly Summer--Claire when she gets older) will begin to recognize the letters as spelling those colors.

My two favorite things about this project: afterward, when the books were all done, Claire sat on the couch and looked at her book for about twenty minutes. Loved it. And when I told the girls to go find something white, guess what Summer came back with . . . a roll of toilet paper. :) Clever girl.


This last project was more my project than the girls'. All they had to do was their handprints, and then I worked on making them into reindeer. I made them to be Christmas decorations for next year. I love handprint projects, and it will be so fun to pull them out next year and see how much everyone has grown!

2012

A Year In Review

January--Pyper was blessed

February--Rhett took Bar Exam

March--Britt turned the big 3 0

April--Britt took foot massage class and loves giving them, Pyper started crawling, Rhett passed the Bar

May--Britt went to podiatrist and got shoe inserts for her arches, moved into new duplex down the street

June--Claire wrote "CL" for the first time

July--Summer turned 4 and lost one of her ear tubes

August--Rhett left his job in CDA and decided to start his own, Rhett and Britt discover baby #4 is coming

September--Britt and Rhett are finding positive results from seeing a NUCCA dr (no more shoe inserts for Britt)

October--Rhett turned 28, memorable Spokanite get-together in Liberty Lake with the Greens and Harris'

November--Pyper turned 1 and starts walking, celebrate Thanksgiving in ID--Britt's sick the whole time, Summer can write everyone's name in the family

December--Claire turned 3, Claire can count to 10, celebrated Christmas in Liberty Lake

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve was just as fun for us as Christmas was!

We'd been talking about having a "party" for a few days prior to it, so when we actually started the "party," the girls were really excited. We started by decorating our Yule Log--a childhood tradition of mine. I asked my mom about it and she said we used to burn the Yule Log on Christmas, but I decided we would start our tradition and burn it New Year's Eve--to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. So we got out stickers and ribbons and googly eye balls and glitter and streamers--any scraps I could find in all my craft stuff. The girls worked away, while Rhett and I helped with the hot glue gun. Claire could have spent probably two more hours on it, but everyone else was ready for the rest of the party. Sorry, Claire. We'll start earlier next year!

 We wondered how well it would burn, but it actually caught fire quite easily and went up in flames. 

We watched it burn for a little bit, then we played our party game--Red Light, Green Light. For the first few times, Rhett held Pippy in one arm, and Summer's hand with the other, while Claire ran beside him. I directed traffic--holding up a green circle when it was okay for them to run to me, and red when they had to stop. They girls loved it. And I think Rhett did too. :) Then Summer got a turn as traffic director, and Claire too.

After our party game, we had our New Year's Eve cake (a new tradition)--an oatmeal cake that is one of my favorite from childhood. It was a hit, of course (any cake at our house is!). We did our handprints for our time capsule (something we do each year too), and then we put the girls to bed. Rhett and I watched some lame movie, which I can't even remember what it was. I think I fell asleep in it.

It was so much fun. We loved starting some new traditions with our little family and look forward to doing it again next year!

Baby Barney #4 ???

So . . . what is it???

Any guesses???

Watch this to reveal the surprise!

Christmas II

A Christmas morning clip--

Summer's plate for Santa--

The girls playing with their new Christmas things

(Yes, they're under there!)-- 

 Pyper with her new crayons--

Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas. We stayed in Spokane, and though we missed being with family, it was special having Christmas morning in our own home--and spending the day lounging in pajamas, eating, and watching the girls discover their new toys.

But backing up to Christmas Eve . . . we got invited to our friends' the Shenemans who live down the street and are in our ward. They have three kids--two boys and one girl, and their kids are a few years older than ours, but they played so well with the girls. Ethan followed Pippy wherever she went and played with her the whole time. He loved her. DJ was thoroughly entertained with Summer rough-housing and playing swords with their giant candy canes. It was what Summer has always wanted!

The Shenemans made southern BBQ chicken sandwiches for us, and then we did the nativity story.

We had a little bit of music and talent afterward where Ethan played his Christmas piano recital songs, and then our family (which had prepared about 10 minutes before going there) performed "Feliz Navidad." Rhett busted out the chords on his guitar, Summer and Claire used Christmas bells and Pippy's marracca as shakers, and I led the singing. (The girls know the words--though they say, "Alise Navidad" instead.) The Shenemans actually joined in singing and dancing, and we even had an encore so we did it again. It was a lot of fun. Then the kids decorated two Christmas sugar cookies. One for them to eat, and one to give to Santa. After that, we headed home, opened our Christmas jammies, and then tucked the girls in to bed. They were so excited for Santa, and had conspired to stay up late to listen for sleighbells, but since it was 9 o'clock, they were exhausted, and fell right asleep.

Christmas morning was so delightful. While we were experiencing the excitement and surprise in the girls, Rhett had our Monkey Bread and Christmas Egg omelet cooking. Every gift Summer opened, she would yell, "This is exactly what I wanted!" -- Even though she'd never even seen one before. It was so funny. Claire was still in the stage of wanting to play with each toy before opening any more, so she was a little slower, but it was fun to see their enjoyment.

We enjoyed our yummy Christmas breakfast, and then spent the day relaxing and playing with everything, finding batteries for new things, and watching the girls share and trade their new toys. Some of the big hits this year were their umbrellas (Summer got Tinkerbell, Claire got Minnie Mouse), Summer's Leap Pad (from a generous friend), Claire's paint set, the dolls with snap on clothes, and the giant Dora dolls.

Currently, the camera cord is MIA, so all I can post are pictures from my phone. Hopefully we'll find it soon so I can post more.

The girls with their new paint sets

Summer's new Leap Pad (which Summer calls her ipad)

Pippy with Claire's Doll Van

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas. And hope everyone else did too.

*      *      *

My experiences with Christmas have been different ever since Claire was born. That first year, when she was only a couple weeks old, we were in law school. So poor. So poor. We hardly had anything. And I remember the kind people who knew, or didn't know, but gave us gifts anyway. A meal on Christmas. A new coat for Summer. Clothes for the girls. Money for us. Kind visits. I remember wondering what Mary felt like, having a new little baby and wanting to give him everything, but not having anything to give. Then here come kind people, strangers, sharing in the celebration of the birth. The feeling of gratitude is so hard to express.

Things haven't changed much since then--we still have kids who need things. And we're still poor. :) The kindness and generosity of people amazes me. I know other people don't have much, but still give, and it makes me think--what a wonderful time of year.