was full of food,

father-son engineering,

and bike race watching.

There was some movie watching, knitting, and guitar practicing thrown into the mix as well, just no pictures of those.

We have oh so much to be thankful for, especially each other.

This year we just dressed up for our ward (church congregation) Halloween carnival and Trunk-or-Treat.  We skipped the Trick-or-Treating yesterday because it was Sunday.  It really was nice to do the dressing up just once.

Ian was Spider Man with a costume from the dress up box.  Dad did the face paint while I whipped up a SweetPea pilot cap.

Hunter was a duck who would quack and quack, but never hold still.

Brenna was a Mad Scientist.

Jonah was a fortune teller.

Logan was a ghost.

Barry was a punk rocker and in charge of the donut on a string carnival booth.

Good times.  Good times.

So, here’s our new April Fool’s Day tradition.  The No Manners Dinner.

We had friends in Ohio whose Christmas Eve tradition was to have a huge family gathering for a meal of spaghetti.  The catch was that each person got the “dishes” and “utensils” they would eat with in a brown paper bag.  Inside would be things like a pot lid, salad tongs, and a ladle and they would all have to do their best with what they got to eat their meal.

Naturally, my kids beg on a regular basis to have a No Manners Dinner of our own, but Christmas Eve just never felt like the right time.

But April Fool’s Day is perfect!

We had breakfast for dinner, of course, and instead of hiding each person’s place settings in bags I just let the boys set the table in whatever manner they chose.

Waffles, berries, and whipped cream from a steamer basket with a rubber spatula, anyone?

Or off a cooling rack with shish-kebab sticks, maybe?

How about with big tongs from a pot lid?

How about drinking out of the gravy boat?

Tonight certainly wasn’t the ideal night to do something new and crazy.  We were gone all afternoon with our homeschool group, Brenna was swimming until 6, Jonah had to be at Cub Scouts at 6, Barry got home about 5:40 and had to leave again at 6:45– but today was the day I needed to make it happen.  It’s all about the memories, right?

And so, it happened.  The kids didn’t stop talking about it all night– about how when I left to run Jonah to scouts and pick up Brenna from swimming they put salt in my quart jar of water, about Brenna eating sausage with a whisk and how it was actually fun to eat out of a cupcake pan because there are so many compartments.

It was worth the extra effort, which really wasn’t extra at all, just a little more fun.

Logan handed this to me and said, “Well, mom, you ah kinda cute.”

I hope you were showered with love too!!

xoxoxo

We’ve had our annual Messiah sing along Christmas party– to continue the Christmas music theme here.  There were about 40 people crammed into our house, over half of which were banished to the  basement to watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town because they were too young to read or be interested in trying to sing along with us.  We blasted some MoTab and tried to sing our parts while following along in the score.  There was lots of food too.  A fun time was had by all, but there are no pictures to prove it.  I was too busy hallelujahing to even think about getting out the camera.  Hence the retrieval of Sybil the Christmas Elephant from the archives.  I think she’s a fun, festive little gal.

Here’s hoping you have a wonderful holiday.  Being a mother continually makes Christmas more meaningful for me, not just because the magic of watching my kids surprise and glee with all the gifts on Christmas morning, but because the Creator of worlds without number saw fit to come to earth just like we do– as a tiny helpless little baby– because he loves us.  Because he loves me.

Merry Christmas!

My 7 year old likes to rank things.  He likes to know what’s best, what’s worst, who’s best, who’s worst.  He constantly asking about our favorites.  So, when he asked what my favorite things are about Christmas I immediately turned the question back on him.  I thought, without a doubt, in that split second that I was waiting for his answer, it would be presents.  He surprised me, though.His favorite thing about Christmastime is the music.That made my heart smile.Every morning, after breakfast is eaten and cleaned up, after everyone (or at least the majority of us) is clothed, we gather around the piano and sing.  I love to sing.  My kids love to sing.  It brings a happy tone to each day– which is especially needed after a morning of nagging to get the dishwasher unloaded.  Usually we pick a song from the Primary Children’s Songbook (if you click through to the song book you can click on songs to hear them).  Now that it’s Christmas we get to branch out a bit.  This is our favorite:

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Chrsitmas Carols.   We found it at a library sale when we lived in Ohio and it has become a much loved favorite.  It has all the standards, Angels we have Heard on High, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, Silent Night, but it also has some that are less familiar like Oh, How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming, and The Friendly Beasts.  It’s all these song coupled with the illustrations that make it so special.

We can never sing just one song.  I think the shortest morning singing session we’ve had this month has been 20 minutes.  Everyone has to pick a song, then remembers that they really wanted to sing another.  We Three Kings is on regular rotation.

This morning I decided to it was time to make our morning music time a bit more interactive.  I broke out the pipe chimes

and the bells.

There was much dinging and donging.  We did get through several songs without too much silliness.  Ian was actually really good at watching for me to point to his color usually dinged right in time.  It’s alway fun and festive to have the bells out.  Well, it’s fun as long as I pretend no one is fighting over who gets the light blue bell and I keep the yelling of  ”Do not bang your bells together!” to a minimum.  It seems that the best and most worthwhile things take the most effort.  It certainly would have been easier to just leave the bells on the shelf in the basement.

But, it’s their favorite part of Christmas!

There will be much more dinging and donging over here during the next few weeks.

To top off this musical day, Brenna had her Christmas piano recital and did a fabulous job.  She has become quite the performer– singing solos in church, singing with the Colorado Mormon Chorale’s children’s choir, and tonight playing Greensleeves beautifully from memory.

I think the music is my favorite thing about Christmas too.

I have been planning the Easter clothes I was going to make for a MONTH.  I got an Ottobre Design magazine, bought fabric to make my 4 boys jackets and pants and couldn’t find the right tencel linen blend for Brenna’s dress, so I was going to block print the fabric and sew a dress for her and a skirt for me.

Can you see where this is going?  I got my fabric design drawn and even carved, but not printed.  When I went to cut fabric for the boys suits I decided the fabric I bought wasn’t heavy enough, so I needed to buy more.  I never could get to the store.  I never could find a good enough stretch of time to print.  So, I ordered Easter clothes from Land’s End instead.  My husband took Thursday and Friday off this week, so I thought that I really could sew after all, but he took the big kids skiing on Thursday, Ian has been puking and pooping frothy diarrhea for 5 days, and Barry was gone with Scouts for 8 hours Saturday.

And the ordered clothes should get here today.

It was a good Easter anyway. I let go of the list of things to do for the holiday and just relaxed, listened to several Easter editions of Music and the Spoken Word, only went to one hour of church since I had a sick toddler, took a nap, talked to family on Skype, and spent the evening reading scriptures and singing with my sweet family

Clothes are so totally overrated.

(Now the puking thing has spread, so I will be parked on the couch watching movies over communal barf-catching bowls.  I just don’t have the energy to even post pictures today.  And it’s my husband’s birthday.  Poor guy.  I hope he doesn’t get this lovely gift, especial after all of his super-hero carpet cleaning, diaper changing, and laundry washing this past week…)

Here are my boys all dressed up Halloween night.

We had a camp-fire, Frankenstein,

and a little turtle.

  The turtle passed out the candy. Very cute.

On a side note– I have discovered my new favorite food– pumpkin cheesecake.  Part of the insides of our jack-o-lanterns go toward a pumpkin pie or two every year, but this year I got a little crazy and made pumpkin cheesecake with this simple recipe.  I would post a picture of it, but it’s all gone.  It was that good.  I think we have officially replaced pumpkin pie in our household.  Even though I have a freezer full of pumpkin puree, I can’t let myself make another until Thanksgiving…

(Oh, and I must say that, regretfully, we do not have a single picture of the girl ninja.  She was very stealthy and all of her sneaky jumping ninja moves kept her out of the sights of the camera.  She was dressed all in black.  Can you imagine it?)

We carved our pumpkin family on Wednesday, but they didn’t like the 70 degree weather too well.  Even though they shriveled, they still glowed last night.

 The kids insisted mine have a baby jack-o-lattern inside.