Gingerbread Houses 2012

I went a little crazy this year and made enough dough for 16 large gingerbread houses. We'd planned on inviting some friends over to decorate with us but I was feeling overwhelmed so we decided to just do it as a family. I really prefer it that way and will need to remind myself of that in future years. I did decorate 2 extra houses for Paige to give as gifts to her kindergartener teacher and teacher's aide. And we assembled the rest of the houses and gave away kits complete with frosting and candy to some friends in our ward. That's something that I could see us doing again and is a great alternative to the chaos of having everyone making a huge mess at our house :)

Ben was the first to get started on his house and unfortunately he got the first bag of frosting which happened to be a bit soft and was taking a long time to set. That combined with the fact that he overloaded his roof resulted in a disaster.

The beginning of the roof collapse. 

Ben realized what was happening and decided to turn it into a foreclosure.

I

Claire's house. 

I obviously had no time to do hair that day, what with all the work baking gingerbread.

Cautious Paige was under no circumstances going to repeat her father's mistakes. Nothing touched that roof!

My house. 

I actually decorated it a day later, in the evening after the kids went to bed, while Ben and I listened to the BYU bowl game over the internet.

Mrs. Dile's and Mrs. Dahl's houses. 

They seemed really happy to get them, and Paige was SO excited to give them to them.

Happy Birthday Ben!

Ben turned 36 today. After church, where Ben substitute taught in Elder's quorum, we came home, the kids had naps and Ben played video games. I made "cafe rio" pork salad for dinner, and we had pumpkin pie for dessert (Ben's choice, of course). The girls gave him a card they colored, and stuck their fingers in his dessert to steal a taste. It was a lovely day with our little family. Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!

Meeting Santa

These posts will be back dated so they appear in chronological order.

At the beginning of December Fort Knox puts on a tree lighting ceremony complete with hot cocoa, military band, Christmas tree lot (where they give away free trees), and of course, Santa Clause. It was on December 6th this year, a Thursday night, so we headed out to the center of post right after dinner to see if we could meet Santa. We weren't as early as we thought we were and ended up waiting in line for quite awhile, but we had a good time anyway and it was a great way to kick off the Christmas season.

Claire is 3

We've had 2 straight days of birthday celebrating around here. It started off yesterday morning with "birthday donuts" and Claire's first present (notice the birthday banner in the background). The present was "Cinderella". It's been on almost constantly since.

After we got ready for the day, we did a little photo shoot. I really wish I were a better photographer. There's only so much a nice camera can do. Can you see her sticky mouth from all the Halloween candy she's been scarfing down?

After a delicious dinner of goulash (which nobody complained about! and everybody ate!) and death bread, Claire got to open the rest of her gifts (with quite a bit of unnecessary assistance from her big sister). A great set of books from Usborne (of which my sister Chelsea is a consultant) and a couple of adorable dresses from Honey and Papa. 

And then her gift from her mom and dad. A wooden castle that's been a huge hit (it costs way less on Amazon)

And it fits the little plastic Disney princesses perfectly. Remember this? We still have them all. Although Cinderella's head fell off today :(

And then we sang happy birthday and ate cookies because we were saving cake for . . .

. . . today at her princess party! I didn't take very many pictures, but we had some neighborhood and ward friends over for a little princess pizza picnic pinata party. The weather was gorgeous so we had a picnic in the backyard.

And a pinata (full of toys since Halloween was just 2 days ago) in the garage.

And then cupcakes!

I love this face right after blowing out her candles.

When the last guest left, Claire looked at me with sad eyes and said, "Mommy, why is my party over?"
 Indeed.
If only parties would last forever, then no one would ever have to clean up. :)

Halloween

Last Year:

The Candy Corn Witch and her little black cat.

This Year:

The peacock costume from Paige's first halloween was the perfect size for Grant, and so we decided to just go with a bird theme this year. I think my 3 little birdies are pretty dang cute.

I purchased the girls' costumes because I was feeling unenthusiastic about making them myself.  Daily life with 3 kids is so busy that most evenings (the only time I'd have to work on costumes) I find that I just want to sit and stare at a screen.  I did however carve all 3 of those pumpkins by myself (with two very interested supervisors) on Monday night.

Our neighbors put together a little block party out in the street before we all took our kids out to collect massive amounts of candy. It was pretty cold out but the food was yummy.

A few action shots of trick-or-treating

And here are a couple from the ward Halloween party last Friday night.  

Man, Claire just cracks me up!

Pumpkin Patch

I took Claire and Grant on an outing about 30 minutes away to Roberts Family Farm today. We ate our picnic lunch, played, saw a pig, took a hayride, and picked out a pumpkin out in the field. I even got out my real camera and snapped a few pictures.

Fall in KY has been beautiful so far. The leaves are changing, the mornings are crisp, the afternoons lovely. I had a great time spending the day out with these two cuties. Outings (other then quick visits to the park down the street) don't happen much lately because we have to skip naps to do something like this, but it was worth it today.

I can't ever get her to look at the camera

He is the sweetest boy

 Yes, Claire is crying in the background. She's too "yittle". She just tried and failed to get her pumpkin up on the bale of hay on the tractor by herself.

 

Me and my little clones.

 It's the best we could do :)

First Shoes

Although walking is likely a long way off for Grant, the mornings are getting chilly here and he was in need of something to keep his little piggies warm. Socks are too slippery to army crawl in on the hard wood floor. I think these moccasins are so cute on him.