The most wonderful time of the year!

Don't you just love Christmastime?  The music, the desserts, the traditions, the merry feeling of giving, there's so many good things to do!  Here's a bit of our Christmas Eve/Christmas Day.

John and his Mom playing a festive duet while the girls and their aunties dance along.  There was a lot of piano music and dancing.

The kids insisted that Santa needed sugar cookies, so we whipped some up.

 I put Jenny in charge of the nativity program this year and did a great job!  She narrated the story and had spots for us to sing songs too. I raided my closets and put together costumes.  Kevin, the adopted brother joined us for Christmas Eve and was selected to be Joseph.

 Singing...

 Christmas morning John's parents and sisters came over at 7:30 so they could be here when the kids woke up.  Here they are waiting to see what Santa brought.

 Lexi and Kaytlin were dying for a (stupid) toy sewing machine that really works!  Only it was a cheap thing from Walmart that broke the first time we tried...  But Santa didn't disappoint, they got one anyway.  They were happy they got it and have probably already forgotten about it. (We did a simple sewing project with my machine and they were satisfied with that)

  Santa also got Lexi the Star Wars legos she wanted and Kaytlin got some paintable horses, Addie got some Mega farm legos.  They also got a Tangled nail/beauty kit with fake nails and everything from Santa.  (Whose kids are they????  So not something I would have wanted as a kid)  They were so happy though!  :)

 John's mom spent hours and hours making her daughters these awesome quilts.  They were made from their high school Tshirts and sweatshirts they had gotten from sports, choir, etc.  Cool huh?

 John and I got the kids their favorite gifts.  They opened them last and were totally floored.  Lexi got a learning laptop, and she feels like it's the coolest thing ever.

Kaytlin got a classic - Easy Bake Oven and couldn't believe it.

We were so grateful to have family join us for the holidays and for all the nice gifts from loved ones.  Thank you to everyone!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and that you have a fun New Year!   

Christmas music stuff

We had a successful piano recital earlier this week.  The recital itself only lasted 30 minutes, even with a few more students, longer songs, and with John and I playing.  Short but sweet right?  The students worked hard and performed well.  I had stressed out a little about the recital because I had chosen a pretty hard song for myself and really had to practice hard to get it presentable.  Also, we knew there was going to be a lot of people there.  I counted afterwards and there were about 60 people (give or take a few - children are moving targets!).  We held it in the Primary room at the church and it was packed!

 I made this piano keyboard cake for the recital (the kids LOVED it!).  

 Lexi and Kaytlin performed at their school Christmas program and were so cute!  Kaytlin's class did this song about being "Your personal penguin." Her teacher and teacher's aide are totally awesome!  How often does your child's preschool teacher have a Master's degree?  They're so fun and creative and I'm so happy Kaytlin's in their class.  

Lexi's sure growing up, she looks so big here!

Busy, busy life

So it's been a while since I've blogged.  We had a great 2 week vacation in Washington with my whole family for Thanksgiving.  I was expecting some serious drama since there was going to be 3 pregnant women all under the same roof (not me included), but I was happily surprised that for the most part everyone got along.  We had a really great together!
John and I were able to go to the temple 4 times, which was wonderful! We don't know the next time we'll get a chance to go again, hopefully sometime this summer.
We've been working on redoing the counters in all three bathrooms and had some problems.  Right now they're halfway done and we're waiting for FedEx to deliver more materials.  I threw a baby shower for my cousin last weekend, and we have our Christmas Piano recital next week that I'm working on getting together.  John teaches 2 advanced students and I teach 8 beginners.  Lexi finished her dance class before our vacation and did awesome at her performance!
It feels like we're always so busy lately.  John being in the Bishopric means we don't see a lot of him on Sunday, and then Wednesday either he or I are at mutual, and there's always something going on.  With piano lessons after school (almost every day) the days just seem to go by in a blur.  The vacation was so nice because we could relax and not have so many responsibilities.
I've been feeling stressed lately.  There's always the mommy guilt of "am I doing the right things for my kids?" I've also been getting headaches a lot lately, several times a week it seems. By the end of the day most days I'm just ready to crash.
I don't want to waste time during the Christmas season though because there's so much I want to do, memories to make, etc.  And cookies to make!

Well, that's all for today - piano student in T minus 30 minutes...

Halloween!

So here's some of the few pictures I took this year.  

Can you just see how excited Lexi is to carve her own pumpkin?  

 John and Kaytlin did an awesome Tinkerbell pumpkin (but I somehow didn't get a picture of it)

 Kaytlin with some preschool friends, good witches were the thing this year.

 My awesome sister, April, came to visit and was a huge help on Halloween.  The girls were SO excited about getting makeup for the church Halloween party.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Murder Mystery Dinner Date

John and I hosted a How to Host a Murder last night, The Chicago Caper.  It was a blast!   The hardest thing was that we could only invite 3 other couples. :(  We wish we could have invited more people!
We lucked out and found an easy way to decorate the place like a 1920s speakeasy.  We had Sparkling Cider and bottled pop (instead of bootlegged drinks) and a few props (like spray painted water guns) for fun, along with music playing from that period.  Everyone dressed up for their parts and spent the night accusing each other of the murder of Hal Cappone. :)  Enjoy the pictures!

Countertop Transformation!!!

A while back I was wasting time looking at stuff on Pinterest and found this kit called "Countertop Transformations" by Rustoleum.  There are a lot of things I'm wanting to change in my kitchen and the counters where one of them.  I'd pushed the counters lower on my list because it just seemed out of our budget, until I found this stuff.  I did tons and tons of research on it and convinced John this was something we were going to do. Heehee! It took a little over 3 days (and lots and lots of messes and cleaning) and we're really happy with the results.

 I didn't want to wait until morning, so the lighting is way different in these pictures, we didn't change the cabinets, and the counters aren't this dark either.  Still, you can see the crazy difference right?

 

 Here's a close up of the counters, and this color is pretty accurate.  I think they look dark in those other pictures because of how glossy they are.

 We have enough materials left over to do the bathrooms too!  

We saw the northern lights last week.  This is the best picture we could get.

Addie the toddler

With Lexi and Kaytlin at school I get to have more one on one time with sweet Addison.  She cracks me up - pretty much every day now she finds a few pairs of Kaytlin's (clean) underwear and puts it on.  She insists on wearing them all day.  She also has a little tutu she can put on herself and she spends a lot of time wearing that too.  Today we did an art project for her room.

Cheese!