Playing Catch Up

Before I start on Christmas, I wanted to share a quick picture of Ella and her Thanskgiving dinner. She is a very stubborn/picky eater. There isn't much she eats. She has a list of about 10 things and will not venture from it. So, for Thanksgiving dinner her dinner consisted of peanuts, a roll, pretzels, apples and carrots. I tell you... her eating phobia will be the death of me.

I had to get it down on my blog for her... she when she reads this when she is grown up, she will know truly how difficult she was when it came to eating.

This year from the cousins, I made pillow cases for part of their christmas presents. I got the idea from a friend of mine and thought to myself, who wouldn't love a cute, personalize pillowcase. Not many of us have them. So, I went straight to work and made a bunch of them for the cousins that we had this year. I included with the pillowcases a bunch of books and pajamas to finish up the bedtime theme.

For the pillowcases, I machine stitched the letters on to the pillowcase and then added a cute ribbon around the case. Not to difficult, but a lot of cute (if I do say so myself).

Gingerbread House Tradition

Every year my mother in law makes gingerbread houses from scratch and they decorate them after Thanksgiving. So, to keep up with tradition, she made the houses and drove them with her to Arizona for Thanksgiving so we could decorate the houses after Thanksgiving. Isn't she awesome!

The kids had a blast decorating their houses. Ella stuck it out for a bit, until she got a little bored with it, so mom had to finish it up. Hannah on the other had loved every minute of it and could have worked on her house for hours on end. She put everything she had available on her house. It was quite the masterpiece!

Now our houses are sitting pretty in our home and slowly ever so slowly, Ella is eating her way through them. That is whenever she can sneak candy off of it when no one is looking.

Cookie Party with the Girls

This week Hannah had a Christmas Cookie Decorating Party. I thought why not make a tradition of having friends over for a fun little party during Christmas break. Hannah invited some friends from her class and neighborhood. Seven year olds are just the right age to start this kind of tradition. The girls handled all the frosting and sprinkles marvelously.

We started the party off with making adorable bakers hats. We used cupcake liners to make cute little flowers to attach to the hats. I got the idea from here. Then we decorated cookies. Lastly, the girls got to open up a gift (which I think was their favorite part!)

I will post more details about the party soon, but for now here are the pictures I took during the party.

She Did It!

Hannah finally learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. While we were in AZ for Thanksgiving, we recruited Hannah's Uncle to help her learn to ride a bike. We had heard he had a great way to teach kids to learn and he did. After about 30 mins out on the bike, Hannah was riding all on her own.

He took a jump rope and looped it around her torso and started out holding it tightly around her. And as she learned to balance more and more, he would give the jump rope more slack, until she was riding without any help from him or the rope. And then waa-laa, she was riding.

She was so excited to finally know how to ride a bike. She wanted to keep riding and riding. She wasn't the most stable or straight riding girl I've seen, but somehow she keep the bike going and didn't fall very often (although there were many, many times I thought she was going down). And then by the end of the week she was breaking and starting all on her own.

Great strides this year.... Learning to ride a bike and learning to swim. Two things that make my life much easier and hers much more exciting!

Me and the Kiddos

Going back to our Thanksgiving trip, our next stop after Disneyland was Sea World. We spent the day there. We like Sea World because to us it is a super fun, kid friendly, very nice aquarium. The kids love to see all the ocean animals (dolphins, fish, starfish, flamingos, turtles, walruses, polar bears, penquins, etc). Hannah loves the new dolphin show and Ella loves the Shamu show. And all of them love the Sesame Street play area (they spent hours in there and it was so nice, because it wasn't crowded). It is a great place to visit about once a year, which is about how often we get there.

Chris and I like it because it gets us to San Diego where we can stay in beautiful La Jolla, go to Bristol Farms and have great fish tacos. It is a win-win for everyone :-)

Winner of Book Giveaway

Comment #22 was randomly selected as the winner. Please contact me within two days, so I can get this book to you ASAP. If I don't hear from you, i will have to pick a new winner! Congrats!

Book Giveaway

Awhile back, I shared a book that I thought many of you would be interested in. It is titled He Loves Us and We Love Him: You've Memorized It, Now Live It. My cousin, Laurel Christensen has written several books geared toward the young woman. And she is great, if I do say so myself, being her relative and all.

Well, I got my hands on a copy of this book and wanted to give it to someone this holiday season. I have read it and I just love it. She is so great at sharing interesting stories and tying important messages into her stories.

This would be a great stocking stuffer this christmas. So, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me about the YW would would give this book too. The contest will be open until Sunday night at midnight. And then I will announce a randomly selected winner ASAP, so I can get it to you before Christmas.

good luck!

More Disney Photos

On our second day at Disney, we did Breakfast with Minnie and it was by far the best breakfast we have ever done with her. It was raining cats and dogs, so all the characters were in from the rain. So, usually when you see only 5-7 characters at the breakfast, we saw about 12-15. Everyone was there and we saw many characters we have never seen before like Rafiki, Brer Fox, and Gideon from Pinocchio. Other characters we saw were Chip and Dale, Eeyore, Capt. Hook, Fairy Godmother, Max (Goofy's son), and Pooh.

We were also the last of the guests, so we got to have many of the characters all to ourselves. Captain Hook put on a impromptu dance (the sprinkler and Roger Rabbit) and Rafiki joined in. We visited with Mary Poppins and Bert again for a long time (she remembered us from the day before). Characters kept coming back to us and at the end we got a huge group picture with many of them. That is one of my favorite photos. It is typically hard enough to get one picture with the characters let along five of them and Minnie herself. What a morning. It made up for the rain.

But I can't complain to much about the rain. After we got soaked, it let up and never really rained again, but it looked like it would all day, so it kept the crowds low. So, low that we were riding the train around the park and stopped in front of the princess meet and greet area. There was no line (which usually is 90-120 mins long) and so we jumped off the train and ran over and walked right in to meet Ariel, Tiana and Mulan. Ariel was the best. She just talked and talked with our girls and was so cute with them.

Oh, and the picture of Jake. He loves Woody and Buzz. He is drawn to anything that has to do with them. So, when he saw this Woody doll, he wouldn't give it up. Can you guess what he is getting for Christmas?

Probably my top 2nd best day at Disneyland.

Around the Park

I decided that during this trip, I would take some photos of places and images around Disneyland. They are so many great things to photograph in the park, I wanted to capture some of the fun places we like. Seriously, I could take a trip to Disneyland by myself and photograph the park all day. Maybe someday I will!

Preschool teacher gifts

I love wreaths and love all the creative ways to create wreaths for any occasion. I saw this idea out there in blog world and thought what a great Christmas gift for preschool and kindergarten teachers. So, this year Ella's teachers will be getting this cute crayon wreaths for Christmas.

They are super easy to make. All you need is embroidery hoops (one size 12 inches and one 8 or 9 inches). Put the smaller one inside the larger hoop and start places crayons around the hoops to form a circle. I used a few more crayons than the 64 count box. Then I hot glue gunned the crayons to the hoops and tied a ribbon on top to hang the wreath.

I love how they turned out. To present them to the teachers, I bought some large Christmas circle platters and will use those as part of the gift and a way to transport the wreaths carefully.

Christmas List

I am putting my Christmas list on my blog mostly to help out my husband. He knows were to go to find out what I want, so this year I am making it super easy for him. Your welcome honey!

And in case you are looking for more gift ideas, here you go!

1) Bob Stroller Handlebar Console
2) XLarge Scallop Circle Punch
3) Mobile Me
4) Yudu Screen Printing Machine
5) Molcajete We love guacamole in our house, so this is the perfect tool for our kitchen.
6) Fossil Faux Tortoise Watch
7) iTunes card... who can't use one of these!
8) Couch Racer X Camera Strap in vintage blue with white or brown and orange. HINT: I really want this gift!
10) Cashmere Gloves from Eddie Bauer
11) Half Sleeve V-neck T-shirt from DownEast Outfitters. And since they are on sale, you can get a few, any color will do (except fushia).
12) Self-Inking Address Stamp I have been wanting one of these for quite some time.
13) Ugg Classic Argyle Knit boots. 50% off here.

and then anything from Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer or Banana Republic (honey, look in my carts for some ideas)

That should give him enough ideas, right. Now if only, he would return the favor and give me a list ;-)

Our Thanksgiving Break

We are back from our 10 day trip over Thanksgiving Break and what a trip it was. In a nutshell, we visited Disneyland, SeaWorld, Tucson and Tombstone. With a lot of things in between. The next few days or weeks will be highlights of our trip, so get ready for a lot of photos and journaling.... it was one fun trip!

We went to Disneyland on Friday and was pleased to find the crowds low and manageable. We were able to see a lot of characters and do a lot of rides and visit most of the park. I love Disneyland so much when the crowds are low... it is really so wonderful when you can just enjoy the park and that is what we did. We met up with Nana and Papa later that afternoon and enjoyed much more fun with them.

Highlights:
Hannah went on her favorite ride - Big Thunder Mountain
Jake saw his favorite character - Woody and you could tell was star struck.
Ella loved her time with Mary Poppins and Bert, they were so much fun to chat with and they spent a lot of time with our family.
The girls love the Winnie the Pooh ride and we got to ride it two times in a row without getting off... the girls thought that was so great, especially since there was a line and we told them we would have to get off and stand in line.
Jake didn't love Santa Claus.
We went on the Dumbo ride, which we never go on.
We all wore our red t-shirts I made. Each of us, sporting a disney character of our choosing.