Cookies!

We haven't seen Dan (John's brother that lives about 10 minutes from us) and Paige's family in a while so we invited them over last night to eat pizza and frost cookies. The kids had a lot of fun...maybe even a little too much fun! And I'm guessing that they enjoyed the cookies, there was a lot of frosting eaten in a very short ammount of time. Owen was so filthy that he needed a good hosing from head to toe. And I must say that we were quite impressed with Ainsley's detail on her cookie (this might just be because usually her artistic skill is weak at best because she doesn't care enough to take time to work on things carefully). What a fun and messy night!

Two Good Lookin' Kids!

Owen's hair looks ridiculous from about 2:30 on every single day due to his nap. Some days I attempt to fix the crazy looks we get and other days it's just not worth the effort. Usually his hair is just matted and fuzzy in the back but I thought that yesterdays "chunk of hair sticking straight out" look was particularly dashing!
Today Ains did her make-up while I was doing mine. I was talking on the phone and not paying much attention to what she was doing. When I got off the phone I just busted up laughing when I saw the incredible amounts of eye shadow she had covered her eyebrows in. By the way...I have no idea why she chose to make that crazy face for the picture. Aren't my kids cute!

Ginger Bread Houses

It has become a tradition in my family to decorate a gingerbread house every Christmas. Notice that I said decorate and not make gingerbread houses. I believe the tradition began when one year I got it in my head that I would make a gingerbread house and then we would decorate it as a family. I didn't have a pattern but figured that it couldn't be that difficult and so I just made my own. We ended up with a house that was the size of a small child (okay that might be a slight exaggeration but it was huge!) and all of the pieces were different sizes and so none of the sides matched up. We ended up hot gluing together the pieces and there were still gaping holes in the house.

From that year on we bought the pre-made Costco kits. They are great! They come with lots of candy, pre-made frosting, and lots of little ginger bread men and trees to decorate. The kids had a lot of fun this year. I could tell that they had a lot of fun based on the incredible amounts of frosting, sugar, and candy that were in my kitchen. Owen got pretty good at putting the candy on the house too. Unfortunately he was better at picking the candy off of the house and so his side was pretty bare. I think he ate more candy on that night than he has in his life. He literally couldn't stand still. The houses turned out cute, although ours is already starting to lose candy that just wasn't stuck on very well. I guess ginger bread houses weren't meant to last forever though!

Santa!

Ains had her first encounter of the season with Santa. He was visiting my sister's neighborhood event thingy Friday evening so we tagged along for a visit and a picture with Santa. Ainsley's cousin Bria wasn't too keen on the idea of sitting on Santa's lap or telling him what she wanted for Christmas this year (she later explained that she didn't want to because it wasn't the real Santa, it was Sarah's dad...I hope Ains didn't pick up on Bria's keen observations. I have to admit though, I think they could have found someone a little older to play the part, this guy wasn't the best Santa I've ever seen. Anyways, I digress). Ainsley on the other hand hopped right up and told Santa that she wants a doll house and a barbie, I have a feeling she won't be disappointed. We get to see Santa again at our ward party this weekend. Hopefully she won't notice any differences between the two. Maybe from here on out we'll have to just visit Santa once a year so as to hide the variances between Santa's. It's been so fun telling her about Santa and answering all of her questions this year. I think this is the first year she will be truly excited and captivated by the magic of it all.

Curls!

For a while now I have wanted to try some sponge curlers out on Ainsley's hair. We switch to 9:00 church in January and she always wants her hair curly for church and school and we usually just don't have time. So the curlers were going to be the solution to my problem. They didn't have the kind of curlers that I was used to as a kid in stock (the pink ones that would close kind of like a barrette) but they did have these ones that were a combination between a sponge curler and rags. So I thought we'd give it a try. Boy did we get curls! We had so many curls that we had to pull her hair up in a pony tail. I guess we'll have to do some experimenting to figure out how to get the look we're going for!

Christmas Cards

I decided in November that I was going to get my act together and send out Christmas cards this year since I didn't send out anything last year. By the end of November I had bagged that idea. I was getting stressed out about it and so I ultimately decided that I wanted Christmas to be more stress free. Therefore, cards were the first thing to go. I guess I was being cheap too. I just didn't want to put the money and effort into them this year. But I still felt that we needed to send something to someone. So the kids and I made 6 Christmas cards. Yes, just 6. My criteria for deciding who would get one of these lovely works of art were that the receiver had to be over the age of 50 and my children had to have a portion of their blood in them. And that's how I decided that these cards would got to grandparents and great grandparents (okay, I had decided that before we even started making them). It was very low key and easy. And I think that only grandparents and great grandparents can fully appreciate a card with a Santa on it made from finger and hand prints!

(hand prints courtesy of Owen, finger prints courtesy of Ainsley)

A few random things.....

1. Today while out shopping while Ains was a preschool Owen and I had a bit of an adventure. We were at our last stop before heading to get Ains and when we got out to the car my little beeper thing wouldn't unlock the door. I tried a few times and nothing. So I walked to the door to unlock it and my key wouldn't work! My key wouldn't unlock my car door. How is that possible? Luckily the store we were at was in the same strip mall as my parents and so my dad came over to help and miraculously when he got there the beeper thing got a little more juice to it and unlocked the door (side note...Owen was with out a coat this whole time because for some reason he had been refusing to wear it). I knew we had to get a new battery soon unless I just wanted my car unlocked all the time. FYI, the best place to get batteries for those things is Radio Shak, who knew?

2. When I picked up Ains from preschool a mom came up to me and told me she thought her son, Cole, had a little crush on Ains. I Think it's the little boy that Ains called boots for a long time. Apparently he still talks about how he was sad because he didn't get to see Ains at the zoo when they had their field trip there in September. Cute!

3. For some reason I have no self control! I have been trying to lose about 8 pounds for about 8 months now. I have been more serious about it lately and still I have no self control. I can go for a few days with out eating a ton of junk but then I break down. What is my problem? Why do I feel the need to eat every fattening/sweet thing that is placed in front of me? It's a mystery.