A week's worth of holiday activities

Day 9/Thursday - We finished off the day with tortilla snowflakes. Yum. Day 10/Friday - The girls painted a big reindeer (yes, my artistic abilities are limited). Later on I hope to play "pin-the-nose-on-Rudolph" with it. It was a bit messy and I did have to scrub some paint out of the carpet, but it sure was fun and I think it was a great use of an old cardboard box.Day 11/Saturday - This day was crazy busy. Lizzie had nativity play practice in the morning then she went straight to a marathon birthday party that included swimming and ice skating. I think it was scheduled to last about 4.5 hours. Crazy. While she was gone the little girls and I did some Christmas shopping and some Christmas returning, made food for the party that evening, and I designated an official spot for our gifts. Lizzie was an angel in the play at the ward party that night. It was so cute. The two things that I was most excited about in our new ward were the huge parking lot and the nativity play and both have completely lived up to my expectations.

The Angelic Choir: The audience:

Gabrielle is wearing the holiday pajamas I wore for my first Christmas (made by my mother).

Day 12/Sunday - After church I took the the girls over to our community clubhouse to decorate cookies and gingerbread houses. We were the only people there for the last half hour of the last day of activities so the workers sent us home with all the excess fruit trays, blank cookies, and decorations. The next day, much to Lizzie's chagrin, I returned the gingerbread kit I had already purchased for the girls. They also sent us home with reindeer headbands. Lainey calls them her "Halloween" and wants to wear them constantly.

In the evening we went to a stake musical fireside where we happened to run into my sis-in-law from PA (happy surprise) and Lizzie's art teacher from school. We showed up early to drop off cookies (and get decent seats). I brought reindeer coloring pages to keep the girls busy during the performances. Unfortunately they had pretty much colored them all by the time the show started.

Day 13/Monday - We pretty much put a hold on most of our holiday activities so we could focus on Drew's birthday but I did manage to wrap up Mike's gift.

Day 14/Tuesday - Yesterday afternoon I took Liz to the local dollar store to pick out presents for her sisters and her upcoming white elephant gift exchange. At home we did some holiday crafts while we waited for daddy to come home and take over. To be honest, we did more crafts than I originally intended.

First, Lizzie made a house for her paper reindeer out of an old grape container she found in our recycling pile.

Next we made Santa faces with cotton ball beards. I painted "holiday nails" for Lizzie, Lainey, and myself. I wanted the girls to stay at the table while their nail polish dried so I started them on another simple craft: they painted drawings of snowmen and Santa (just his beard) with shaving cream. Then, Liz asked if they could play with the shaving cream on a cookie sheet (apparently she still remembers the other time I let her do this). Andrew was home already and he was NOT happy about it, but he let them anyway (though he didn't bathe them after, just wiped the shaving cream out of their hair with a washcloth) .

The girls loved "playing with snow indoors."

I kind of loved that I got to just walk away . . .

from all the mess and . . .

go to my friend's annual ugly sweater party and leave Drew to deal with the kids.
Day 15/Wednesday - Today I finally mailed my first round of gifts to out-of-towners. Below is picture Lizzie drew of Uncle Mike to put in his present.

After school today I plan to finish up our gift for Drew's sister and then race to the post office to mail it. Then, I'll race home and park the girls in front of the t.v. so I can finish the gift for my parents. The pathetic thing is that I started all my homemade gifts in August and am just now finishing them up. Argh.

Celebrating Andrew's birthday:

I bought some bags of Drew's favorite candy and let the girls pick which ones to give him (and how to wrap them). They loved the entire process.

Technically I "gave" Andrew skis a couples ago but I felt like he needed a present on his actual birthday so I gave him a . . . SWEATER! Of course. And he was sweet enough to wear it out to a late night dinner after the kids were in bed. I took him to Famous Dave's for barbecue, then back home for ski movies (I almost stayed awake through the first one).

I let Liz pick out the cake (red velvet from Costco) and I "decorated" it. When Lizzie saw that I had written "A +" on it she said, "I don't think that was a very good idea" and asked me to please remove the plus sign (or "fix it" as she sweetly put it). Drew liked the A+ alright though. Oh, and 27? He wishes. Up until about a minute before I presented the cake I thought I had regular candles. Oops.

Happy Birthday Drew!

I hope you already know it, but your girls all love you to pieces!

The Girlies for the Grandparents (b/c we've been otherwise too busy to post)

Recent Countdown Activities

Monday/Day 6 - For FHE we picked out a toy Jake and left it in the Toys for Tots bin. It was a transformer. I thought it would be hard for me and was surprised when it wasn't. What was hard was when the conversation at book club the following night turned to people we knew who had lost their baby or almost did.

Tuesday/Day 7 - The girls wrote letters to Santa and did some holiday crafts. Alaina and I made hand print Santas to finally replace our hand print ghosts and bats from a couple months ago.

Lizzie made glitter snowflake window clings.

Alaina tried to copy Lizzie's pose.

We stuck them on our mirrors instead of our windows. It wasn't easy to get a picture though thanks to the poor lighting, flash on the mirror, and the baby grabbing at my camera strap.

Wednesday/Day 8 - Lizzie helped me pick out a holiday sweater vest for an upcoming ugly sweater vest party, the girls picked out grandparent gifts, and we did our usual evening unwrapping of seasonal story books. Yes, that is what Lainey slept in. After the girls went to bed I replaced all of our holiday activity ideas with mint Hershey kisses in this advent calendar:

Instead of advent activities we'll have a holiday "to do" list--that's more my style anyway and it'll be easy to add other ideas (if I have any). It just seemed like every time Lizzie read an activity idea I had to say, oh that won't work today, let's do this instead.

I just used a dry erase marker on a large picture frame. I plan to use the thing to make a summer to do list in a few months.

Thursday/Day 9 - This morning I hung Lizzie's snowflakes from the light to make a sort of holiday chandelier. While I worked Laina and I shared a bowl of popcorn until I saw her doing this:

Smearing her snot and drool throughout our shared snack. Yuck.Needless to say I threw out whatever was left as soon as Laines went down for her nap. And yes, she is still in her pajamas. We all are. My excuse is my sick baby.