It Pays to Clean your Room

On Saturday Lydia was cleaning her room and she decided to rearrange her furniture. She moved her toy box to the other side of the room and what did she find? The $20 she thought she had lost on her birthday! See it does pay to clean your room. She was super excited! Her room looks great now! It is even dusted and vacuumed which should help her dust allergies. Maybe now she will also have room for a present that is coming her way.

My Favorite Christmas Music

So I have been listening to my absolute favorite Christmas Album these past few days. It just makes me smile when I listen to it. To me it is everything Christmas. It wraps up all of those feelings and puts it into music.

What is my favorite Christmas Album you ask? "Through the eyes of a child" by Bob Gandy. I absolutely love it! I even brought it into work this morning so I can listen to it while I work.

You can actually listen to samples of the CD on http://www.bobgandy.com/. It has such a great mix of old favorites and some new original songs.

Happy Holidays everyone!!

"Mommy! It's on Fire!!!"

Yes, these are the words I heard yesterday morning. No it wasn't my Christmas Tree or my house, it was Lydia's toast. I know, I have to explain. Our toaster broke a few months ago and it just hasn't been on our list of things to replace. We just keep forgetting, or when we see a toaster it is one of those super expensive ones that we can't justify buying.

Anyway, Lydia can make several things by herself. Scrambled eggs on the stove top, she can mostly make macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti o's. I have learned how to toast bread in the oven and I figured Lydia was such a capable girl that she could make it as well. I advised her to turn on the oven to 350 and to place her toast right on the oven shelf. I advise her to use oven mitts. Well suddenly I hear "Mommy! It's on fire". I come in and see one of Lydia's pieces of toast had fallen down below and is slightly on fire. It wasn't blazing by any means, but there were little flames. I grabbed my oven mitt, yank out the toast, blow it out and put it in the garbage.

I say to Lydia "No more toast in the oven". How about you just have a plain peanut butter sandwich instead of peanut butter toast". Poor shaken Lydia heartily agrees.

Later at church I notice her wrist is red in one spot. Come to find out she had also burnt herself. Poor child! Maybe we should ask Santa for a toaster :)

Oh, last night we also decorated our gingerbread house. I will have to post pictures soon.

It's Beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas!! So yesterday was the big day to decorate the house. We cleaned first and then I went under the stairs to pull out all of the Christmas Decorations. The funniest thing that happened was when I pulled out the tree. Adelle and Lydia looked bewildered at how small it is. I just reminded them that they are getting bigger each year. Granted it is a pretty small tree. I think it is less than 6 feet tall. I don't need a ladder at all to put on the star. There are times I consider getting a bigger one, but then I remember that the circumference of the tree would be larger as well. We have a pretty small living room so this petite tree works well for us.

I bought the tree 8 years ago when I was living in a small apartment in Bothel, Washington. I decided that I was going to celebrate Christmas whole hearted! I went to the local department store and picked up a tree and a copy of Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD. I absolutely love the holidays and am quite sentimental. I think that is a trait I picked up from my dad.

Every year the girls and I love putting the ornaments on the tree. Wes participates as well, but I don't think he gets quite as excited as the girls and I. I love pulling out each of the ornaments and remembering where they came from. It was a family tradition growing up to get a new ornament every year. It is one that I have carried on with my kids. I actually have some of my original ornaments. I even have the ornament from my very first Christmas.

We pick up ornaments when we go on vacation, like our little crab holding a Christmas tree from our Oregon Trip 2 years ago. The tree almost becomes a scrapbook of our adventures and memories. There are even a few sweet handmade ornaments from Lydia. I have even added this year some antique ornaments that my grandmother gave me last year.

My grandmother Walter no longer puts up her tree so she gave it to us last year along with all of the trimmings. Sarah picked up her little tree from us yesterday. I went through the ornaments and found some beautiful handcrafted glass ornaments. I think they must be from the fifties because one of the boxes actually had a price tag of .49 cents. Can you imagine?? I placed these gems near the top of my tree so my cat can't use them as her toys. They add a nice touch to the tree.

We were tired after all the preparations and spent the rest of the evening watching Rankin and Bass' "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". You know, the old TV specials with the stop motion animation. We also watched the original cartoon "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas".

We are planning on decorating our Gingerbread House tonight after church! I will have to post pictures.

Here are some fun pictures of the girls from yesterday:

Adelle holding her new ornament for this year. It is a little cat that is also a bell.

They really are getting tall compared to the tree.

My precious girls! I am really excited for the festivities to come as well. There are Christmas parties, visiting of relatives, the giving of presents, and of course the Christmas Music!

I also wrapped all of the extended family presents yesterday and they are sitting under our tree. Now I just need to wrap Wes' and the girls' presents. I am also done shopping. Woo Hoo!

Kids say the funniest things

So last night when Wes was getting Adelle ready for bed he was pretending to be a horse. Well Wes the horse collapsed and said that he couldn't go on unless he had some carrots. Adelle asks me if she should get some carrots out of the fridge. I hear the horse call out that he doesn't want real carrots and that Adelle needs to use her imagination. I went back to blogging and I hear Wes the horse saying that he needs oats now. Adelle comes over to me, grabs a hold of me and says. "You're Oates. C'mon". I laughed so hard!!!

Family Pictures

A couple of months ago Jamie Petersen (Sarah's sister in law) came and took some pictures of my family and my extended family. Here are some of my favorites!!

Thanksgiving Dinner at My Parents

Sunday morning Lydia came home. Yeah!! Sunday evening we headed to my Dad and Julie's house for a Thanksgiving Dinner. It was wonderful to see everyone again! I forgot to take pictures during dinner. Drat! I got some afterwards though :) Lydia suddenly doesn't like to have her picture taken. She hides whenever I pull out the camera.

Allie, Matt and Cedric reading.

My grandmother Walter and sister Sarah.

Guess what Adelle found in the living room? Presents! Grandma Julie likes to get her Christmas shopping done early like me :)

Adelle loved looking through the presents to find ones that are for her.

Lydia couldn't resist looking as well.

Cedric and Adelle playing piano together. The girls love seeing their cousin and had a lot of fun playing with him. The best part of Thanksgiving of course isn't the food, but seeing family! I love visiting with them.

Julie loaded us up with a lot of leftovers and I have been trying to use left over turkey as much as possible. I have made Turkey Noodle Soup and a turkey salad for lunch. Now what to do with the dark meat and ham :)