Gingerbread and Friends

It's simple, but does the job.

From Soccer in the Fall

 


Scrapbook pages I did tonight from the girls playing soccer in the fall.  I don't do double pages very often, but this seemed to work well.

After school

This is what happens after school around here.

First Madison and Ally have their 20 minutes of reading to do.  Madison has been taking it up on my bed lately.

 Ally is apparently loving this book:

 Emily gets off the school bus about 10 minutes after the other girls get home and although she wants to just turn the tv on, she has to wait.  Today she decided to build a castle.

Matthew also liked the castle and had a hard time staying off the table.

Madison and Matthew are great little friends.

Matthew cooking

Monday night, I was making Chicken and Dumplings for dinner and had the soup part cooking on the stove. I went upstairs for a few minutes and when I came back downstairs, Matthew had pulled a chair over to the pot. At first I was mostly concerned that he would get burned, so I got him down and I turned around to stir it.  He decided to add a couple items including a matchbox car, pencil, hair elastic, paint chip color, Popsicle stick, a friendship bracelet that I picked up the day before behind the toilet, and doorstop from the funeral home. The doorstop and friendship bracelet are the ones that really got me. 

Charlie picked up pizza for dinner.

New Years Resolutions

Last week I came across this talk by Elder Ballard.  I knew that I wanted to do a Family Home Evening lesson on it since it was the beginning of the new year.  I firmly believe that if we aren't working on something then we are floating through life.  I love this quote: "I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential."


We decided to make some family and individual goals:


Family Goals:
Work on paying off student loans
Read scriptures everyday and have morning and evening prayers everyday.
Make our beds everyday.  


Charlie has his goals


Mom:
Work 13+ hours each week.
Exercise 3 times per week.
Read scriptures daily.
Clean something everyday.
Scrapbook 2 pages per month and finish 2 quilts this year (I'm totally counting Ally's that I'm almost done with!).  


Madison:
Practice multiplication.
Do at least 2 miles at run/walk.
Ride bikes, jumping jacks, treadmill.
Help other if they are hurt, be kind, Choose the Right Story.
Say prayers, read scriptures.
Keep room clean, Take baths Sat., Thurs., Tues.
Learn new hobbies like checkers, soccer, running, reading.  Learn to sew.


Ally:
Do 7 laps during each run/walk.
Learn more math.
Make new friends and play with them.
Read 1 chapter from the scripture every day.
Keep my room clean.
Learn a new dance like the waltz.


Emily:
Learn to read.
Learn to ride her bike.
Go to Primary each week.
Play a game every day.

Christmas

The Monday before Christmas we got together with the some neighbors and made gingerbread houses for Family Home Evening.  This is serious business.

Gingerbread houses are very good to eat, too.  Sydney and Emily:

Emily is very proud:

 Christmas Eve (All of us in one picture looking the same direction!!):


Christmas Day:

Matthew--Sweet happiness:

The temple pictures are one of my favorite presents from this year.  A friend's mother-in-law works at a place and these are ones that they were just going to throw away so they sell them for a great price.  Madison loves the San Diego temple, Emily chose the Manti (she was with me), and Ally loves the Salt Lake temple.  Matthew also has the Provo temple.  During last conference we were reminded again that every child needs to have a picture of the temple in their room so we ordered prints through the distribution center.  Charlie did a beautiful job of hanging these with the prints and I hope it is something that they can have forever.

When the girls opened this present together, the first words out of Ally's mouth was, "Oh, my gosh.  We are going to kill ourselves."  Yep, this is the reason that we bought it.  Obviously not to kill themselves, but so we can learn that guns are not bad.  Charlie is teaching them about how to shoot and they love it!  Matthew thinks that it is equally his and we can only shoot when he is sleeping.

 This cute little thing is ready for church:

The other highlight of our Christmas was giving the 12 days of Christmas to two families.  They weren't the traditional and most were very simple (oranges, stickers, cookie dough, donuts), but we loved doing it and hopefully it brought them some joy as well.  We decided to reveal who we were at the end and the Peredes were so sweet and said that it was the biggest highlight of Christmas for them.  On our doorstep the left us the most amazing bowl made out of bread filled with rolls.  I want to try to make one of those!  I really want our girls to learn to give to others and hopefully this was a small, fun way to do that.

The other highlight of the month was Charlie taking off a week and we just stayed home.  It was wonderful!