Halloween 2012

Emily ran out before I could really get a picture of her. She wanted to be a "Girly Girl" is what she called it. She wanted things to be extreme and things she normally wouldn't wear... Lots of sparkles, dark makeup, her hair all done, pink stuff. Not that she doesn't like pink, but she always says she isn't a "Girly girl" and I agree, she isn't super fussy about all the glamorous things advertised for girls.

Lindsey wanted to be a voodoo witch. It was lots of fun making. She looked very gross! I could hardly look at her. Not sure if you can tell but she even had brown teeth. There were all sorts of things hanging from her skirt, snakes a bird, voodoo doll, spiders, skulls... many things from Halloween stuff. Even a rat! Her costume was lots of fun.

Lauren wanted to be a pretty witch, whatever that meant I wasn't sure. People would refer to the girls as a bad witch and a good witch. Lauren was pleased with her costume.

Amber was a princess, Costco costume made easy. We did spray her down with glitter.

Samantha was a fairy which also came from Costco which made it easy.

The grade schoolers, Lindsey, Lauren, and amber had a Halloween parade at school. Lindsey didn't wear her wig or much makeup for school. The individual pictures were taken right before school. I painted Samantha's face like 3 times and then just gave up.

It was my year to take the girls around trick or treating. We got way too much candy and I, myself ate way too much candy too!

Easter Week

I was thinking about Easter and how I was dissappointed how I felt when Christmas was over.  It is a major religious holiday and yet I felt like as a family we failed to celebrate it with Christ in the center of things. 

One of my dear friends has a book about having a Christ centered Easter.  She had a post on her blog last year I think about what she does and how she brings and keeps Christ into it all.  I loved it!  I thought for sure we would follow it this year and adjust or add to it as I felt fit our family. 

I also planned on doing those easter cookies, the ones you make and put in your oven until the morning.  I have always thought it would be fun, but when I first heard of it I had just a little baby.  Then each year it seemed like I forgot about it till it was too late. 

I wanted to dedicate our family home evening the week before Easter to talking about Easter and all that, but then I was reminded of Jamie's Easter activities she does.  I thought perfect!

The week before Easter went like this:

Sunday:  I had a huge headache, but managed to talk a bit about Easter and we did the first little lesson.  I explained the the kids that we were going to talk about Easter every night this week.

Monday:  I woke up with a small irriated throat, thought it was maybe just allergies even though they normally effect my eyes and nose more than my throat.  As the day went on, it got worse, I felt aweful called my husband to have him bring dinner home (which I seldom do for being sick).  At about 5 I took lots of mortin and started to feel a bit better, my head ache almost went away.  We did the second day events for the Easter week activities for family home evening.

Tuesday:  I didn't sleep good, I wanted to die, in hopes to end my pain.  I called Robert to come home from work so I could get some help and go to the Dr.  I tested positive for strep.  I came home and went to bed.  We didn't do any Easter related things.

Wednesday:  Didn't sleep good, motrin didn't really dull much pain but knew I was to get better since I was taking my RX.  I slept most the day, the girls watched TV most all day long.  A wonderful neighbor brought us dinner.  All day I was either freezing cold or burning up.  No Easter activity.

Thursday: I slept when the girls watched a movie, and after my older girls got home from school.  I was feeling a bit better.  Was excited to get back on track with the Easter activities. I combined 2 or 3 of the days to get caught up were we should be. 

Friday:  Feeling better, my throat almost wasn't hurting.  I was contemplating running my race for the next day.  I decided against it.  Went shopping to finalize all our Easter stuff.  Luckily I had bought most the stuff weeks ago.  We forgot to do the Easter activity, but I was able to eat so sort of real food.

Saturday:  I was woken up around 4ish by Amber.  I started thinking about running the race again.  I decided I would do it.  I got up a few hours later to get ready for the race.  I was pretty sore from the race.  Robert and I went shopping, and my appetite had returned.  I was HUNGRY and wanted REAL food!  That night I stuffed plastic eggs, and we forgot to do Easter stuff again, well REAL Easter stuff. 

Sunday:  The girls had strings tied to their beds that lead to their Easter baskets.  We went to church, went to Grandma's for Easter egg hunt there and dinner.  I felt like again, this important holiday went by and we didn't focus on it enough. 

I guess there is always next year.  I keep thinking if I wasn't sick or if I had planned better.  I tried, and it was better than last year.  I feel like we didn't ever focus on those major important things about Jesus' life.  I guess it is just those small steps that make you closer.  Hopefully next year I will be a bit closer to where I wanted to be this year.

We didn't even color eggs this year....  I guess there is always next year.

Valentine's Day

As Valentine's day approached, I couldn't help but to think of our Valentine's time 2 years ago.  You can read the post here about when Samantha had RSV and she was in the hospital.  It was just a day or two after Valentine's day.  At times it seems like so long ago, and yet also like just a short time ago.  How does time do that, seem both so distant and yet just yesterday too?  I read my post from two years ago and remembered all those feelings of how sad it was to listen to Samantha struggle to even breath, and Amber who was 2 was sick with it I am sure too, but she was old enough that you could hear her raspy breathing but she was strong enough to be okay.  I hated going to the hospital and holding down my sweet little 8 month old baby while they stuck tubes in her nose and mouth to suck out the fluids while she cried her little tiny helpless hoarse cry.  I hope I don't even have to deal with something like that again.  The twins even remember going to the hospital to visit her.  They remember the little kids hospital gown she had on.  It was blue with little bears on it.  It was way too big, but we just modified it a bit.  I had forgotten those details until they had said it.  I had some pics but they were on a phone that I had to replace and I lost the pictures.

On to better things...  this year I didn't do as much with the heart theme as I have before.  I tried to make heart cookies, but I think because they were store bought dough, they didn't turn out.  I have done it before with my recipe and it works so good.  So I ended up cutting the cookies a bit to make them look more like hearts. 

I had Samantha and Amber paint "love" pictures.  They were cute.  Then I just drew on some other  paper for placemats and added some candy suckers to the table.  Suckers seem to be a staple at our house sometimes.  You can see the pictures they painted under the little bottles.

The strawberries were heart shaped, the ice in the pink soda was heart shaped, and the pizza was heart shaped before I cut it.  We also ate heart candy too.  Oh, yeah the best part was Amber helping me make heart shaped breadsticks.  She helped me twist the pillsbury breadsticks from a can into little hearts on sticks and big hearts too.  I put some of the ones in a vase that were tall, but some of them just broke.  Oh well.  To my suprise the breadsticks were tasty.  They were the garlic kind.  I will probably buy them again.  I hadn't had them before, or don't remember it anyway. 

Samantha is "too big for her high chair now" or so she thinks she is.  She uses a chair now.  She seems to be enjoying her dinner.

Amber insisted on having her mouth wide open.  She is too funny!  Since she has been sick she has been working on eating all her food.  She actrually ate ALL her pizza but a little bit of crust, and 3 bread sticks.  You can see a little of the breadstick in her hand that was kind of shaped like a heart wand.

Emily is good with anything that has to do with pizza!  I lost count of how many slices she had.

Lauren was enjoying the meal, but seemed to have already filled her belly with candy at a friends house so she didn't eat much. Emily snuck into Lauren's picture.  (You can really see those genetic canine teeth of hers.)

This is the funniest pose of Samantha's!  When you tell her to say cheese, she squishes up her face and closes her eyes and says, "cheese!"  It really cracks me up!!

I went cheap, really cheap and just wrote Robert a little letter with some song lyrics from Matthew West, "Wouldn't Change a Thing" and what does he do... what he does everytime.  He gets me something way too expensive, something I wouldn't have ever dreamed of because it is out of what I would consider our price range....  he got me an iPhone.  We were getting ready to shut my phone off to save some money, but instead, he upgraded it to a new phone and got himself one too.  The phone seems pretty cool, but it will take me forever to figure it all out.  I had my iPod figured out, but now a phone was just added to it.  Yikes!  It will take me awhile.  Now I will get nothing done around the house for a week while I try it out and learn how to use it.  It will be Robert's own fault when he comes home and there is no clean clothes or clean dishes.  (okay not really)