Our Annual Gingerbread House

Decorating anything with icing is not my forte, but my children love to decorate the gingerbread houses, so I play along for them. And here it is our lovely, beautiful gingerbread house!

Thanksgiving and Beyond

For Thanksgiving we went down to my parents house in Prescott Valley. My sister and her family joined us there. The kids had a great time playing together and we had a lot of good food!

Out of the three pictures I took of the three of them, of course the best one is the blurry one!

Here's Daniel and Kyler playing a tossing game (I don't remember what it's called!)

The biggest cousin holding the littlest!

On Friday, we took the kids to a big gingerbread house display and normally they have gingerbread cookies there that the kids get to decorate, but we went on the wrong day. My kids were a little upset, so we made and decorated them at home, compliments of Dad making the frosting and Aunt Jena making the cookies!

My sweet munchkin!

Hideouts are always so much better at Grandma's house!

My sister let the girls paint her toes with nail polish that she gave them. It looks like she is having second thoughts!

On Saturday, we went over to the White Mountains to cut down our Christmas trees. This is the first year we have down this as a family. We got there a little late and didn't have as much time as we would have like to hunt for the perfect tree, but it was still fun. Daniel definitely felt like the Griswold family from Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation. Here is Brett and Kyler cutting down there tree and trimming it up.

Here is Daniel cutting down our monster of a tree! It was so big it was hanging out of the truck on the way home!

Here's Kaylee trying to entertain the girls and keep them warm.

Here's me trying to keep Tobyn warm. It snowed on our way home.

Here's our tree decorated! It barely fit through the door, we had to shove it and trim it up quite a bit! We have 10ft ceilings! As we were decorating it Daniel got the girls believing that we brought a squirrel home with us and it's living in the tree! (Chevy Chase's Christmas Vacation is Daniel's favorite movie, can you tell?)

This is just a proud mommy moment of Rayna writing her name! Yeah Rayna!

Snow Day

Today has not quite been the day I envisioned it would be, but I guess we have made the most of it. This is our one day a week we actually go to school (and it is one of the last one's before the holiday break) and it got cancelled (along with everything else)! Oh well. The girls have had fun playing in the snow, sipping hot chocolate, and playing with the neighbor girl instead! I have got a few household chores done today, but with extra add-ons of shoveling snow and suiting the kids up for the snow, I haven't accomplished as much as I wanted! These pictures were taken this morning and its been snowing nonstop today, so we probably have another foot out there!

Thanksgiving Play

On this last Friday, we hosted a Thanksgiving Play that the girls were a part of with six other families of homeschoolers. The play was "The First Thanksgiving." Taylin was a pilgrim girl and she loved her costume. Rayna was an Indian girl and she hated her costume (I can't blame her, it was a little annoying for her!). There was a total of 21 pilgrims and indians in the play, which put about 40 people in our house with parents and siblings! It was a lot of fun. There was some definite chaos, but the kids had a great time and that was the purpose. They did an awesome job memorizing their parts and their songs. The preschoolers were done about half way through, but that always makes for laughs! Here is some shots of them in all their glory!

Tobyn at 6 Months

Tobyn has hit another milestone, and become another month older! He is a bundle of fun. This past month we have pulled out new toys (and our house is getting crowded with baby toys!) for him to play with, he is using his voice more lately, pushing up on his knees (but he doesn't turn over from his back to his belly yet?), grabbing and playing with his toys (and sisters' hair occasionally!), and we have just started giving him food! So, I've decided I must being doing something wrong, all three of my kids have just not been into food! The first feeding went well, but after that, he was not interested! Oh well, it's a good thing he's a good nurser! On another note, this afternoon Tobyn and I had one of our private conversations. It involved lots of cooing and ahhing, along with some giggling and belly laughs. He grabs at my face and snuggles and rubs my shirt, so I give him kisses on his face and bury my face in his shirt. I know it doesn't sound like much of a conversation, but it was a highlight of my day!

First bite of bananas!

"I'm not sure I liked that!"

"My new chair!"





A new toy! Well, to Tobyn it's new.

My smiley boy!

The Last Few Weeks

It's inevitable, I always seem to fall behind in blogging! So, here is a recap of the last few weeks!

This is Montezuma's Castle. We went on a little field trip with just the girls and Hannah Finney. We had a great time and the girls were so interested and eager to learn! Their only issues were that they wanted to go inside. Which I can't blame them, I wanted to go inside, too!

Climbing trees is always a fun part of field trips!

Rayna and Daddy carving the pumpkin! Taylin was not interested in helping. The gooey part was not for her, but Rayna was all in!

For Halloween we went to a Harvest Party and the kids had a blast! They look forward to it every year! Here's Tobyn as a giraffe. I thought about putting a black nose on him, but then I decided that it would just end up all over me! So, I didn't.

For the girls, I came up with some homemade outfits in order to save some money. They weren't store bought, but they were just as excited about them. I thought they actually turned out okay for just using things around the house. Taylin was a bride. This dress was a flower girl dress for my niece when she was ten. So, it was way long, but it looked okay to just hem it!

Rayna was a purple butterfly! She was actually really fun to help dress up! She let me do her hair how I wanted, so I had some fun with it! (I did actually buy her wings)

Fun, snuggling in the morning!

"My sissy is so funny!"

This was our field trip to the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Phoenix. They have a good dinosaur exhibit, which is what we were studying this past week. The kids had fun getting to really see all the cool dinosaur bones.

Can you imagine this monster swallowing you?

The famous T-Rex!

They also got to pan for gold at the Museum! That was way fun and they even got to keep the gold they found!

While we were in Phoenix, we stayed overnight at my brother's house and went to my nephew's T-ball game and his birthday party. The girls had a blast playing with their cousins. This is Rayna and Jennica at Henry's party! (Jennica was dressed up as Hannah Montana to go to another Hannah Montana party)

Henry's 4 years old!

Tobyn's Five Months!

I'm sure this gets tiresome of me saying this, but I really can't believe how fast this is going. Somebody told me the other day that they thought Tobyn was starting to look like a little boy instead of a baby (I told them that was mean)! That can't be. He has to stay my baby, right? He is so precious. He smiles at almost everyone and his smiles get so big that you think he is going to burst! He is often called the quiet one in our house. I don't know how long that will last, but he is usually always content as long as he has Mom and is being held. Things that Tobyn likes are: his mamma, his sissies, his daddy, and most other people, his changing table, being naked, his thumb, his little blue blankie, and the bath tub. Life is so simple at 5 months (don't you sometimes wish everything stayed that simple)! He's still a little peanut, but I think he has done some serious growing this past week! He has been eating like a monster and I am finally starting to put away those 0-3 months clothes.