Covers

Most of you know that I teach the 14 and 15 year old girls at church each Sunday. Many of the lessons would say "bring paper and pencils for the girls". I knew with a loose leaf of paper that whatever they had written down wouldn't be saved so last Spring I decided to get them all little spiral note books. They are roughly 4 x 5 inches and 180 pages, so pretty thick. I thought this way when they write something down or write goals or thoughts about a lesson they will have it saved and someday can go back and read those thoughts etc... At the same time I thought it would be a great way to put the scriptures and quotes from the lesson in a place that the girls can look back on a certain topic and have those resources at their fingertips. If they ever have to give a talk or a lesson on one of these topics - they'll have all this info. (The catch is that I keep the books and bring them each week - I just didn't see the girls remembering every week. So I will give them their books as they move up to the next group.) It also saves us a lot of time because we don't have to look up scriptures and wait for everyone to get it. It's all right in front of us.

So here's what the books look like:

Here's a close up of one page.

Then my best buddy AS shared her secret pattern for making covers for spiral notebooks. She told me I should make them for my girls. I thought the girls would really like that and the books look so much cuter. So I had to experiment because my spiral notebooks are a much bigger size than the ones AS uses. The third time was the charm and then I got the assembly line running and this is what I ended up with:The girls were really excited and I had a lot of fun learning to make something new!

Broadway's Calling

Ainsley got her hair rolled in sponge rollers on Saturday night. She slept on them all night and Sunday morning we had body - and by that I mean out of control body. Her hair has grown out a bit and I guess I need the next size up so it won't be such a tight curl. Before it was so short that these small rollers were all we could get in. I really wish I had gotten a picture of the back.

So Broadway has been calling - they need an Annie. And Hollywood called and said they'd like to do some remakes of the old Shirley Temple movies.

I think I know of someone that would audition quite well. She's even got down her stage faces:

RUDE and DISOBEDIENT

CHEESY (sorry for the darkness, my flash didn't go off)

And of course the "I didn't do it, I have nothing behind my back, of course I don't know where it is" look!

Climbing the Walls

Recently Ainsley brought "Buddy Bear", her class bear, home for the weekend. He literally CLIMBED THE WALLS.

I think Ainlsey might have encouraged it. She has tried to climb our stone fireplace before.

Other than that Buddy was very well behaved. He made the best of friends with Ainsley's beloved "Manny" the mantee" and "Agnor" the penguin.

Christmas 2007

I am so late with everything. This post will be mostly Christmas pictures with captions so when I eventually turn my blogs into a scrapbook I will have these pictures.

Sweet Ainsley recieving a stuffed pig.

Christmas was great. Very busy though. Dan was on call and had to work right up thru Christmas Eve- late afternoon. Because he was on call we couldn't leave our general area and that meant it was just our family. It's been awhile since we did Christmas eve with just our family and it seemed a little lonely so we ended up getting together with some friends that don't have any family close by. We went over to Ryan and Emily P's house. They treated us to their Christmas Eve's tradition of won tons - crab Rangoon this time. They were unbelievable. We brought our tray of ring bologna, cheese, crackers and sweet/hot mustard. We had lots of fun eating and playing games. Dan's office had received a gift basket with lots of fancy items in it so Daniel brought home some caviar. Everybody (but me) tried it including all the kids. I'm not a fish fan and I'd had it before. The funniest thing was that the P's 2 year old daughter really liked it and had several crackers with caviar. Rich taste I guess. While the adults played some games the kids all decorated gingerbread houses. They did an awesome job and I wished I had taken pictures of them. We got home rather late and the kids opened the presents that they gave each other. Then it was off to bed for everyone.

Christmas morning we opened presents with just our own little family. Ainsley and Gregor both got bikes this year. Chase got an awesome medieval chess set with dragon heads at each corner of the board.

Chase tested his skills on as many people as he could find to play him on Christmas day. Here he is with Aunt Nantha.


Piper got the "Little People Nativity Set". She was very excited and as the people were being pulled from the box and handed to her she was screaming at Ainsley with all her intensity. She did NOT want Ainlsey to touch her new toy. Luckily later she was in the sharing mood and Ainsley and Curren received the lesson of Christ's birth and really enjoyed acting it out.

Because Daniel couldn't travel beyond a 15 miles radius from the hospital we hosted Christmas dinner at our house. It was a bustling place but I got a lot of help. Mom brought a cooked and sliced turkey and ham plus a the stuffing, a sweet potato casserole and huge chocolate cake. That meant I had easy stuff to prepare. I did a fruit salad, marshmallow salad, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls and a pumpkin pie. All in all we had our 6, my mom and dad, my brother, his wife and two boys, my grandparents and my aunt and her friend.

Here's Ainsley and Curren. They really get along well. They are exactly one year apart.

Brian and Stacy

Mom and her big Sis

Stacy and Slater

Piper and Papaw

We had a few performances since the boys have started music lessons. I think everyone really enjoyed it!! MacGregor started with 2 piano pieces.

Then Chase did a trombone piece followed by a piano piece. I was really surprised because I had been on the boys to practice something for that night and it had been a hassle to get them to do it. I was only asking Chase to do the trombone one but when he was finished he asked if he could do a piano one too. I was really shocked that he WANTED to perform in front of everyone more than he was asked. Who knew?

I also played a piano piece that I fell in love with this year. It was a beautiful arrangement of Silent Night and I was way more nervous than the boys and made more mistakes as well. I really don't like being in the spotlight. It's very uncomfortable.

As everyone else was packing up and getting ready to go home - Emily and Jeremy made it. They had packed up their moving truck and drove to Jeremy's sisters for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning and then headed up to our house. They arrived around 7pm and we had fun playing games with them for awhile. They got moved into their apartment the next day.

Here are a few random pictures of the kids.

Here's Ainsley dressed in her "Rosella, Island Princess Barbie" dress up clothes complete with peacock feathers. She's holding a pet shop animals set she received as a gift from Aunt Nantha and Gloria.

Here's MacGregor playing with Piper's new book. Crazy guy! Oh and in the background you can see the TV with a fire on it. It was a TV station that played instrumental Christmas music and had a roaring fire. That's what they had on all day - it was called Yule Log. We loved it and everyone swore that it really did heat up the room!
Here's Piper with her new baby. She was so funny with this baby. She would hug it and pat it's back. My mom kept saying that she was too little to know how to pat a baby.

Here's Chase with some new Pjs. I just think he looks cute and look at those "bedroom" eyes!

On Christmas night Chase and MacGregor went home with my Mom and Dad to spend the night. They grabbed their new pjs and some new toys and had a great time. My dad even let them stay up til 1:30 AM watching their new Ratatouille movie. Bad Papaw!!

They went to my parents because the next day Tyler, Brigham's little boy, was coming to my mom's to do Christmas with her and my dad. My mom thought that Tyler would have more fun if the boys were there. He loves the big boys!

Christmas 2007 was wonderful!!

Funny Girl

I just have a few funny pictures of Piper. Here she's wearing some goofy mask. She found it at our friends house Christmas Eve.

Here she's wearing stickers from a sheet of stamps, you know the parts on the edges that surround the stamps. She was a bit confused by the whole thing.


Piper got a piggy bank for Christmas. I honestly didn't think she was ready to actually put coins in but my mom found a jar of change and showed her how to do it. Well those little fingers hold steady and can drop those coins right in. She LOVED it. She loves to take things in and out of baskets and buckets etc.. So putting all these coins in was heaven for Piper.

Cones and Concerts

Ainsley had a pre-school Christmas concert in December. We had to pick up some cookies for the cookie reception afterwards ( I couldn't make any because our kitchen was torn apart while they put in the new floor). While we were at the grocery store I remembered that we needed a box of ice cream cones for a project MacGregor was working on. His class was building models of a community and his assignment was the church. He decided that an ice cream cone would be a good steeple. It turned out awesome but I don't think we got any pictures :( So back to the grocery store - We purchased our items and headed to the car.

While in the car Ainsley decided she was hungry. Normally she eats before school. It starts at noon. But we were busy getting her hair done etc.. and had to run to the store that I just thought we'll have dessert first today and eat lunch when we get home. This day she didn't have regular school - just a 20 min concert followed by the cookie reception. But since she was already hungry I grabbed the box of ice cream cones and gave her one to snack on. I knew of course this wouldn't go over well with Piper so I gave her one too. I didn't figure she'd know what to do with it.

Piper looked at it for a long time. She watched Ainsley start to take bites out of the top. She started nibbling too. It turned out that ice cream cones are PERFECT snacks for infants/toddlers. They are crunchy - good teethers but don't crumble into a thousand pieces/crums like pretzels and certain crackers. Yet they are pliable and do get soft and dissolve with moisture but DO NOT turn into a messy paste like some teething cookies. It kept Piper busy for a really long time while we waited for the concert to start and it didn't make a huge mess!! 3 cheers for cones!

And Ainsley and her class did a great job doing their Christmas songs and chants. Her favorite was "Must be Santa" which she sang while bobbing her head from side to side with vigor. We put sponge rollers in her hair that morning after her bath but 2 and half hours wasn't enough time for the back to completely dry. The front looked cute though. And Daddy made it just in time!!