The Miracle of M&M"s

So I was working on my Relief Society lesson for tomorrow on the couch when Elyse came and sat by me munching on M&M's.



Elyse "So there's chocolate in them?"

Me "Yes"

Elyse "so you put them in your mouth and make the chocolate pop out?"

Me w/a smile "yes I guess so."

Elyse "watch me"

And she puts one between her teeth and proceeds to "make the chocolate pop out"

Elyse "See!"

We have numerous conversations like this daily. The world through her eyes and verbal skills is such a wonder.

Day 3 of 3, Merry Christmas!

I almost forgot this one. Mark gave me a jewelry box this year. He has picked out such beautiful pieces of jewelry the past few holidays but I haven't had a good place to keep them. Well Payton had a different use for the box. She told me tonight that my jewelry box was her favorite present. I think Mark may have to open the two boxes of saws that have been sitting in my garage unopened for a year, and see if he can build Miss Payton a her own "china cabinet".

And they lived happily ever after! I wish this had turned out, Caia took this picture. Payton was snuggled right up against me. A perfect ending to a very Merry Christmas.

Our friend Dan Evans gave this puzzle game to the girls. We all enjoyed it.

Dan's mom Sis Evans sent each of the girls necklaces. Elyse's Necklace had a Dora on it. She wore that, and the bracelet, which matched exactly to her jammy's and robe, all day. She took it off for a nap and put it all right back on.

Caia and Payton's necklaces were "I am a Child of God" charms. How well she knows little girls. Mark is the only one that has met Sis Evans but she remembers the girls each holiday! Thank you Sis Evans for being so thoughtful!

(Some day I will remember to post pictures backwards first, then add text so this would all be in the correct order, I'm not great at thinking backwards, oh well!)

OK OK enough suspense for you impatient souls. I can't believe all of the flack I have gotten for not posting sooner. I hope this lives up to your expectations!

So after a late night, our morning didn't start until 7 am! I could hear Payton and Caia whispering and their little slipper feet scooting around. When they woke us they had only peeked to see if he had come, they wanted to wait for us to get up to play w/Santa gifts and stockings. I assured them it was OK to get into these things, and they took Elyse to take a peek. Elyse came back in talking 90 miles a minute. "Santa came down and stepped out of the chimney and left lots of presents, and a Diamond Castle Barbie!" She repeated this twice and I wished I had the video on. We are so bad at taking pictures on Christmas Day we start off taking them then Mark and I get to caught up in the action and get distracted. Our gift to the girls was a count down calendar to our Disneyland adventure in February. They weren't as excited as I though they would be. They couldn't get past the fact we have been telling them that we would go next summer or so. So finding out we are going this February I guess confused them!?! They got over it and excited when we watched the DVD from Disneyland.

We had time to talk to our Grandparents in Russia and AZ. We always enjoy these visits. I have to admit I feel very blessed to have two families that love us and we get to spend eternity with.

Skype is also such a blessing as well, we love that we can include them in our festivities even though they are both so far away.

Day 2 of 3, Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve packages! What could they be?P.J's like every yearl, but this year a little twist they came with a bag & slippers!

Payton, always so clever

"Oh they're so cute, oh it's noses are hearts, and they have bows!" and before bed she said thank you for the present. That's my Lyse, quick to say thank you and notice all the details.

I love that they like to match still.

Dinner at the Mosman's was wonderful as always. The kids start asking about 2 months ahead of time if we are going to the Mosman's for Christmas Eve.

Thank you Kim for another lovely evening!

Day 1 of 3, Merry Christmas.

Sister Alvey @ the piano, Caia, Payton, Joseph & Emma Hansen, Ashley Todd Clay Hansen,

Sam and Roy Patten.
Gladys Patten, Clay and Amy Hansen

Monte came and crashed the party, Sue was home recovering from surgery. We love you Sue and hope to see you on Christmas day.


Roy Patten holding Bethany Alvey, Paul, Alex, and BreAnn Alvey.

Emma, Caia, Payton and Elyse completely enthralled with Sam's yukalaylee skills.

Sam Patten in the zone!

BreAnn helped me clean up while Paul enjoyed a good literary read, "The Bean Buckets."

I love that he was laughing as hard as the kids.

I decided it would be wise to try to post each of the next three days as they happened or I will not do our fun justice. We have a tradition of a musical evening some time the week before Christmas. The last 2 years we were at Doug and Nicole Haines, this year they were out of town so we moved the festivities to our house. We of course had a lot of fun and food. The Hansen family came, along with the Alvey's, and our home teachers the Pattens, who brought along two of our friends the Todd's. My favorite addition this year was the hot chocolate bar. I have been on a quest to create the coffee stand hot chocolate and I did it. Torani's choc. sauce, milk and Torani's flavoring, yummy whipping cream, along with my favorite Christmas present ever my cocoamotion from my Sis-in-Law Mary Liz. I have great plain white mugs from Target and I put out dry erase markers so everyone could write their names on them. Of course all of our teenage friends took it to the next level and decorated their mugs, it was a stroke of FUN on my part. Then we gathered around the piano for good old Christmas carols. I love that we spent most of our time singing from the hymn book. The kids each took turns playing a piano piece, and Sam Patten brought his yukalaylee( I had to look up the spelling for that one). I think everyone had a great time. I can't begin to express how warm and happy these events make me. I guess I host them for selfish reasons but I believe this is the kind of entertainment that the spirit is able to attend and I feel blessed to have a home to host them in, and friends willing to participate. Merry Eve of Christmas Eve!

Oh The Snow, Snow, Snow, Snow!

The snow is only about 6" but this one of Elyse is off of our back deck with the wind drifts against our arcadia door.


Q. What do you do when it's too cold and snowy to leave the house?

A. Play with the Cricut of course! The sisters sign was made on my friends machine for girls camp this summer, our cabin had a Christmas theme.

Of course it's never to cold for the girls to play outside. These were taken tonight when Mark got home from tithing settlement. We heard the garage door go up but no one came in; when the girls realized that dad was not only home but he was "playing" (shoveling the driveway) in the snow they went out for the attack. My only regret was not getting a picture of our Dad, they got him pretty good. But then again you know the old saying..."you should have seen the other guy!"

He's Making His List and Checking it Twice...

Thus w/ all of the list checking we decided to make sure we are on his good side and turned to cookie making. Along w/ cooking making we learned a few lessons....

1. Cookie making is serious business.

2. What starts out neat and tidy won't last but makes a mom feel like she has some control.

3. Three little girls in black are so cute, but cookie making and decorating show up well on black. On the flip side apparently it doesn't show in a pictures so much, Who knew?

It's been a good day. The cookies are done now to see if I can get cards out tomorrow. I didn't take into account that as fun as they were to make I need them to fit into envelopes and my scrapbook store closed down since I started them. So I'm off tomorrow to hunt for envelopes.

This Week

Elyse making a cornflake Christmas wreath

So this week was filled with Christams fun. Monday night we purchased the ingredients to make gifts to take to some single sisters in our ward, we'll put them together and take them for family night/day on the Monday we get out of school. Friday we took our Joy School friends to Gritman Day Health to perform for the grandmas and grandpas. I pulled Payton and Caia out of school to participate and our friend Allison is home schooled got to come too. It turned out a lot better than I had thought it would, the grandmas and grandpas loved it. Saturday Caia danced in a Magical Peter Pan Christmas, twice. Mark, Payton, Carli, and I attended the 3:00pm performance while Elyse played w/Nik and Jordan Schwartz. We had enough time to grab Caia dinner, take it back to her, head home for Elyse, our potatoes, ham, and brownies, and to make it in time to be 10 min. late to our ward Christmas party while Caia did a second performance at 7pm. All in freezing temperatures, and blowing snow. We had one family from Genesee not make it home and have to bunk w/other members in town, and our Genesee ward members were unable to make it back into town today for church due to the highway being closed from the snow drifts. We have ended this Sabbath night just right. We watched Mr Krueger's Christmas, drank Grandma Monson's hot spiced punch and played a fun Christmas game that Caia learned at Achievement Days. The girls, including our little friend Carli whom we have adopted until her mom is done with school for the semester, are off to bed. Mark is nearing the end of tithing settlement and I still have Christmas cards to get out, teachers gifts to put together, and bishopric gifts too. But all in all it should be a fun week. Here is the link to to the kids performances if you have time. (I'll add Peter Pan soon.) http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hmons0691&search_type=

Elyse's Sleeping Habits

So the other night I was sneaking into the little girls room before I went to bed and Payton's blanket was down like the picture above. I just thought it had fallen. Yesterday when I went to put Elyse (bottom bunk) down for a nap, as I was leaving she says "Close two doors mom." I was a bit confused and walked out closed her door and she yells, "no two doors" , that's when the vision of the night before came back to me and I realized the second door was her sisters blanket. She had actually stolen Payton's blanket while she was a sleep to create a second door. She by far has the biggest imagination. So after weeks of sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag this is her new favorite sleeping situation! She has such a tender heart! Last night she woke up and came into our room having had a bad dream and says "Mom I had a bad dream, will you come say a prayer with me?" After she finished w/her sweet simple prayer she says "Mom I'm sorry I yelled at you to get out of my room" (this happened at bed time). Let's just say I had no problems w/that middle of the night call and the rest of the night was peaceful.