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.

Thanksgiving

Caia making a crust for Great Grandma's Dutch Apple Pie.

Payton eating peels.

Caia peeling, slicing and coring apples for the pie.

Payton eating the peels almost as fast as Caia is peeling.

The table all set, we even had place cards this year!

(Only the best for our guests.)

Notice the fog setting in, we had

over 24 consecutive hours of a heavy fog.

Our last two weeks were good ones. Jolyn came and visited for the weekend (20-24). We enjoyed the start of my Christmas shopping in Spokane. For my birthday we started the day off with presents. Then I let the kids skip the morning of school and we went to the Breakfast club for breakfast. The girls love to go there for breakfast. We spent the day around the house, and that evening enjoyed prime rib at the Keusperts, (he was Marks 1st councilor for the first 2 years.) I picked up a chocolate pie at Costco for dessert. The girls sure got a kick out of all of those candles! Saturday we started some small gift crafts, hit a craft fair, and we topped off the evening with my friend Wendy at Twilight I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I can't wait for the next one and now I'm reading them again!

Jolyn was off to the airport and I turned to Thanksgiving preparations. We had two families of 4, one of 6, 4 Elders and us. I have to admit that everything went like clockwork. After dinner us girls slipped out to the Thanksgiving Michael's sale. ( I had to get my $30.00 Cricut cartridges!) The last 3 days have been unusually quiet. Mark and I did hit a few sales Friday late morning. And attended a Friday night baptism for a convert in our ward. We were excited that Logan Finally took the plunge, she is 16 and was baptized by her 16 year old cousin it was a very special evening.

The girls are all in bed and we are looking forward to the Christmas break I enjoyed having everyone home and happy to play together. Thank you to all for the Birthday wishes.

Have a great week.

10 Things that make me smile!

OK I was tagged several weeks ago so here I go. I'm excited to take time to think about this.


10 thing that make me smile. ( Not in any particular order)


1. When Mark gets home and all the girls run to him yelling "Daddy"!


2. Listening to Elyse in the bath tub.


3. Watching Payton push every ones buttons. It can drive me crazy but at times I can't help but laugh.


4. When my girls leave for school, When my girls come home from school.


5. That Caia made her dad take her shopping for a birthday present and she wrapped it and it even has a great bow!


6. Mark, he can make me smile just by telling me that his whole world revolves around me, when in reality we all know our world revolves around him.


7. Knowing that even away from family that my Thanksgiving table is full, and getting to make Aunt Barbara's Stuffing. I love the smells while it's being made and I see in my minds eye her stirring that BIG bowl.


8. Remembering that my dad calls me "doda".


9. Elyse saying "it's just you and me kid" after we say good bye to the sisters.


10. When my girls snuggle up to read a Wrinkle in time. I'm amazed at both of their ability to see symbolism in this book.

OK I tag, Jackie S, Alisa S, Annie L,

A bit here and a bit there.

(This post refers to the first 2 weeks of November. )

Not much of a picture week, but some great things to remember.


Elyse: She likes me to snuggle by her at night "for 1 minute". So the other night I was snuggling by her and Payton was asleep already. She closed her eyes for a few seconds then opened them and says, "mom, it's so hard to make the sun come up." Life is amazing when your 3 and the sun rises and falls around you.


Payton: Currently she is into riddles. The other night she was making up riddles about our family members. Here is my favorite. "She is the best piano teacher ever!, she likes to snuggle me, she makes breakfast, and lunch, and dinner, who is it?" She also lost her top tooth, I'll have to get a picture of that one posted. It's so cute her last two teeth she had our friend and neighbor Nik Schwartz pull them. All last week she kept saying "it's a good thing Nik is coming over on Friday because this tooth is loose" How funny is that? No he has no gimmick, no tricks, he is just Nik and can do it! I love having such nice young men in our ward.

Caia: HHMMMM she is 9. Past the cute saying stage but dabbling in the art of sarcasm, and giving her mom the cold shoulder when we strongly disagree. Luckily not good enough at it that when I smother her with attention for it she cracks a smile and life is back to normal. She has such great friends, she and Emma Clark have been friends since they were 1! and Addi is such a cutie too. They are currently playing Little Women at recess. She is a great reader, Emma read Little Women and now Caia is working on it. I think I had better borrow it next and read it. She is getting ready for a Christmas Peter Pan where she is an Indian Dancer with her Celtic group.

Halloween

Emma Hansen, Caia, Payton, Spencer Banks, and Elyse

Payton and Lola decorating cookies, Elyse spilled on her costume so why not get comfy! My girls and their PJ's are inseparable.

Wow what a crazy Halloween season. With all of our little parties it felt like Christmas. After Payton's festivities it was Elyse's turn. It was our week to host our Joy School friends so that meant another Halloween party. The kids were so cute! The older girls were out of school so they were happy to be involved. We painted pumpkins, sang songs, ate more worms, and decorated yummy pumpkin cookies.

We have a fun little tradition with the Hansen's in our ward. We get together Halloween evening for soup and bread then the dad's take the kids Trick-or-Treating and we stay home and pass out candy, and chat. We invited our friends the Banks this year . This has to be the warmest Halloween ever. The kids wore a light sweatshirt and they didn't freeze! As for their costumes; Elyse switched costumes about 10 tens over the week. That night we took her down to the dress up box and that's what she came up with, although I think before she made it out the door she made a few more alterations to it. Payton too decided to change at the last minute, whatever! Life with 3 girls is always about going with the flow and a lot mind changing. What's important is that they had so much fun! ( Elyse is now telling everyone that next year she is going to be "a Super Hero". This post Halloween choice is her longest lasting decision, although I'm grateful for a whole year to figure out what on earth a super hero is to this 3 year old.)

Saturday was just as fun, the girls spent Wednesday night and all day Thursday gutting their rooms and cleaning so we their treat was High School Musical 3. Mark decided to "keep his man card" and volunteered to stay home with Elyse. I used to think there were way to many school holidays but I have grown to love our breaks, the girls are at such fun ages.

Party Time

Cinderella making an appearance as a witch.


All of our guests were able to contribute to the brew, with bat eyes, (blueberries) Frankenstein tongues, (fruit by the foot), vampire teeth, (tips of candy corn) a few other things but the favorite being witch's breath (dried ice, I couldn't have planned it better if tried, I picked the ice up with metal tongs and it made a great screaming hissing sound.)

Payton and Mia Barret .

Allison Chatterton, Emma Ferrin, 6 year old Payton,

Carli Salomon, Elyse 3, and Kenya Contreras

We only do a birthday party with friends every other year and this was a party year for

Ms. Payton. She chose a Halloween theme. We played dress the witch, (a spin off of pin the tail on the donkey, thanks to my cricut machine) made a fabulous witches brew, (thank you Shannon Taylor for that idea it was as great as you said it would be) ate ribs, (string cheese), and worms (hot dogs sliced into 8th's then boiled curly). We Opened presents, wow we have a lot of littlest, Polly's, pet shops, and pretty pony's. Payton is in heaven, these are her very favorite things and she plays with them all the time. Even Cinderella made an appearance dressed for Halloween like a witch. Every one seemed to have fun, and Mark and I were glad it was over.

Shortly after the party Mark was off to a stake priesthood meeting. Later we had our favorite babysitter come, Kayla Stinebaugh and Mark and I attended the adult session of stake conference with Elder R Bruce Merrell of the 70. Following that we went out to a late dinner with our second councilor and his wife. Here is a shout out to our good "buddy"! Today we attended Stake Conference which of course was very nice, two sisters from our ward spoke today and last night one of our sisters spoke, so the Paradise Ridge Ward was well represented.

All and all a great weekend, it's 2:45pm and things are quiet....for now.

Happy Birthday Payton!

Elyse enjoying Payton's birthday present from Brother and Sister Bennett

Payton enjoying one of her presents.

Opening her presents.


Payton's Birthday was the 24th. I can't believe she is 6! I told her that she didn't have to go to bed on Thursday night, in exchange she would still be my 5 year old. But she decided to go to bed and wouldn't you know it she woke up 6. It's amazing I love having a 6 year old. Friday she got up and opened her presents. She took snicker doodle cookies to school to celebrate. Elyse and I picked her up and went to McDonald's for lunch. That night the only thing she wanted to do was have her favorite primary teachers over for dinner, which upon her request was shrimp, rice and zucchini. What a fun dinner. We then went to a new ice cream shop in town instead of cake. Then we came home got into PJ's turned out all of the lights and watched a grand fireworks show out our window and sang happy birthday just for her. It was a perfect evening, (and U of I's homecoming).

This is for you Grandpa May!

Last night the girls were in the kitchen just before bed. Elyse decided that something smelled and blamed it on Payton, she smells things all the time. So I told her it's her upper lip. Hers eyes got real big and she asked "my wips?" I told her it must be, we don't smell anything. She thought about it long and hard. This morning when she got up I asked her "what smells?" She says "oh, oh, that must be my wips!"

Pumpkin Carving FHE

Waiting to get started, Elyse was so excited.
"Oooo pumpkin guts, I need the sanitizer!" Elyse Keeps us laughing