I got this in my email from a friend. Wouldn't I love it to be true!? It brought a smile to my face just watching it :)

The Creche Exhibit

We have made it a yearly tradition to go to the community creche exhibit. We enjoy looking at all the creches from around the world, and we like to get our family picture taken. We had to take the picture without Alan this year, so Benjamin took over as Joseph and Elisabeth took my place as Mary. The kids were excited to have new roles.

Grandma took a picture with the grandkids since Grandpa couldn't come. The girls were all angels and Travis was a cute baby Jesus.

I took a few of my own pictures too.

Emily's choir performed at the creche this year. She auditioned during the summer and was selected for the Oregon Children's Choir this year. People warned me that the choir had a lot of Sunday commitments, but out of 6 concerts, only one is on Sunday, which is a better ratio than Kidsports. She has been really enjoying it. They did a pretty good job.

Ward Christmas Party

We went to the ward Christmas party without Alan this year. It was a "best dress" party, so it was fun to dress nice (my kids wore washable clothes, however!).

We ate a yummy meal with the family and sang lots of Christmas songs. We also read the nativity story.

The only part of the party that my kids had a problem with was when Santa came. Santa was wearing a Victorian outfit this year, and I could not convince my younger kids that this was really Santa. I don't think my kids were the only ones with this problem, because usually when Santa walks in the room there is a lot of excitement and this time it was dead silent. Benjamin kept saying, "I don't know that guy. Who is that?" When I tried to tell him it was Santa, he would say, "those aren't Santa's clothes." (In fact, a few days later when we were driving down the street we saw a Santa on a corner trying to get people to come into a Christmas tree lot. Benjamin looked at him and yelled, "There's Santa! Why didn't he come to our Christmas party?!")

The kids did sit on Santa's lap, though, without any problem.

They enjoyed the candy canes and they were good sports about letting us take pictures. The activity commitee did a good job, and we had lots of fun that evening. I just hope that next year Santa can find his traditional suit for the kids :)

Gingerbread Houses

We spent one of our snow days making gingerbread houses.
Kim and I actually made REAL gingerbread and cut out all our house pieces. (we learned that you should get the pieces off the cookie sheet pretty fast and not wait for them to cool) Kim was SHOCKED that I actually had molasses in my pantry.

The kids used graham crackers for their houses.
I think the kids ate more candy than they put on their houses.

The houses turned out really cute. Emily made hers like a present. (That is Ben's collapsed house in the foreground)
This is mine, but I didn't have anyone to take my picture with it ( I finished it after the kids went to bed)
Kim's was a work of art as usual.
Leilani built a traditional house. We had a lot of fun, but it was more work than we imagined.

Helping Dad With The Christmas Decorations

Traditionally it has been Alan's job to put up the Christmas tree, so we made sure that we did it while he was home for Thanksgiving.
The kids love to help. They sort the branches into piles.
And then they put the branches on the trunk - under the direction of Dad of course! (We have had real trees before, and although it is really fun to go pick them out and cut them down, we generally prefer our fake one)

This year the kids pretty much put it together themselves.
They were very proud of themselves, and of course wanted to play under the tree when it was done. (What is it about a tree that just makes you want to climb under, around and in it?)
Emily was the only one who stuck around to help her Dad put the lights on the Christmas tree.
Benjamin decided that he was going to help put the lights on the house.
He was very excited to help Dad,

and we only had a few lights get dropped and broken.

They did a great job, and I was glad that Alan got all of that done while he was home, because I didn't want to add any of that to my list of things to get done! :)

All Together Again!

For those of you who don't know, our prayers have been answered and we are going to be a family living together in the same state again. Alan starts a new job, here in Eugene, on December 29. Hurray! What a great Christmas present we are getting.

Fall Leaves

While Alan was home for Thanksgiving, I asked him to rake the leaves in the yard. After we got past the male argument that the leaves hadn't all fallen off the trees yet, so it made no sense to rake the leaves because it would just have to be done again, he went out and raked the leaves into nice piles. Benjamin helped rake the leaves for a while, but then decided they were more fun to play in.
So, I decided to do some fun pictures in the leaves.

I was trying to take a pictures of all the kids lying in the leaves, but Ben wasn't cooperating.

Instead, he got big armfuls of leaves and threw them on his sisters as they posed for my pictures.

But eventually I prevailed!

When I was done, the kids decided to have an all out war with the leaves. You can see Alan in the background just watching all his work being destroyed. But he was a good sport and let them have their fun. When they were finished, he got the leaves in the garbage, with very little help.

The kids were just making me laugh. I watched this video and decided they were having just as much fun with the leaves as they were with any of the toys they have. Boxes and leaves for Christmas?! Am I on to something?

A Cranberry Tradition

At some point during my childhood, my mom got the book "Cranberry Thanksgiving" and decided that we should make the recipe for cranberry bread off the back. It has been a family tradition since then, although rumor has it that my sisters never enjoyed making it the years that I was gone. I thought it was fun, and we have continued the tradition in my family. Every year we borrow the book from Mom (I have yet to find a copy of my own).


We read it to the kids...
and then we make the bread.

Each of the kids has to have a turn mixing, dumping, sifting, and chopping.

We've even drafted Alan to help out with the chopping.

We cut the butter into the dough,

we chop the cranberries (by hand until this year - I got a chopper last year for Christmas!)

We really have a good time together making the bread. None of my kids will even try eating it, though. We take it over to Grandma's house for dinner, and Aunt Alli, Grandma and I pretty much eat the whole loaf ourselves. Yummy!

Our Disney Trip to the ER

Emily holds the distinction of being our first child to make an emergency room trip, and our only child (so far ) to make an emergency room trip.

Her first trip was when she was 9 months old. We were in Utah for a wedding and had to take her to the emergency room in Provo where she was diagnosed with a collapsed lung.

This time she decided to end our Disneyland trip with a bang - literally. The last day we were there, we were waiting for the tram so we could go out and eat dinner, and Emily decided to sit on the metal railing. I told her to get down, and all I got was attitude and a "Why?" I told her she was going to fall and she was not behind the yellow line. So she scooted down the fence a bit so she was behind the line. I got distracted chasing Benjamin, and a few seconds later I hear my mom say, "Lisa, I think Emily really hurt herself." I turned around and there she was with her hand to her face and blood running through her fingers and down her arm. Apparently she did a face dive off the railing. My first thought was that I didn't have a tissue, blanket or anything to hold against her wound to stop the bleeding. (okay, if I am honest, that might have been my second thought. My first thought probably was something along the line of "you've got to be kidding, I just told that kid to get down 30 seconds ago, and now she's hurt?! Why couldn't she just mind?) My mom suggested that we take her down to the Disney Store in Downtown Disney and that maybe they would have something we could use, so we took the kids down there. In retrospect, it was kind of weird that no one around us said anything or tried to help us or even acknowledged anything happened. We were standing with a group of people leaving the park, and I can't imagine that nobody saw anything. Strange. Anyway, we took Emily to the Disney Store and asked the first employee we saw for help. She got on her radio and called for a nurse, got us tissue to hold on the wound and had Emily sit down and talked to her - I assume to keep her conscious. Other employees locked the door behind us and made an employee "wall" between us and any customers that were walking by. They asked Emily's size and brought her clothes so that she could change out of her blood stained outfit at some point. When the nurse got there, she cleaned her up and we discovered that she had cut open her eye brow. It had clotted, and the nurse didn't want to disturb the clot and try and clean it out because she didn't know how deep or dirty it was, so they sent us to the ER at the children's hospital. She said that with it right there at the eye, she could guarantee infection if we didn't get it cleaned up and treated right, and that it might affect the eye. She also thought we might need a plastic surgeon. Well, there went our last night at Disneyland. Benjamin, who we had just discovered was tall enough for the Matterhorn and had promised him a ride when we went back in, was sorely disappointed. But they were all very concerned for their sister's "broken" head and were very glad it wasn't them. I tried to take a picture of Emily's gaping wound on the way to the car, but she started getting upset, so I put my camera away.

You'll just have to picture this lovely princess (this is what she was wearing) with blood on her outfit, matted in her hair and all over the left side of her face. It was funny, though, because at the hospital all Emily was worried about was that they were going to mess up her hair (she had it done at the Princess Fair). She didn't want to lay down on the bed or anything until they assured her that they were going to do everything in their power not to mess her hair.

We were treated very well at the hospital. I didn't have any insurance information with me, and Alan didn't have the information at home (actually, I think he was asleep when I talked to him, because the next day when I called him he asked "Now which kid got hurt again?" If he had called me and told me he was on the way to the ER with any of the kids, I would have instantly been awake. Is this a man vs woman thing?), but they said not to worry about it. They actually let me leave the hospital with nothing more than my name and address. They didn't even ask for a credit card. She was treated fairly quickly. I guess being covered in blood must push you to the top of the triage (it had started bleeding again on the way to the hospital). Long story shorter, they fed her, entertained her, numbed her, cleaned the wound and stitched her up. Her wound was a centimeter deep and an inch long. She was embarrassed that she hadn't minded me and that she had gotten hurt like I told her, so she made me tell everyone how it happened.


This is how she looked the next day. We kept her stitches covered with a band-aid, and you can't really tell, but she had a black eye.
We made it home to Oregon without incident, and here are Emily's stitches and eye a few days later. I took the picture while Grandma touched up her hair. Together they made that princess hair last over a week.

Emily was very blessed. She had to miss PE, recess and gymnastics for a week and a half, but other wise she hasn't suffered much. She got her stitches out and the wound is healing nicely. She has a scar, but it is in her eyebrow, and you don't notice it unless you know it is there.

Broccoli

Benjamin really likes broccoli, so when we bought some at the grocery store, he couldn't wait to eat it. He wanted me to make it when we got home, but I told him it was for dinner and went to do some things around the house. Imagine my surprise when I came back in the kitchen and saw him holding the broccoli examining it.

I knew what was coming next, so I grabbed the camera.
He wasn't that impressed with the taste, so he decided to wait for dinner after all! LOL

It made me smile...

I had to go to three wards yesterday, and my children attended two of them with me. Grandpa was nice enough to take the kids home with him after our ward so they didn't have to go sit through another sacrament meeting. He took them home, fed them lunch, changed their clothes and babysat them until I got home later. I really really appreciated it a lot. However, I did get a good laugh at my son when I saw him. Emily and Grandpa dressed him in a joint effort.
Notice the turtleneck with the shorts.

The shirt was on backwards...

and he had no socks.

Nothing major, and he was perfectly happy, but it put a smile on my face. It is good to know that they need me!