Happy Birthday Lydia!

Our sweet girl is 4 years old today! 4!! She asked for a cake with cupcakes on it so that is what she got. I made Mark's Grandma Spencer's chocolate cake which is a great recipe and Mark made some cute and delicious ice cream cupcakes.  We decorated her room with signs and balloons and had a nice time celebrating her.  We are in the middle of winter storm Jonas which is dumping so much snow on us which is actually perfect for Lydia.  Since she knows her birthday is during winter she often talks about how she should always have snow on her birthday and that winter is her favorite season. She certainly got that today.

She requested coffee cake for breakfast and homemade pizza for dinner. I was really worried that our power would go out and I would not be able to make any of these things (and just worried in general about losing power in a big storm) for her but our power has stayed on for the whole time so far which has been awesome and so helpful.  Just to be safe I made her cake Friday morning before all the snow came.

Super easy cake to decorate. At first I talked about making two cakes and doing 2 levels. But after talking to Mark and really thinking about it I realized we really didn't need that much cake and all she wanted was cupcakes on it! 

Mark making the surprise ice cream cupcakes. 

We got up today and opened presents while the coffee cake baked.  We stayed near home of most the day because of the storm but she and Jared had a great time playing Star Wars in the basement and enjoying her new presents. We attempted to go sledding this afternoon but had a hard time getting any speed on the hill as the snow was too deep.  She and Jared played in the snow out on our deck for a good while and then we had dinner and cake.

Her presents unintentionally all had a "Frozen" theme to them.  She got an Elsa dress and shoes, a Olaf figurine and a baby snowman from the Frozen short.  My mom also got her a big stuffed elephant. I actually bought her the Elsa dress back in October after Halloween and got a great deal on it.  She liked it fine but I am wishing I would not have gotten that dress up and found her a Princess Leia or Padme' Amidala outfit.  Star Wars really messed up our gift giving the past 2 occasions or maybe I should just not buy gifts a month or 2 in advance.  We really should have waited to watch it till like February! Oh well.  She loved her cake and the cupcakes Mark made and was happy with her presents.  We will just keep using random clothes items for Star Wars outfits.

She has been asking for one of these since November or so. So she was super excited to open it. Jared got it for her. 

2016 Birthday Interview:

1. What is your favorite color? Purple and Pink

2. What is your favorite toy? My princess's

3. What is your favorite fruit? Pineapple and bananas

4. What is your favorite movie? Sleeping Beauty

5. What do you do well? Fill my charm jar

6. What do you like to do with Daddy? Go to play places

7. What makes you happy? My baby Olaf

8. What is your favorite scripture story? Noah saving the animals 

9. What is your favorite song? Give said the little stream and Hark the Herald Angels Sing

10. What is your favorite animal? Pig

11. What is your favorite book? Lady and the Tramp

12. Who is your best friend? Abigail (Farnsworth) and Lainey (Lenox)

13. Where is your favorite place to go? Chick Filet to the play place

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play in the snow

15. What is your favorite drink? Lemonade

16. What is your favorite holiday? Valentines

17. What do you like to do with Mommy? Go on a trip and play with princess's

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Coffee Cake

19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday?  Homemade Pizza

20. What do you want to be when you grow up? To take care of all my kids and animals. 

Book of Mormon reading celebration

Today, January 20th 2016 our family finished reading the Book of Mormon. Mark and I are pretty sure it has taken us at least the last 3 to 3.5 years to read through the whole book.  We read pretty much each night after we eat dinner.  Before anyone can leave the table we read a section of verses.  Jared and Lydia each read one verse and then Mark or I read the rest. I know we missed days while traveling or being on vacation but most days we are home we read.  Some days go better than others but we hope we are instilling in our children the importance of reading the scriptures.  Jared actually really enjoys our scripture reading time.  He is a good learner/listener and asks insightful questions and can answer questions we ask well.  Lydia is kind of a stinker at this point about reciting her verse but it comes in waves. Sometimes she has no problems other times she is so slow about it but we keep at it. The other night we were reading about the different gifts of the spirit in Moroni and Mark pointed out to Jared that one of his gifts is the desire to learn.  He told Jared about how when he gave him his baby blessing one thing he and I both really wanted for Jared (and Lydia) was for them to have a desire to learn about Christ to desire to learn of the truthfulness of things for themselves. Jared has told us more than once that he really enjoys reading the scriptures and we hope he always feels this way!

Awhile ago I saw that some friends of mine had a little party to celebrate finishing reading the Book of Mormon.  I thought it was the cutest idea and decided we would do something to celebrate when we finished.  So today I baked a mini cake, we blew up some balloons, and sang Scripture Power and Book of Mormon stories.  We went around the table and said what our favorite scripture story was.
Jared: Ammon (no surprise since he did cut off multiple arms)
Mark: 2,000 stripling warriors
Aprillee: Nephi and the broken bow
Lydia: Alma (Mark listed some for her and she picked Alma)

I really did not want to make a huge cake as Lydia's birthday is Saturday and I am making a cake for that so I found this cute little mini cake kit at the grocery store and used that.  It was perfect. I found this great sparkly navy blue frosting and gold sprinkles! It was fun. I am not a cake decorater but I do like to make fun simple things like this.

It was great to celebrate this accomplishment and to show Jared and Lydia the importance of reading the scriptures. I do love to celebrate occasions!

New Years festivities!

We had a really awesome New Years, probably our best yet.  We originally planned to have our dear friends the Farnsworth's over for a taco bar and games but they ended up getting sick and couldn't come which was so disappointing.  I told Jared and Lydia the night before that our friends couldn't come and they were really sad.   I felt bad and decided I would try to make our New Years Eve Day celebrations really great.  I hadn't planned much for the daytime because I knew the evening would be so fun but now our evening would be not so exciting so I got to work.  It's funny because I actually ended up staying up till midnight on the 30th instead of the 31st but it was worth it.

 Jared and Lydia both wok up at 5:00 (they both went to the bathroom) New Years Eve which was not cool. I went to each of their rooms to remind them that they had to stay in bed till 7:00. I am not 100% sure if they went back to sleep or not but I did not hear them again till after 7:00 so I think they may have.

Anyway.  I planned a countdown for them starting at 9:00 AM and ending at noon. I got out 6 envelopes and printed off little clocks to place in them. On each clock I wrote a fun activity to do.  We: played New Years BINGO, filled in New Years Mad Libs, played a great game called categories (one person is given a topic like animals and then they pick one animal.  We sit in front of them and guess an animal. Whoever guesses the animal they picked gets sprayed with the water bottle.  It was a blast!!) did a memory cookie sheet with things they really liked through out the year (where you cover it with a towel the let them look at if for 20 seconds or so then cover it and see how much they remember), played the candy flour game (you fill a cup with flour then turn it over a plate (we used our pie pan) and place a piece of candy or a dime/penny on it and slowly cut away at it with a knife.  Whoever makes it collapse has to try to pick the item up with their mouth, hilarious!) Our last envelope activity was to watch New Years Firework shows around the world which we did at 11:30.

At noon all of our alarm clocks in the house went off. We were in the basement watching fireworks. Mark and I had secretly set them all and brought them down. They were not quite synchronized but close. We headed outside to do our poppers (only 2 really worked lame!) and have our silly string fight which was fun except Lydia was pretty scared by it (yet later she said she loved it?). We then toasted with Sparkling cider with our lunch.  It was an awesome way to spend New Years Eve morning.

After dinner we went down to the basement for a glow stick dance party. Jared was more into a lightsaber battle which was not as cool in my opinion but we had fun.  A few days before Christmas we let him watch Star Wars for the first time (episode 4) for filling his charm jar and he of course fell in love with it.  We watched episode 5 during the afternoon on New Years Eve so it was pretty fresh in his mind. That evening we had a new couple from church come over to enjoy fondue with us.  Jared and Lydia were super tired and went to bed at 7:00 completely thrilled with our New Years Eves celebrations. I can't wait to do it again next year it was so fun!

These balloons were amazing!  They are still lit up.  We will most definitely get them again. 

For New Years we made plans with our friends the Player's to come over for a Winter picnic/bonfire. We planned on tin foil dinners and enjoying a campfire.  I stole this idea from my friend Becca, or rather from her husband's family.  He is from Montana and every year, (maybe on Christmas?) they have a winter picnic in the snow in Montana. Brrr! We had great weather today it was like 52 degrees and no rain /wind. Sadly it has been very rainy here so the wood/ground was really wet but eventually our fire got going.  We cooked our dinner on charcoals and they turned out really well.  We had glow sticks, good conversation and more sparkling cider.  I was nervous we would never get a fire going and was sad but as we were about to start eating it all of a sudden just started burning. I think the wood finally dried out enough.  It was prefect and I hope the weather allows us to do it each year. If we can't do it on New Years Eve/day we will do it as close to as possible. I am always looking for new traditions and loved how this one turned out.

The Player's who saved dinner!  

We MUST get a hatchet and a chimney for charcoal. 

We did a New Years resolutions for FHE on Monday. This year I hope to run another 10K, go to the doctor (confession: I haven't been even to the dentist since we moved here and much longer than that...I HATE going to the dentist), improve my gospel study and make more time for my family. I am too selfish with my personal time and would like to work on that. We were richly blessed in 2015 with great health, a new house, job security, fun school beginnings and much more. Life is so good and we are enjoying our journey!!

Christmas

We had a nice quiet Christmas day at home with just each other. Jared and Lydia nicely slept in till around 7:30 and then came into our room to wake us up. We went downstairs and watched the church's old Christmas nativity, Joy to the World a perfect way to start this special day.  We then headed upstairs to check out our stockings.  In the past I have felt our stockings were pretty lame but this year was the best year yet.  Mark and I even did a good job on each others stockings often they are just filled with candy but this year we each got each other some fun stuff.  After stockings we ate breakfast, the traditional orange rolls and mixed up some scrambled eggs with ham to go with them. After eating we opened up our presents and spent most of the morning enjoying them.  After awhile we asked Jared and Lydia if they were ready to go on their scavenger hunt and they were very excited to do it. We all really love this tradition. We had Lydia go first.  She found her first clue on the tree and off we went.  After she found her dress up clothes we had Jared head over to the tree to find his clue.  He was able to read all his clues by himself which was really fun to see.  Jared's gift was a huge nerf gun. We bought in back in October for his birthday but I really didn't want to give it to him.  It has been sitting under our bed wrapped since then. Mark convinced me that we should go ahead and give it to him now so we did and he of course loves it.  We are glad our kids were happy with their toys.  We got  Lydia a Minion clock which seem so to be her favorite or near the top.  We got it for her and us really.  She is such an early riser and always wants to come into our room.  We love cuddling with her (and Jared) but we do not love it before we have to get up.  So we got her this clock so she knows what time it is in the morning.  We told her she has to stay in her bed until 7:00 and it is working great.  She loves the silly noises it makes and I think she likes knowing when she can get up by herself.  (We really worked on number identification this Fall) A day or so after Christmas she came over to Mark and I and said, "You guys really did a great job with our these (their presents)." She was referring to the clock then and it was super cute.

Lydia ate most of her stocking candy before breakfast was ready... Mark thought she would be great in an ad for Kit Kats.

The very best gifts! 

Looking for scavenger hunt clues! 

We had ham, funeral potatoes, broccoli, and rolls for dinner and sugar cookies from the previous night.  It was such a fun Christmas season!  We got to do a lot of great things and really enjoy that special time of year.  It's hard to believe another Christmas has passed, I am so thankful for this special time of year.

Christmas Eve

Back around Thanksgiving I began thinking about how I wanted to spend Christmas Eve.  It was going to be our first Christmas in our new house, somewhere we really have space that we could "host" some kind of event and have it work out well.  I didn't think I wanted to do a dinner but I decided I did want to have people over.  When I was growing up two traditions I really enjoyed were making and decorating sugar cookies and singing Christmas carols around the piano.  So that is what we did.  We had 2 families come over and had a really enjoyable evening.  We invited one other family but they ended up having family in town so we stuck with the other two and it worked out really well.  I made the cookies and frosting that afternoon and set it all out for when they arrived. They (The Lenox's and Ellsworth's) came over around 6:00 and we decorated our cookies then the kids went to play in our basement (we so love our basement!).  After the kids (poor Jared was so outnumbered there were 6 girls and just him but he had a great time) had played some we came upstairs and read the nativity and sang Christmas hymns. Then we opened it up for regular Christmas carols.  It was just what I hoped it would be. Not too much going on, not too many people but a fun activity and a nice way to have the Christmas spirit. I loved it and feel like it went well and everyone had a great time. I hope to make it a yearly tradition here in Charlottesville.

I meant to take a picture during but was busy helping Lydia decorate and decorating my own cookies. This cutting board was filled with cookies stacked like 4 high.  It was really fun. 

We decorated about 60 cookies. 

Mark was our narrator for Luke 2.

We love hanging out with the Lenox's. 

Christmas Eve.  It was really strange weather.  Totally un Christmas like in my mind.  It was rainy (normal) but like 65 degrees.  It was so humid.  So gross! Oh well.

After our friends left we let Jared and Lydia open up their gifts to each other.  They were super excited to get to open one gift before Christmas. We did it last year too so I am pretty sure it will also be a yearly thing. They were really excited with the gifts they got each other. We read Twas the Night Before Christmas and sent them off to bed.

Then Mark and I filled stockings and got the Christmas Scavenger hunt ready.

 

Scavenger hunt clues. 

Jared's was s big Nerf gun and it was under our bed so no picture.

It was a great day!