November News

Ella and Emily both entered the school Reflections Contest this year. The theme was "Diversity Means..." It was a pretty tricky theme this year, but both girls decided enter the literature category. I got the good news that Ella was being awarded the Award of Recognition for her age group. That's probably the category with the most entries, so I was extra proud of her. Emily didn't win an award this year, but she's hoping to try again next year. I'll post their stories below. Unfortunately, Ella stayed home sick that day, so I kind of had to blow the surprise to get her to go to school for the assembly that day!
The 1st grade puts on a Thanksgiving program, but unfortunately, she had just been diagnosed with strep and we had to miss it. But she brought home her cute costume the next day!
One of the girls took this pic and I couldn't resist posting it! This is our Eden about 1/2 the day!
We got crafty had make turkey cups and fall tree placemats for Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year. It was a yummy dinner and the weather was nice enough that the kids could play outside some of the time! Perfect!
The kids liked having their own tables in the kitchen.
And the adults got a table in the living room!
We also took turns entertaining the kids. I got them pretty loud and wild with a game of "Don't Eat Tom Turkey!"Eden's been so into dogs lately. We had a Pet Care Center set up in preschool and she LOVED caring for her doggies.
She crawled around acting like a dog for a few weeks. She would run and catch imaginary balls, pant, and bark. She LOVED it when I would let her drink water from a bowl on the ground!! And I discovered the PERFECT pet for our family. For preschool, I wanted to be silly so I unbent a wire coat hanger, added a dog collar at the bottom, and viola...an invisible dog named Inky! The preschool kids and my kids thought Inky was the absolute BEST. It would chase after balls, do tricks and jump on them. They love taking him for walks. I love it because it doesn't eat, poop, need exercise, shed or smell!
After Thanksgiving start all the Christmas traditions! We decorated a gingerbread house for FHE.
And we got all the Christmas decorations up on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Steve and I also took turns with the Black Friday sales. I went out at 10PM to WalMart to see if I could get any good deals, but ended up empty handed. But it was fun to be in the crowd for a few minutes! Glad I didn't have to wait in any checkout lines thought! Steve went out in the middle of the night and snagged an android phone for me and a new iPod for Ella (hers broke). I've been loving my smart phone! I love being able to get online at any time, using the navigation feature and the games! I'm also using a task software to make my to-do lists, shopping lists, etc. It's pretty fun! And since it's a no-contract phone, it's pretty cheap month to month. So after going through 2 iPods and a tablet, I think this is the best fit for me. I can't wait to use it to track my running in the spring!

Ella's Story:

Once upon a time, there lived a dragon family. The family all blew fire. They used their fire breath to light up the house, roast marshmallows and to scare the princes away. But the baby dragon couldn’t blow fire. He tried and he tried, but he couldn’t! His family all made fun of him. “You are so funny,” they said. The baby dragon felt sad.

One day, there was a birthday party for the king dragon. The dragon family tried to think of a present for the king dragon. Baby Dragon had an idea. At the end of the party, Baby Dragon showed his surprise. Baby Dragon blew FIREWORKS for the king dragon! King Dragon was so amazed. He said, “You are the best dragon ever. We are sorry we teased you.” Baby Dragon felt happy. No one teased Baby Dragon from then on.

THE END

Emily's Story:

Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her name was Violet. She was eight years old. One day she moved to a new school. She was excited until she got there. She soon felt upset because everyone made fun of her! They made fun of her because she wore old clothes and her family was very poor. One day Violet saw a group of kids looking for one more kid to join them. Violet asked if she could play with them too. They said, “No, you look weird!” Then they ran off laughing. Violet felt all alone.

One Friday morning she won a spot in a movie! She got to pick some friends to be extras in the movie. She told all of her classmates and all the teachers to be in the movie too! Then when the movie was over, they all got to be in more movies. Then everyone liked her because they realized how nice she was. They felt bad about making fun of her. Soon she made lots of friends. Now she felt happy and she skipped off to play with some of her new friends.

THE END

Disney montage

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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I picked too many pictures, so I decided to make a video montage instead. Written description to come! Couldn't figure out how to get it to download my cute Disney music, but now you can at least share our vacation with us!

Disneyland vacation!

Life got pretty busy after our fun-filled family vacation, but I wanted to write about our trip before I forget all the details. I picked so many photos to add to my blog, I decided to make it into a video. Unfortunately, that means I can explain any of the pictures as I go along. So we get the printed version and the visual version!

We left Saturday morning to head to St. George. We planned on spending some time with Chris and Krissy's family on our way there and home. I had packed some presents for the girls to open along the way to help with the long car ride. Steve had to outdo me though, and bought each of the girls their own iPods! He purchased them all used, with various problems and was able to fix them up, get them loaded with videos, music and games and wrapped them up with new headphones! We asked the girls if they wanted the big or little presents first and they chose little. So they had fun with a couple of my gifts all the way until we stopped in Beaver. Then they wanted the "big present." At first they were disappointed with the size of the package, but quickly changed their tune when they realized what it was! I already had an iPod from our anniversary present and even Eden knew what it was and how to use it! I don't think we heard a peep out of them until we got to St. George! Just Chris was home when we got there, the others were at a school carnival. But Chris let us use his wireless internet to download some more fun games he told us about. We got to see his Nook too - now that's what Steve wants! We went with their family to their ward Halloween chili dinner and activities for the kids. The girls loved spending time with Sloanie and Holden!

We planned on leaving SUPER early to get to Disneyland the next day. Turns out Eden woke us all up around 2:00, so we just decided to leave then! We had a great trip with very little traffic. I was even happy that the fruit and vegetable natzi stand wasn't even opened yet. I still have bad memories of them trying to steal our apples last time we went to California! We decided to stop at McDonalds for a 2nd breakfast before heading to Disneyland. We got there by about 11:00 so we had a good full day of fun. We got there right in time for the Disneyland band and character show right in front of the castle. We were in the front of the audience, so Alice picked our girls (and some others) to dance with her to the Very Merry Unbirthday song. They thought that was pretty neat. This was the busiest day we went, because it was the weekend and the day before Halloween. We felt like we didn't get on many rides, but we sure had a fun time looking around and seeing all the decorations. When we felt tired and hungry enough, we decided to go find our hotel and check in. It was far enough away from Disneyland that we got to take a charter bus to the park everyday. Of course, the kids thought that was as fun as any ride! We liked our hotel room with its separated kid suite. We thought it was going to just be a bunk bed, but it turned out to be a bunk bed AND a twin bed, so they all got their own beds. They also had their own TV and Xbox. The only thing we didn't like was that the only microwave was in the gift shop on the main level. So every night we headed down with our micro meals to heat up our dinner. We did like the free Restaurant breakfasts each day. There were only a few free choices, but it was nice to start the day with hot eggs, pancakes, hash browns, juice and toast instead of the packaged donuts and pastries we had at our hotel last time!

The next morning we decided to swim in the outdoor pool and hot tub. We thought it was awesome to be swimming outside on Oct. 31st! We also had time to find a Kohls to get me some new shoes. About a month earlier, I'd stubbed my little toe so hard that it completely blistered over and hadn't been able to wear shoes or even socks since. Since I'd hoped it would heal by then, I only brought my swimming flip flops and regular shoes. I was VERY sore from wearing the cheap flip flops all day the day before so we went and got some nice Nike sandals that didn't touch my toe. Those were a lifesaver the rest of the week.

We had special event tickets for that day to go to the Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. They let you in 3 hours early, so we had a few hours to get some more rides in before they kicked everyone else in the park out and started the Halloween activities. There were a lot of characters in special photo op places all dressed in Halloween costumes. There were also trick-or-treat stands all over the place. Some had really long lines, but we usually skipped those and found ones with shorter lines. They are very generous with the candy and even had fruit and veggies to give out if you asked for them. We ended up with enough apples and carrots to put in our lunches for the rest of the week! We really enjoyed the Halloween parade and the Halloween fireworks. We were glad we decided to buy that extra special event ticket!

The rest of the week was so nice compared to the crowds the first 2 days. Most lines were 10 minutes or less. The girls discovered the Big Thunder Mountain and we rode that about 10 times in a row (with Steve and I switching off since Eden was too little.) If Eden was too small for a ride, we would also pick up ride-share tickets, so the other person could go to the front of the line (and they usually let both E&E ride as well, so we got 2 rides in a row pretty quickly a lot of the time!) Eden was content to watch videos on her iPod or play the app games, while we waited. She was a trooper and handled the long days pretty good. She usually fell asleep in our arms for a while late afternoon. We, of course, liked all the kiddie rides as well! We had fun visiting the Princesses and got to see Cinderella, Jasmine, and Snow White. I was amazed how much Cinderella and Snow White look and sound like the real characters! This time there was also a Pixie Hollow area where we got to meet some fairies. We met Rosetta, Tinkerbelle and Videa. They were sure a spunky bunch! We really enjoyed California Adventure, so we actually spent most of our last day there as well (also since they closed many of the rides in Disneyland because of some rain.) We rode the new Little Mermaid ride about 6 times in a row! It was a good place to stay out of the rain. We didn't even leave our cars, we just went through over and over again! We also loved the new Toy Story Mania, but that did have a long line most of the time. Ella braved California Screaming with me THREE times! (We used Steve and Emily's fast pass tickets to get through the line quickly!) That was an awesome roller coaster! I even convinced them to ride the Tower of Terror with me! But that wasn't their favorite. Neither was the Star Tours I took them to on Halloween and it had been converted to a Halloween themed spooky show. The other ride that they convert to Halloween/Christmas theme is the Haunted Mansion. Ella was TERRIFIED to ride, but we forced her on anyway. She might have liked it more if we'd ever watched the Nightmare Before Christmas movies. We also rode Soarin' over California for the first time - so fun! We also really enjoyed watching the Aladdin show - especially since we missed most of the downpour while we were inside! There were so many fun things to do and we were VERY grateful that we got to do so much since the crowds were so minimal. It's definitely the way to do Disneyland!

We bought each girl a souvenir, and they brought enough of their allowance money to buy one more each. Ella ended up with 2 Princess Polly Pocket sets, Emily got a giraffe pillow pet and a Princess Polly Pocket set, and Eden got a Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster and a Woody Mickey eared hat. I even got a hat this time - a Minnie Mouse one. So we all had some ears to wear this time. We also got a cool Christmas ornament to remember this vacation and we bought the Photo CD of all the photos the photographers took of us all week. They changed it a little, you get the photos online when you get home and can add borders, signatures, etc.

I was amazed that Steve braved so many more rides this time! I guess that's what happens when the kids get older and braver too! The kids are already counting down till our next trip. Steve says he wants to go in 3 years again. I hope that really happens, we LOVE our Disney family vacations!

October News

I honestly couldn't remember October until I picked the pictures for this blog! Disney memories plus a week catching up have overshadowed the fun we had in October! Guess I'll use the photos to guide my memory here! (And because we switch between two cameras, the events may be out of order, but it takes too long to reorder them!)

Paige got a good deal on circus tickets and invited us to go along! I had just finished a preschool unit on the circus, so the girls were really excited to go. The preshow attractions were kind of annoying. Everything cost an exorbitant amount of money and they waited until they'd milked out all the money they could before starting the show! The show was fun though. We especially loved the clowns and elephants. The girls were mesmerized by the lady that turned into a tiger. Especially when we saw the tiger loaded on the truck ready to leave. They thought maybe they would turn her back into a lady at the next show! Eden was a bit of a stinker the whole time, but that sometimes just goes with the 2-year old territory!
We also went with Paige to Thanksgiving Point's Cornbellys! I was sorry that we weren't able to make it with all the sisters for Karyssa's birthday. It was a beautiful day. We had a LOT of fun and there was a LOT to do! I think I lost Eden about 3 times though. It's ridiculous how quickly she can disappear! Can you tell that she DID NOT want to be in this photo!
They sure loved the Princess Playland. Emily really loved directing the "play" onstage and telling all the little girls what to do. They actually listened and she had the time of her life!
Just take a look at that precious face!
My princesses!
These new bouncy horses were new, but I think the girls rode them for all of 10 seconds.
Cute girls on the bounce houses!
On the hayride.
Eden loves baby Hayden!
The girls actually got me to do the kiddie maze (I've NEVER had a desire to do any sort of corn maze before!) It was actually really cute, every few turns or so there was a giant spinning wheel. It would tell them how to act or how to walk all the way to the next wheel!
They all loved these water pump/gutter duck races.
This pic is out of order, but it's from the Preschool Pumpkinland fieldtrip. I let the big girls miss the morning of school and come with me. They loved being able to finally each get a pumpkin.
Ella's masterpiece.
Emily's Frankenstein!
When you got it, flaunt it!
Preschool pic.
Here's the elephants from the circus.
Ella got to dress up for Career Day. Can you guess what she wants to be?
The girls got a LITTLE excited with this Frankenstein Halloween craft! They ended up making one for a bunch of their cousins!
Notice Ella's shirt? She still insists on matching daddy at bedtime! He came home with this shirt for her. Later he felt bad and found another one for Emily!
Darling Emily got a new haircut. I just wanted her to get a trim, but she had her heart set on getting it cut to her chin. I thought we may as well go for the A-line look. Her feather looked really cute with it.
Here's when she realized how cold the pavement was - she went out without shoes and socks!
Ella's so good to Eden, here she is reading to her. She really is doing well with her reading. She's loving school and her teacher.
The week before Halloween was CRAZY! Not only was a preparing for a family trip, but it was Red Ribbon Week at school. I was asked to be the coordinator for the event. I spent a lot of time planning the activities and finding volunteers. I also spent a LOT of time using the school's Cricut machine to cut out 700 red leaves! I made a tree bulletin board in the hallway with the words, "LEAF drugs alone! Don't FALL for Drugs!" I distributed enough leaves for every child Monday morning and at lunchtime, they walked pass the tree with their signed leaf pledging they would stay away from drugs. Luckily I had 2 other volunteers to help me. They all got a piece of candy after hanging their leaf. On Wednesday after preschool I went to the school to judge the classroom doors. I asked all the classes to decorate their classroom doors with a drug-free message. I got 2 volunteers to help me judge them. I was surprised that all but 2 teachers participated! And they were awesome, it was hard to pick just 3 winners! On Friday, the PTA president and I went and popped popcorn for the winning classes. I also got a volunteer each day to go to the school and hand out candy to kids still wearing their red ribbon bracelets. I felt like I spent A LOT of time at the school!! I also was a sub for switching the books for 2nd grade - kind of a crazy week for me to say yes, but Eden was a trooper! The school also had their first-ever literacy night. They hired a magician and had popcorn and cotton candy for everyone. It was so well attended we had to wait for them to set up more chairs for us! Next month they are having literacy night at Trafalga - glad they're having fun with our Title 1 money! I really got to know the PTA president, principal, vice principal and secretaries very well! Also, since I'm the room mom for Ella's class, I had to get the Halloween coordinated with 5 parents and 5 volunteers to run the show, since I wouldn't be there. Her teacher was nice enough to mail me a thank you card and let me know it all went perfectly!

Also, our stake put on another Zimbabwe drive this month - our 2nd. They have a list of needed donations and drop off dates. I didn't do much for the last one, but I did better this time. I scoured the house for lots of our unneeded items, and took the leftover clothing items from Paige and Dan's yard sale to donate. I went with the YM/YW on activity night to help them do the sorting and packing. They fill a huge trailer and someone pays for the shipping. We heard a lot of wonderful stories about how the items were received and used last time and this time they put on a fireside as well. (Which I missed.) Feels good to help others even if it is with things we don't need, but they will be so grateful for!

Stay tuned for another blog this month - DISNEYLAND!

We're going to Disneyland!

Slow September

The last few months have flown by, but I thought September would never end! It didn't help that I was excited for our 10th anniversary at the end of the month! And that we've been keeping a certain secret about a certain family vacation! We've planning on telling them at FHE tomorrow. It's been a busy month with back to school and back to preschool. We're all doing great, except Steve's been struggling getting his research paper done. Hopefully he'll get over his block soon and the next few classes will cruise along. Here's my typical pictorial look of the month with commentary by yours truly!

Eden spotlight: Here's a fun ritual Eden has with her daddy every night. After watching 2 episodes of Curious George we go find daddy studying in his cave. He gets a kiss on both cheeks, the chin, nose and forehead. Sometimes she gives him double if she doesn't think they were good enough. And lately she's been making sure they are "Big one!" kisses!
She LOVES posing for the camera! That is when she hasn't stolen the camera to take a million pictures of random things around the house!
Eden and I spent a couple hours with Grandma Tanner. It sure was weird to see her house almost empty! But she was upbeat and showed me all the albums of Grandpa that people had made. We talked about the books she was reading and I showed her the game I'd made with all the milk caps she'd saved for me over the years. She was thrilled. We also went outside and I showed Eden that fruit can actually grow on trees. She picked a peach and a plum. Of course, then she wanted to pick everything around. Luckily she decided on leaves on a bush. We also got to pick a few tomatoes from the garden. Ever since our visit, Eden's been talking about Great-Grandma and constantly wants to go visit her!
She always insists on wearing her sunglasses in the car. She's such a diva! She's also speaking in much longer sentences and is getting easier to understand. She's growing up.
We found two of these princess pull out couches at yard sales lately. The girls have had a lot of "Sleepovers" on them. Eden loves to take naps on them as well. The funny thing is that NO MATTER where I put her to bed, I ALWAYS find her somewhere else later! Here she is nicely tucked into Emily's princess bed after I nicely tucked her into her own bed!
Ella loves it when I suggest we do fancy hair for church!!
Ella also is quite the artist - here's a cute family pic she drew.
The girls were THRILLED to get a package from Japan. We looked at all the stamps and counted them and did lots of boring educational stuff until they INSISTED we open it already! It took us a few minutes to figure out what our surprise gift from grandma was. I told the girls it was a turtleneck for a giraffe. But we soon figured out it was 3 mermaid tails for them and 3 for their barbies! They put them on right away and loved being mermaids!
They also loved their surprise package from mom. I finally broke down and bought these magnet shapes I've been eyeing for awhile. Luckily I found a pretty good deal. They've spent countless hours with them already!
After our circus preschool unit, we had a parent day to show off some of the things we learned. I rented a cotton candy machine again. We had kind of a fiasco, but it turned out ok. We started out with a broken machine. The guy we rented it from came late the night before and brought it back saying he fixed it. When I tried it before preschool it was still broken. I couldn't get ahold of him so I started calling local stores looking for cotton candy to buy. Finally I called Steve in a panic and he left work to search for me. I finally got ahold of the guy we rented it from and I insisted he come fix it or run it for me at the parent day. Luckily he brought another one up just in time. Steve arrived at the same time and got it all set up for me and helped me get through the hecticness. Isn't he great!! He always comes through for me! I set it up again after school and we had a cotton candy stand. The girls thought that was totally awesome and they went around finding customers!
The BIG TOP set up in the preschool room. Getting good use out of our childhood circus tent!
I talked Steve into a different kind of anniversary date! I bought tickets for a new zipline in Provo canyon. I was surprised he agreed! We got to go down 5 lines. It was pretty tame, but also a lot of fun!
After getting the hectic-ness of beginning of preschool out of the way, I decided to do some fun some fun stuff with the girls again! I picked them up early on a Friday and we headed to an Expo in Sandy. I let the girls each get a feather put in their hair. They love them and they've lasted until now. Then on an extra early out day, we headed to SLC to go to our favorite place - the Children's Museum. It had been a long time since we last went, but it was still pretty much the same. They had a blast nonetheless. Everything was new to Eden. She'd start playing with one thing until something else exciting caught her eye. She'd run to that yelling, "Mommy look!" We stayed until they closed at 6:00 and went to the food court and had dinner together. It was a fun date.
I've also been trying to use up some expiring gift certificates so we went to Maggie Moos Ice cream twice - once on our real anniversary night and once during Priesthood session. We tried to go to Monkey Island bounce center, but realized they'd closed. Hopefully they'll open again and honor our gift certificates!! I also let the girls try out a Karate class for a week. They had a lot of fun learning to kick and punch. The Senior Master even made me do it the first day! I brought Eden as an excuse the next day! We're going to try a dance class and a gymnastics class before we decide what to enroll in. Emily also going to try out a piano teacher this week. I really want her to get going on that.

The girls were super excited for school crazy hair day! When Eden saw Ella's hair, she insisted on having hair "Up High" too. But it only lasted for a minute until she bumped her head on something and wanted it out!
I went to school at lunchtime to eat with them and everyone was telling Ella how cool her hair was! The girls were thrilled that I came to visit.

I woke up on our anniversary to find pink streamers everywhere. The number 10 on our doors.
I heart you - across the kitchen and living room walls.
And hung across the living room ceiling!
And he brought me home 2 bunches of flowers! We opened our presents to each other before Steve left for work. He surprised me with an iPod touch! I was so lost what to do with it! But I've spent lots of time figuring it out the last few days! We're waiting to hear the announcement this week about the new release to decide if we'll keep this one, or upgrade to the new generation or upgrade to the iPhone. I bought Steve a new zoom lens for his SLR camera. He was surprised. I actually bought him something he wasn't expecting for once!
Ella ran outside with the camera last night to take a picture of this pretty rainbow! No rain, just the rainbow!
We've really enjoyed conference weekend! Steve also took some time today to start decorating for Halloween. He has a ton of Megos that work really well for this holiday. Here's his Ghost Busters surrounding another ghost figure!