A Christmas Nativity Countdown…

Remember that feeling when you were a child, waking up early on Christmas morning, so excited that sleep wasn’t an option?  This morning I woke around 5:00 thinking about all the things I needed to do and Christmas is almost here.  Today is Christmas Eve Eve!  I felt that excitement and there was no way I was getting back to sleep.  There are so many things I need to get done today, clean the house, shovel the snow, some last minute shopping…but did I get started on any of that?  Nope.  I wanted to finish up a project I started last night.

Last year (or maybe it was 2 years ago) I made a Christmas Advent calendar. 

Each day had a card with an activity like, make Christmas cards, deliver gifts to neighbors, read the Christmas story from the Bible.  I spent a lot of time on it, but it just hasn’t been what I wanted it to be. 

This year on Pinterest I saw a lot of nativity advent calendars

 

and I decided this is what we need.  I printed a scripture for each day and added a felt figure for the nativity scene.

I made it completely with scraps I had on hand.  I still need to stitch the eyes on, and buy a piece of felt for the background.  Its not perfect, I made it in a rush, but it changes the focus of our Christmas countdown to our Savior Jesus Christ and He is what this season is about.  Joshua loves playing with it already and so even though this will get packed away in a few days, I look forward to using it for many years to come.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Warm Weather is Gone, and with it my Motivation to Blog…

It has come to my attention that my blog is a little out of date.  I don’t have anything spectacular to blog about so I’ll just give you some picture collages…

And here are some of the many pictures we took at Disneyland.

Feeling a Little Artistic…

I’ve been working on some projects lately.  We’ve been in our house for 8 months now and many of the walls still need decorating.  One day the kids and I made some footprint artwork.

I’ve always wanted to be a painter, and create beautiful paintings.  I ran across an online “class”  that taught how to paint flowers.  I kind of grew tired of watching the classes after the first few but I think I picked up a few tips and then just made up the rest as I went.

I was happy with how the first one turned out and decided to try a few more.

Olivia’s room seemed like the right place to display my flowers.  Maybe I’ll get brave and try again on a bigger canvas next time.

And in other news, look what we made today! The count down is on!

I love Fall…

Some of the things we’ve been up to this week, We went to to Wheeler Farm, Gardner Village, a Scarecrow Festival, and the kids helped Daddy wash the car,

Olivia loves jumping in bed with Joshua at night.

Growing Kids…And a Beautiful Drive in the Canyon…

Olivia thinks she is so grown up these days!

You think she’d learn to be cautious or at least have a little fear after she fell down the stairs last week, but no sir-ee.  We were visiting the neighbors and she discovered she could climb on their trampoline all by herself.  And then she wanted to do it again so she DOVE OFF of the trampoline!  Luckily I was close enough to catch her so no harm done, other than giving Momma a heart condition.

We went up the canyon last weekend with Grandma Jo and Papa Ken.  Here is Grandma’s attempt to get a picture of Joshua.  I think she got a lot of cute ones in the process.

It was such a lovely day. Thanks JoAnn for taking some family pictures and letting us tag along.

Olivia and Papa Ken are now best friends after he spent much of the ride “juggling” her shoes with her.

On a side note, this is a picture of the kids excited to watch conference, I just loved this!

Olivia’s First Trip to the Zoo…

We went to the zoo this weekend.  I was a little nervous about the weather as we woke to a cold rain.  Even as we drove to meet up with Andrew the rain poured down on the car.  But miraculously the weather cleared up and we didn’t have more than a few sprinkles the whole afternoon.  The kids had a great time, and the adults did too.  This was the first time we’d been since they added the bears and they were well worth the visit.  The polar bear was very social and put on a good show for all the kids standing at the glass to watch.

The polar bear scared Joshua but Olivia loved being up close and personal!

A big gigantic thanks to Elaine for taking the pictures, since I left my camera in the car.

We enjoyed the Lego exhibit that was part of their summer programming.  Here are my little monkeys!

A Morning Run…

A neighboring stake was hosting a Zombie 5K this morning.  Basically there are two groups of runners, humans and zombies.  The humans had flags that they were trying to protect and we had a 3 minute head start on the zombies.  I only made it halfway through the run before the zombies got me.  At first I was confused because no one else around me lost their flag but I later learned the colors of the flags represented your age group and zombies could only take flags from their age group.  The kids came with me while Andrew helped a friend wheelbarrow cement.  It was actually a lot of fun.

On a completely different note, I finally have a wreath on my front door!