Our little Angel

Disapointed to be playing the same roll as last year, Caroline made her appearance as one of the angels in the nativity. I thought she looked very holy. I'm sure you can guess from the costumes that there was a bit of kafluffle last year when they were purchased (on clearance from Halloween at the bargain price of $2) because of the wings. As any gosple scholar knows, angels do NOT have wings. I am a bit concerned that these primary children may lose their testimony or, worse, think that angels actually do have wings. Hopefully they will survive this. Brinley is shown here to the left eating the remains of her hair bow.

Brinley had a little lamb

Brinners starred as stable lamb number 13 in this year's production of the ninth ward nativity. Moments of glory for the young actress included crawling over to the microphone and singing "helloooooo" durring the inkeeper's lines, eating straw from the baby Jesus' manger, and removing her hairbows and eating them while bouncing up and down on her knees. Being the stage mother that I am, I crawled through the crowd and tables to the bottom of the stage and hissed at her to calm down, but, needless to say, she was a little excited to dial it back.

Cutie Pie

Gracie now eats just about anything . It's hard to believe a baby can digest the things they do without any molars to chew! Tonight she ate dinner just like the rest of us, with her high chair pulled right up to the table. Chicken, broccoli, carrots and angel hair pasta-yummy!

November 16th, 2007

This is the day that will live in infamy for the rest of my history on this earth: I found my first gray hair. The beginning of the end...

Little lambs

Brinley and her two little best neighbor friends as lambs in the ward Nativity pageant.

Cookie Party

December's soccer off-season activity was a gingerbread cookie party, held at our house on November 30th. All 14 of the players and some of their parents were there and, let me tell you, these girls are as creative as they are athletic! I made a few batches of gingerbread and the girls rolled out their dough, cut the cookies out, we baked them and then they decorated them. In between they spent time running around the house yelling at the tops of their lungs and playing sardines (a funner version of hide-and-seek). One of the grandmothers of the girls is a professional cake decorator so she came and showed the girls some fun tricks with a pastry bag. All in all it was super fun and very tasty-I love gingerbread!

Fred

Jeff looked so awesome as Fred. I spent hours in the men's department at DI searching for royal blue bell-bottom pants and orange loafers. (By the way, I thought DI was supposed to be dirt cheap??? I spent more money there than if I had just bought the costumes at a costume shop!) Regardless, he was very authentic-the real deal.

Daphne

Caroline appeared as Daphne in a dress that I sewed. The boots were purchased at DI and spray-painted purple. The wig isn't exactly right because I couldn't figure out how to style it like the character, but she's pretty close.

Velma

Brin brought down the house wherever she appeared. I thought my brother-in-law was going to die laughing when he saw her. The cuttest thing she did was put her glasses on top of her wig and pretend to not know where they were (just like Velma does in the cartoon). It's a little freaky how much she looks like that squatty little character...

That scrappy little Scooby

Gracie was abaout the cuttest little doggie ever. Never mind that everyone we saw thought that she was a boy... Also, she only left the dog head on for about 10 secconds before she pulled it straight over her face and off. At least we got some good pics.

Hey Scooby!

In honor of Brin's favorite tv show, Scooby Doo, we all dressed up as the cast for Halloween. It was a big hit! Heather spent at least 30 hours constructing and painting the mystery machine and I sewed Daphne's dress and a few of the scarves and socks. Gracie was, of course, the cutest little scooby. The highlight for me was Brinley's performance as Velma. She brought down the house. Lots of fun.

Spooky business!

Here are our halloween pumpkins for the year!

Gracie helped pull the goop out of the pumpkins.

overkill....

For family night we had our traditional pumkin carving extravaganza. What was unexpected this year was Jeff pulling out the jig saw for accuracy in the tight curves. This is SOOOOOO Jeff......

Soccer Party

Caroline's soccer team party was held at our house on Friday night. All but two of the 14 girls and their families came so we had a full house. Ice cream sundays, out-door games and lots of chit-chat made the event lots of fun.

cure what ails you...

The three little amigas were playing in the back yard when Brinley was stung by a bee right on her stomach! She cried in that high pitched scream she has for several minutes until the next door neighbor suggested that a little mud would take the sting away. The next thing I knew Sariah and Hannah had big mixing bowls full of mud and Brinners was covered in mud four inches deep all over her tummy. Talk about a mess to clean up, but at least she stopped screaming. I am so glad she has sweet friends to help her feel better.

Early Snow

October 21st we got an unusually early snowfall. It was a Sunday morning and the girls woke up to a winter wonderland. Of course, they wanted to play in it and were dressed in their snow gear and sledding on our back hill by 8 am. Sadly, the snow melted by the time we were home from church and luckily it has been warm ever since (in the 70's yeasterday!) but it got us all in the mood for the holidays.

Happy birthday

While at the cafe for lunch the wait staff sang happy birthday to Caroline. The cafe was adorable and the presentation of the food was so cute.

The doll hair salon

The first thing we did once we entered the store was to get in line at the doll hair salon. Caroline chose a style called the "ponytail veil". I still can't believe I paid $20 for someone else to play with my daughter's toy...

American Girl

Our gift to Caroline for her 9th birthday was a trip to Amerrican Girl Place in Los Angeles. She and I left on Friday, October 5th, flew to LA, rented a car and navigated trraffic to check in at our hotel near Beverly Hills. We then drove to The Grove shopping plaza and hit the store that Caroline has been dreaming of for six months! Here she is just outside the entrance.

The canibal's pot

At the cabin Micahel has this amazing hot tub right out in the middle of the woods. Made of cedar planks, the sides expand and become water tight. It is heated by a metal box that sits right in the water in which a fire is built. I put in too much wood (?) and the water got quite hot- we joked that we felt like a cannibal was cooking us in his pot. Jenn holding Paige, Jeff, Brin and Caroline.

Montanna

We spent the weekend in Montana at the cabin of Libby and Michael Brady (Jeff's Aunt and Uncle). While there we rode quads, hiked, "fished" ate, played games and had a generally perfect time. Here we are at the field at the top of the 1300 acre valley Michael owns- it was quite a climb up on the trails. If you were to continue straight through the trees in the background you would fall into quite a deep valley. Jeff carried Gracie in the hiker on his back and the girls loved riding along. Caroline was quite the driver by the end of the weekend.

Is that what they teach in Sunday School these days???

Caroline was playing school with Paige and Brin and wrote this on the white board for them. hmmmmmm......

Brin and Caroline

Caroline's new thing is "not smiling" in photos.

fun on the tramp

blurry photo- this is a nightly cry we hear from the two girls "daddy-will you bounce us!?!?!?"