We made a quick trip to St. George on Saturday to pick up a few things. While we were there Preston found this little tent on clearance (I LOVE Target's after Christmas clearance)
We came home and I had to rush off to work. Preston was begging Chris to set it up so he could sleep in it. When I walked in the door this morning, I saw it in the living room and decided to peek to see if he'd actually slept there. When I touched it I could tell someone was in it, but I was surprised to see SHELBY laying there!
Curled up with her blanky!
Shelby has grown up SO fast. She doesn't play with toys very often (she doesn't even have a toy box) She's more into clothes and cell phones, laptops, cameras etc... you know, BIG GIRL stuff. It was so fun and it truly melted my heart to see her sleeping by herself in that silly little tent. It reminded me that no matter how big she gets, there will always be those moments when she's still my baby.
This should be the last one for the night.... I swear!
Our new Aquatic Center FINALLY opened yesterday. Morgan was invited to a birthday party there, so we decided to take the other 2 to the pool as well. They had a BLAST!
In this rooms, they have a playground, a toddler pool, another wading pool, a hot tub, a lazy river and a hydrotube that winds around the outside of the building. The bucket that you see at the top of the playground fills with water and then when it's topped off, it dumps all the water onto the kids. Oh my gosh, they thought that was the coolest things EVER! Also in the aquatic center, they have a competitive lap pool and then there's a couple Rec. rooms, a snack bar, a party room and a few other things. It's AWESOME!
Preston playing on the slide on the playground.
Morgan with some of her friends at the B-day party.
Shelby is tall enough to stand up in all the "kid areas" so don't ask me why she's wearing a life vest..... oh well you pick you battles right???? Regardless, how many people can rock a life vest this well????
Our school does an activity called "The Rendezvous" It started out being for the 4th graders, but now the 5th grade participates and Shelby's 3rd grade class participates. How it works is, the teachers pass out tickets (carnival type) for good behavior, incentives, good grades etc. throughout the quarter. They can also take them away. (ex. Shelby's teacher charges the kids 10 tickets if they need to use the bathroom other than at break time. He also charges tickets if they forget homework or other things like that.) SO at the end of each quarter, they hold a big swap meet. Each kid is supposed to bring some sort of goody or toy to sell. They use the tickets as their money and they have to barter or trade for their goods. Shelby did snow cones at the last one and decided that it was such a huge success that she would do it again.
She had quite the line throughout most of the event.
The kids bring a HUGE variety of things. They had old toys, candy, snacks, sodas, donuts, hair bows, books, blankets... ALL KINDS OF THINGS. Shelby left with a couple sodas, 4 hair bows, cotton candy, a pink cowboy hat (no worries, I refuse to let her wear that TACKY thing!)
One of the teachers DJ'd for them and the teachers even did some line dancing!
The kids had a BLAST! Shelby made 900 tickets in 1 hour. She sold her snow cones for 20 tickets each.... that's a TON of flippin' snow cones! I had to go beg the lunch ladies for more ice HA!She now has a total of 1740 tickets. What do they do with all those tickets you ask? At the end of the year, the kids write their names on each ticket and they go into a drawing for prizes. Each teacher that participates buys 10 small prizes and then the PTA furnishes a new iPod. All I can say is that with all those tickets, she better walk away with something good!
Each quarter 2 classes are in charge of the Reading Assembly for the whole school. This quarter is was the 2nd and 4th grade's turn to host it. The 2nd graders read a book about a penguin and sang a song. They were SO! DANG! CUTE! (ok so maybe I'm a little biased, but oh well) I love Morgan's little face in this video. You can totally tell she's missing her 2 front teeth.
You gotta love the "cabbage patch" dance at the end HAHA! I SWEAR she didn't learn that from me.
So, I realize that this is a tad bit late, but oh well. The last several years, I've done a Christmas video for the grandparents. My Granny doesn't get to see the blog so she just eats these videos up! Here's the video for all the rest of you that didn't get the DVD.
My good friend Martina is in town for Christmas so I went to Provo to do some "scouting" with her. (The "scouting" part is a story for another blog) We always have THE BEST time when we're together! We were supposed to be looking at crafty home decor....which we did....for a minute... But then we got sidetracked by a shiny thing in Park City a.k.a the Tanger Outlet Mall... ok so in all fairness to us, Chris really put the idea in our head by reminding me that there aren't any craft stores at the outlet mall in Park City so there was no reason to go. Silly, Silly man! How were we supposed to NOT go??? I mean, REALLY!
Ya'll know I'm a bargain shopper and this particular outlet mall has bargains like NO OTHER! I have several friends that get some amazing "coupon deals" (which by the way, I seriously need someone to sit down and teach me to coupon) Anyhow, my friends always post their good deals on their blogs and I always feel left out... so here's my good deal for the day! I got all of this stuff at The Childrens Place. (including what the girls are wearing) There's 7 skirts, 5 shirts, a Halloween Costume for my nephew Ashton (that's another blog for another time too) and a pair of knit pants to go with the costume. It's a total of $169 worth of stuff for $18.27!!!! the shirts, costume and knit pants were all .99 and the skirts $1.49! Martina got $150 worth of stuff for $29. That's over $270 we saved our hubby's.. what would they do without us???? They'd be broke, that's for sure! HA! I'm still on a shopping high!
Most of all though, I enjoyed hanging out with my friend. She's going back to Pennsylvania next week, and I miss her already!!!!! I can't wait for her to come back again!
We had an awesome Christmas. The kids had such a great time and they were SPOILED!!! ROTTEN!!!
We spent most of the day shopping in St. George. Then came home to go to a Christmas program put on by one of the local churches. Then we went to look at Christmas lights and then home to open Christmas presents. Here's Shelby getting one of her presents that she REALLY wanted!!!
Here's what they got from Santa...Shelby's is on the left, Morgan's in the middle and Preston's on the right.
I just think this one is too cute! You can totally see that Morgan has no teeth!
My mother in law got me the coolest present this year. She got me all of these cute little magnetic embellishments.
With this cute little stand
that you decorate however you want... I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!!
We have a New Years traditionwhere we give a small present to the kids just to sort of close out the whole holiday season. Oh My Gosh!!! The kids love it! They get SO excited. (Morgan was feeling very well, that's the reason for the grumpy face)
We had an amazing Christmas. I can't believe that it's already 2011! Hope all of you had a great Holiday Season!!!
The kids decided to have a little get together to exchange their gifts with the "BFF's". We did all kinds of crafts and fun stuff. We started off making little Christmas trees out of pine cones and glitter.
This is Shelby and her friend Justine working on theirs.
I honestly didn't think the boys would want to do the crafts, but they actually came over and decorated a tree. Now granted, the girls took a good 25 minutes to decorate theirs and the boys took a good 25 seconds...but Hey, they did it!
After our first little craft, the suspense was KILLING them, so we had our gift exchange.
Shelby gave Justine a matching Aeropostale shirt. Justine was quite stoked about this!! Shelby was pretty excited for the 5th Diary of a Wimpy Kid book!
Preston and Zac! Preston got a bunch of plastic bugs and animals. He really liked those but he wanted to make sure that I understood that the plastic lizard wasn't gonna cut it for Christmas...he wants a real one!!
I just love these 3 girls!!! Tatum is the one in the green socks and Ryann is in the teal. You know how 3 is usually a crowd with little girls? Well these 3 work perfectly. They can all play for hours with ZERO bickering or leaving one out. They all like each other equally which, let's face it, generally doesn't happen. We got quite a kick out of Ryann and those socks. She's very tiny, so the knee socks covered her ENTIRE leg with a little extra at the top!!
I even made home made cookies...from scratch..not pre-made dough....I KNOW, RIGHT??? Stop the presses!!! I'm not a baker! I can cook..but I can't bake to save my life. BUT these cookies were dang good if I do say so myself!
Next we did another craft.
The boys weren't at all interested in this one though. They LOOOOOVE to play the Wii together. (Preston wanted to stay with "Jana Miwwett" while the rest of us went to Disneyland this summer so he could just play Wii with Zac all week!)
What would a Christmas party be without a snowball fight? Well....the weather hasn't exactly been cooperating with us lately on that front, so we decided to have an indoor snowball fight. By snowballs I mean white foam craft balls! (For the record:those suckers kinda hurt when you get smacked in the face with one!!!!) This was towards the end of the fight and Justine was on sensory overload, so she had gone into Shelby's room to play.
The girls had their dance Christmas Recital last night. I think they both did such a GREAT job! And were BY FAR the prettiest ones there...(Ok so maybe I'm a little biased... (Oh, before you say anything about Shelby's costume..I know,! Trust me, I'm thinkin' the same thing!)
A couple of Morgan's friends came (to watch their little sister dance). This is Brylee and Aspen (you'd never in a million years guess they're twins would you? YEP! They are. And their personalities are just as different as their looks!)
Here's the video. Morgan is front and center and Shelby is front row on the left side (or you could just watch the girl that the video is focused on. HA!)
Ok, I'm warning you all there's a tangent coming on... (insert the southern accent that returns when I'm annoyed lol)
People.....If you're gonna put Christmas lights in your front yard, DO IT RIGHT OR NOT AT ALL!!!! It doesn't matter if you live in the dumpiest neighborhood or up on "Snob Hill", if your Christmas lights are done halfa$$ed then your whole darn house just looks T-A-C-K-Y!! And likewise, when they're done right, you're house can look great no matter what neighborhood you live in.
EXAMPLES:
"Snob Hill" : These people went and bought the fancy LED Rope lights (not cheap). The point of the rope lights is so that they're all in a perfect line, correct? So, you're gonna go spend all that money to have perfectly straight lights and then you can't even pull 'em tight so they look decent??? Seriously?
"Snob Hill": Is it just me or does it look like someone T.P.'ed their front yard with Christmas lights?
REALLY?.......REALLY????????
Now, I'm a firm believer that with lights, LESS IS MORE!!!! I LOVE this house. It's a cute house all on it's own, but I just love the way they do their lights. It's simple and elegant! Kudos to you "Non tacky light hanger people"
I'm not a fan of colored or ice cycle lights, BUT these are pretty decent looking. (the picture is kinda crappy, but trust me they looked good in person) This house is in a much older and smaller neighborhood but the lights are done neatly and they look good!!!
You know the saying, "If it don't look good, don't put it on the front porch"? Well, don't put it on your trees, roof, steps, driveways, or anywhere else either!!!!
We added several new decorations this year. I'm soooo in love with all of them:
Morgan wanted to know what this saying meant and I explained it to her. She said, "I still want presents though!" HA!
Next is my new shelf. I love this cause I can use it year round for all kinds of stuff!! Oh the decorating possibilities......
So there's a sweet story behind the little Willow Tree in this picture. When I first started collecting these, I saw this one and randomly told Chris that I wanted it when we got a house one day. It's called
Mi Casa su Casa. So a couple days after we closed on our house (close to 2 years later), he came home from lunch with a wrapped present and it was this Willow Tree. He'd remembered after all that time!!! And it's not as if he shops at places that sell Willow Trees either, so he had to make an effort to go get it! Not gonna lie.. I GEEKED! OUT! over this one! I'm a sucker for things like this! It's seriously my all time favorite gift that he's ever given me!
I picked up this little shelf at my co-workers consignment shop... I flippin' LOVE this thing... don't know why, but I do. It wasn't even for sale. She was using it as a display, but I made her clear everything off of it so I could get it!
The whole living room. Yes, the Nativity is still my FAVE decoration overall. I only get to put it out for 1 month a year, so I got all kinds of excited about it!
I love how Morgan snuck that bright shiny "M" right there in the front. I didn't notice it until I was adding these pics....she's a dead woman HA!
Does anyone else get tired of trying to sort through all the presents to find the neighbor, friends, or extended family gifts? Well this year, we got these cute little trees for those! They're off in their own little corner so they're easily accessible whenever those people pop by or we're going to be seeing them! Plus it keeps the kids from handling them during their daily plunder through the gifts. I swear, every year, my kids fiddle with these presents as if they're hoping that the name on them will just magically change to theirs or something.
Christmas is my favorite time of year. Despite all the chaos and things going on, there's just something about the season that makes you want to smile.
The girls danced at the Talon Craft fair last night. I just had to post this because there's a little boy at 1:40 that has had us CRACKING UP!!!! The look of horror on his face when the girls go down into the splits is hilarious!! (ok so maybe we're easily entertained)You have to double click on the video to bring it up on youtube.com so that you can see his face.
For our schools Fall Fundraiser, we sold Little Ceasars pizza kits and Sports cups/popcorn buckets. Since we have 3 kids in school, we've started combining a lot of our efforts. For example, Preston gets all of the Lin's receipts, Shelby all of the Box Tops and Morgan got all of the Fall Fundraiser sales. (each year, we'll rotate) Morgan sold $501 worth of pizza kits and cups/popcorn buckets and won 3rd place for the entire school. The prize she picked out was an American Girl Doll. Let me tell ya... it was quite the process picking out exactly which one she wanted. She wanted one that looked similar to her, but they don't make one with BOTH green eyes and short brown hair... needless to say, we went through a few tears because in her little mind that meant that combination was weird... sheesh... girls! Finally, we found one!!!!! It's actually one of the regular characters. Morgan picked "Rebecca" . If you aren't familiar with American Girl, it's a book series. Each character represents a young girl living through a different period of American history. For instance: Addy is a young slave; Felicity is from the Revolution; Kit-the Depression;Molly-World War 2 etc. Rebecca is a young girl growing up in New York City in 1914. Shelby loved the books when she was going through her American history craze. I think they're great because they're fun but still have something to teach the reader about what it would have been like to be a little girl during those periods. Morgan hasn't really gotten into the books (mostly cause she HATES reading... wonder where she gets that from...) but she LOVES the dolls. She was SO excited when she got home from school and it was on her bed. (I couldn't find my camera, so you'll have to deal with cell phone pics..sorry. And she'd just come from dance. Don't want ya'll thinking I let my kid run around half naked in this weather) Morgan was so sweet with her. She wanted to change her clothes for bedtime, so I dug out a pair of Morgan's old newborn jammies. We'll have to get some that fit Rebecca later, but these work for now. When it was time for bed, she read the book that came with her, "Meet Rebecca", out loud to the doll. I was listening to her read and noticed she was replacing "Rebecca" with "you" as if she was telling the doll a story about herself. It just melted my heart!
Chris and I have been married for 13 years. We have the 3 cutest kids in the world! Shelby is 11, Morgan is 10 and Preston is 8. They definitely keep us on our toes, but we wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.
My good friend Martina is in town for Christmas so I went to Provo to do some "scouting" with her. (The "scouting" part is a story for another blog) We always have THE BEST time when we're together! We were supposed to be looking at crafty home decor....which we did....for a minute... But then we got sidetracked by a shiny thing in Park City a.k.a the Tanger Outlet Mall... ok so in all fairness to us, Chris really put the idea in our head by reminding me that there aren't any craft stores at the outlet mall in Park City so there was no reason to go. Silly, Silly man! How were we supposed to NOT go??? I mean, REALLY!
Morgan was so sweet with her. She wanted to change her clothes for bedtime, so I dug out a pair of Morgan's old newborn jammies. We'll have to get some that fit Rebecca later, but these work for now. 
When it was time for bed, she read the book that came with her, "Meet Rebecca", out loud to the doll. I was listening to her read and noticed she was replacing "Rebecca" with "you" as if she was telling the doll a story about herself. It just melted my heart!
