Christmas in California

Our annual festivities started the first weekend in December when we trecked on down to Home Depot as a family and bought our Christmas tree.  The girls had fun at the tree lot looking at the different types of trees and then helping to decorate the tree.  Katelyn 'helped' with the lights and they both managed to get there hands on a bunch of ornaments.  Thankfully, nothing was broken.

Here is a picture of the girls in front of our tree.  So cute they are in their Christmas outfits.

I'm thinking that I need a star or angel for the top of the tree.  It is year #6 and we still don't have a tree topper.  It looks so sad. We opted for a short tree this year as Kyle insisted it would be so much easier to deal with and we were not going to be home on Christmas anyways.  When we got it up & in the house, he said something to the effect of 'We should have gotten a bigger tree. . . .'  Haha, oh well - live & learn.

 This picture was taken the morning that Katelyn 'sang' with the Sunday School in front of church.  I used quotes because in spite of the fact that she new almost every word to all the songs, she didn't sing a single word in church that morning.  She did however lift her dress up so that we could see her belly button and sit down on the steps.  This was a sharp contrast to the first time the Sunday School sang this year when she sang as loud as she could and tried to do all the motions, even when there were no motions for certain parts of the songs.  We never know what to expect for our Missy Katelyn.

Because we were going out of town for Christmas, we opened our presents the Friday evening before Christmas.  I made cinnamon caramel popcorn with pecans & white chocolate - the first time I have ever attempted anything like this.  And let me just say - IT WAS SOOOOO GOOD!  It was a great treat while we were opening presents.

Here is a link to the recipe - http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/09/cinnamon-caramel-corn-with-pecans-white-chocolate-aka-cinnamon-bun-popcorn/ (it's a lot easier than it seems to make this)

 

 

 

 

The girls got a bunch of smaller presents.  Their main gift was that Kyle made each of them a tent/fort.  We usually make a large fort every time we get new books from the library, so I thought it would be great to have something we can just pop-up whenever we want.  I think they will work great.  They are, however, HUGE.  I wasn't really thinking about where we would store them when we made two of them.

Opening gifts was a lot of fun this year as both of the girls were really excited about it.  Katelyn kept making huge gasps every time a piece of wrapping paper was ripped off of a present and they were both helping each other open every present.  Here are a bunch of pics from present opening night.

About to open the first gifts (after we had to restuff one for a little girl who jumped the gun - Katelyn, I think).

Two big Minnie Mouse Fans

A train set!

A goof ball opening her stocking.

Playing with their presents inside the forts (not fully opened).

Sorry this post is a little long, I want to catch up to present time and we had a lot going on.  I hope you all had a great Christmas season!

CVS Score

Some of you may know that I am a couponer.  I'm not one of those crazy people that clear off shelves and buy 20 of one item, but I do stockpile up on some items that I know we will use, such as cereal, soups, toothpaste, etc.  I use a couple websites to match up coupons with sales each week.  My favorite is www.hip2save.com.

The week of Thanksgiving, CVS had some awesome deals.  I was able to get all of the following for $3.36!

(Yes, there are a few things that I don't need in this pile, such as the glucose tester, but I made $10 off of this, which I then used to basically pay for the soda.)

This was one of my better trips.  I can usually do very well the week of Thanksgiving.  Probably one of my top 5 trips in the almost 2 years I have been couponing.

Thanksgiving weekend

For Thanksgiving this year, as we often do, we went to my parents' house.  The day before Thanksgiving, my mom had Katelyn over to do a craft.  They made place-cards for each person who would be at Thanksgiving.  They also made a couple of pinecone Turkeys.

Katelyn's placecard turkey.

On Thanksgiving day, I tried to do a couple of activities with Katelyn.  Inspired by Pinterest, I tried to have her make a thumbprint turkey - she was just more interested in making thumbprints all over the page in random patterns and colors.  We also made a scavenger hunt turkey.  The girls enjoyed looking for the feathers and I kept the pieces and plan to use it again in future years.

This is from the blog I got the idea from (http://thecharmedmom.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-craft-fingerprint-turkey-cards.html), not mine as I forgot to take a picture.

I made a turkey very similar to this one and then Katelyn hunted for the feathers.  Pic from http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2012/11/turkey-feather-hunt-gross-motor-game.html.

It is so fun now that she is getting older and can participate in these types of things.

I, of course, spent most of Black Friday shopping.  My mom and I met up at 5:15AM and I didn't get home until about 2:30.  Fun times!

On Saturday morning, Kyle & I dropped the kids off at my parents and we headed down to San Diego.  We took our bikes along and biked around Coronado.  We stayed in the Gaslamp District, which was pretty interesting, although we aren't too into the bar scene, so after dinner, we went to the movies and saw 'Lincoln'.  The next day we ate an AWESOME breakfast at a local restaurant.  I wish I had taken a picture of Kyle's breakfast.  It was a massive cinnamon pecan pancake thing.  Even he couldn't finish it.  We might be making future trips to San Diego just for breakfast.  After breakfast we headed to Old Town for a couple hours and then headed home to pick up the girls.

We had a great Holiday weekend. 

School Harvest Festival

This fall, my Aunt Lisa, who is a teacher, invited us to go with her to the school's annual Harvest Festival.  This takes place at my high school and was the festival I went to almost every year growing up.  It was Katelyn's first experience with this type of environment.  She had a lot of fun playing the games with Aunt Lisa, and of course playing in the bounce house.  Brooklyn mostly hung out in the stroller, but I am looking forward to next year, when she can be a little more involved.

Carnival Games!

Jumping in the toddler jumper/obstacle course.  I had a hard time getting her out of it. :-)

Thanks for inviting us to come along with you Aunt Lisa!

Halloween 2012

Ok.  So, I think we can establish that I'm not very timely at publishing my blogs.  It has now been well over a month and one major holiday since Halloween.  However, in an attempt to keep things in some semblance of order, and because my kids were way too cute to pass it up altogether, I am still going to post about our Halloween.

Halloween was on a Wednesday this year, so on Monday night, we carved our pumpkins.  We carved them in the garage this year, which worked out a lot better than in our kitchen last year.  It was a lot of fun because the girls both were able to help as it was on the floor.  They both loved to help too.  Brooklyn thought she was in charge of the big spoon and wanted to scoop out the seeds with me.  We bought one big 'family' pumpkin and the girls each had a smaller pumpkin (see the previous post on the pumpkin patch).  Katelyn enjoyed using the marker and drawing pictures on hers while we were working on the details of the big pumpkin.

Tips that worked well for us to remember next year:
1.)  Use a washable marker to draw the face as it wiped off really easily
2.)  When cutting out the top, include a large section of the back so it is easy to scoop seeds out.

Supervising Daddy

Scooping out the seeds.  Big Helpers.

The finished product (and the two small pumpkins).

On the evening of Halloween, we first took the girls over to my parents for their first trick-or-treat experience.  Then we had a couple of friends over with their kids, so it was fun watching 4 toddlers walk around our neighborhood.  It was also a little comical.  Katelyn would usually be the first to get the candy, but then didn't want to clear out of the way and let the other kids get close.  Brooklyn tried multiple times to walk into the houses when the doors were open.  We have never been home on Halloween before (even though this was our fourth year in our house), and it was interesting to see who came around to our house.  There aren't too many trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.

I chose these costumes because Katelyn has been called 'Lady Bug' since she was born and Brooklyn is often called 'B(ee)'.  I love my little girls.

Fall Festivities - Oak Glen & Pumpkins

We enjoyed our fall - even though it may not have cooled off until the last few days.

The first weekend of October, we met my family up in Oak Glen.  We went to one of the apple farms and picked apples and pears.  After that, we headed into town and walked around for a while, took a train ride  and ate dinner.   Overall, a good day.  I think that if we go again, we will just opt to buy pre-picked apples, although the pears that we picked were VERY GOOD.

Katelyn picking a pear with Daddy's help

On the train with Daddy

The next week, the four of us headed to Tanaka Farms, a large farm and pumpkin patch in Orange County.  We went through the corn maze and then rode on the tractor around the farm and to the petting zoo.  Both of the girls like the idea of a petting zoo, but for the most part were scared to death of the animals.  We finally found a similarly scared sheep in the corner and Katelyn and Brooklyn were ok petting it as it was just laying there and not moved towards them.  Kyle's favorite part of the morning was the pumpkin canon.  The girls each picked out a small pumpkin and we bought one large 'family pumpkin', which we later carved.  Katelyn was very proud of the pumpkins and kept showing them off to anyone who would come over.  It was a huge pumpkin patch and I am guessing that we will probably go back again in future years.

Corn Maze in California!

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The Family Pumpkin

Since we were already in Irvine, we decided to bring our bikes along and we went biking along the Back-Bay in Newport.  It was a really nice area.  There were a lot of hills and we got tired pretty quickly because of the heat, but I definitely want to go back and do more of the path and surrounding areas.

View of the Back Bay from where we parked the truck.

Stay tuned for our pumpkin carving and Halloween costumes!

Katelyn is 3!

Last Thursday, we celebrated Katelyn's 3rd birthday!  I can't believe she is that old.  And she looks and acts old too.


The Saturday before her birthday we had family pictures with my family.  After the pictures Katelyn opened her gifts and went to Chik'fil'a for dinner and celebrated her birthday. She loves it when we sing happy birthday and of course sings along. :-)

On the actual day of her birthday, we played it pretty low key, but we did a few of her favorite thinks like going to the park and the library and then making a fort to read her new books.

Katelyn picked out a balloon and ice cream at the grocery store.  Popsicles are new to us and she is just getting over her dislike of ice cream because 'it is cold.'

Fun days!