christmas 2008 update...

I didn't do much blogging about all of our Christmas "activities" so I'm going to give the synopsis. Maybe that means I was too busy enjoying everything we did...that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

PINK CHRISTMAS....

For the third year in a row, I participated in "Pink Christmas". It's a girlfriend gift exchanged of handmade items. My friend, Kristi, started it 3 years ago with (I think) 80 people and this year 250 women participated. Kristi also picks a few families in need and everyone donates money when they sign up that all goes to those families. Really cool!! So this is a picture of what I did this year(I promised my mom I would put it on here so she could see!) Pretty simple this year...flower clips on a wire "board". I didn't take a picture of what I received(lame). It was great! A handmade apron, box of Alaskan chocolates, and an Alaskan knife. You guessed it...the girl who had my name is from Alaska.


DANCE RECITAL...
Brenna did an awesome job on her tap and jazz dances. She won't be taking dance classes starting in January. She auditioned for the local performance of "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and that will be taking up most of her time for January and February. So we'll start dance classes again after that.
Emma Grace was awesome! She has such a cute dance style and has LOVED her teacher this year. She has been taking dance with Sheridan this year. They love going together each week. Unfortunately, Sheridan threw up in the car on the way to the recital so they turned around and went back home. Bummer for Sheridan. She was so excited to dance.
Eliza had this smile on her face nearly the entire time she danced. She LOVES dance class and that is an understatement. She asks me nearly everyday if she can go to dance class. This cute little white costume was for "Suzy Snowflake"...too cute!
The highlight of our Christmas season was Eliza learning the dance to "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas". Now six days after Christmas I want to strangle the person who wrote the song. It was fun at first but we have now listened to the song at least 800 times...no exaggeration!
We mostly listened to the song that many times because of this little guy. This is the look he had on his face during the entire recital...no joke! He concentrated so hard on every move. Then he came home and insisted that we play the hippopotamus song over and over and over again while he taught it to himself. We pulled out some old tap shoes and he can't get enough of it. It may just be inevitable...he may be a tap dancer.

SHARING TALENTS...
FAVORITE CHRISTMAS TRADITION...
Todd and I took Brenna and Emma Grace to see "A Christmas Carol" at the Hale Centre Theatre. Can I just say it one more time...I love living here. How lucky are we to have such a wonderful local theatre. When you come out of the theatre, after the show, the cast is standing there singing Christmas Carols and there is a snow blower over the doorway. AH...fake snow...again...I love living here.
Check out Brenna's flip flops with her cute outfit. I'm raising an Arizona girl! Before the show, we went to Joe's BarBQ to eat. We loooovvvvee Joe's! We love Joes too because he is single handedly reviving downtown.


TEMPLE LIGHTS...
Look at this beautiful nativity in front of the temple. The lights are so beautiful at the temple and we are so blessed to be able to go each year and enjoy them!
This is our family in front of the statues of Mary and Joseph with the donkey going to Bethlehem. Beautiful!
We figured out the best was to take advantage of the temple lights with a family this year. It only took us 5 years to figure it out!! We went during the middle of the week and got there at 5:30 before the sun was even completely down. By the time we got out of the car and over onto the temple grounds, the sun was down and hardly anyone was there. We walked around, enjoyed the lights, and went home for dinner. Oh...what a beautiful thing!

NATIVITY....
It's been tradition in my family my entire life to dress up and read the story of Jesus' birth on Christmas Eve after having a Christmas dinner. Because we have typically been here without family, we often invite other families to come and do this with us. This year the Taylor family and Norton family came. Todd set up a great Nativity in our backyard. Unfortunately because we had been having so much rain the grass was a little too wet and muddy so we set it up right next to the porch. All the adults read scripture verses from the Bible to retell of His birth.
Emma Grace was Isaiah foretelling of Christ's birth.
Brenna was the angel who came to Mary(& the angels who came to the shepherds).
Eliza was a Wiseman(girl). Courtney was an angel. Brenna and Courtney decided that they would hang from the sides of the nativity...you know..."fly like angels".
Valerie was a Wiseman(girl)
Tony was a shepherd. In this picture it looks like he may have been a shepherd bearing gifts. But really, he was the cutest shepherd. Couldn't you just eat him up. This would be a good time to mention that Charlie(Tony's buddy) did not participate in our nativity. Ten minutes before everyone came Charlie threw a major tantrum and Todd and I decided he would make a wonderful Shepherd next year and we put him to bed.
Laine was Mary and Adison was Joseph. Because we had so many girls and Mary is "the main part" we had to draw names to see who would play the starring role. Laine filled her responsiblities beautifully. , and
GIVING & RECEIVING...
This is probably my favorite memory of Christmas.

The kids all get a chance to go to the dollar store or Target dollar spot with their own money to shop for everyone for Christmas. They all wrap their presents and on Christmas Eve they get to give out all of their gifts. It is so awesome to watch them be so giving and so grateful for the things their brother and sisters gave them.

So in the picture Brenna is hugging Eliza for the gift she just received and Brenna is giving a gift to Charlie. Look at the expressions on all of their faces. They love it!
CHRISTMAS MORNING...
Who is that peeking under the tree?

Christmas morning we opened gifts after running through our Santa wall and saying a family prayer.

Brenna got the Marionette that she had no idea she was getting. She has played with it nonstop.
Emma Grace got the horse she's been dreaming of.
Eliza got the camera she wanted so that she could be like mom.
Charlie got the Buzz Lightyear that will drive us all crazy by saying, "to infinity and beyond". Or as Charlie says, "and yon" and then flies around the room.


CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST...

Charlie finished off the Christmas season by enjoying a wonderful breakfast of a giant Hershey kiss and candy from his stocking. This fourth child thing is working out pretty good for him.

miracles do happen...

all of my children smiled and looked at the camera. Of course, the picture right after this one is of Charlie picking his nose. Oh the joys!!

play dough...

Charlie was in his own little world today playing with play dough. He cut the play dough and lined the little pieces up along the table. He made sculptures(I use that term loosely!) of our dog Missy, Frosty the snowman, and a house.
When I told him that his lunch was ready he said, "I not done yet!" Finally I just put his lunch right next to the play dough and he took a couple of bites in between creating all of his masterpieces. When Brenna came home from Activity Days and offered to take him outside he told her, "I not done yet". What??? He never refuses a chance to go outside with his sisters. Finally when it was time to set the table for dinner and he told me again, "I not done yet", I had to set up another little table for him to play with his play dough. I had to pry it out of his hands to go take a bath after many failed attempts to convince him that he could play with it again tomorrow.
This is the sculpture of Missy(our dog). Maybe it's only because I'm his mom, but I see a resemblance!
I promised Charlie that we would make him a fresh batch of play dough tomorrow. This batch was already starting to dry out but after these little hands played on it ALL day long, it's time for some fresh stuff for sure.

If you're using the store bought play-doh, you have to try this recipe. It is so worth a little bit of time to make it. It is so much better than store bought. It stays fresh soooo much longer. You can add color if you want. I've figured out that my kids really don't care if it's colored or not so I don't bother.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 cups cold water
food coloring
wooden board
plastic bag or container
1. In a medium saucepan, mix together the flour, salt, vegetable oil, cream of tartar, and water.
2. Cook uncoverd over medium heat, about 5 minutes. Stir constantly until the dough is the consistency of mashed potatoes.
3. Divide the dough into four equal portions.
4. Add approxiamatley 6 to 8 drops of food coloring to each portion and knead the color into the dough to distribute it evenly. Knead the color into the dough.
5. If you store the play dough in a plastic bag or airtight container, it will last a really long time.
(this recipe comes from MarthaStewart.com

800 miles

It felt wonderful to complete my 800th mile this morning! Todd woke me up at 5:00 and said, "ready to go running?". I looked at the clock and said, "have you lost your mind?". Thank goodness for his motivation some days. We ran at a pretty moderate pace the whole time until the last 3/4 of a mile. Then I told Todd I was taking off. I ran as fast as I could. I had to make that last mile count. It felt great!! This picture was actually taken in February when we ran our first half marathon. We probably looked about the same this morning when we went running. Thanks Todd for helping me make my goal...you're the best!

Of course, I'm not going to quit running but it will be nice to move on to some other fitness goals for 2009.

Set goals and you can do anything!!

gingerbread house...

This is something you almost never see....me in the pictures. We love making a gingerbread house every year. You would think that after 10 years of making these little houses that we would somehow master it...oh no! Every year a wall caves in, things slide off the icing, but the kids love it so we keep making them.
Eliza loved dipping things in the icing and then licking all the extras off her little fingers.
The finished product!...we'll keep our day job!

pomegranates & gingerbread...

So our Christmas traditions start with POMEGRANATES. This started a couple of years ago when we were on a walk and went past a pomegranate tree that was losing some of it pomegranates. I broke one opened and somehow got the girls to try it. They loved it! Now every Christmas when the Pomegranates are in the store, they ask for one.
I'm actually not really sure how you're suppose to eat a pomegranate but here's how we eat them.
-outside(because they can get messy)
-bib for little ones(because they can stain)
-take one little piece out at a time and suck the juice out
-spit out the little seed inside(another reason to be outside

The girls LOVE the juice from the pomegranate seeds. And it's healthy! Yippee! What a novel idea in the Hall home.

I LOVE the smell of gingerbread at Christmas time. The girls love cutting out the little guys and gals. We doused our gingerbread people in sugar...enough of this healthy pomegranate stuff!

funny things...

Did you say..."jibby"?

From time to time the girls like me to tell them what they did when they were born. Sounds silly! But they like for me to tell them what they did in the delivery room because each one was really different. So we were going down the list...

Emma Grace didn't make a sound and it made us really nervous. The nurse had to tell us that she was okay, that some babies don't scream in the delivery room.

Eliza didn't cry either(for a little while) but she was more wide eyed then I thought newborns could be. She was looking up and all around like she already knew what was going on. My thought, "oh my, what am I in for?". She is still wide eyed and think she knows everything.

Charlie...screamed! No actually he was probably the most "normal" although by number four I realized that almost anything was normal.

So we were talking about all of this and suddenly Emma Grace, knowing that Brenna screamed and screamed from the moment she took her first breath said, "Brenna cried like a JIBBY when she came out!"

I love it! None of us are sure that "jibby" really means anything but we are having lots of fun making up definitions and using it in sentences. We figure that jibby can describe almost anything.




We love to say "Thank you"...

So recently I taught the primary children at church the song, "Children All Over The World". In the song we sing thank you in different languages from around the world. Some of them are "tak", "merci", "gracias", "kansha-shi-ma-shu".

At dinner we make a point of making sure everyone says thank you to whoever made the meal. So mostly it's a big round of "thank you mom". Lately they have all been using their knowledge of how to say thank you in different languages at the dinner table. One night dad was included in the thank you's. Emma Grace said to Todd, "tak". Without missing a beat Todd said, "be quiet". We laughed and now everyone says "tak" for "thank you" and "be quiet" for "your welcome".