Gone Fishin' take two

During Thanksgiving break we drove all the way to OC and tried to take the kiddos fishing at this great little place called Huckleberry Pond.  Lucky for the owners (they must have known we were coming) because it was drained, and the place was closed for the holiday.  

So take two!!!  

We tried again on Saturday, it was open, stocked with Utah Rainbow Trout, and a very patient staff to help our rather retarded family try to fish. 

What I learned:  fishing is NOT in Curt's blood, and therefore, our kids are doofus fishers as well.  Not that I'm that much better, but let's face it...I am better.  I can at least cast correctly even if I don't catch squat.  Curt casted the line into the netting on the roof of the place.   

At least he can laugh at himself!  Monson casted it and almost caught my eye with the live hooked worm.

Brayden had a complete meltdown.  McKenzie & Lexie ruled (they have my genes-haha)

{nice butt shot of that guy.}

while Izzie & Vivie just knew how to look cute.  

$55 later, 11 lbs of fish, (one of McKenzie's being 5.5 lbs by itself) 

we finally finished our excursion.  And we want to go back soon--not because the fish is yummy, but because we've got to teach our family how NOT to be doofus fishers.  I think I'll be looking for some fishing rods on sale this year.

...because I just may have a few little female fishers with my genes.

(okay, I stink too....but at least I don't cast into the roof...love ya,honey!)

We had ourselves a "Merry Little Christmas"

I have longed for the day that my kids could play real music rather than just make annoying sounds (see a couple posts down)...

On Christmas Eve my mom and I cooked up some yummy Mexican tamales, white bean chicken chili, shrimp, crab, salmon and veggies for dinner.  And I fished my wish--Brayden cooked up & presided over a musical Christmas Eve. We did our fancy puppets along with our Christmas Eve book I made eons ago, which the kids (and apparently Curt) have LOVED in lieu of acting out Luke 2.  Brayden played the violin, McKenzie & Monson took turns playing the piano, they performed duets and it was just LOVELY, for lack of a better word (My kids and the word 'lovely' can't always be mixed).

Curt read the traditional "I Believe in Santa Claus", followed by "Twas the Night Before Christmas."  And the greatest thing about Christmas Eve?  We were done and the kids were in bed by 8:00 with their ears open and listening for any signs of Santa's reindeer.   

ROUND 2:

Christmas Day is a very Lazy Day.   One by one they run downstairs...youngest to oldest so we can capture each of their reactions on camera.

The best part of all?  Ama was here to share it with us--it's been EIGHT years since she spent all of the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day festivities with our family.

The kids loved their homemade gift exchange between each other and from yours truly. Brayden made Monson a doodle pad.  He drew an outline on paper then had it copied 100 times and bound with a hard cover and spirals--genius!  Monson drew a caricature of Brayden playing football.  McKenzie and Lexie made each other jewelry and decorative hair accessories, and Vivs and Izzie did much of the same (or whatever mom had time for:).  I made my mom a 'celebrations' board with everyone's bday and anniversary, I crocheted Mons an iPod case...and all this explains why I haven't slept for nearly a month.  I know, I do it to myself.  But the homemade PJ's will have to wait for another year--Christmas Eve came much too fast. 

Giving Back

In an effort to teach our children to look outside of themselves we, like most people, like to find ways to serve others.  It could be as simple as the way Lexie dishes out compliments, thus 'making' someone's day or the way the older three cleaned up after someone else's 'tee-pee' job across the street or the way they share their musical talents with others.  But during the Christmas season, like most families, we like to expand our efforts and do something a little more organized as we reflect upon our own rich blessings.

As tough as the circumstances were surrounding my pregnancy and early life with Viviana, I cannot fathom going through that during the middle of Christmas.  How would you do that with so many little kids???!!  Certainly, we rise to the challenge and find ourselves capable of doing much more than we ever could have imagined in times of trial.  So last year as a family we made gift baskets for several of the women on bedrest at Mary Birch Hospital.  It hit home and really meant a lot to us to be able to 'give back' with a situation so near and dear to our hearts.

This year, we expanded our efforts and included some NICU families with baskets full of micro-preemie to newborn  sized clothes, blankets, bows for the girls, lotions, journals for the moms, homemade frames, homemade jewelry and tons of snacks and other little goodies.  When planning for this, we tried to remember our experiences and the little luxuries and warm thoughts that made our time at the hospital just a little bit easier.  We were delighted that my mom was able to join us to deliver the goodies.  We were also able to visit with a few of Vivie's nurses from her NICU experience.  What a joy it is for them to follow her progress and see first hand how their job as 'nurse angels' really makes a difference.

While coordinating the basket-giving with the social worker, I was astounded to learn that this is a completely untapped service effort.  The staff was overwhelmed that we wanted to do this.  I would absolutely LOVE to start an NPO helping these NICU families from all walks of life that are experiencing such difficulty and trial in an effort to establish even just a little bit more hope and joy.   

It is my hope and prayer that as we serve as a family in different capacities that those acts of beauty, however simple or complex, will become second nature to our children and they will realize the true joy that is to be found in the service of our fellow man.  And it is my most deep desire that they experience this joy all throughout the year.  

(so if you have any desire to join in our efforts next  year, please please talk to me and we'll orchestrate something even better and bigger next year!)

Ode to McKenzie & Monson

Pounding on the piano- the kind that doesn't resemble anything like music... but rather, tests the nerves and makes you want to SCREAM happens OFTEN with lots of tiny busy little fingers in our home.  I asked for it.  I insisted on having a piano so our children could tickle the ivories and fill our home with beautiful music...or sometimes we just call it sound.

We bought a console second hand about 10 years ago...the twinner piano to the one I played on growing up, or at least tried to with the few years I took piano.  My brothers have much more 'for reals' talent in that department.  It's been a great desire of mine to expose our children early to instruments and music to develop possible talents they could stick to and hopefully bless their lives and fill our home with music-not of the iPod variety. 

McKenzie and Monson have diddle daddled with lessons at the school which proved to be unsuccessful with a class of 12.  A couple of months ago I started them with a phenomenal teacher, trained in the Suzuki Method and both have excelled greatly in just a few short months.  Suddenly the 'sound' turned into 'music'!  Joy to my ears!  She uses a very modified Suzuki Method for Monson and a more traditional approach with McKenzie.  Monson does NOT enjoy the lessons and structure, but rather composing on his own has been his forte; whereas, McKenzie has soaked it all in and loves playing any chance she gets.  They have talent and apparently stage fright to go with it.  They both froze during the middle of one of their solos at last week's piano recital.  They eventually turned it around to figure out the notes, but I froze with them for a second as I could feel their fear as their face turned 10 colors of red.  They did a great job with their first performances and I hope there's a round two next year!

It's a Charlie Brown Christmas

Monson enjoyed playing the character Linus for our ward Christmas party program earlier this month.  He really captured the character sucking his thumb and dragging around a blue blankie.  He was so proud to wear the cute hat his friend, Seth, gave him this summer too.  Monson memorized the whole part...maybe he has an acting career ahead of him! 

 

Santa stopped by for a visit so we could cross that mall trip & long line off our list!  He typed up everyone's name from our ward that had been a good girl or boy and was on Santa's list...

And we can't forget the horror in Vivie's eyes as we sat her on scary Santa's lap.  Izzie would have nothing to do with it.  It brought back great memories of my brother, Mark, probably somewhere in between my girls' ages, throwing a coniption fit on the floor when Santa showed up.  Kind of like if you wiggle and scream enough, you will disappear and Santa will go away.  Not so.  At least Izzie enjoyed her ice cream and watching Santa from afar...with fear and sadness in her eyes.  Oh, and sticking her tongue out to the camera probably made her feel better cause guess who was behind that camera?   

Busy Body Bray

I don't get why our schools don't allow the kids to dress up for Halloween, but it's mandatory for them to spend the day looking like this:

Middle school is fun.  Brayden had a jolly time putting together his Egyptian costume and exploring history and learning all about how they prepared bodies for death thousands of years ago.  I think he rocks as an Egyptian Pharoah.  Pretty cool headress a.k.a. living room pillow fabric if I don't say so myself!

Switching gears...Brayden has loved learning the violin with the San Marcos Youth Orchestra.  And I love it that he's honed in on a talent he can really sink his teeth into.  He performed at the San Marcos tree lighting at the community center a couple of weeks ago.  He also recently took part in a concert/recital.  For the last semester he has played the alto saxophone at the middle school, but decided to drop that and focus on the violin being that instruction and opportunities are much more personalized and so much better than a 70-person band class at school.  I hope our children can continue to play their instrument of choice and develop a true love for music through their talents that will serve them well their whole lives.

~la toilette~

I've had this project in my head for way too long and had the vinyl and ordered, ready to go mid-summer.  It only took a major party at my house to finally complete a few little crafty things around the house and clear my head admist crazy homemade Christmas season.  So I will call this my little Christmas present to myself!

My inspiration came from my most favorite little boutique...Dear Lizzie, in Highland, Utah.  It's one of my many dreams to open up a boutique/bistro like that one day--but I'm afraid I'll have to settle for queen of copycats.  I can't even remember what the sign said, but it was 'not your momma's' typical vinyl board.  It was blinged.  And if you know me, you know I {heart} bling in all its forms.  My guest bath has fleur-de-lis tiles and so after cutting/routing, I went with the theme and painted a parisian-style harlequin background, 'aged' it and then topped it all off with my signature bling.  LOVELY!   Even for 'la toilette.'  It's much, much prettier in person.

Happiness is Homemade ~ Crayon Pockets

Every year for Christmas I try to make at least one homemade thing for each of the kids.  This year has become a bit more of a homemade Christmas than usual...and if I would have just started back in August I wouldn't be burning the midnight oil so much!

My inspiration for this one came when I thought about all the drawing, coloring, scattered half-used computer paper, and missing crayons in our home, cars, and church bags.  It's such a large equation to the messes at our home-- among all ages. I've seen these crayon rolls all over blog land, but wanted something a bit more.  (Although I wish I would have taken a bigger cue from the link under 'these' above & used that cool iron-on vinyl--oh well...next time).  Then I found this activity bag.  Of course, I could have just paid the $20 x 3 and saved myself the wonderful pleasure of spending a day in my pj's, watching the house around me fall apart, having the girls keep busy watching umpteen princess movies, and trying to keep the iron away from little miss Vivie's precious hands while sewing away.  Why would I possibly want to save myself some sanity?

I understand completely the harmonious feeling when my mom was in 'her' element {sewing} and trying to concentrate with six kids and our demands surrounding her.  I try to do this kind of stuff late at night, but with Christmas fast approaching and my list a little longer than I'd like to admit...nights turn into days.  My head has not hit the pillow before 1 am for the last month. I worked hard for those bags under my eyes!  I made three (Lexie, Izzie, Vivie), and each one is uniquely it's own size (not on purpose...I'm a bit of a doofus) but I think the third one is a charm.  I can't wait to wrap them, and see the glee on Christmas morn.  {and there had better be glee--I worked hard on these!}

The crayon rolls in the links above would be much, much easier... but I couldn't resist these great all-in-one holders, especially for church (yes, I do let my little ones color in church) and outings in the car.  I love the easy tutorial at Skip to my Lou.

Happiness is homemade and I'm stickin' to it.

Glammed & Glittericious Girlfriends

I don't know what came over Malisa and me when we decided two weeks ago to host a girlfriend party in the midst of this crazy Christmas around the corner season.  Perhaps it's just that we needed something over-the-top, glamorous and glittericious just for the girls...something different than the cookie exchange I used to host in Utah.  Something that absolutely had NOTHING to do with Christmas itself.  Oh, and did we choose something different! Amusing to some, useful to others, super creative - and my house will forever be dusted with about eight colors of sparkly, sticky, hide in every crevice, nook & cranny glitter.   Oh, but it was worth all the hours of preparation--three nights 'til 2:30 am to be exact, inhaling gobs of mod podge, and all the money we spent on cups, glitter, lids, straws, ribbons galore, sparkly embellishments and SODA.  And {THANK YOU A million times over, Curt...for covering for me & supporting us in this crazy project!}

We charged $10 for those that RSVP'd to help put a dent in the cost of supplies--because it sure added up fast!  We instructed them to glam and glitter....some got it and participated and others either thought we were just crazy or childish...or just didn't feel like puttin' on the ritz...and that's okay too-we're just glad they came!

I made these cutest invitations (I know, I'm not being humble...c'mon, they were super duper cute!)  And of course, glittered them all up and added some mystery to our party by keeping everyone guessing.  Probably because if we said "we're making glitter cups" they'd look at us and run the other way.  Really, until you see them and get your hands on a glittered cup with all the embellishments, you just don't get it.  So we had to keep the mystery.

After we decided to host the party, Malisa found out from a girlfriend in Utah that has done these cups before what actually was involved and it wasn't as easy as one would think!  Not only did we have to buy industrial amounts of glitter, mod podge, & ribbon, but Malisa had to drive all the way to stinking HEMET to the nearest Sonic to get a couple sleeves of 44 oz and 32 oz cups.  They're heavy styrofoam so they won't sweat and they fit perfectly together so you can glitter the 44 oz and put the 32 oz. one inside, lidded with your drink of choice.

We had everyone bring an appetizer to share and their $10 'cover charge' along with an apron.  Each girlfriend took a number as they came, in order of arrival from 1 to 24.  We really wish we could have just invited EVERYONE...but really, we would not have slept even one hour in the last 72 had we done even one more cup!  It was a three-step and watch mod podge dry in between kind of thing.  So after appetizers, the girlfriend who arrived first got a great consolation prize of a tiara, glammed jewelry bobble, and glitter star stick.  Of course, no one still knew why these were of upmost importance!  Malisa unveiled the glitter cups and then it made a little more sense to everyone---and then we showed them our glammed up, glittered, and embellished cups to carry in style wherever we go.  They all got to choose their cups in the order they arrived (there were three base colors with several glitter colors in each for depth).  

And the girlfriend who glammed and glittered themselves for the party the best (as voted by the other girls) also got the little consolation prize.  

We modpodged scrapbook paper onto initials, tied gobs of ribbon and glued away to make our cups the most glittericious and fabulous!  It was so fun to see the creativity flow and the end results were fantasticly wonderful in every way!  Call us crazy, but truly, who knew glitter cups could be an addicting accessory? Or even an accessory at all! We have already started planning our next glammed up and glittericious girlfriend party.

Until next time.....

Your glammed up and glittericious girlfriend,

Glittericious....can the word that's really not even a word be overused?  hmmmmm.  I'm still lovin' it!

here's the link for the flickr photostream of ALL the photos from the evening:  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toushay/

Winter Spirit

In California in order to feel wintry and festive we have to pretend.  We have to ignore the fact that it's really 7o something amazing degrees outside with blue skies in December.  We have to overlook that the kids wear shorts to school most days and do not wear jackets 90% of the time.  In fact, we have to declare "winter spirit day" at our elementary school so that we can wear our hats, scarves, and gloves... during the middle of winter... in 7o something degrees... with our shorts... so that we look like a bunch of freaks.   

UPDATE:  Apparently I jinxed San Diego ...either that, or I just 

don't look at the weather report.  We are getting slammed today by wintry weather conditions.  55 degrees, pouring sheets, gloomy skies, wet, wet, wet.  We San Diegans are just not used to the rain.  Or driving in the rain.  We really don't know what to do with ourselves when the blue skies

disappear.  waaa waaa waaa.  But it is a nice refreshing change of pace.  See?  We actually do have seasons.   

So We Adopted!

When the kids got home from school today there was this cute little package on our porch that must have been magically left by Santa's Elf.  

Inside this package was this "Elf on a Shelf" picture book and little red elf to go with it as well a little note personally addressed to the kids giving instructions on what to do with this little creature.

 He sits up high in the tree or on a shelf and cannot be touched or he'll lose his magic....but the kids can talk to him until their hearts are content...  He watches them perform their good little deeds (and so does momma--LOVE IT) as well as their little noddy moments and outbursts (not so lovely).  He reports it all nightly to Santa and returns the next morning perched somewhere else for the kids to search him out as he watches and takes his notes. 

We registered our cute little Elf's name on the elf website and Santa sent us back a letter complete with adoption papers.

My dear friend, Allison, grew up with a little elf just like this.  Her cutest mom has

 had a little elf friend for almost 40 years now.  So Allison has had this tradition with her little kiddies since she was married.  I'm just trying to figure out why it took so long for Santa's little elves to make their way to our home.  Perhaps it's this adorable sign I put out this year inviting Santa to our home (new find at Taipan).  Or maybe it's because SIX kids and their noise levels are historically unmanageable this time of year...go figure.  Santa KNEW we needed some way to avoid coal in the stockings since he's a very merciful Santa?  So finally, we have a little elf of our own which the kids named 'Buddy' (I know, VERY original).

Izzie's name choice for him was 'elfant'....as in elephant.  We voted...I voted for Elfant.  Elfant lost.  Meet our new friend, "Buddy."  Hopefully he can help our 'mouthy' ones earn treats instead of coal this year.