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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Santa, Legos, and the Museum

For the past few years we have made a tradition of going to see Santa at the museume during Thanksgiving weekend. We LOVE the Santa there and all the activities. I took the kids to write their letters to Santa and deposit them in the special Lego mailbox while Daniel waited in line. This was a great idea as the kids could sit and think about what they wanted to ask for, so they were ready when it was time to talk to Santa. The line wasn't too bad. See - no grumpy faces, it is almost our turn!IMG_1816

OK - I know I might be a biased mother but Kyla and her hair look amazing in this picture! IMG_1818

Pretty good posers!

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Santa giving the kids the run down. He is pretty thorough about making sure they are being good!

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Eli asked for Sally (the car) and legos.

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Kyla wants a canopy for her bed.

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Myka started writing her letter that she wanted a dog, but I told her that wasn't going to happen, so I gave her the idea of a doll bike.

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Nora kind of thought she was too big to get a picture with Santa but we made her do it.  She asked for a reading hammock and a nerf gun.

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Somebody offered to take our picture.  I kind of hate it when they do that.  You don't want to say no but I was good with just having the kids. We love seeing the model train display.  The kids really have a great time following the train with a camera on the front that shows up on the TV screens. We also loved the Lego train display, but somehow didn't get any pictures.  Nora loved finding Harry Potter and Eli was excited to find Spiderman on the tall building.

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Peek-a-boo!

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The kids enjoyed being able to control Thomas.

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The is the exhibit at the museum right now, it is called "Lego Architecture", I think.
This one is Ford Field (where the Lions play) all made out of Legos.

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A replica of a really tall building somewhere. (No, I did not pay very good attention.) Lots of Legos!

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The Chicago Skyline - lots and lots of legos

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other stuff and more legos

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Had to throw the babies in the hot dog for a quick picture on our way out. We couldn't stay too long because the BYU game was starting.
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Friday, November 9, 2012

Learning Curve

Hey everyone, please ignore the next three posts or so.  I am going through a learning curve with trying to use blogger again. The pictures I posted yesterday seemed really poor quality so I am trying to post some a few different ways. This is through blogger.  Have to add them one by one.
 





Flikr

Loaded with Flikr
copy and pasting html code, kind of confusing if I can't find a way to do it easier.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89883988@N06/8169482577/" title="IMG_1512 by lizafish, on Flickr">http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8069/8169482577_04fc72b204.jpg
" width="375" height="500" alt="IMG_1512">
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89883988@N06/8169470563/" title="IMG_1543 by lizafish, on Flickr">http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8068/8169470563_69c4bb823a.jpg
" width="500" height="375" alt="IMG_1543">
Medium 500 IMG_1544 Medium 640 IMG_1544 Medium 800 IMG_1544

Test with flikr

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I don't think this is going to work. But the pictures quality is really good

Test 2

Using Picasa Web Albums worked pretty smoothly.
 





Thursday, November 8, 2012

Test


Happy Halloween!!!

Wow! October has been SO busy but so much fun. Today was Halloween and it was great. We had a "late start" day at school so we had an extra hour to get ready this morning. The girls all wore their Halloween shirts with skirts and were super cute. We had time to make pumpkin shaped pancakes this morning before school too.
Good Morning!
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Breakfast is pumpkin pancakes!!! They were so yummy!IMG_1704IMG_1705
All ready for school. I tried really hard this year to get the girls to wear their Halloween clothes as much as possible. Still sad that they don’t get to wear their costumes to school though.
 
 
I asked Aurora if she would come over and help get the house ready and spend Halloween with us. Couldn't have done it without her!  She wasn't sure about this feeding two babies at one time thing.
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But she did a GREAT job!
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I was able to put together skirt, shirts, and tights sets for the three girls out of just stuff we had in the Halloween box that had been hand - me- downs. Unfortunately, two pairs of the tights got big tears. So now I need to look for more tights on clearance. Isn't my house cute?!
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Eli found this Spidermand costume in one of the boxes I had been going through and put it on that instant. From that time on, he would put his clothes on in the morning and then put the Spiderman suit on top pretty much everyday. I was really grateful when Halloween was over he decided he didn't have to wear it all the time.
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Britta is our "lil pumpkin" and Kyla got her all ready for trick-or-treating with this tiny trick-or-treat bucket! (and NO we didn't take the babies trick-or-treating) 
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On Sunday I started toying with the idea of throwing together a last minute Halloween Open House. When we first moved into the ward the young families would rotate having an open house each year.  It was really fun to have a place to hang out and chill with friends.  Most of the other years we spent too much time trick-or-treating but this year I thought it would actually be more fun to hang out at the house with friends.  I called Melissa on the way home from dropping Grandma Cynthia at the airport to see if she would be my partner in throwing an impromptu open house.  Right after that I called Aurora and asked her if she could spend the day with me cleaning the house, taking care of babies and having a party. The girls were really sweet and put together some games for the kids.  Nora printed and cut out pictures of little pumpkins and did a treasure hunt. Kyla printed off a Halloween bingo game complete with prizes and markers.  Myka had Dad help her make strips of a sheet for a mummy wrap game.
Ready to hit the streets.  Little Red Riding Hood, a soceress, a pirate, and spiderman (who sometimes morphed into a fireman if he needed a jacket :) The kids got SO much use out of their costumes this year.  They wore them like 6 times and we didn't even go to the school party. Kyla won a costume contest at activity days and got a $10 gift card to McDonalds and a free coupon book. 
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For the past couple of years I have had this great idea of organizing a "costume swap" in the ward, and this year I actually made it happen.  It worked quite well because the primary was holding their program the last Saturday in September. I just used the Relief Society room and set up everyone's costumes that they brought and the moms browsed while the kids were in practice.  Most of us wanted the costumes back when people were done with them so we wrote our names on the tags.  We totally scored when it came to Kyla's costume because that was the exact one she had picked out from the Party City catalog (that I told her I wouldn't buy).  Nora also got her dress at the costume exchange.  Eli's and Myka's were costumes that we had from before. 
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We were so glad that our friends came up to spend the evening with us! The Lawrence's came over early and I made chicken noodle soup for everyone. Then Daniel and Tom took the girls trick-or-treating around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes and then brought them home for the Open House.
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Eli's "kitty" pumpkin, and Myka's pirate
 
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Kyla's happy face and Nora's owl. They all did a great job and were assisted by the cool new drill bit I bought Daniel and his jigsaw.   
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Eli's kitty and Myka's pirate
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Kyla's smiley and Nora's owl
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I had Daniel take the firepit out on the driveway and everyone had fun hanging out around the fire but it was pretty chilly and started sprinkleing. We ended up having about 6 families stop in and I think everyone had a good time.  Well except the two families that forgot their 8 yr old daughters at home for an hour, until their neighbor looked up my # to tell them the girls were alone at home :) 
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The babies slept for a good part of the party and were REALLY glad when everyone left and it was quiet! Britta on the left Anya on the right.  I still want to make the kids get in their costumes and get good individual pictures AND one with ALL of them in their costumes. I'll have to post one of the babies in their costumes but we actually didn't put them in the costumes on Halloween.