Reindeer

So this was one of our activities for our advent calendar this year. They get a lot more creative than I do when I make mine. I didn't have legs or hooves like theirs did. Leave it to a kids imagination to come up with stuff.

More Christmas Trees

We bought the girls their own Christmas trees for their rooms this year. I always wanted one so I figured we may as well get one for the girls. We let them pick out their own decorations and decorate them however they wanted to. They like to turn them on in their rooms at night until they fall asleep.

Kylees 6th birthday

This is probably one of the first pics of Kylee taken at the hospital before we got to see her.

Here is another pic of Kylee at the hospital all dressed up and cute.

Our first picture of Kylee in our house her first full day home.

Kylee turned 6 today. She has been counting down for quite a while now. I still remember 6 years ago to the day that we got the phone call that she was born early (original due date was in December but she came the day before Thanksgiving) and that we were to go to Logan to pick her up on Friday. We were so excited. Not quite ready because we thought we had a couple more weeks to get the room and stuff ready. But we managed. We got to call the birthmom on Thanksgiving at the hospital to see how she and Kylee were doing. Thanksgiving that year was at mom and dads house with extended family because I remember trying to keep it a secret from relatives just in case things didn't work out. But as we all know they did...yay Kylee!!! This time we invited mom and dad and Jon's parents to go with us to meet the birthmom and Kylee on Friday. I remember going to a store and seeing Jon's neice Karen in the parking lot as we were on our way out of town.

We got to the agency a little early. We beat the birthmom and her family there. I guess we weren't supposed to see each other in the waiting room because when they walked in they hurried and ushered them into their room to wait for the "passing off of the baby part".

I had a message at the agency that I needed to call the hospital doctor to talk to him. Kylee apparently was jaundice and he was worried about passing the care of the her off to some other doctor. So I had to call and give him the name of our doctor with the promise that I would give our doctor the paperwork saying that I took Kylee in the next day for blood work. Which of course I did. He told me that we needed to keep taking her into the doctor to make sure her blood was checked out and her coloring turned correct. We ended up taking her to the doctor several times in the next couple weeks (almost seemed like once a day). Poor little baby foot was all pricked by the time we finished. She even got to sleep in the bililight (or however you spell it) for about a week.

It was fun seeing Ashley and her family again. She is such a sweet girl. Her family seems so familiar to both Jon and I and we were very lucky and grateful that we got the priviledge of receiving two babies from her. Of course the passing of the baby was very emotional for both parties. Happy beyond belief for us but I am sure very heart wrenching for Ashley and her family.

After pictures and conversations ended her family left. So we got Kylee in her car seat. Boy was she tiny. The car seat seemed so huge with her in it. Then we started home. I worried again that she would start crying on the way home and I just wanted to get everyone home to bed. We made it.

Fast forward to today...so this is the cake Kylee wanted. A Nemo cake. I took two pics because the "black" frosting I tried making turned a funky brownins greenish so I didn't want to use it for the eyes or the outline. But I noticed that you couldn't see the fish very well. So one without outline and one with the funky outline color.



For some reason Kylee was the only one who could get the balloons blown up. I got a few done. But Kylee did the majority and she was proud of herself. Brittany got to decorate the house with the blown balloons.

As you can see she got a zhu zhu puppy and a zooble from us.

These are all the zhu zhu pets that both Brittany and Kylee have. The kitchen gets pretty noisy when the get going.

Kylee's Thanksgiving Program

Kylee's kindergarten put on a Thanksgiving program for the parents today. Of course right before the program started someone sat right in front of me and then the row Kylee was sitting on had to slide over a little...so she was right in front of the person sitting in front of me. I couldn't see her very well. But of course the songs and the actions I saw were cute. They let us check them out after the program. She was very excited. She said it was squishy where she was sitting.

Snow????????????

This was our first and only snowstorm so far this season. Not a whole lot. But the kids had fun building a snowman and sledding down the hill at the park. (Since I am blogging on Dec. 16th and this picture was taken back on Nov. 19th I can really say this has been our only snowstorm so far).

mmmmmmmmmmm yummy

So this was my very fist attempt at making a pumpkin pie from scratch. I boiled the pumpkin and scrapped out the insides and everything. The only thing that was missing was the whipped cream, we ended up with cool whip. If I do say so myself it tasted pretty good. The kids liked it. Jon never did try it, some excuse about being to late by the time he finishes dinner after getting home from work and starting bedtime routine (around 10:00). Brittany ate the whole thing and wanted more so I guess that was a good sign.

Halloween Day Fun

The school decided to let the kids have a parade at school for Halloween AND wear their costumes to school. Which was nice because the girls really wanted to do that. Kylee was a vampire princess (she is walking in the gym with her buddy...all the kindergarten get a 5th or 6th grade buddy to walk with them). I had to bring Kylee in the morning to class for the parade and then take her home until her class started in the afternoon so she could do her class party. Last year the parade was in the afternoon. I think they alternate every year...but next year it won't matter for us.

Brittany was a Marvin the Martian this year. She was so excited to find this since she loves Marvin the Martian at the moment. They got to wear their costumes the whole day instead of changing for the parade. At the end of the day they got to have their class party.

This is right before we headed out for trick-or-treating. Usually every year I stay home to pass out candy. Since we don't really get a lot of kids on our street, I decided to go with everyone around the neighborhood. We put a sign on the door and the candy on the porch...not much was missing when we got home. Again we hardly got any trick-or-treaters. Next year I am only going to buy two small bags or one large bag and when we are out...oh well.

Being silly of course.

So again this year between going to Jon's work and around the neighborhood the kids really scored on the candy end of things. We had it for 6 months last year (then I finally threw it out). Looks about the same this year. Jon will take all our extra to work to get rid of.