At the Exploration Place

We had a grand time. There's a great aviation exhibit, and one on Kansas. But the thing the girls liked best was the Castle. A huge, two story castle, with costumes and horses and shops and mirrors and balconies. They could have spent the rest of the afternoon there! The reason why we don't have any pictures of Caitlyn is 1) she would never hold still enough for one and 2) our camera has taken to going on the fritz, and it chose to do so when we wanted to take a picture of Caitlyn. Every time. Go figure.

Two princesses on the castle balcony.


Megan's working the controls for the wind machine for this:

This is the wind wall: 350,000 metal discs that move and ripple when the wind blows them. It's really quite neat.

This is Kristen having a good time in the Tot area.

When Mommy Has a Tummyache

This seems to help.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve...

And Christmas Morning!
Santa brought Alison a "'tar!"
And Cailtyn some Strawberry Shortcake dolls.
Kristen got a bear,
and Megan got her donuts!

Stories and Horses

But not horse stories.

Listening to Tony Clark read a story. He's got a great reading voice (the English accent helps, methinks.) That's Jamie, his 6 year old, in the background.
Megan reading a story. This picture earned me a "MOM! Stop taking pictures!" That's Hannah in there, listening. (Actually, I think she was telling everyone to be quiet and listen.)
The family on the carriage ride Saturday night. There are more pictures from that over at Flickr.

Megan's Christmas Concert

She's in there: next to the boy with the blue shirt. It's the last song they played at the fifth and sixth grade strings concert. She did a great job!

Clapping!

But I like the cookie

We did our annual Christmas cookie decorating tonight. Everyone had their own method.

Megan's:

Caitlyn's:

Alison's:

Maybe too much sugar??

We're groovin' to Herp Alpert (Okay, I know it's Herb, but saying "Herp" is more fun.)

Caitlyn's Christmas Concert

Her school's first and second grade Christmas concert was today. She had the opening part. She was a bit nervous before, but she did great!

Putting up the Tree

The tree went up on St. Nicholas day (the 6th)... it was a bit of a rush job this year because of Church and work and school. I did come up with a bit of a brilliant plan, though: I laid out all the ornaments beforehand, so all they had to do was put them up. Worked pretty well, and none got broken! Oh -- I went artistic this year with the pictures... hopefully, you can still see them all just fine. :)

Look who's "flee"!

Alison had a wonderful Dora Birthday, with a Dora Cake, and some Dora presents. She was very excited (the cake she said was "beautiful"!) the whole day.

This was the first present she opened. She wore the shoes and dress and carried the wand the whole day. She was very excited when we went to the store to get batteries so the shoes could sparkle, too.

Lindsborg

Is a little town about 72 miles north of us. It was settled by Swedish pioneers originally, and is the home of Bethany College. Every December (and other times of the year, too), they have celebrations honoring their Scandinavian heritage. We missed much of it -- it was mostly in the morning, and we didn't get there until around 3 p.m. -- but we did catch a bit.

We especially liked talking to the Tomte.


Around town they have these "dala horses" (the brochures said it was a Swedish thing) in front of all the shops. This was the girls' favorite.

Alison finds a new friend

This was at the Friends University tree lighting. (I took a movie of the lighting, too, but it didn't turn out.) She monopolized him for as long as she could!

Baby, It's Cold Outside

We woke up this morning, and found out the girls didn't have school. It hadn't snowed, but it started to around 9 a.m. So, of course, everyone wanted to bundle up and go outside. And, of course, no one stayed outside for longer than 10 minutes.


But they did get enough snow to do this:
SNOW ICE CREAM! (Unfortunately, they decided it was over-sugared, and so no one really ate much of it.)

The best part

She LOVES the gas fireplace. "Mama, can me turn the fire on?" (Sometimes, she'll ask. Mostly she just turns it on. I have to get on her case about it, since it really hasn't been cold enough. Maybe we should turn off the pilot light?? Or get a timer...)

It's like being on Trading Spaces

Before: Ugly Man Pit




After: Pretty Girl Room.


We're not done -- we need to make her a canopy (I should take pictures of the room now that the furniture's in), and put up display shelves for her doll and get a mattress for her reading couch/second bed. But it looked so much better after the pain job, that I couldn't resist. (Megan helped with the room; picked out the paint, and even helped paint it!)

Hmmm...

While we were shopping for a new refrigerator and dishwasher, the girls were doing this:

You can't see that they're watching this:

Hmmm...

My little nurse

Daddy's sick. He's throwing up in the bucket. :P

This one's for my dad

It was at the ward talent show last night. That's Elder Carter reading the description (how long do you think he worked on getting all the Maori pronunciation right?). He's from Utah. Elder Hapuku (it's pronounced HA-poo-koo) is the one doing the haka. Russell told him afterward that there wasn't enough tongue.

I took the camera so we could get a video of Caitlyn's talents -- we (she and I) read the story she wrote for Uncle Victor and she did Silent Night in sign language (Megan played) -- but Alison acted up and Russell forgot to take the video. C'est la vie.

When it's warm out

They ask to play in the sandbox.

And this is what they create:
(it's a sand pie)

Joke time

Knock, knock

Who's there?

'Speriment pig.

Experiment pig, who?

'Speriment pig Alison!


Knock, knock

Who's there?

Pirate pig Kristen.

Pirate pig Kristen, who?

(pause, then a giggle) You said "who" again!

Mommy, take a picture!

Whatcha doin'?

"Sticking out my tongue!"

What we do when Dad's gone

Another one bites the dust

And this time, there's already the permanent tooth there!

A Halloweeny Weekend

We had a very Halloweeny couple of days. We went to The Night of the Living Zoo... Alison was so excited; she'd been asking about "trick or treating" at the zoo for days. It was a lot of fun; we took the camera, but being nighttime, not many of the pictures came out. Here are the girls in costumes before we went...
Alison's a princess, Kristen's a very cute pumpkin, Caitlyn's "Princess Pocahontas" and Megan's Miss Smarty Pants.
Get it?? (She lived up to her costume: she was incredibly obnoxious the whole time we were at the zoo!)

Saturday we went to a local pumpkin patch and picked our own pumpkins.


Then we carved them. Can you guess which one belongs to which girl?

The clues: Megan carved her own; Caitlyn drew her own face; Alison wanted a "scary scary boo" pumpkin; and Kristen's looks like the face that Kristen had when I was carving.

The newest family member

We close on November 20th. Just in time for Christmas in our new house. :)

It's about time!

Haunted Graham Crackers

When I said we were going to do a Haunted House, Alison said, "But we already have one!" I said that we were going to make it out of graham crackers and candy. She said, "Oh. A CANDY house!"

Harvest Time

Russell took the older girls (everyone but the baby) to the Farmer's Market yesterday for their fall festival. They had fun, ate hot dogs and bratwurst and painted pumpkins!

See them up close and personal over at Flickr.