Christmas

Updating the blog again...finally getting around to the Christmas post. My brother came home from his mission right before Christmas, so we decided to go back home to Vermont and spend Christmas with everyone and spend some time with my brother before he went back to school. I have a lot of photos from our trip, but this is just a few cause I didn't want to post tons of them, and didn't want to do more than one Christmas post.

So right after Thanksgiving we put up our Christmas tree so that the girls could enjoy it for at least a couple weeks. They loved hanging the decorations and were really upset when all the ornaments ran out.

The Monday night before we were to fly out we decided to have our own little Christmas for family home evening so we wouldn't have to ship all the girls presents back to Vermont and then ship them back to Oklahoma again. They had a blast opening gifts and got things that they had wanted for a really long time, some really cool games, and a few surprises.

One of their surprises were these big puppy dog pillows that my mom's parents (gigi and pappy) hand made for the girls. They love them (Georgia fell asleep on hers with Gwen's slippers)!

We flew back to Vermont a few days before Christmas and split time between my family and Rob's family for the next two weeks. We spent Christmas Eve with my family (and the missionaries) and did all the family traditions: made Christmas cookies, decorated Christmas cookies, played Christmas bingo, and read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Rob and I also have a tradition with the girls where they get to open their new Christmas pjs on Christmas Eve, and we did that as well.

My brother and sister with the girls Christmas morning at the top of the stairs. I curled the girls hair the night before for church.

The girls were pretty pleased with what Santa brought...Gwen got My Little Pony Princess Celestia. Grace got a Barbie car (something shes wanted for a while) with a little Barbie. Georgia got a Disney Tangled doll-Rapunzel. Each of the Santa presents were at the top of the girls Christmas lists.

Shortly after Stockings and presents and breakfast, we got ready for church, and the girls got to wear the brand new dresses that Rob's mom got for them to wear that day. They liked posing on my parents stairs in their new dresses.

After church and some lunch we went to spend some time with Rob's parents. I totally spaced about taking pictures while we were there, but the girls had so much fun. We visited a lot of Robbie's Nana and Pappy, went sledding, shopping, played in the snow, met up with some of Rob's friends from high school, and just relaxed. We had a great vacation, and it was fun to see everyone again.

Girl Scout Cookies!!

Gwen decided that she wanted to try out Girl Scouts this year and see how she likes it. So far it's gone well, and now we are...

Selling Girl Scout Cookies!!

We have a case of each type of cookie sitting in our house right now (Thin Mints, Trefoils, Samoas, Savannah Smiles, Do Si Dos, and Tagalongs). We signed up to sell so many cookies because we thought we could sell most of them in our neighborhood.

Hahahahaha.

Some of the High School girls who are members of Girl Scouts apparently beat us to it. Gwen's pretty disappointed. We are still going to try and sell some here, but I'm not sure how much luck we will have.

SOOOOO...if you have a craving for cookies...or just love girl scout cookies...I will happily ship cookies to you (it's better than having to pay for 72 boxes of cookies ourselves, times $4 a box, which is what will happen if we don't sell them all, including doing a booth). Seriously-

I will ship cookies to you!!

So if you are interested, please please PLEASE let me know!!

Photos From School

So I'm trying to play catch up once again. Here are some photos of the girls from the past few months of school. Some of the photos are really poor quality because they were taken with my phone.

Gracie's school celebrated spirit week during the week of homecoming, and each day they had to dress differently. These are three of the different ways she got to dress: as a cowgirl, ready for a beach party/luau, and as a rock star. Grace had a lot of fun dressing up for school each day (the other two days were each grade level dressed in a specific color-gracie's pre k did the color red- and the other day was wearing a jersey or shirt in support of the local high school).

Right before Christmas Gracie's Pre-K had a Polar Express day where her teacher and assistant teacher set up the room to look like the north pole and set up chairs in two lines so they could pretend to ride the Polar Express. Grace got to wear her pjs to school, got a ticket to ride the Polar Express, and got a Christmas Bell just like the boy in the story. She said they even watched some of the movie and ate some Christmas snacks. It was a lot of fun for her.

Right in the beginning of the year both Gwen's school and Gracie's school had a walk a thon to raise money for the libraries of each school. I had a picture of Gracie's walk a thon, but it won't work, so here's a picture of Gwen that actually ended up in the local newspaper.

When they hit 50 days of being in school, they asked everyone to dress up in 50's attire. I called my Grandma and asked her what they wore in the 50's and based Gwen's outfit off of what she told me. Right before we moved out here, my parents were getting ready to move as well, and so they had me and my sisters and one of my brothers (the other was on his mission still) go through all their stuff they were going to get rid of and pick out what we wanted. I saw this skirt in all their Halloween stuff, and since no one else wanted it, I took it cause I figured one of the girls might want to wear it one year (and save me from making a costume that year). Lucky I grabbed it-it was perfect!!

Just a week or so ago they also celebrated 100 days of school. All of the kindergarten teachers sent home a paper asking us to create a shirt that had 100 of something on it, whether it was 100 dots of paint or you glued 100 pieces of candy onto the shirt or something like that. Gwen decided she wanted 100 buttons, so I sewed 100 buttons onto the front and back of her shirt for her. She loved it (even though she doesn't look it...she hates it when I take pictures of her now because she hates the flash)!

The following day the had a 101 celebration and watched 101 dalmations as a special treat. They did a bunch of 101 activities and made 101 dalmation ears. Gwen thought it would be fun to pose goofy for this photo.

A couple months ago when it was still warm out in the mornings I caught Gwen pretending to meditate before the bus came. It caught on with the other two and they tried it as well. Those girls sure make me laugh sometimes!

We sure do love the school system here and the wonderful teachers Gwen and Grace have, and we will be sad to leave it all behind when we move to Texas after school ends in May. It will be sad, but we are grateful for the chance we've had to live here and for the wonderful people we have met. And I can never express how grateful I am and how much I love my sweet and silly little girls!!

First Day Of School

I am way behind on this post, but better late than never, right? Gwen and Grace both started school on August 18th, and I cannot even begin to describe how excited they both were. They asked me about it for weeks-"Do we get to go to school today Mom?" So the night before we had baths, laid out cloths, made Gwen's lunch, and packed their backpacks. They were so excited...I was so nervous/worried.

Gwen-Kindergarten

Grace-Preschool 4yr Program

Georgia-she didn't want to be left out, silly girl.

Gwen was so excited to ride the bus. It was really hard for me to put her on the bus though-I couldn't stop crying. Gwen did so good though. She came home from school and said, "It-was-AWESOME!!" She continues to do good on the bus and in school. Her teacher said she just loves her, and that she's doing so well that she might have to come up with some extra stuff for Gwen to do in order to challenge her because she is just breezing through things. Gwen loves gym, music, the library, computer lab...everything!! She has an awesome teacher, and just loves school.

Gracie was anxious to go to school as well. Her preschool is only half day, and it's about 10 minutes from our house. I take her and pick her up every day, and while the first day was kind of hard for her because she is pretty shy, she came home so excited and happy. Gracie still looks forward to going to school every morning, loves having little bits of homework every week, and just loves having so many friends to play with. Gracie's teacher says she is doing very well and is such a sweet girl in class. Her teacher and assistant teacher are fantastic, and Gracie just loves school.

Georgia had a bit of a hard time at first with her sisters being gone so much, but she has done so well since then, and actually enjoys the time that we have together, whether it's running errands, or cuddling while watching cartoons, or helping me clean/do laundry. It's been wonderful to have one on one time with her so much, and we feel so blessed to be in a wonderful town with great schools and amazing, loving teachers for our kids.

Pretty Pretty Princess Halloween

So I still have some things to catch up on here, but I figured I'd go ahead and do Halloween. Because it's been so warm here (and I guess it usually is every year) we were told to wait until a day or two before Halloween to carve our pumpkins so they wouldn't rot too fast. So we decided to wait until the night before. Sunday after we finished dinner we started carving our pumpkins.

It was really funny. As the girls were finishing up, Robbie cut the tops off of their pumpkins and started scraping the sides, so all they would have to do was pull everything out. Gwen had picked out a pretty tall pumpkin, and for some reason it was a lot more goopy than the other two. So when she stuck her hand in, she wasn't too pleased.


Grace wasn't too happy about touching the goop inside her pumpkin either, but she didn't complain as much about it as Gwen did. After a minute or two, she really got into it.


I had to help Georgia, and even she wasn't too sure about touching the pumpking goop, but she really got into it and had a lot of fun.

Right before dinner we made some Halloween sugar cookies. We had a lot of fun, even when the girls tried to eat the flour we dusted on the table (and Georgia tried to eat the cookie dough). We cooked the cookies while we ate so that they would be cool and ready to decorate after carving our pumpkins.

When the time came to decorate the cookies, the girls were so excited. They iced and decorated pumpkins, frankenstein, skeletons, bats, spiders, and the word Boo. Lots of sprinkles made it on the cookies...and lots on the floor.

When Monday finally came around, the girls were so excited to wear their Halloween shirts (even though they had already worn them a couple times throughout October) to school. Gwen and Grace both had Fall Festivals at schools, and Gracie even got to wear her costume to school (Gwen wore hers on Friday). They couldn't wait to go trick or treating.

So I started asking the girls back in September what they wanted to be for Halloween. I swore last year that I wasn't going to make their costumes this year because it was so much work and so stressful, but I didn't have much of a choice. Gwen was the first one to come up with her costume. She wanted to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid, but not the mermaid version. She wanted to be human Ariel, wearing the pink dress that Ariel wears to dinner with Prince Eric.

So I searched and searched for something to make this dress out of, and finally found something at Goodwill about 2 weeks before Halloween. I found a pair of girls size 16 capris, and with a little fabric, a woman's slip, and some ribbon, her dress turned out pretty good. I made a quick tutu to go under the dress and poof it out, but it bunched up and looked funny. I also made a hair clip similar to the one Ariel wears in her hair with that dress out of the same ribbon on the dress and pearl-like buttons. It really did turn out pretty good, and Gwen loved it, which is all that mattered.

When Gwen decided to be a princess, Gracie decided she wanted to be a princess too. She decided that she wanted to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I figured if I was going to make Gwen's dress, I might as well make her dress as well.

So I went searching at Goodwill and found a pair of women's size 4 capris and with some fabric and buttons, her dress came out pretty good as well. I also made a scrunchy out of some of the yellow satin that her dress sashes are made out of to look like the hair crown Belle has around her bun when wearing the yellow dress. Gracie loved her dress as well.

Georgia is absolutely obsessed with the movie Tangled. Whenever she sees anything from the movie, she spazes out. It is her favorite movie to watch, and she wants to watch it all-the-time! So it wasn't much of a shock when she said she wanted to be Rapunzel.

I made Georgia's dress too. One of the main reasons I decided to make their dresses was that most of the Princess dresses I found online and at stores were at least $30, and I just wasn't willing to pay that much for a Halloween costume, let alone triple that price. To make the dresses from scratch was going to be pretty expensive too-over $50. Which is why I once again went searching at Goodwill and found a woman's size 20 purple skirt, which ended up being perfect (except for a little long, which I fixed) for Georgia's skirt. With some lace fabric, and ribbon, the skirt came out really cute (even though the skirt looks blue in the photo and the lace looks yellow-I swear it isn't like that, it was just the lighting in the room). I had to make the bodice from scratch, but it wasn't that big of a deal. When I had been thinking about making the dress from scratch, I bought the pattern for the Rapunzel dress, and in there were instructions on how to make this really cute Rapunzel hair. Georgia loved it-she bugged me all day long to wear her dress and hair.

The girls had a blast trick or treating and we had such a fun Halloween together. Gwen already told me that she wants to be a pink flamingo next year....hahahahaha....not happening, but we are looking forward to making new memories and having more fun together. What pretty pretty princesses I have!!