illguthlife: Pre-Christmas catch up

Today is kind of the last lazy day of we have left for the year. In the next week and a half we will celebrate Christmas, bless Veronica in church, host a party for her at our house, and pack up to visit Salt Lake. Things will be busy, busy, busy!

I have a bunch of pictures and random things from the last 6 weeks that I want to blog about. I figured I better post them all today before we start doing all the big Christmasy things. So sit back and enjoy the recap.

Our tree has been up since the beginning of November. It's been kind of weird to have it up that long - especially since the leaves on the trees outside didn't really change colors until December - but it's also been fun. The kids love it.

We don't have a lot of ornaments on the tree because I don't want the kids to break them. So we've been making kid appropriate decorations for the tree. Here are some little trees we made.

We've had to go to the hospital twice for some things. One time was for a follow up audiology appointment for Veronica. (Silly girl couldn't pass her hearing test when she was a newborn because her ears were too gunky) Its kind of a long walk from the parking lot to the doors so I put Veronica and Derrick into the double stroller and then had the girls hold on to the handles. We got a lot of stares, but it worked really well.

Here are Brandon and the kids in front of the hospital.

Brandon took the Honda to get the alignment fixed. The girls wanted to go with him so he took them along. They dropped the Honda off and then walked over to Hobby Lobby and explored the ENTIRE store together. He bought them each a little bird house for a dollar. The girls were so excited to get those bird houses. We painted them as our project a few days later.

Here is a random picture of Veronica. She's such a cutie! (Oh and she can hear just fine. She passed that follow up hearing test right away.)

I volunteered to be in a small choir for a Christmas Concert at church. We sang With Wondering Awe. When I volunteered I thought, "how hard can it be, its just a Christmas hymn." But when I saw the arrangement I realized I was in a little over my head. There were ahhhs and notes higher than I usually sing. Add that to the fact that I can't read treble clef (I played the string bass so I know bass clef really well) and I had to work hard to learn my part. Here I am trying to learn the ahhs part. The concert went really well. I hope to get around to writing a separate post about it later.

Charlotte snuck out of her room and fell asleep like this in the toy room one night. I love how she first lined up all the links on the window seat.

I got this idea from Pinterest. I put our graduation tassels into clear ornaments.

We made "baby turkeys" at story time at the library. The girls insisted that we hang them up in the kitchen with our big turkey that has been up all year.

Our Christmas cards and newsletter are finally all done.

One evening I lay down to take a nap when Brandon came home from work. I woke up to a silent house. EVERYONE was napping. Here's how I found Lydia.

I couldn't find Charlotte at first. I was about to start panicking when I finally found her in my closet.

Even Brandon was asleep. It's like a sleeping spell had been cast on the house.

Brandon moved the table into the living room one Saturday so he could mop the dinning room really well. The kids couldn't resist it.

They all would jump from the table onto the couch. Derrick is normally cautious about things like this, but even he joined in on the jumping. You should have seen the mischievous look he got in his eyes the first time he saw Charlotte jump.

Brandon had to get an official photo taken for his Warrant Officer application packet. There is about a two month waiting list to be able to get one of these photos done. But Brandon's commander gave him a letter that let him schedule one right away. It was another of the many small miracles we've had in relation to his application lately.

When Brandon came out in his ASU's Lydia said, "You look like a pilot!"

It happened to be another really cold and rainy day so Brandon wore his overcoat for the first time. I teased him and said it seemed like I had a member of the gestapo in my house.

The girls like to use our shoes as cars. Here they are driving their blocks around.

And here they are playing in a box. For some reason we are still planning on giving them real toys for Christmas.

Lately I've started doing dishes by hand. Somehow it's just easier that way right now. Charlotte and Lydia love to help. Sometimes they even demand that I leave them alone. My evil plan is working.

The weather here was gorgeous on Tuesday and Wednesday. The girls went out to watch the garbage truck go by and ended up chasing butterflies in our front yard.

It was 80 degrees outside and it was a shame to go back inside so we ended up weeding the flowerbed and dividing up the irises.

We found worms and the girls held them for the first time. We also saw a little lizard. We even found a marble and a little plastic dog buried in the dirt.

Derrick was napping pretty much the whole time. Veronica spent a lot of time outside in her chair.

Here's what the flower bed looked like when we were done.

And then the weather swung the other way and dropped below freezing. We have ice on our lawn that hasn't melted in two days.

Here's Lydia showing her "clapping hangers" to Veronica.

Veronica loves here chair, but she also loves to stretch out on the carpet.

Brandon and I are working on converting the toy room shelves into a doll house. I'll do a whole post on it once it's done.

The girls and I tried out that salt dough ornament recipe that everyone keeps pinning on pinterest.

The picture in the pin has a handprint painted to look like Santa. We made ours into snowmen.

The girls loved painting them.

Brandon made chocolate chip and candy cane cookies for our movie night treat.

We had movie night with our neighbors who we were babysitting. Our kids love playing with them.

I put an ornament into the girls' stockings every day. Once they change into underwear for the day they can get their stocking down and pull out their ornament. Then we put the ornament up on the wall. This has been a really fun tradition for us.