Christmas Eve

Since most of the residents in the ward stuck around Toledo for Christmas, we invited them to our house for some Christmas caroling and chocolate fountain. It was a lot of fun to spend time with our church family since we couldn't be with our other families! After everyone left, we watched 'The Nativity' and read the Christmas story. Then we headed outside to spread some food for the reindeer. We wouldn't want them to miss our house!
Next, back inside to open one present. Tanner said, "I hope it's not jammies!" Guess what....
...here they are in their new jammies. The girls loved them. Tanner was unimpressed!
We read a Christmas book, put a plate of cookies out for Santa and sent them to bed. This morning they all slept until 8 am. I wonder if we will be that lucky tomorrow!

Just in case there was any question where our loyalty lies after all these years in Ohio....in honor of last night's victory....

Preschool Sing-a-long

Friday we attended Ella's preschool sing-a-long which was quite fun. The kids did a great job with all their songs. I have a new respect for preschool teachers as each of the songs had a different noisemaker (tapping sticks, jingle bells) and as soon as they handed them out, the noise was constant! Ella is right in the middle of this picture...of course dressed in pink!
We were lucky to have Grandpa Wilson here for a few hours and he got to come and see Ella's program. She didn't know he was coming and was really excited to see him!

Student of the Month

Our sweet little kindergartner was chosen as student of the month for December. The school chooses a child from each class that meet a list of requirements and honors them with a breakfast and a dress-down-day pass. This morning was the breakfast and it was actually really good. I expected donuts and juice, but we had pancakes with fruit and a variety of drinks. This picture is of Tanner and his teacher, Mrs. Haas. Way to go, Tanner!

When we unpacked our Christmas decorations this year, Ella was quite disappointed to find that her stocking was very un-pink and un-princesslike. It is a very cute print with Santas and Snowmen, but not very girly. A few days later, Marc was talking to his mom, who has made all of our stockings for us and told her of this problem. She said she couldn't make any stockings because she didn't have the pattern (they just moved), but would make a new one as soon as she could.




Imagine our surprise when just a few days later, a package arrived in the mail addressed to miss Ella. She was thrilled by that! When she opened the package, she found this lovely un-christmas like but very girly, very pink and princesslike stocking. Needless to say she was ecstatic! Thank you Grandma Wahlquist for the lovely new stocking!

It's sNOw fun...

...when church is cancelled because of a snow emergency and we have to stay home all day! Here are some pics of the boring time the kids and Marc had outside today!

Making snow angels. (I was really surprised that Sarah got so into it)Trying to make a snowman but the snow is too powdery.
Many hands make light work. Marc had a lot of help shoveling the driveway.

There was also a snowball fight, some tackling in the snow and a little shoveling the neighbors driveway that didn't get captured.

Bedhead

Sarah has this wonderful, cow-lick-ridden head of hair which is difficult to control but makes for some pretty awesome hairdos in the morning or after her naps.

This is Sarah this morning when she first got out of bed. She was still pretty sleepy, hence the dazed look

Some things are just too funny not to document for the teenage years, right?

Day of Thanks

Since none of my children are big fans of pie, we started the day making these turkey cookies. Tanner and Ella did a wonderful job and the cookies were a big hit at our dinner with friends. We enjoyed dinner with about 8 other families from our ward. The food was great and the company even better. We only took pictures of the kids jumping on the trampoline. The kids spent a lot of time outside in spite of it being 30 degrees.

My mom called on Wednesday with a cute, inexpensive, no-prep idea that I decided we should do. I picked up a cheap vinyl tablecloth and had each of the children trace their hands, write their names and one thing that they were thankful for. We will get it out each year and have them do the same thing...hopefully it will be a fun tradition.

As far as what they were thankful for....

• Tanner said he is thankful for mom and dad (such a sweet boy).
• Ella is thankful for her Barbies (which she had just been playing with)
• Sarah said she was thankful for "ooowah" which is the Laurie Berkner band DVD.
• If I had to guess about Rylee, I would say she is thankful for such a kind, caring, snuggle-rific Dad.
  
  

Day Two

I had big plans to drag the kids around Wednesday morning...a little shopping and Sarah's storytime, before heading to playgroup. But, it started raining and didn't stop ALL DAY long. So we just went to playgroup. One of the moms brought this fun inflatable and the kids had a great time. After playgroup, Tanner headed to a friend's house and Ella had a friend over to play. The afternoon passed quickly with Ella's friend, Rachel, declaring in a super-duper play date. We rounded out the day with dinner and a fun game of family hide and seek. Apparently my kids have trouble with the obvious since they had a hard time finding me when I just put a big bag over my head and sat in the couch in the living room!

Thanksgiving vacation, day one

I usually look forward to any school break with a bit of anxiety and maybe a bit of dread. I love having my children around me, but struggle sometimes to keep them entertained without allowing the TV to do the job for me (my overly guilty conscience would not allow that). Tanner has been begging to go to the art museum since the girls and I have been going regularly. He has felt a little left out. So here are my little artists...I think Sarah could spend hours at this easel.

Their project this week was actually still life pictures using chalks or markers, which the kids were not interested in. They also had the supplies to make these cute turkeys, which they did enjoy. Notice the pink feathers on the turkey on the right. Ella was quite thrilled to discover those!

We enjoyed lunch at McMommy's (the best lunch spot in town), spent most of the afternoon raking leaves and ended the day with parent-teacher conferences. We'll see what the rest of the week holds for us.

Tanner Says Thanks

Thanks to all of you who have saved and sent your box tops for Tanner's dress-down day at school. A special shout out to Aunt Erin and Uncle Alex who supplied about 60 total and have him well on his way to his second 100. He took his first 100 tops in today and was very excited! He can continue to collect them all year to earn more dress down days, so keep saving and sending!

Marc's big adventure

Marc went to Utah over the weekend on the premise that he wanted to be present for the blessing of his newest nephew, Charlie. He took the camera and this is the only picture of Charlie, with his aunt and cousin.... There were several more pictures of a little side trip on Saturday.....

...to a certain stadium in Provo....

...but, whatever the reason for the trip, he brought me a few BYU brownies....YUM-O!

Well fed or bad scale?

I took Sarah to the pediatrician last week for her two-year check up. She was happily declared a healthy girl, and found comfort from the torture of two shots in a sucker as we left the office. I was a bit surprised by her height and weight. When she was 18 months, she weighed 24 lbs, 4 oz and was 33 inches tall. Now at two, they tell me she is 33 3/4 inches tall and weighed 29 lbs...which means she gained nearly 5 lbs but only grew 3/4 inch. Now I would think that adding that much weight to her and not really getting taller, would make her fat, which she is not. So, since we came home and I had a chance to think about it, I am sure that the scale was wrong or at least misread by the nurse (which is funny because that is usually what I say when I step on the scale at the doctor's office, too). It's interesting to me too that I don't want my girls anywhere near the 75th percentile (which she now is) in weight but for my son, that's great. The double standard has begun.

Busy Halloween

Halloween was a VERY busy day for us. It was one of those days where we went from one thing to another for most of the day. We had lots of fun though and the kids got plenty of sweet things to eat. Marc even joined us around lunch time which was a great bonus.

Our first stop was Daddy's office where they invite families to come and trick or treat through the offices in the building. Sarah and I didn't have time to stay for the actual parade of kids but she got a lot of oohs and aahs from the office staff and a treat bag to boot.

Next we were off to preschool for the Halloween program. Ella did a great job, singing all the songs and doing all the fingerplays. She looked very cute in her fairy costume. Next stop, trick-or-treating in downtown Perrysburg. The downtown businesses hand out candy during the day. We have gone every year. It is fun because it only takes about an hour and nets plenty of candy so that the night time trick-or-treating can be skipped! It was a beautiful SUNNY fall day....perfect for being outside.

Our playgroup met at the library. Here are all the kiddos before we got started.

Next we were off to Tanner's school for his Halloween parade. Marc and I decided it was scary to see how the costumes morphed from firefighters, pirates and princesses in the young kids to really frightening, gory, bloody things in the older kids...it makes me a little frightened for what is to come.

We found a little nature trail that lead back to the car from Tanner's school. The girls thought it was really fun.

Ella and I then went to the mall to get some shirts that Aunt Erin wanted from H&M. After we came home we had dinner and Marc offered to take them out trick-or-treating and noone wanted to go!

Look what I did

For some unknown reason, I decided to devote the last week of my life to making a halloween costume for Ella. She wanted to be a fairy and since patterns and costume fabric were on sale at JoAnn's I decided to tackle the project. I am not sure why I felt that a couple of semesters of high school Home Ec were adequate preparation for this but the pattern touted itself as Easy so I felt up to the challenge. I was surprised by a few things.

• First, that I found it fun.
• Second, even though I have never sewed an article of clothing, I can do darts and sleeves. I was unable to master the zipper, but as my friend Emilee quickly and kindly showed me, it is MUCH easier with a zipper foot (I blame this error on the ward's machine that I was using as it did not have a zipper foot). Thanks to her wonderful teaching though, I feel prepared to handle it next time (with the proper equipment of course).
• Third, it was actually cheaper. Pattern: 99 cents, Fabric: about $5 and wings: $3.49.
• And finally, it actually turned out cute. I can sew clothes, or at least fairy costumes. Maybe I do have one talent!
  
  

The many faces of Ella

We spent the weekend in Cincinnati looking at houses, attending my nephew's baptism and enjoying the company of all six of my sibs. As those of you from big families may know, it is an unusual event to have everyone together (we were actually missing a spouse and 4 kids) but all of the Wilson kids were there. We took advantage of the opportunity and went to have a family picture taken. This is an undertaking with 20 some people and especially with 9 children, but with a my brother, Scott, and his family moving to Okinawa next month, we had to do it. I am posting these unedited proofs from the shoot so that you can see the many faces of my sweet daughter Ella. She was obviously having a good time with this. I think if you click on the picture, it will get bigger so you can see her expressions. She was making us all laugh and, to her credit, she did make it easy to eliminate many of the 135 pictures that they took. Enjoy!

Sarah's Second Birthday

Saturday was Sarah's second birthday and we celebrated in grand style! Here are some pics of her day.

We were unable to go to our favorite pumpkin festival with Grandma and Grandpa Wahlquist this year since they moved away from Pittsburgh, so we decided to check out a local pumpkin festival. It was no Traxx farms, but the kids enjoyed a corn maze, a hayride, climbing on hay bales and choosing a pumpkin. The one in the picture below weighs 500 lbs.

We have a little tradition that Marc tries to take the birthday child out to lunch on their birthday. Marc was covering a UT soccer game at lunch time, so he and Sarah went to dinner at 2 Toots Grill, where the little electric train delivers your food. Marc said Sarah was fascinated.
After a thrilling date with dad, she came home and opened her presents. It did not take her long to figure it out (with the help of her sibs).

And finally a little birthday cake.

Sometimes it is hard to believe she has been here for two years and other times (when I remember the early days of Sarah) I am surprised that we made it to the two year mark. She is such a sweet little girl and we are so blessed to have her in our family.

Shaggy no more

Since she is almost two years old and is constantly brushing hair from her face, I decided it was probably time for Sarah's first real haircut. One of my friends from church cuts hair so she agreed to do the honors. Here is my princess before. I wanted to cut it really short like it was when it was in this pic but I thought Marc would probably kill me. I still think I might do it next time because I think it is so dang cute.

This is what we ended up with...a few inches shorter with some layers and still a few curls on the sides and back. And she is still too cute for words.