It's the most beautiful time of the year!

I love Christmas and this year for our family Christmas is coming 2 weeks earlier.
Between recitals, preschool, packing and putting decorations I've been keeping myself pretty busy.

So traditions, traditions...

#1 Decorating the house and the tree
no pictures of this one, too darn busy about where to put everything to be thinking about taking pictures.
We put up our Christmas decoration on November 13Th, Couldn't wait one more day
The kids Love helping me out and getting all the ornaments and cute decorations out of the boxes
I am sorry to say that we have lost 5 ornaments. The most ornaments broken on one year and counting. Half of my tree has lost all of its decorations already, My dear sweet Josh thinks they are balls and wants to pull them out and play with them.

#2 write Santa's letter.
What does Julia want this year no doubt a Princess Bike. She has told me about a million times that Santa is bringing her one, that we gotta make sure Santa doesn't disappoints her, so we put put in a good word for her with the Old Man
And apparently Josh want a Handy Many tool bench, Julia is sure of that, every time the commercials for that toy come out, She makes sure to remind me that her little brother wants that toy and that he'll be so, so happy(EXACT QUOTE)




#3 Making our Gingerbread House


have to admit it is a lot harder now that there are four people who want to eat the candy before we put it on the house.


We had a major structural problem with our house this year, so it took us 2 days to finish it. The results, just lovely, even though we are missing most of the candy that came in the kit.
Final results....


There are still many things to do and I don't think we'll be able to have enough time for all of it. We have played on the snow, built a snowman, can you tell i built it and that i had no idea what i was doing...oh well, the kids loved it and that's what matters.




We been drinking lots of hot chocolate and watching Christmas movies on TV.
The kids favorite one: Sherk Christmas.

we still want to go to temple square and see the lights, let's see if we can fit it all in our tight schedule, after all we are leaving to Ecuador in just 10 days.

NoVeMbEr

Of course the traditional home-baked birthday cake, and the special cake decorating talents of a 3 and 1 year old made that treat the best of the night.

Sorry November, you went by too fast. I've just had a chance to get online and blog. Well I had the most delightful day on November 11Th. I turned 27 years old.
I can believe I am that old already. I just to think my gosh I can wait to turn 19 and here I am now a whole 8 years later, wishing those days back again. No worries, no late nights, no sleepless nights with sick kids, bills..., there is so much more responsability that comes when you get older, but I wouldn't change my life for anything.
I am blessed to have an adorable family and can't wait to spend more days of my life with.
I got some neat presents, but the best was one special card that Spencer, Julia and Josh made for me.

We also celebrated Thanksgiving day with Spencer parents. I brought my camera, but i didn't take any pictures, I was so sad at the end of the day. We had a beautiful time and the table was decorated so cute, Oh, well hopefully I'll remember to take pictures next time.

Nursery at last!!!

We've been anticipating this date ever since Josh learned how to walk. I love my boy and it is very sad that he is now old enough to go to nursery but my goodness what a relief!. We don't have to chase around the church and try to keep him quiet while the classes were going on

I had even stopped bringing my scriptures to church because I never got to open them any more, If i ever dared, he would pulled on pages or leave some of his goldfish between it.

My silly monkey is now 18 months. He acts like he is older though. He is very kind and cuddly, but he has to feel safe in order to have a good time and be happy, so Spencer and I decided it would be good to put him in Julia's nursery. They would be together until we take off to Ecuador

So how did the first day go, you ask?

Perfect, it couldn't have gone better. He stayed in nursery and never once did the teachers came to get me. It was the best feeling on the world

Although when I went to pick him up, he threw himself into my arms and just started to cry and wouldn't stop saying mommy mommy and gave me the biggest hugs you could ask for.

I asked the teacher how the day went. He said that when something happened to him, Julia would run to the rescue, hugged him and told him that everything was going to be OK.

More traditions

A couple of days before Halloween , we carved our pumpkins.

I love this picture because it shows how serious Spencer is about the whole thing....Not!!!
Just kidding, he is pretty good. Gotta enjoy carving the pumpkin right!.
I don't think i can ever complaint with him, he takes it upon himself to
gut those darn pumpkins, and this year they were pretty big
Thanks Spenc, that's my least favorite part.
After reviewing a few sketches and stencils, Julia finally decided she
wanted to have a sleeping beauty
pumpkin and her really smart mom, agreed to it.
It took me 2 hours to get it done,
but it was worth seeing her face at the end of the night.
We kept Josh's simple, with a silly face jack-o-lantern
good thing we didn't let him pick his stencil or who knows long long it would of taken us to get those pumpkins carved

Field Trip To Black Island Farms

Our second field trip for preschool was to Black Island Farms. Being our first time to this place absolutely fell in love with it.

We went with her friends from preschool, but after

the hay ride we had to go

home and put some extra clothes and come back.

That day was freezing, but the kids still had a fun time.

I was able to get some nice pictures of them as well.

I just love the earthly colors all around

Second round.....

Once we came back bundled up, we were able to joy all the toys and activities they had for kids in there. Julia loved the slides

The slides were very neat, not to mention they

were a great exercise for the kids, because they

don't have steps but yo have to climb on the hay

I took Josh to one and have to admit the tallest slide was very scary, but

like always Julia didn't mind.

She enjoyed climbing it over and over again.

She probably tried it at least 20 times

They had a great time on these tire-made bulls,

Ye ha cowboys!

love this cutesy little house, they played pick-a- boo

through the windows and relaxed for a bit on the front porch chair

The farm train was a blast.

You could ride the train as much as you wanted and it was all incusive in the 4 dollar entrance price.

Not bad considering they rode that train about 10 times each.

halloween party

This was such a cute idea. My in-law's ward threw a Halloween

party for the little kiddos!
They had games, haunted allies, trick or treat
stations and the best way to finish it was by having
sloppy Joe's and cotton candy for dinner.
So here we are about to enter the spooky ally.
Julia cut through the line and wanted
to go all by herself.
We had to pull her out of it so that she wouldn't get lost.

Indeed these kids are a good
representation of their mommy, ready and up for anything.
Julia tried the string donut game.
she did a good job, although
she was cheating must of the time

My favorite thing that night was the bean bag toss game.
Julia really concentrated and tried so hard to get those
beans bags into the buckets.
Joshua's turn was right after. He was looking at Julia
and getting the game.
When his turn came he tried it once
and missed, so he decided to pick
the same bean bag and re-toss it
a million times until he got one in.
The next stage was harder, as they needed to toss the bean bags into wooden faces.


As the lady was trying to
explain to him what he needed to do, he decided to take
a short cut and rather walked to the wood and
tossed the bean bags in....no miss there!


Julia tried hard, but unfortunately
she inherited her mommy's weak right arm

Julia's favorite part of the evening....
having her face painted
She was so happy. She thought she had gotten make up
It was really bad when bath time came
and we had to wash it all off



That night we left full of treats,
including a cake that Julia won on a cake walk

Pumpkin walk

I love our Syracuse Pumpkin walk for 2 reasons:

#1 they are free

#2 they are 2 minutes away from home

Julia and Josh had a great time. The city employees were dressed with really neat Star Wars costumes. There were about 1000 carved pumpkins around the path.

I think the person who enjoyed this activity the most was my little Josh who was hyperventilated with all those pumpkins. He's been fascinated this year by them and a very time he sees one he would just yell:

Uh, pumpkin, uh pumpkin! and you could see his little self just so excited by seen it.

Julia of course was trying to find the best one and of course the winners were sleeping beauty and the mean dragon, oh that mean dragon!

Preschool

Wow, time goes so fast. Last week I had my turn on teaching preschool. I love teaching the little kiddos, but I must say I am glad it is over.
















I couldn't sleep just going through all of my ideas and everything that i was going to do for my class. I went with very little sleep for a couple of days, not to mention preparing for the classes was more than a hand full.

It was a great experience to teach and be able to see my Julia in action with her friends. I've always thought that she was a very sweet and mellow child, but being with her in that class made me appreciate her good nature even more.

I can't wait for my turn again...well, maybe I can

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On my last class, we decided it would be cute to have a Halloween party, so all the moms put together one. The kids played games, decorated cookies and had a scavenger hunt around our house. It was great!. Even Josh joined in the fun with the big kids.