Christmas Smorgasbord

One thing I love about the nine o'clock schedule for church is that I finally have some time to get things caught up on our family blog. Hopefully I will be able to get to the computer more often this year. Keep your fingers crossed... Our Christams holidays this year were jam packed with activities. I spent all last week recovering from everything. The following is a sample of our lives the last few weeks.

Tree on a leash.
We have this wooden garland for our tree. Apparently Lida thought it would make a good leash. She tried several times to get one end to stay in the tree while she tried to walk away. I don't know if she thought she was going to take the tree for a walk, or what, but I thought it was funny.

Lida's Revenge

I was on the phone with my mother-in-law a couple of days before Christmas. Of course, Lida, being my child, decided this was a great time to read a story. She was outraged when I didn't end the conversation and read to her. This was her revenge...

she finished the job during another phone call later that day. We have now blocked off the shelves in the Library to discourage further retribution.

Merry Christmas!!!

Need I say more?

There was a Little Girl, who had a Little Curl...

Katherine got these ingenious curlers from her Grammy Crumpley for Christmas. As many of you know, Katherine's hair is determinedly straight. This was our first experiment...

I put the curlers in her hair after her shower on Saturday night.

I should have taken the picture before I pulled it back so you could see just how curly her hair was. After sleeping on her funky curlers all night, her hair ended up in these thick, beautiful ringlets. And they stayed!!!!

Happy Birthday, Katherine!

I don't know how I only ended up with three pictures from Katherine's birthday. I guess I was a little stressed that day. I have never allowed Katherine to have a birthday party before, but I finally gave in for her eighth birthday. She had eight little friends over to play games and make personal pizzas. They all had a great time, and I was thrilled to have it over. For some reason -maybe just longing for summer?? - Katherine wanted a pool party birthday cake. Somehow I didn't get a picture of the cake either...It took me forever (at least it felt that way) to find the little paper umbrellas for the top of the cake. After 3 different stores, I finally found them at the local craft store.

Snow...Finally!!!

Katherine's birthday party was supposed to be a sledding party, but inexplicably, we didn't have any snow! We finally got several inches over New Year's weekend, and the kids finally got to go sledding. Lida loved it! We'd just get finished lugging her to the top of the hill and she would point at the sled and insist - "Down!!!"

I can't wait until I'm eight...

Katherine was baptized by her dad on the 2 January. We were so blessed to have so much family there to celebrate her important day. Tyler's parents (and two brothers) drove up from Colorado for the occassion. (Damon managed to break at least one heart at church on Sunday!) And, of course, we had nearly all our Idaho family there as well. We spent half the day worrying that Mark and his family were stranded on the highway somewhere - only to find out later that Mark was at work. Whew! The roads were nasty that day and I didn't want to have their demise on my head!

Lida's First Haircut

I was cutting Andrew and Tyler's hair yesterday - and giving Katherine a trim - and Lida just couldn't bear to be left out. She's had hair in her face for weeks anyway, so I finally broke down and trimmed her hair.

I didn't do a fabulous job, but you can see her eyes now. And if you consider that the victim is 18 months old, it didn't turn out sooooo bad.