Preschool program

Annie's preschool class had a Christmas program on her last day of preschool for this year. They sang some songs, then built gingerbread (graham cracker) houses. They are pretty darn cute.

 

And again, we're so happy to have Janeen Caffrey close by to be our preschool/piano/everything teacher. She is awesome and much loved.

I made some gluten free graham crackers so they could bring home their houses without contaminating our house, and so Ryan could eat anything he happened to find (on Annie's house) safely.

Grandma's 60th Birthday

On December 19th Grandma Knight turned 60, so we had a birthday party for her on Saturday. We played several Minute to Win it games, had dinner and apple and cherry cobbler. It was great fun! This month also marks 4 years since her accident when she got hit by a truck. She commemorated it by running another 5K. We sure are glad she's still around! And hopefully for many more birthdays to come.

Now for some awesome pictures and videos of our Minute to Win It games. They had a Christmas theme.

Face the Cookie, where you try to slide a cookie into your mouth from your forehead without using your hands.

Reindeer nose, where you try to swing a red pom pom on a string onto your nose to stick to a dot of vaseline on your nose. That was a lot harder than I'd thought. And we didn't get any videos or pictures.

We didn't get any pictures of Snowman Stack Up, either. That's where you try to build as many snowmen out of mini marshmallows as you can in a minute. I didn't do too great on that one.

The final two were Snowball Toss, throwing marshmallows through a wreath into a bowl (a favorite of the kids) and Candy Cane Pile Up, where you use one candy cane in your mouth to move a pile of candy canes into a bowl. I think Todd and Rachel tied. Or maybe Todd won? It was lots of fun, either way.









We're glad to have a reason to celebrate and glad that Todd's family was down for Christmas and got to join in the celebration.

Piano Recital

Rachel has been taking piano lessons for a little over a year, and this month had her first piano recital.

She did a great job on all her songs even though she was a bit nervous about playing in front of so many people.

We love Mrs. Caffrey. She was Rachel's preschool teacher for a year, is Annie's preschool teacher now, and Rachel's piano teacher. And she lives just one street over from our house, so Rachel can ride her bike to piano lessons all by herself, which both she and I love.

Christmas prep

We went to see Santa when he came visit at Long Realty this year. It was a short-ish wait and the kids could color while they waited. The kids had written notes to Santa. Rachel asked for Wheeleys (shoes with a wheel), Annie asked for a Pinkie Pie Pony, and Ryan asked for a car.

All the kids were happy to see Santa. Maybe next year we'll have a crying with Santa picture. :)

Rachel got to participate in her first grade Christmas concert at Vail Theater of the Arts. There were limited tickets together, but we got to be one of the lucky few that got two extra tickets so Grandma and Grandpa Knight could come with us.

The first song was "Concert Etiquette Rap" and all the kids had sunglasses and looked so cool.

Here are a couple excerpts of a couple songs.

In preparation for Christmas, my mom came over one day to make Christmas candy with us. Annie loves to help in the kitchen, even when she doesn't get to lick the spoons, but ESPECIALLY when she does get to. She liked the leftover marshmallow creme for the fudge.

More than 5 pounds of sugar and about 2 pounds of butter later, we had 3 batches of caramels, 3 batches of fudge, 2 batches of candied pecans, and one batch of divinity.

We'll call that a success. A week later we also made some gluten free gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. We're fully sugared up and ready for Christmas.

Random pictures

With how much the kids like taking pictures, we have a lot of surprises when we unload the camera onto our computer. And, since we hardly ever remember to get the pictures from our ipad. So here's a collection of new and old pictures that have no rhyme or reason.

Rachel put a crown on Megan and made her smile. And took 20-30 pictures.

 McKenzie LOVES her baby cousin and asks to hold her all the time.

 Pictures with the grandparents:

 Jacob's Aunt Helga (I think, unless it was his cousin) crocheted these cute cupcake purses for the girls. They LOVED them. Rachel is also wearing my old dress from when I was 7 or 8 years old.

 Pictures from when Megan was brand new:

 A little more recent...

And more recent still...

 Megan loves bathing in the regular bathtub with just an inch or two of water. She splashes and squeals like it's the most fun she's had in her life.

 The first few times she would automatically try to turn onto her tummy, like she does any time I lay her down. She's gotten a face full of water a couple of times and didn't much like it, I guess. Now she just lays on her back happily kicking and splashing. And when I do put her on her tummy to wash her back, she immediately tries turning back onto her back.

 Annie manages to get her shoes on the wrong feet about 90% of the time. She's got some kind of skillz.

 Megan loves talking to "that cute baby in the mirror."

Growing up

Rachel is a great speller, nearly every week getting 12 or 13/10 on her spelling test. So she gets all the regular words right, and gets the vast majority of the challenge words, which are harder and not on her study list, right. So it was not a huge surprise when Rachel won her class spelling bee and got to compete in the school-wide spelling bee.

 She did well, but nerves got to her and a few rounds in spelled jump g-u-m-p. Spelling in front of 300 people is no easy feat.

 We're proud of her.

In the last week or so Ryan has taken to sleeping on the floor again instead of his crib. A couple days ago I pulled his mattress out for him to sleep on it on the ground. His last stage of sleeping on the ground/mattress ended after a month or so when he decided he still liked the security of his crib. Figuring that Ryan will be turning 3 in March, we kind of figured that it's probably time to get him a real bed, but decided to put it off until our Christmas spending has been reigned in a bit. So January/February. Then yesterday I realized Ryan's crib actually has one of those drop sides that have been banned and was designed to be made into a toddler bed by taking off that side. So we converted it and he is SO excited to have a big boy bed. And since we waited until he was almost 3, the bedtime battle is mostly nonexistent. Way easier than it was with Rachel--she was not even 2 when she got a big kid bed, and Annie was about 26 months. It seems that 3 is the magic age.

Annie was rather excited about the new development, too. She and Ryan played in his room with his bed the rest of the day.

Megan has taken to sticking her tongue out all the time. Especially when she's smiley. It's the cutest thing ever.

Megan also has figured out how to get from point A to point B by rolling and is very happy with her new found mobility. I was talking baby talk to Megan saying how now that she's rolling and won't stay on the blankets we lay her on, we'll have to vacuum and sweep 10 times a day. Annie piped up with: "Yeah! And now she's going to eat our socks and underwear!" Um... I hope not.
Annie had another pearl of wisdom this week that made me laugh out loud. She is learning how to read and every day before she is allowed to watch a show during Ryan's nap she reads a Bob book and go through her set of sight words, including "but." She must have had an epiphany because she said to me, "There are two butts! Butt is something you poop out of and it's something else, too: a word!"

Ryan is up to his regular shenanigans. Markers are great for faces, bodies and walls. In his world.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we headed in to Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house like we usually do. McKenzie has a deep love of kites, so Grandma had promised that we could go to the park and fly kites that morning. First thing McKenzie said when she walked in was asking to go fly kites.

Unfortunately there wasn't much wind. After much running and marginal success we convinced the kids to go play at the playground instead.

They worked up a good appetite down at the park and came back just in time for a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at lunchtime.

We were in charge of the pies. We had Pumpkin Treat, apple pie, chocolate pie, banana cream pie. We had several slices over the course of the afternoon, then went home and had pie for dinner.

We love having family close by to spend holidays with. We're just waiting for more family to move to Arizona so we can enjoy more time with them. ;)