Traditions in the making

I love that all of my children are old enough to not only enjoy Christmas and EVERYTHING that goes with it, but that they are old enough to participate and, in most cases, help out in preparation of the many traditions/festivities of the season. (And they're happy to help).

On Monday, for family home evening we made gingerbread houses. We had so much fun. We also got our tree that night as well. It was a surprise for the kids. We told them to get ready and get in the car, we were going to Lowe's. They thought that Dad just wanted to look at tools. "Boring." Well, when we got there, we walked around for a while, then finally walked outside where the trees were and picked one out. Needless to say, the kids were very excited. On Wednesday night, we decorated it. It was Abby's turn to put the star on top of the tree. Elsa had fun decorating the tree.Calvin had fun too!I can't believe Dallin is so tall, when it's his turn
again to put the star on top of the tree he won't need a ladder.Abby loved decorating the tree too!Notice most of the ornaments are at the kids level.
After they went to bed Clint and I rearranged the ornaments.How does our tree look?
Then we had eggnog together. The weather is finally acting like it's winter. On Monday we got a lot of rain. Usually when it rains here it only rains for about 10 min. Not this time, it started at noon and stopped at about 8 p.m. It was great, especially because we NEEDED it. It's suppose to rain all weekend too. Yeah! Anyway so now we can (and have) broken out that hot cocoa and marshmallows. Yum!

Abby got a little blog

After asking everyday for the past week she finally wore me down and I helped her create her very own blog. Since she can't type, or let alone spell (or read). I will be helping her with her posts. She will, however, be telling me what to write and what pictures to put on. So go here if you want to see her cute little blog. Since she and Elsa are so little and cute, I will be changing their blogs to private blogs. So if you'd like to view their blogs every now and then, just leave a comment and give me your email if I don't have it already and we'll "put you on the list." Actually I think Dallin and Calvin's will go private too.

I finally post on Elsa's progress

If you'd like to see Elsa saying her sight words. You can go here.

Spider Calvin finally posted

"Look Mom! No training wheels!"

Here is Abby riding without her training wheels. One day I asked her if she wanted me to take the training wheels off her bike. She said, "No way!" at first, but I told her that I would help her. After many days of asking her to let me take them off she reluctantly let me take them off. It went just as I thought it would. She just took off. The stopping part was a different story. She forgot how to stop, so I reminded her to pedal backwards and then told her to put her feet down. She did Awesome! She had a couple of falls, but like a good cowgirl, she got right back on.

This isn't the first time she rode with out her training wheels. For some reason that video would not upload. So you get this one when she learns to start off by herself, before I had to hold her.

We are Thankful!

For Family night on Monday, we talked about being thankful and why we should be thankful for what we have. I made a "thankful tree" and we put what we're thankful for on each leaf and put them on the tree. This is what our tree looked like.Calvin wasn't there because he felt sick and went bed early.
He felt much better the next day and went to school! We had a very nice, laid back Thanksgiving day. We had a nice quiet day. (well...as quiet as you can with 4 kids). While the turkey baked, the kids played, Clint and some of the kids went to Kmart and took advantage of the sale...well they went in search of candy corn, but didn't find any but got other stuff, so their trip was not in vein. As for me, I just sat around the house and relaxed. It was so nice to take a day and do NO housework. (Except cooking and cleaning up afterward, but that was no big deal.)

The day after, "black friday". Clint had to work, so the kids and I went shopping. Not too much, but got some pretty sweet deals. Then the rest of the day, Clint came home and he went to check out some of the deals and the kids played and I started putting up Christmas decorations. Yeah, finally!

Uncanny Resemblence

Have you ever wondered what you'd look like as a cartoon. Well I cut Abby's bangs the other day and realized that she looks a lot like suzie from Calvin and Hobbes. Don't you think?

Another tooth.....gone......

.....Finally! Elsa lost her fourth tooth. She would NOT let anyone touch it, especially her Dad, who, she thought, would loosen it a little more and have it possibly fall out. (He's a sneaky one.) Well, after many, many days it finally came out. We did manage, however, to get a video of it hanging, before she finally blew it out. (Literally, she blew and it came out.) Just watch the video and you'll understand.


We thought Elsa would be tough when it came time for her to lose teeth. Just because she had a high tolerance for pain when she was little. When she was about 4, she fell back on a chair and split her head open and needed to get 4 staples. As the doctors were numbing the area, she kinda made a sound like, "That kinda hurt." and that was all she did through out the whole process of getting staples in her head. Now, I can't even brush her hair without her screaming that I'm pulling her hair and it hurts. Crazy mixed up kid! We love her though and she makes us laugh atleast once a day.
I just had a parent-teacher conference with her teacher. She told me that Elsa was doing good and was very smart, but she wished that Elsa would talk to her so she could see just how smart she really was. Right now I help with assessments at home, where Elsa will talk and I video her so that her teacher can watch and see Elsa talking. If you want to go to Elsa's blog you can go here. I haven't been able to put anything new on, because it takes a long time to upload a video. I'm working on it though and there will be new stuff soon.

Calvin is 9!

Well, it happened! Calvin turned 9 this week, on Monday to be exact. We just had a simple family celebration and it turned out to be fun. While he was in school, I bought cookies and took them to his school so he could share them with his class. He was surprised about that because I hadn't said anything about it or asked him if he wanted to take cookies or something. After I came home from dropping them off at the office of the school, I asked Dallin if he thought Calvin would be surprised. He said "Yes, because in church yesterday, our teacher asked him if he had any fun plans for his birthday. Calvin said that he wouldn't have fun at school because his Mom wouldn't let him take treats to school." How rude, he never even asked to bring them. Well, he got to bring treats and he was happy. I remember when I was younger, I always wished my birthday fell on a school day so I could bring treats, but it didn't.....ever! Anyway, later that night, he wanted to go to Cici's Pizza so we went and filled up on some pizza. While we were there, B-rad was there. He is a kid's magician/entertainer. He was making balloon things for all the kids there. Abby, Calvin, Elsa, and Dallin all got one. Abby got a butterfly and a ninja sword, Elsa got a cute lil' pony and a flower. Calvin got a ninja sword and a really cool, tall crown because it was his birthday. Dallin asked for a pizza, but B-rad could do that, so Dallin settled for a puppy dog and a ninja sword. There was also a little boy there who was turning 3 that day and he got a crown and a pirate sword. Later through out the night, that little boys sword popped. He was, of course, very sad. So Dallin got up and walked over to him and gave him his puppy dog. Dallin was happy, and Elsa was sad that Dallin gave up his dog, but after I explained what happened, she understood. The little boy was happy again.
After we got our fill of pizza, we went home so Calvin could open his gifts and blow out his trick candles. (We got some footage of that). I think he had a great day!
9 things about Calvin;
1) Where ever he goes there is fun and adventure waiting.
2) He's sweet and sensitive.
3) He loves people and people love him. Everyone he meets is his friend.
4) He loves his sisters, even though he teases them to no end at home. I can always catch him making sure Elsa is where she needs to be at school, and he even holds her hand as they walk places together.
5) He's a good brother to Dallin.
6) He's a good student. He gets his work done even though it's "easy and boring".
7) He's a hard worker and loves to work with his Dad outside.
8) He loves to learn about the scriptures.

9) He's a good example to his friends and siblings. The cake (with trick candles) HeHeHe!He wanted a Snake-eyes (from GIJoe) cake. So this is what I came up with.

I printed it off the internet and taped toothpicks to the back and stuck it in the cake.
He loved it and he wondered how I got Happy Birthday Calvin on it!Clint and I gave him GIJoe the movie and Iron Man Wii game
As you can see, he was very happy!Dallin got him a Nerf gun and extra dartsThe girls got him this Bionicle set and he got many more great gifts from his great relatives.
Thank you all he loved all of them.

I'll put video of him blowing out his candles later.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

A bit early....but cute!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Preserving my Traditions and Memories

Go to Britta's Boutique to see what's new with me and what I have created lately.
I just put a post on there about Preserving my Traditions and Memories and I talk about Heritage Makers and how they've helped me to do just that very simply and in my spare time. (With 4 kids you can guess how much spare time I really have.) I started with Heritage Makers just to do scrapbooking online and not have to hassle with tradition scrapbooking. You know, taking EVERYTHING out then having to put it ALL away before the kids get to it and ruin the pages that I just created, or get into my markers and mark all over the walls. (Just to name a few examples). With H.M. I can spend anywhere from 1/2 hour to, well, as long as I have time for, to scrapbook online. All I do is go into my own, password protected, studio, work on my project, then when it's time to stop I click "save and quit" and it's saved and archived in H.M.'s database forever. Now you might be thinking "I wouldn't know where or how to begin?" Well, that's where I come in. I will be your consultant and help every step of the way. Also H.M. has wonderful recorded online classes, and outlines to help you created your books.
Heritage Makers is great because there's so much more you can do. Just go to my Heritage Makers site to see all you can do.

Almost forgotten

I almost forgot to post these photos, I was watching our screen saver and these came up. So now I'm posting them before I forget.

This one is Abby and her new outfit she got for her birthday I think I posted pictures of her opening the present, but not this one of her modeling. So cute!

Elsa lookin' cool even in her sleep.

Elsa got a new blog

Elsa has been begging me to help her make her own blog where she can add her own things. After much persuasion on her part I finally caved and helped her. If you would like to visit her sight you can click here and become a follower. That would totally make her day! I'm sure reading her blog will totally make your day!

It's a miracle...He finally posted something new

I just wanted to direct your attention to my bloglist and hope that you'll notice that Dallin has added something new to his blog. So go ahead and hop on over to his blog and take a look. Thank you and that's all I wanted to say.

Halloween eve

Well, Halloween started a little early for the Singer kids. On Halloween eve they had no school (Nevada Day). They were invited to their friends halloween party, so naturally they went. They had food, games, prizes, and who can forget, CANDY! The kids all had a "screamin'" good time. I didn't have my camera since the battery was dead and I left it home to charge. I hope to get pictures from my friend who took some. Then, we came home and I made cornbread for the ward "fall festival". The kids played video games, since they finished their chores earlier that day and there was only 2or3 hours before we had to go to our next party. Anyway, the ward party was fun and a lot of people came. (We actually had to put out more tables and chairs.) We ate first, all kinds of chili, chowders and soups. Delicious! and cornbread and other side items that go with those things. Yum! Then, they started the trunk r' treating, or should I say trick r' treating, since it was indoors. The kids had their fill of candy for one day, (or for one year). But they still went to bed o.k. so I guess they didn't have too much. When we got home I took each of their candy bags and emptied them into a big glass jar while they were getting ready for bed. They weren't happy about that, but oh well. I wasn't happy about it either when my mom did it when I was a kid. It doesn't mean it is not a good idea, though right?! Here are some pictures of the kids in their costumes....Dallin was such a good sport this year. He wanted to be a Quittich seeker

but I ran out of time and made this target costume for him. He also let Calvin and his friends
try to "get the target" with their play guns and swords at one of their parties. Calvin wanted to be snake eyes, but settled for a ninja.
I also ran out of time and already had the stuff for a ninja.
He is always easy to please.
He loved being a ninji.
(He bought the sword with his own money.)Elsa is all about pink. She wanted to be supergirl in pink.
She made a pretty cute one don't you think?
Even with striped leggings (which she picked out), good thing too
because the costume ended up a little too short.
My favorite part of it is the "S".All month all Abby talked about was how she was going to be
a gingerbread girl for Halloween. I'm probably biased, but she is
one very cute gingerbread girl!
(BTW - The pink/brown outfit is the original outfit.
She got it wet, so she had to change her
outfit to the green/flower one.) Which is cute too.This the girls decorating their treat bags.

Yes, Papa we found yet another use for your bags.

It's about that time

Yeah it's been quite a long time since I posted. I'm sorry that I've put it off for so long.
October has been a busy month for us. The first weekend was the craft/yard sale at the kids elementary school, which I found out after Clint and I decided and paid for the lot to sell our checkerboards, etc.,, that Clint had plans already that weekend to go mountain biking with the scouts. So..... I invited my sister and Mom to come and help me. Well, they decided to come, with Hannah's 3 babies. It was total madness, but I was glad they were there to help, because my kids had a primary program that Sunday, so they had a practice that Saturday during the fair. So my Mom took the kids, then went to the airport to get her purse that she left(which is a miracle that it was still there in Vegas) when she had a layover on her way to Utah. She didn't even notice that it had fallen out of her bag. Anyway, the plan was for her to go to the airport get her purse then pick the kids on her way back. With construction at the airport, she was delayed and luckily Clint came home early so when the kids called home to see if anyone was picking them up, Clint went to get them and brought them back to the fair. The babies were pretty good at the craft sale for the most part. Maisy got a little tired and fell asleep on my shoulder, so I laid her down in the pack n' play and tried to distract Laurel from throwing toys in on Maisy. (I was successful. Anyway, the rest of the weekend we tried to organize my house, but didn't have much success with that. We decided that traveling with babies that age was impossible and they needed their schedules to not change. Despite everything with the kids and babies, the craft sale did not go as well as we might have liked. Although we had a lot of people interested in ordering a custom made checkerboard and other things and took our cards. So we'll see what happens there shall we? I forgot about conference. I loved conference this time. Of course I love every session. This one was really good though. The talks were inspiring and just plain good. During the Sunday sessions Clint, Calvin and I were working on a puzzle, with a little help from Elsa. While the other kids did their own puzzles and activities. It was nice to have all the kids occupied for atleast a few minutes so Clint and I could listen. Here is the puzzle we worked on...and Elsa too.This past weekend we had our own yard sale. We did a lot better than the yard sale at the school. It was a pretty good day and the weather was perfect. There were a lot of people out early in the morning. We sold mostly Clint's tools, some used but most still in their packages, and the halloween costumes that I made or bought on clearance a couple years ago, but never used or used once, matchbox cars (still in their boxes), and dvd's/videos, scrapbooking supplies, etc. we're going to do another one to get rid of the rest of our stuff that we didn't sell. I'm working on de-junking our home, so I'm sure I'll find more stuff to sell or just trash. My goal is too have my home clean and de-junked by Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.
Today, Sunday, was a good day. We had 2 really good talks in Sacrament meeting. The last one was the 2nd counselor in the stake presidency. He talked about prayer and really listening to the spirit being careful not to listen to our own bias'. He gave an example of a young woman whose parents and older siblings went to BYU and she has always wanted to go there, and when she prayed about it, it felt right. After her first semester, she came home and was talking to Pres. Wilson (the 2nd counselor) and through her tears said that she knew she needed to go to UNLV, but wanted to go to BYU and as she prayed about this at the time she let her bias' answer her prayers. It made me wonder if I had ever have done that. Maybe, but I'll be more aware from now on. He also talked about priesthood blessings and knowing and understand the feelings and will of God. He then gave the example of a bishop who got a call in the middle of the night from a young father whose wife had suddenly collapsed on the kitchen floor earlier that day and was now in the hospital unresponsive and unconscious. The father had called his bishop to come help him give her a blessing. The Bishop rushed down to the hospital and the second he laid his hands on her head he felt peace, that everything was going to be fine. So he blessed her that she would be healed and live to raise their five children. The bishop went home and a few hours later and father called him, sobbing, telling him that she had passed away. The Bishop hung up the phone and knelt down right there in the middle of the living room and prayed sobbing, and asked the Lord what he had done wrong. The spirit whispered to him that he got the feeling right but the Lord's will wrong. The Lord was taking one of his daughters home and he was giving a feeling of peace to assure the family that everything was going to be fine, that they would be together for eternity. Pres. Wilson also tied in that we need to be careful not the get hung up or offended on what people say in blessings or over the pulpit. For example, he told of himself giving a young woman a blessing that her pregnancy would go well and talked a little about the baby and called the baby a he. The woman remembered that and took it as a sign (if you will) and thought she was going to have a boy.
(She really wanted a boy) Well, she had a girl and her faith was shaken because of this. Pres. Wilson didn't realize that he had called the baby a he and warned us or rather the priesthood holders to be careful when they gave blessings. Anyway, it was just a really great talk and I learned a lot from it. Don't you just love those kind of talks! Then, after church Clint and I went to choir practice, for the first time, and it was fun. We are practicing for the Christmas program. When it was over, we ate cookies and came home, then Clint went to visit a couple of people then went to a meeting where a woman, who had researched ways to get scholarships was talking about just that. Clint said that it was a good meeting.

Happy Halloween

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Baking muffins

Last Monday, Abby and I made blueberry muffins for breakfast. She was so excited! She loves to help me in the kitchen. Whether it's making dinner, cookies, bread, or even doing the dishes. I love having her in the kitchen with me and I hope she never loses her love for being right next to me, helping, cooking and learning new things.

The muffins were D-lious!
Thanks Grandma and Papa for the cooking set and muffin mix.
Maybe when Grandma and Aunt Hannah come Abby and Grandma can make something together. Abby would LOVE it!

Calvin's a wolf!

After much hard work from Calvin and his Mom, (Now I know why the Mom's get a pin too.) Calvin's FINALLY a Wolf. Just in time too. He turns 9 in November, so now he has about a month to work on getting some arrow points.

Dallin got an activity badge too. He's almost got his Webelos badge, then he'll work on his Arrow of Light. I can't believe he's going to be an 11 year old scout in April. Look how tall he is!

Abby saying Thank You!

Can she really be 4?

It doesn't seem that long ago that we celebrated Abby's 3rd birthday. I can't believe my baby is 4 years old. We had a nice little family party at home. Since her birthday was on Sunday and I didn't get invitations out in time for a "friends" party. That's o.k., there's always next year. She was VERY happy with the way her birthday went anyway. Here are some pictures of the celebration. But first I wanted to start a little tradition that I've seen other people do and I thought it was such a great idea. I want to tell 4 things I love about Abby and how she's grown in the past year. 4 because, well, she's 4...

1. She keeps our lives fun and interesting(and gives me something to blog about).
For example; her hair cuts, making pancakes, etc.
2. She loves her brothers and sister.
3. She's learned that it's o.k. to go to primary, preschool, and friends houses, and stay by herself and she doesn't need her Mom ALL the time and she can still have fun.
4. She's so smart. She loves to write her letters, esp. the letter A.

I could go on, but she's only 4...here are some pictures from her birthday...This cute cookie bouquet was from the Singers from San Antonio. She LOVED it! As you can see in the center picture. She just stared at it for about the first 5 minutes after getting it delivered.We didn't want to eat it because it was so cute, but we ate it for our family night treat. They were delicious!

These are her presents from her mom and dad and brothers and sister. She was so excited! What kid isn't excited on their birthday?
All she wanted was a rainbow cake.
I love this age, they're so easy to please.

More presents....the clothes and princess game was from Aunt Lisa, thanks Aunt Lisa. The muffin mix, apron, and cooking stuff, ingenious by the way, was from Grandma and Papa, Thanks Grandma and Papa. She loved it, and wanted to make blueberry muffins right then.
She made them the very next morning for breakfast. Everybody loved them!

My Fall Give Away

I'm having a fall give away in honor of the fall/halloween season. Those of us in town probably are like me and wish that this HOT weather would just go away. I'm hoping that with this give away mother nature gets the hint and sends us some much cooler weather. Anyway, I'm giving away some of my hair clippies that I make, so if you want to win some for your little girl, niece, or whoever you know that likes that sort of thing, then go to brittas boutique to find out how easy it is to enter this great give away.

Backyard soaps, candles, and more

"Harvest Time Gift Set"
I found this website the other day as I was browsing the web and I thought I'd share it with those of you who are interested.
If you like scented candles, soaps, room scents and stuff like that then you'll love this site. That's all I wanted to say. Just click on the title of this post have a good
day!

Pinkalicious

On Sunday the girls and I made pink cupcakes after the book, "Pinkalicious". If you've never read this book, it's a pretty cute book and the girls have wanted me to read it just about every night since we got it at the schools book fair back in June. The girls even help me read it by saying the words before I do. For example at the beginning it says,"It was a rainy day, too rainy to go outside. Mom said, " Let's make cupcakes, what color do you want?" Then the girls chime in, "Pink, I said, pink,pink,pink." And that's how it goes all through the book and I love it. If you have little girls, who love the color pink, then I strongly suggest this book. It's way cute. Here are the cupcakes we made....and they were PINKALIOUS! (Even the boys loved them....of course who doesn't like cupcakes?)