Star S'mores

We are a little on the behind side, so we are going to be playing a little bit of catch up. 

Every year for Christmas our kids get to pick a name for Christmas and then help make a gift for that person. This year Lexi picked her cousin Ty and she was so excited! She knew he liked making movies and Star Wars so she decided to make him some Star S'mores. 

Disclaimer: This may sound a little crazy, but she came up with the whole idea on her own. Mommy just helped google some things and cut a few things out to make it happen. 

First the S'mores:

Every piece of chocolate should be turned into a character... right?

                               

Then we made these cute little Star Wars puppets using a tutorial from theidearoom.com which Ty used to create the cutest little Star Wars movie!

                                        

She was so proud of her hard work! She boxed everything up and then wrapped it up all by herself. I loved watching her be able to get into the real spirit of Christmas and do something nice for someone else. And who knew!? A crazy little 4-year-old vision really turned out awesome and her cousin loved it. 

                          

       

The Crèche Festival

A few weeks ago Cedar City had a crèche festival. For those of you like me who had no idea what a crèche is, it is a nativity. Maybe I'm the only weird one who didn't know that. It was really cool to see all of the nativities and to celebrate our Savior, Jesus Christ. Lexi got to be part of the live nativity. She was the angel and was supposed to stand there for 15 minutes, smiling.... that didn't happen. By the end she was a grumpy little angel, but we still love her anyways and were so proud of her for trying. 

This was our crèche that we brought. This simple little gem is one we made when we were first married, but we still love it. 

One of the scout troops in the area made these ones. We thought it was cool to see how different they all were, even though they had the same resources to make them. 

This was probably our favorite crèche of the night. It was made out of balloons. How cool! Some people are so talented!

At the end of the night we were going to pick up our little nativity. Lexi came with me and we left the boys at home. She saw this nativity outside and ran up to it. Before I could even stop her, she was kissing baby Jesus. I didn't want her to ruin someone else's stuff, but it was so dear. I hurried and pulled out my phone. The picture quality isn't very good but I wanted to remember the moment. I asked her to come to me and told her it wasn't very nice to run up like that because it wasn't ours. She told me she just wanted to tell baby Jesus thank you for being born so our family could live together.... and my tears started flowing. Suddenly I didn't really mind (because she wasn't trying to be destructive) that she was up there. I am so happy to have this girl to remind me what Christmas is really about. 

You Better Watch Out

You better watch out... you better not cry. You better not pout I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. 

Or... in our case, he lives at our house (at least for one day). Chris got to play Santa at our Ward Christmas Party. Although it wasn't a role he ever really wanted to play, he did a great job! The best part? Our kids had no idea! 

Dance Recital

Lexi had her very first dance recital on December 5th. She was super excited to get up and perform in front of everyone... a thought that makes her mom want to throw up. She was excited to put on her "Ariel Costume" and put on make-up. When it came time to perform, she did so good! She was one of the few who actually remembered the dance and wasn't completely terrified to perform it. They danced to Here Comes Suzy Snowflake and did I mention it was darling?!?

Here are a few pictures from the night:

When the dance was over Lexi wanted to stay on stage and she told us she was kind of sad to leave. Silly girl! (She gets that from her dad!) 

Great Job Lexi! We are so proud of you!!

The Naughty List

For the first year in her life, Lexi may have been put on Santa's naughty list. I don't know what it is, but the last few months she has had a string of naughty that we just can't break. She has this artistic bone in her body. I get it. She probably gets it from both of her parents. Her problem: she tries to hide the art. This has led to Sharpie on the walls:

pen everywhere:

(Magically I don't have a picture of any of the 6 "murals" that were drawn on the walls. It took a little over a gallon of perfectly matched paint and 6 magic erasers to fix that one!)

And her latest... acrylic paint in my new-to-me carpet:

(This is just a small sample. The worst was in her room, but we had cleaned a bunch of it up before deciding to take a picture.)

We have officially lived here less than 1 week and I have bright blue paint all over my carpet. I get it. I understand that she is busy. Our parents warned us that this would be the case long before she was born. But naughty busy?!? Really? This close to Christmas? 

I want to give this girl a break. I really don't want Santa to bring coal in her stocking... but we have got to figure something else out or some other outlet for her creative self. Ugh. 

Here's hoping that Santa has a merciful heart!

We Bought A House... Again

We may have disappeared... Again. But it was only for a minute. The delay? We bought a house again. We were renting this townhouse and we fell in love with the area. Actually, it is the reason that I fell in love with Cedar City at all. It's in this quiet little neighborhood and close to my all time favorite place in Cedar City to find a diet coke! It's in walking distance from Lexi's school and dance class, and did we mention we loved it? The problem: RENT! It's hard to go from owning your own house to paying rent. Solution: just buy it! Well, our unit wasn't for sale when we started the buying process, but the one across the street was. We ended up moving all of our stuff across the street... and we love owning a home again! We'll add some pictures later when things are a bit (or a lot) cleaner. 

Bands of America 2014

We spent last Saturday at the Bands of America competition in Saint George. My cute little sister was performing with the Orem High School Marching Band. I was part of this band almost 10 years ago and it was fun to see how much it has changed over the years. The biggest change was the size. I think it was a little bigger when I was part of it, but they did great. 

After the competition we got to steal her away for a minute. We went and had lunch and the kids had a chance to hang out with Aunt Rachie for a minute. Tears were shed when we had to leave. We spent the rest of the day watching other bands perform. Although they didn't get an award, they still did a great job. Congratulations Orem High School!