Colette sings Christmas songs

Katie took a short video clip of Colette singing snippets of Christmas songs. Her two favorite songs are "The First Noel" and "Jingle Bells," both of which she declined to sing in front of the camera. Heavy sigh. But she's still a cutie!

Card Holder

This craft was super easy and fun to do.  You can put your own spin on it very easily.  We don't have very many cards yet to put on it, but its fun to have it on the wall.  The girls love the sparkly buttons.  I had a lot of fun with it and was able to do it in one night after the girls went to bed. 

So for whatever reason I seem to be getting to some Christmas crafts that I've wanted to do for a long time but haven't had the time.  Tonight I finished our tree skirt.  My mother in law got me the snow man material for my birthday.  I didn't have time to put on the photo frames made out of material, but that will be fun to add next year. 

 Today has been a proud parent day.  Savannah had her very first preschool christmas play.  She was a dove that was in the stable where Jesus was born. The above and below pictures are her in her costume.  She memorized her part and many of the other children's parts.  She said it loud and proud according to her and she really did. 

 This is one of the craft projects that they worked on at preschool.  It took them 5 days of work but it looks beautiful.  It gives me a great idea of a craft project to go with it.  We will see...

And last, Savannah made this for Dale and I for Christmas.  She wanted us to open it up now so we could hang it on our tree.  Its a great picture of her and she decorated the frame beautifully, if I do say so myself.  She said she covered it with decorations and she used to much glue but the cut off the extra.  Thanks Savannah, you did a great job on everything!!  It will at such Christmas spirit to our home!

Baby Dolls

Colette got this Doll for her second birthday.  We have been given dolls through the years from families whose girls have out grown them, but Savannah and Leila are pretty protective of those dolls even though they are everyones.  Colette was so excited to get her very own doll.  She carries it everywhere, feeds it, gives it hugs and kisses, and tucks it in bed with her every nap and bed time.  Its so cute to watch her taking good care of her "baby dolly."  However her dolly some times miss behaves.  One night she kept crying out like someone wacked her in the face.  It turns out that her "baby dolly" was indeed hiting her repeatedly on the head and Colette needed hugs from the Mama and Daddy.

Thanksgiving Crafts

Ok, so I've had this craft for a couple years and this year I found the time to get it done.  I thought it turned out great.  I had a lot of fun and I'm all excited for Christmas crafts.  Here is a couple of pictures.

The Holidays are here!!

The holidays are here and the kids are excited to decorate the house.  We don't have much in the way of halloween decorations so I decided we would create some.  So we made spiders out of paper sacks, pumpkins out of jars, and creepy monsters out of milk jugs.  Savannah even put wings on her jug because it was part bat, part mummy, and part pumpkin.

The top spider is Savannah's and the bottom one is Leila's.  They were both very detailed at how the spider was painted making sure the spider had a mouth and butt.  As long as the essentials are their, that is what is important, right guys.

Savannah's First Day of School

This is a month late, but here are some photos from the morning of Savannah's first day of preschool. Katie made her a special breakfast: pancakes in the shape of a bear's head. Also, Savannah is showing off her new panda shirt, which she loves.

Silly Kids

Savannah was in the car with me several days ago when we came across a beer delivery truck parked in our lane. Savannah wanted to know what it was doing there, so I explained. In answering Savannah's follow-up questions, I explained that beer delivery people have to have strong muscles in order to haul the heavy crates and boxes. Savannah said, "Oh dad, you could never do that job then. You could only carry one or two boxes."

Gee, thanks Savannah!

September 20th Katie took the girls to the Dallas Zoo. Leila was pretty excited to report to me afterward that they had seen a "purple-butted monkey" (a Mandril). I thought that phrase demonstrated some pretty sophisticated linguistic skills on the part of my three-year-old. (I would have expected a phrase like "a monkey with a purple butt.")

On Friday, Savannah and Leila were playing together, braninstorming to come up with ideas. Savannah: "Let's be parents but not have any kids."

Saturday: Me: "My stomach is bothing me." Savannah: "Maybe you have a stomach ache." Ah, yes, thank you for that diagnosis, Dr. Savannah.

Colette was dancing wildly to some music Katie had playing in our room the other day. Every so often, she'd stop jumping around, pat her tummy, and squeal, "Me cute! Me cute!"

How right you are, darling!

It worked!!  We have been having so much trouble getting anything to post, that neither of us has wanted to even mess with it.  Now at least we know we can post something.  The question remains, will we?  I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Trial Run... Will it work???

In which Savannah casts a spell

Yesterday evening the kids were waiting anxiously at the dinner table as I opened the oven door to pull out the pizza. Savannah intoned, "Magic wand fly swift and sure, make dad brave, and help him not to burn himself." When I brought the pizza to the table without having burned myself, Savannah took the credit: "Dad, I cast a spell on you so you wouldn't burn yourself, and you didn't!" Thanks, Savannah, dad needs all the help he can get.

Someone's too obsessed with "Sleeping Beauty, methinks.

But of course, I am Prince Philip (see photo of me in my Prince Philip Halloween costume), so maybe it was appropriate for Savannah to use the spell (though much modified) on me that helped the prince in Sleeping Beauty defeat the evil fairy Maleficent.

Does she really?

For Mother's Day, each person in the family said one thing they love about me. Suprisingly, Savannah said that she loves every breakfast, lunch, and dinner that I make and knows that I put a lot of hard work into each one. The very next day she came to me while I was making dinner and asked me what we were having. I said, "Noodles, chicken, and tomato sauce." She asked if they were all mixed together and I answered yes. She then proceeded to throw the biggest fit, falling to the floor and crying that she didn't like that, especially all mixed together. The fit lasted for several minutes.

And I thought that she loved what I made.

The night before St. Paddy's day...

Ok, so these pictures aren't in the right order, but I thought you might enjoy a picture of what the hat that we found in the leprechaun trap looked like.

Now this is the trap that we made. I found some ideas online and this is what we came up with. First you have to know some things about leprechauns. For example, they have huge egos, so they can't resist stopping to admire something that looks like what they wear or do, so we made a large hat. Next they love to break the rules and get away with it so, we made signs saying "do not climb" to get them to go up the ladder. Next, they love nature stuff, so we made the ladder out of twigs we found. And Finally, we put some "gold" on top of the false hat top to entice them to go get it, thus causing the false top to fall with the leprechaun, trapping him. Savannah and I made the hat and false top and Leila and I made the ladder and signs. Leila didn't want to take any chances of missing any leprechaun, so the other sign says "no leprechaun bees [i.e., are] allowed," thus further enticing one to go into the hat.

This is a picture of the girls setting up the trap before bed time. I had so much fun with this. The girls loved learning about the leprechauns and were so excited to see what a real one looked like. They were convinced that the pictures we saw did not accurately depict what a real one looked like. They were not interested in the gold or candy aspect of it, but just to see one. I read online that one mom left leprechaun kiss marks on the kids' cheeks. Another one painted black a pair of Barbie doll shoes for the leprechaun shoes that got left in the trap. I think we could have fun with this each year. The girls have been wondering what they need to do to catch a girl leprechaun. I guess we will have to work on that.

St. Paddy's Day...Better late than never

Dale asked me to write about St. Patrick's Day, so here we go. It started off with a green bath in candlelight while painting pictures with shaving cream. The girls loved the glow of the candlelight and every time Colette got some shaving cream she tried to rub it on her leg only to watch it disolve in the water. She was pretty fascinated by it and kept begging for more. Next was our green breakfast, which consisted of green eggs with spinach mixed in to make it green, green grape juice, green grapes, and green waffles. We read Green Eggs and Ham while we ate. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, even Dale.

Next we went outside to check out our Leprechaun hat trap. The girls were anxious to see their caught leprechaun. But to our disappointment, we only found chocolate gold coins, a leprechaun hat, and a note telling us that our trap was not clever enough to catch him. We did manage to get his hat. I guess that is a start.

Finally, we went on a treasure hunt. I found a poem online about how if you leave a treasure box in the moon light the night before St. Paddy's day, when the leprechauns come out they have to fill the treasure box, but since they like to be tricky they also hide it. If you can't find it before the day is done, then they get all their gold and goodies back. So I hid small scraps of paper rolled up around the house and the girls followed the clues till they found their treasure box. In the photo to the left, Colette is admiring what the leprechaun left us. She loves chocolate anything and has a knack for knowing if its the real deal or not. We didn't have to tell her what to do with this treasure. And that was our day. It was fun.

Dancing with Princesses, part two

The littlest princess.

Princess Savannah insisted that I also dance with Panda, who was wearing "his" wedding dress and, oddly enough, rabbit ears.

A drooling, slobbery, but incredibly cute, princess.

Dancing with My Princesses

The girls played "dress-up" a couple days ago and were dancing around the living room in their princess outfits. So I surprised them by coming out of the bedroom dressed in my Prince Philip costume (which I wore for Halloween). We had a good time dancing. Savannah even dressed panda up in "his" wedding dress, complete with a black tutu underneath.

Katie, meanwhile, dressed up Colette's "duckie."

Here some photos of the event.

Redecorating the Kitchen

Ever gotten the impulse to make a change?

Ever just tired of the same old same old?

Ever just want so badly to make things finally the way you have always wanted to?

That impulse hit our home yesterday morning.

The place, the kitchen.

The tool, pudding paint (chosen by the kids)

It went from white, white, and more white to pink, green, and purple splashed on the floor and cupboards.

Now the time comes when, after using pudding to redecorate, you have to clean up, which the girls were more than happy to help with. It was almost as much fun as the project itself.

So we are back again to a white white, and more white kitchen but it had some fun color for a few hours.

Day 10: The Party

This is the first day back with Dale. We are having our welcome home party and enjoying time together. This is a picture of the girls racing by jumping onto the paper in front of them. Then they wait till the paper in back is moved to the front and jump again.


This is a great shot of Leila hiting the balloon. We were trying not to let it fall. The girls were really getting into it and running each other over in the process.

This is Colette playing pin the stem on the clover. Everyone is really good at it because everyone got it in the right spot. I guess I need to spin them around more.

And what is a party without cake. This is chocolate cake made in the crock pot. We didn't do any frosting but I bet it would be good with raspberry sauce drizzled on top. Yum.

Well that concludes the daily account of how we tried to survive without Dale. We are all very glad to have him back home. Please check again for your regular program posts by Dale.

Day 8: Preparations

We spent a lot of this day just getting ready for Daddy to come home. The girls wanted to give him a great big Welcome Home Party. However, he didn't get home until about 10:30 pm so we decorated today and we partyed Sunday afternoon. As you can see we went all out. Hung up hearts so he would know we loved him, made a sign and blew up 15 blue balloons, his favorite color.