Good deeds jar

I owe thanks to my friend Kristi for passing on the BEST holiday idea ever. I am always looking for ways to remind H and B about the amazing power of giving. The genius idea that she shared was to make a good deeds jar. So, on November 30th we sat down and each of them came up with 24 things they could do for someone else to make them smile. They each had their own mason jar that they decorated with pictures of Santa and every morning this month they ran to their jar to pull out a slip and find out what they got to do for the day. They called grandparents to say "I love you", cleaned out the dishwasher, did something nice for a friend at school, gave a compliment to someone , gave treats to neighbors and cleaned their room (to make mommy happy)......

Last night Anna came over to babysit while Jay and I went out for dinner with friends and we came home to a display of paper snowflakes that they worked on until they went to bed. We decided to make them even more fancy by taping the good deeds on the ends of the flakes. Only two good deeds left in the jars for tomorrow and then they will see if Santa takes a minute from his work tomorrow night to read their 48 slips of paper.

I just had to post this below pic for remembrance sake. Before school let our last week I joined some other moms and we helped the kids decorate gingerbread girls and boys. Moms brought all cookies and fixin's and the kids went to town. It was painfully obvious which kids don't have this fun candy at home.... i.e. our kids. They(Henry and Bryn) decorated their cookies with one goal.... to see how much candy they could smoosh onto the icing. The cookie became the vehicle to bring candy home, of course. They never ate the cookies once they got them home, but they did sneak every piece of candy off within a day or two! What have we done?

Bring on the snow!

Henry now refers to our after dinner walks as "winter wonderland" walks and rightly so. We are getting a beautiful snowfall of monstrous size flakes tonight. What better thing to do than take our boards up the hill to rock canyon for some runs in the new powder and watch Jay show off on his second hand snowboard find. Last night we (Henry and I) celebrated winter solstice with lots of neighbors for a bonfire, drinks, smores, poetry readings and of course sledding by moonlight! Poor Bryn missed out since she caught the stomach bug the night before but she got to cuddle at home with daddy after some tears for missing the big bonfire. Shhhhhh we plan on inviting friends and having another party in the canyon soon.

Kids trying to hitch a ride home without falling off.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Last weekend we drove out to the tree farm to find us a Christmas tree. Jay was convinced he spotted the perfect one from our car but I couldn't make a decision that quickly so we hiked around enjoying the wintry wonderland.

Jay couldn't make any decisions until he shook off the snow. We left in our wake many snow-less trees....

Henry kept finding little baby trees that he thought would be fun to have. Fewer needles to sweep up for sure!

Heading to the car with Finn by our side.

Richgels brought dinner over and then we all decorated the tree, accompanied by some perfect Pandora "Christmas swing" mix of tunes.

This Santa I made from old nylons back when I was little. Not the happiest of Santas but he keeps gracing our tree year after year. Maybe he will scare H and B into keeping their room clean!


It's so much fun to listen to the kids talk about each ornament, most of which they have made over the last several years, and hear them reminisce about Christmas's past.




A job well done! One of the last pics of Henry with his obstructed view of the world, thanks to his bangs.

Turkey day

We headed to Iowa for the Thanksgiving feast since my sis can't travel far. For whatever reason I have been lacking on the photo taking lately and we failed to even get a family picture of us all. Oh well, who really wants to see us anyway? As always, they LOVE their cousin Liam and the three of them had a blast playing dress up, fusion beads, turning his room into some kind of restaurant, swimming at my parents hotel, and playing at the park across the street.

Breaking news..... my parents are going to have photo cards this year for the holidays. I won't spoil the surprise and post the version that made the cut. Above is a reject pic. Somehow I was the pied piper of photography. I told them to head outside, sans coats, hats and mittens, for a better photo and sure enough they all followed me out the door and we managed to get a cute shot!

Thanks for the fun and fabulous Thanksgiving feast!