December (part 1)

 Fun new stockings and festive poinsettias:

Picking out a Christmas tree.  Though we ended up with three instead of one.  A tiny one went to work with Michael, the middle sized one lived in the great room on the homework table, and the regular sized one in the family room.  It was a fairly mild evening at the tree lot and smelled wonderful.

Before leaving we did stop momentarily by the fire in a big metal drum to warm our fingers.

Kate, Lizzie, and Sabrina took care of the tree decorating downstairs again this year.  It was cheerful and festive well into February... or March?  (The beginning of the year kinda flew by.)

Alternating sunshine and below zero temperatures led to epic icicles this year across the porch on the west side of the house.  The largest one morphed from stalactite to column!

Shopping at the mall as a family.

The girls were very excited to take part in "Ugly Sweater Day" at school.  I found some base sweaters at the thrift store and picked up some random things at the dollar store.  The girls got to go to town with needle and thread, hot glue guns, etc.  Kate's even had a battery operated line of Christmas lights decorating a tree made of ribbon.  Sabrina loved her sweater (poncho) so much she carefully removed the ornaments afterward so she can wear it again!

We shared a huge Hershey's Kiss.  It was hilarious watching Kate and Lizzie try to get decent sized bites off the thing!  Sabrina was missing both front teeth, so she finally gave up and got hers trimmed off with a paring knife.

Lizzie's 3rd grade Christmas Program!  She even got to play the ukulele for one of the pieces.  Sabrina entertained herself, as the program started to get kinda long, by coloring pictures.  Including the freaky yellow skinned monster!

 Feeling like Christmas at home!

Snow piled up around town all winter, and was reluctant to melt off.  The fellow who does snow sculptures nearby did some great work!  The top right one was specially for the so called "Mayan Apocalypse" on 12/21/12.  If it had actually happened I suppose I wouldn't have to catch up here ;)

 The church (ward) Christmas party included a program my the children.  Lizzie is the shepherd on the right in a blue gown.

by this time the countdown until the holidays was in full force!

November. You know, like 4 months ago.

 Here are some snippets from November.

Sabrina's "brown" hair from Halloween ended up leaving her with pink hair for about a month!  It's kind of hard to see in these pictures, but trust me -- cotton candy pink!

November snow.  Beautiful, true.  The precursor to a long, cold winter.

Wild family party at.... the grocery store.  Yup.  Face painting, balloon art, samples, and more!  At the grocery store.  :D

Clockwise, starting top left corner: 1: the end of the rainbow.  2: Sabrina wearing a hat made out of an old tee shirt by Kate, Daddy's sunglasses, and a sucker.  So very gangster. 3: One of several times this winter when we had to remove snow from some of the trees and bushes so they wouldn't be crushed by the snow.  4: I'm sure the winter of no Twinkies will go down in history books.  Sounds like they should be back this summer.  5: Smiley sticker on Kate's knee,  6:Michael with two girls (sisters) in nursery.  We have been released from Nursery now and miss it terribly.  7: One of our nursery boys got so sleepy he used a plate as a pillow to take a nap, right in the middle of the floor!

Sabrina, missing 3 teeth at once!  Sabrina's page about frogs: "A frog has smoth skin.  A frog is sgkney.  A frog can be poysinis.  by Sabrina Southern"  (A frog has smooth skin.  A frog is skinny.  A frog can be poisonous.  by Sabrina Southern)  Also, Sabrina intentionally drew the craziest looking girls she could.

The girls set up beds for a "sleepover" on night; books and all.  Since my hair has gotten so very long the girls have enjoyed playing with it.
Sammi (the tuxedo cat) lived with us as a foster cat for a few months.  Unfortunately Ginger would not leave the bigger, older cat alone.  After trying everything possible to ease the transition, we ended up sending Sammi to another foster home.
Bottom center: Thanksgiving break, watching movies in the break room at Daddy's work.

.Grandpa and Grandma Southern moved from Saratoga Springs to Provo.  Yay for having them so much closer!  About 5 tons of wheat (give or take several tons) was moved into our dungeon.  The girls did an awesome job helping to move things.  Stuff moved into the new basement was mostly passed down into a window well as a more direct route.  When we put the cover back on the window well the girls shut the window and made it a kid aquarium :P

On my birthday the sisters got together (sisters-in-law is the same, of course).  We did some curtain sewing (right?  I think that's what we were doing.  A good family sewing project is fantastic.).  Marisa made a beautiful lunch for us served on the best dishes.  Broccoli soup, bread, herbal tea, and a lovely apple-cinnamon cake!

For my birthday we took the girls to Tucanos.  A very fancy dinner, indeed!  I used my free birthday dinner there.  We topped the extravagance with a stop at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

...then we came home and had cake and ice cream!  Oh, on our way out we stopped by the school so I could run in and vote (2012 presidential elections).  The line was only 20 minutes long instead of 3 hours as it had been earlier in the day when I tried to stop by.  If only they'd had a shorter line for people who were celebrating their birthday ;)
Michael even wrapped my present with paper and tied on the ribbon.  The paper may have been closed with masking tape, but look at the cute "v" shapes he cut at the end of the ribbon!  I got a pair of sock monkey footie pajamas (editor's note: I now have 3 pairs.  I love them.  A lot.) and some fancy eye-things (sleep mask).  The girls made all sorts of beautiful cards for me and collected some of their favorite doo-dads for me.

Thanksgiving was lovely.  We had dinner at the new Southern Parents' home and stopped by the Jasplund home for pie later.  (I have to include those details so next year when I look back to see whose year it is for dinner I remember ;))

Happy Halloween

All three girls chose characters from "Doctor Who".  Sabrina dressed up as the 10th Doctor (played by David Tennant), Lizzie dressed up at Rose Tyler (the 9th and 10th Doctor's companion), and Kate dressed up as a Dalek (the nemesis of The Doctor).
Sabrina was very concerned that the 10th Doctor has brown hair, and she really does not.  So I promised to get some brown hair spray for her hair.  Unfortunately the brown turned out burgundy!  So I added some black.  (Spoiler alert: the sprays stained her hair and she had pink streaks in her hair for 6 weeks!)
In this pic Kate was tacking some stuff on her costume after wearing it to school and before going Trick or Treating.
Also note the sonic screwdriver :)

School parade:

The 5th and 6th grade performs The Thriller every year after the costume parade.  Kate memorized the dance really well so she got to be front and center.  It's very funny watching a dalek do the Thriller.

After school I drove the girls to daddy's office.

The office was thoroughly decorated, including black lights.

the teenage boy across the street enjoys playing the part of a child-teasing zombie.  Sabrina finally decided the candy was worth the obvious trap.

then the 3 girls together made a plan.  Sabrina played the part of the distraction while the other girls grabbed the loot.

top right: the loot was totally worth it!
I moved the big recliner from the living room to the front porch where I sat with my computer.  I turned on the Phantom of the Opera and passed out candy from under my heated blanket.
I spent all afternoon getting dressed up.  I took a shower AND did my hair AND put on makeup.  I'm pretty sure nobody recognized me.

Skipping back to the office, the Salem City civic trick-or-treating was in the parking lot outside Daddy's office, so we went around there too.  Then the girls left notes and drawings on the boards at the office as usual.

See?  I told you Sabrina's hair was tinted pink afterward.  She can totally pull it off.

Sabrina's 7th Birthday

Sabrina drew a picture of what she wanted her cake to look like.  Right down to the pennant saying "Sabrina" on one side and "Wizard!" on the other.  I'm still not entirely sure why, but she was happy.  Kate made the banner for her.

Sabrina wanted loaded baked potatoes for dinner.  Unfortunately it was a rough day and I didnt' get it started on time, so we went for Irish Nachos instead.  Kate made "window stickers" out of contact paper.  Lizzie gathered up some pens and bubbles.  I love how excited she gets about every little thing.  It makes it so fun to give her things.

Sabrina's big present from Mom and Dad was this doll car.  She was SO excited!  She even got to decorate it with stickers.
And yes, we were apparently out of tissue paper, so her car was "wrapped" in a handy gift bag with a length of fabric covering the top.  Super classy. ;)

Sabrina also celebrated her birthday with Grandma Jensen who made her a scripture bag, and with the Southern family.

Then some cousins were in town from a few hours away so we had a cake decorating "tea party" to play with them.

(You can see J decorating cakes like a MAN)

Then we played a game where each player took turns rolling a pair of dice.  Each number meant one thing added to their paper so in the end every person had drawn a jack-o-lantern, complete with name.

 Finally, Sabrina got to invite two friends to come with us to the Nickelcade, followed by Krispy Kreme for donuts.  Doing the two friend outings is SO much simpler than parties at home!  Love it.

 Happy 7th Birthday to my dear, sweet Sabrina.  I love you!

October

 Now that I have a functioning computer AND keyboard -- AT THE SAME TIME!  I'm going to try to play some catch up.  Yes, I'm about 2 months behind.  Tough.

Here are a couple of more unique items I made: the pretzels really did taste as good as they look.  The "spiders" are hot dog chunks (good ones, for the sake of the parentals) with spaghetti noodles poked through them, then boiled until the pasta was done.  Served with alfredo sauce.  It was surprisingly good!  I was prepared to deal with it for the sake of the girls, but I'm not even opposed to doing it again someday.  It was a fun tribute to Halloween one night.

 I don't remember whether I've covered this or not, but Lizzie had her first chance to attend General Conference with Aunt Janice and Aunt Jennifer.  Her cousin T was her conference buddy this time.  She absolutely LOVED it!  These two pictures are screen-grabs from when she was shown on TV during conference!  This was immediately after President Monson announced the change in age for full time missionaries.

These pictures are from the Aunties.  Lizzie was wowed by her visit to The Roof restaurant.  I am so grateful my girls get these opportunities!  I never would have dreamed to be so close to the General Authorities and First Presidency when I was their ages.

On a random change of subject -- We knew Sabrina was in need of some urgent dental work.  She already had her first work done (already posted) and we had appointments scheduled for all the rest.  Then over one weekend she started to complain a lot about pain in some teeth.  Then she developed a nasty fever and when I checked her mouth again there was a bad abscessed pocket on her gums.  We got her in to the dentist the next day and my brave girl had 3 root canals and a filling all in one appointment, all on the left side.  If the swelling had been worse she would likely have ended up in the hospital for IV antibiotics.  Thankfully some oral antibiotics "stat" took care of it.

 Lizzie and Sabrina were both scheduled for a lot of dental work and Kate started to complain about a sore spot in her mouth.  I checked and noticed some molars coming in and said she'd be fine.  By the weekend she was complaining again.  Finally on Saturday morning (of course, no dentist available!) Michael noticed that one side of Kate's face was swollen.  Badly.  I took a look in her mouth again and discovered a HUGE abscess.  Thankfully she didn't have a fever, but she sure had the swelling going on!  We could not get in touch with the dentist so we finally gave up and took her in to the emergency room so she could get started on antibiotics.  Good thing, too!  If she had developed a fever then SHE would have been planted in the hospital on IV antibiotics.  Between Sabrina and Kate we'd have had a much worse couple of weeks.  Thankfully getting in to the dentist on Monday they fixed the bad tooth and the antibiotics did their work.  And no, there is absolutely nothing contagious about abscesses.  They're not even that common!  We're just THAT GOOD.  (Yes, this is despite regular brushing, flossing, and flouride.)  So glad to have teeth more or less settled for now.  Knock on wood.