Christmas wrap-up

I doubled the batch of Christmas cookies and had our neighbor's kids down to decorate. Having friends to help decorate was nice because they lasted longer than normal and I only had to decorate a few when they gave up.

We went to Temple Square on a Tuesday night and it was so nice not to feel like sheep being herded around the buildings. The kids did well despite cold temperatures and an onery mom!

We made our annual neighbor gifts---180+ suckers. I love when this task is done..it's so much work.

The kids made these soda can snowmen for their gifts to others. Pretty cheap and what kid doesn't want their very own can of rootbeer? The picture doesn't include their candy corn noses.

Chrismas Eve presents from Grandma Carlson. This is Katherine's first nightgown and she's in love. I'm pretty sure I will not be able to buy pajamas from now on.

We have proof!

We had to document this moment in Kyle's life. Not many of you know but Kyle is a very creative, artistic kid. This traits manifests itself when Kyle dresses for bed. He has quite a few matching pajama sets and refuses to wear a complete set. He pairs buzz with star wars, spongebob with power rangers, christmas with Incredibles. I asked him one night why he cannot wear a matching set and he replied, "I want it to be rainbow!" Well, that settles that.

Ginger Bread Paradise

Here we are preparing for Christmas by decorating our annual GingerBread House. First of all I'm a super concentrating in this picture because as it does every year, the roof falls off because the icing isn't holding and you'd think they'd figure out that they need to make the angle of the roof less steep. DUH!!!



Katherine got to decorate the christmas tree and took the responsibility quite seriously.


Finished Product

Reflections

The boys entered the school's reflections contest this year. Josh entered a picture of the new giraffe family at the zoo and Kyle drew a picture of flowers. Joshua won honorable mention and got a medal. Kyle was upset he did not win anything but was consoled because Caleb smiled at the scarecrow Kyle colored outside his Kindergarten class.

Harvest Floor

I might be going slightly crazy but I had a blast canning food this summer. I started on peaches a few years ago and slowly added peach jam and grape jelly. This year I canned peaches, pears, plum jam, spiced plum butter, apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling, dried apples, grape leather, grape juice, grape jelly and helped my mom can 80 pounds of chicken. I know I'm nuts but it was so worth it. The kids love the fruit so much better than the store and I have tons of gift of preserves to give out for Thanks and Christmas. Jeff loved the applesauce because he had it as a kid and the canned chicken is sooo good and easy for enchiladas and soups. The biggest downfall was very sore muscles and what I now call "harvest floor". If you see the picture of the counter top after grape juice just imagine what the floor looked like. Holy Cow! You don't feel like mopping because the next day it will look the exact same. Jeff was very understanding.

You might be wondering where you put food storage like this in a condo. Well, on top of my kitchen cupboards works well and we have more in our room. It's so beautiful isn't it?

A New Perspective??

My neighbor dropped by to show me some art work the kids did while she was watching them last week. She asked me if I had taught him perspective and I said, "Huh? What's perspective?".
She showed my this picture Kyle (a kindergartener) drew and explained that perspective is drawing different sizes of objects to show distance. I looked at the picture and I was blown away. She was right. Kyle drew this little racquetball scene and even the racquet is smaller than the racquet in the forefront. I was amazed that he knew to draw the person before drawing the net.
My paternal Grandmother was an amazing artist and so many of my Clark cousins inherited that talent. In my immediate family only my younger sister was blessed. I'm beginning to be convinced more and more that Kyle was blessed with a talent. And I'm not just saying this because he goes through more computer paper than a print shop. You should see this kid's Huge folder of pokeman cards he's invented. He draws his little creature and makes sure he has a relevant name, gives him all these powers and numbers. It's amazing.
(by the way, I don't know who Rod is. It must have been a piece of scrap paper at my neighbor's house.)

Happy Halloween

Katherine was a Cat, Kyle was a skeleton, Josh was a karate ninja, Caleb was a baby skeleton, Mommy was Al Borlin, Daddy was a party pooper.


We gave Caleb a dum dum to keep him happy the last few minutes and this is how he fell asleep. He slept that way for 10 minutes.

At this house the kids wouldn't take their eyes off the statues. You never know when one could reach out and get you!

Pumpkin carving joy!