Dolls

I had grad plans of making a bunch of homemade Christmas gifts this year, but that idea pretty much went down the toilet. I did however manage to make these dolls for my girls and for my cute little niece. My friend Lillian showed me the doll that she made for her daughter and I loved it, so I decided to make some of my own. She got the idea from this blog , and you can download the pattern for free from Martha Stewart's website.
My helpful tips for making these dolls are:
1. Be sure that after you print off the pattern that you have the pattern enlarged to 150% of the original pattern size.
2. Allow about a 1/2 inch seam allowance for those arms and legs. I didn't do this and I had to stitch all those little buggers together by hand, it would have been so much easier to sew them with my sewing machine.
3. Instead of painting the face on I stitched it on with embroidery floss, I like the look better.
Over all these dolls were really easy to make and I think they turned out super cute!

Happy New Year!

I did this last year and I thought it would be fun to do again this year:Landon December 2008Landon Decmeber 2009Tori December 2008Tori November 2009Ella December 2008 Ella November 2009

The kids Christmas Eve 2008The kids Christmas Eve 2009

Happy 2010!

Christmas 2009

(Here is a copy of our Christmas card for everyone who I don't have addresses for)

I figured I'd better do my Christmas post before the end of the year. We had a a great Christmas this year. I love that my kids are old enough to get excited about Christmas it makes everything so much more fun for everyone.

The Monday before Christmas we invited a family in our ward, the Comstocks, over for FHE. We had pizza and then we had the kids act out the Christmas story. We had a great time and the kids had so much fun playing together.This makes me laugh a little Landon was Joseph and Savannah was Mary. Landon is 4 and Savannah is 9. Tori was an angel. You can tell that we had fancy costumes ;).
On Christmas Eve we went to our friends Lillian and Blake's for dinner. We had a delicious Christmas feast. I feel so spoiled because my friend Lillian is such a great chef. I am going to be very sad when we move away from each other (of course I will miss way more then her great cooking).

After dinner we came home and got into our new Christmas pajamas. Landon and Tori woke us up at about 7 the next morning. They were so excited to see all the presents under the tree and the gifts that Santa brought them. Like always they were spoiled. Here are some pictures from Christmas morning, I didn't get a ton because the kids were way to preoccupied to cooperate for pictures. I included the above picture because Tori's face cracks me up, she was so excited!
Landon looks less then thrilled in this picture but he really was the most excited out of everyone.

Sunday Best

One of my favorite things about the Sunday before Christmas (or Easter) is seeing all the kids in the ward dressed up in their new holiday outfits. I know that before long my kids will start to have opinions about what I dress them in and they won't want to match so I am enjoying my time having full control over what they wear. Here are some pictures of the kids in their Christmas outfits, I think they looked super cute!The pants I planned to go with Landon's vest flooded on him so he wore his suit with his vest. He still looked great!I took Tori to the bathroom during Sacrament meeting and on our way back we ran into a bunch of ladies from the other ward who were waiting to go into the Relief Society room. They started saying how cute and beautiful Tori looked and she ate it up. Tori isn't the smiliest little girl in the world (especially if she doesn't know you well) but apparently all you have to do is tell her she looks pretty to get a big smile out of her. Who knew it was that easy?
I usually don't put Tori and Ella in dresses that match exactly but I just couldn't resist matching Christmas dresses.So hard to get a good picture of three little kids at once.

Christmas Songs

Here are some videos of the kids singing some Christmas songs that Landon learned at school:

Tori wanted a turn (the phone is her microphone):

My favorite part of this next video is Ella dancing in the background:

Check out the post below about Grammy's visit

It's always fun when Grammy comes!

I am way behind on my blogging but last week we had the pleasure of having Jared's mom with us for the week. We had so much fun with her here! She was a great help around the house and we just love having her around. The kids (and Jared and I) were so sad when she left last Sunday.
Here are some pictures of some of the fun things we did while she was here:

We made "pinkalicious" cupcakesShe read lots of books to the kids

She went on a train ride at the mall with Landon and ToriThanks Grammy for the visit we loved having you here

Haircut

Some of you may remember the horrific hair incident of 2009 Well Tori's hair has grown out bit since then and it was getting hard to do so I decided it was time for another hair cut. I took her in to the salon to get it cut and she did really well. I decided to have them cut her some bangs while they were at it. I have had this internal dilemma about cutting Tori some bangs for some time. I thinks bangs can be super cute on little girls but I have also seen them done where they aren't so cute. I really think Tori's hair turned out so cute and you can't even tell that Landon took scissors to it a few months ago

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