Heidi turns 4!

 It's hard to believe it's already been 4 years since our sweet Heidi joined the family.  She was so excited to take the Birthday Box to preschool... in it she got to put a picture from each year of her life showing something she learned to do...then she got to tell the class all about her pictures.  We chose: a few months old - learning to smile, 1 year - learning to walk and push her baby stroller, 2 years - reading a book to her favorite baby doll playing Mommy, 3 years - in her ballet clothes, learned to skip and loves to dance.  Heidi's new "hobby" is to sing - she loves to make up songs and sings them with much passion.  Sometimes she uses familiar tunes and just makes up new words, but mostly she makes the tunes up too.   I love it!

Birthday morning she woke up to presents!  Her very own (princess) scooter

Tinkerbell from Skyler - the card he wrote to her was sooo sweet.

Basket for her bike, Hello Kitty bike bell, and Hello Kitty Bandaids from Colt

Plush castle with 5 plush unicorns - from Grandma and Grandpa 

Since she plays Birthday with her babies all the time I thought a wooden birthday cake she can decorate with candles/decorations and cut to serve would be fun. 

Birthday cereal 

She also got a new outfit for her baby - but only because shen I walked into the American Girl store one night there was a big Bitty Baby sale going on!   

Then her best friend came over and we headed out to get little fingers and toes painted. 

Some ice cream 

A wish for the birthday girl!  All in all a great day - and a wonderful start to another year!

A ton of pictures

I pretty much forgot about our blog...sorry if there's anyone out there still checking it!  So here's some pictures from December, not really in order:

Christmas tree up before church 

Our "elf on the shelf" Pip... making mischeif each night 

This is all the snow we got this year 

Snowflake Lane 

Heidi and Uncle Tim at Colt's taekwondo belt ceremony 

High Brown belt!  He's 3 away from his black belt! 

We took a trip to the Root Beer store over winter break...Skyler loves root beer, and his new batman hoodie (notice the ears?) He picked out a really yummy vanilla root beer 

Heidi doesn't know how good she has it, Skyler and her are best buds.  The jammie combinations he comes up with after church are comfy but often hard on the eyes... 

Heidi and her best little friend Sophie, with babies in front packs and sporting matching dresses.  This is the life! 

Pinewood Derby car #2 - this year's was even faster than last years!  Colt wanted an Avenger car - specifically Hawkeye.  He's the one with the bow and arrow I think.  Colt worked with Tom to get the car just right - and a sparkly purple coat (well, 4 coats) of spraypaint looked great. 

Mom and Heidi date to the Eric Carle performance - it was amazing!  Black lights and huge, life sized puppets 

It was Colt's year to pick a tree (remember last year?  If not..I'm to lazy to provide a link but it's worth looking back for) 

While the boys decorated the tree Heidi was quietly arranging all her ornaments around herself 

Hmmm...maybe a bit to the right? left? (I love this picture) 

Skyler's piano recital - He's taking from another teacher this year and doing really well.   

Heidi loved the local production of the Nutcracker! 

Our Christmas card photo - much easier than trying to get them all looking at me and smiling at the same time! 

Baking Christmas goodies for friends

Well, hope you enjoyed a blast to the past!  Hopefully I'll get some time again soon for more pictures.

November stuff

Not a lot going on but here's a few pictures from the last few weeks...

A few weeks ago some free tickets to the "The Three Little Pigs" play were offered to us....so we invited cousins Lizzy and Laura to join us! It was a very cute, well done show!

 Heid's show and tell day - she brought her beloved "titty tat" puppet from Pappy

At curriculum night, Skyler with his classes' painted lady butterflys about to hatch!  They each get a caterpillar, name it, feed it, and watch as it goes through metamophis. 

End of October

 Donuts with Dad at school

 Heidi's Halloween Costume #1 (I've realized the wonderful thing girls is their dress-up box saves bundles at Halloween)  She learned a Halloween song "October Pumpkin" on the piano and played in a little recital with her music classmates. 

 Nintendo's party: Colt is "Dusty" from G.I. Joe...not to be confused with a regular army guy, Skyler wanted soooo badly to be "the Dark Knight" - though he's never seen the movies.  And Heidi borrowed this adorable Rapunzel dress from her friend (aka Halloween Costume #2)

 #3.... Halloween day she decided she wanted to be a cat.  We had black tights, leotard, skirt, and headband - I cut out felt ears and stapled them on - she was thrilled. 

 Costume #4...for warmth - butterfly wings were from a friends' birthday party - so 4 costumes, all absolutly free.  It was the boys who took some investment.  Oh well, fun times were had by all.

Ready for trick-or-treating with our friends....and it thankfully didn't pour rain like it was earlier in the day. 

Conference Weekend

 We love conference weekend, and this year I was ready the night before with a plan!  Colt loves the friend magazine so when it came a few weeks earlier I hid it so he'd have something new to read during the weekend.

 I pulled all the white legos out for Skyler and gave him a stack of temple cards to pick from.  He worked really hard and made a great replica of the Washington DC temple... keep scrolling and you'll see the finished product

 Heidi had her own games and puzzles to work on, here she's giving her jack o lantern many faces

 The night before I stuck each kid's things in their trick or treat buckets as a last minute thought.  I had printed activity pages, coloring pages, included treats, and here Colt has a new bag of white melty, or pearler beads to also create a temple.  He loves making things out of melty beads so it kept him busy for a long time.  And since he's older he enjoyed just sitting by us and listening.

 Heidi's bucket is still being located, but I grabbed our bowl for candy and put her things in it.  I don't think she actually even got to everything...

 Skyler's finished temple- there's a gold lego trophy guy on top for the angel moroni

And that was our Sunday!  Saturday, since Tom was working, I watched morning conference while the kids played upstairs, calling them down when the Prohpet spoke, then watched the afternoon session later that night after they were in bed.  It was a wonderful weekend!

Pumpkin Patch

 We went to the pumpkin patch the 1st weekend of October since it was so beautiful out

 On the hay ride

 A man had turned his remote control plane into a witch flying on a broomstick, the kids loved it

 Trying to get a nice picture... I didn't realize until I looked at this at home that Heidi was pulling Colt's hair - the sun was in my eyes so I couldn't see what pictures I was taking.  Oh well.

 Colt shooting off baby pumpkins

 And Skyler

 A 2nd remote control airplane...a bat - mesmerized the kids

 The quest for the perfect pumpkin

Everyone got their perfect pumkin; Heidi's is small, a baby pumpkin as ordered, Skyler's is the perfect pumpkin shape, and Colt found a "Two-Face" pumpkin (like Two-Face in Batman) - 1/2 orange and 1/2 green.  A fun time, wish Tom could have been there too but he's working on a huge project at work so this year we went without him.