Ward Christmas Party 2010

Our ward had a Christmas party the first weekend of December. The primary acted our a nativity while singing Away in a Manger. Maya was very happy to be an angel. (The tallest one.) Jen got to participate by singing Christmas Chopsticks (Twas the night before Christmas rhyme sung to the melody of chopsticks). 6 women singing this very fun song in harmony with a little bit of silly choreography was very fun (and difficult to keep a straight face). It was nice for Jen to get out from behind the piano and have an opportunity to sing. All in all a very fun night.

What a view

The front of our house faces west, so there are many nights we get to enjoy the beautiful sunsets* over the rolling hills of California. This is the view from our toyroom.

*Unfortunately, that means the back of our house which has the master bedroom and boys' bedroom windows is facing east and the sunrise each morning. We moved here in the summer time and the sun comes up very early, and the boys were starting to rise with the sun. Thanks goodness for nice thick curtains which were put up very quickly once we moved in.

Show me that pretty smile

The tooth fairy has been working overtime in the Wilde household. Maya lost 3 teeth in 3 weeks!! If it was october, we might mistake her for a Jack-o-latern. She's still the cutest!
She still can't bite an apple, but since the teeth aren't dangling in there, she doesn't have to be so careful. She likes the fact that food can fit into the holes (like pretzel sticks hanging out of her mouth). One of her favorite songs this Christmas was "All I want for Christmas is my Two front teeth."

No one's food is safe!

For those of you who have young children (now or in the past) you know that you cannot sit down and eat something without your little coming and helping him or herself to the food on your plate. Well, you can't leave your food unattended on the table and expect to come back to it later either.

I've learned how to make my favorite Jamba smoothie at home. (Saves a lot of money.) Everyone loves when I make up a batch. Unfortunately for Maya and Luke, they haven't quite learned that they can't leave their goodies on the table. Seth is our little smoothie addict. Here's a few occasions of him finishing off Maya's and Luke's smoothies while Maya and Luke were playing in the next room. He loves the stuff! (In the top left picture - fruit bits from the smoothie are all over his face including his eyebrow. We need to work on aim.)

Seth has also become coordinated and strong enough to move our chairs around the kitchen to get to whatever he wants. This Christmas season there has been a pretty much constant supply of treats on our counter and Seth pulls up a chair and helps himself. Chex mix and cookies have become the main source of nutrition for him over the past 2 weeks. We pop him a clementine or banana whenever we can.

Going Fishin'

This fall, Matt took Maya and Luke fishing for the first time. The kids loved it! It became a regular Wednesday outing for a few weeks since Wednesdays are early release days and Seth would be napping. It left me with a nice quiet house for a couple of hours, so I'm all for it.

Luke usually comes home sopping wet with lake water. He now has a pair of sneakers that are just for fishing trips so I don't care how wet and dirty they get.

On their second or third trip Maya caught a fish. She baited her own line, cast it out by herself and caught her very first fish! A small-mouthed bass we think. (There was a nature photographer there who said he thought that's what is was. We looked it up and it matches the pictures in the books, but who knows? I'm no fish expert) She named it lucky and she'll explain why in the video.

Crazy Hair Day

Alright, I'll try to get these done in order. Time to think back.

September and October were filled with school during the week and soccer and church on the weekends. My kids love soccer as you've seen in previous posts.

School is keeping the kids nice and busy (but not too busy). Maya's quite a book worm and reads through several chapter books a week. At school she's really gotten into Tether ball. I haven't played that game since I was in elementary school. It sounds like it's making a comeback. Luke is doing a fantastic job learning to write all his letters and numbers. He's starting to sound out words. Pretty soon he'll be reading too.

The school had a spirit week and one of the days was crazy hair day. The kids had fun with it. Here's a few pics.

Of course with crazy hair comes crazy faces.

Slacker!

I am such a slacker. I didn't get around to writing a single post in the month of November. Now, once again I have a lot of catching up to do. The days are so busy with the kids and once I get them into bed my brain doesn't want to have to think anymore, especially if it has to use energy to come up with something interesting to say for each post. We'll try to do better.

I'll start with something funny that Luke said yesterday.
It's a Saturday morning and we're just waking up. Luke asks Matt to get him some breakfast, so Matt gets up. Before he goes he sits back on the bed to give me some hugs and kisses when Luke jumps onto Matt's back and says: "I'm in the love ball too."

That boy cracks me up!