It's Great to Be Eight!

We celebrated Hannah's 8th birthday yesterday. Wow -- how did my little girl get to be 8 years old already? She is definitely growing up!

Since her birthday happened to fall on a Saturday this year, and it was also her "year" for a party with friends (we do every-other-year for friend parties), she got to have two celebrations on the same day!

She invited a few friends over in the afternoon. First, they all got to make their own little homemade mini pizzas for lunch.

Then we tried making bracelets from beads. I think they had fun stringing the beads, but unfortunately, I could not get the knots to stay put on the slippery "string" the kits came with (my first experience with jewelry making). So none of the girls got to take their bracelets home (by the end I think most of the beads had fallen back off anyway). It didn't seem like any of them minded too terribly (hopefully!).

We did a little treasure hunt activity with stuffed animals (the girls each brought one of their favorites). The "treasure" at the end were some simple little skirts I had sewn for their stuffed animals to wear.

Then we all had cupcakes! I'm including this picture to show how McKay couldn't stay away from the party even though he was the only boy in sight. He was the typical big brother always looking for an opportunity to show off (and I think he also secretly enjoyed making the girls giggle by his silly antics).

Hannah had requested a unicorn cake this year, so I copied this one I found on-line:

She requested homemade macaroni and cheese for her birthday dinner (as usual!) and then we had our little family party and present time.

I have to put a shout-out to my little brother Tyler. He is always so generous in sending the kids birthday gifts. He told me that for Hannah's birthday this year, he wanted to write a story about her (as "Princess Hannah"). He only had a chance to write the first couple of chapters before her birthday, but she was so excited when she started reading it.

And if you know my brother, you know that for him, writing is a more difficult process than it is for the rest of us. Because of his muscular dystrophy, he has to use specialized computer equipment to type at all. He is awesome -- we love you, Uncle Tyler! (And we'll be waiting for the rest of the story!)

Then it was time for more cake and sugar and singing Happy Birthday.

Hannah managed to get all of her candles out with a single blow this year! (McKay informed me that I put them too close together.)

The other great part about being 8 is Hannah gets to be baptized. She is so excited! We've scheduled her baptism for this coming Friday evening.

Hannah was our "binary baby," joining our family on 1-10-01 at 11:11am. She was definitely a more active, independent baby and toddler than we were used to with McKay! She was blessed with the biggest blue eyes and longest eyelashes -- she's going to break a lot of hearts (but not for a loooong time...) She loves to sing and is learning to play the piano. She also loves to write and illustrate stories. She can be quite the drama queen and can be so intense about things at times (should I be nervous about those teenager years?). We love her enthusiasm and her smile and the joy she brings to us.

As I've done with some of the other kids, here is Hannah's "birthday review" - Happy Birthday, sweet Hannah!

1st birthday...

2nd birthday...

3rd birthday...

4th birthday...

5th birthday...

6th birthday...

7th birthday...

8th birthday!

Hmmm...

I keep thinking I need to update my blog, but I can't think of anything newsworthy to write about. So I've been racking my brain and checking to see if I've even taken any pictures since Christmas. So, uh, yeah, here you go:

This would be an old steel flagpole (in three pieces) that is anxiously awaiting its transformation into an awesome windmill tower. It's been sitting out in front of the shop for a while now, and I happened to take this picture when I was out snapping a few more of the never-ending trench project.

Back to the windmill project. We've known since we moved here that we need to do something with all this wind we get at our house. Besides having it blow doors shut and whip our hair around and stuff like that. Brian's been researching windmills and we were able to get one through a friend-of-a-friend sort of thing (actually it was more of a relative-of-a-relative). Brian's parents stopped in Utah to pick up the pieces in their truck when they drove down here in November. Brian and his dad have been planning and engineering pretty much non-stop since then on how to build a tower for it and how to engineer the tower so it can be raised and then also lowered (for maintenance). Not an easy engineering job when you're looking at 50-60 feet.

While Brian's dad was here, they visited a steel place and found this old flagpole that they thought would be suitable for a tower. They'll have to do some welding and some modifications and I certainly don't claim to follow all of their plans. I'm not even sure how soon it will get up. But it will be an exciting day!

So you can see from these pictures that life has been quite exciting around here the past couple of weeks. We had a very quiet and relaxing Christmas break. I quite enjoyed it. We didn't go anywhere and no one came to visit this year -- we didn't even really get out of the house much. We did take the kids to the Discovery Center one morning, but that was about the extent of our outings. Lots of sleeping in (which I'm having major withdrawals over!), lots of reading and playing and just spending time together. It was great.

On New Year's Eve, McKay begged to stay up until midnight this year, so we let him. The girls went to bed and then the three of us played a game of Settlers of Catan. Another nice, quiet evening.

I became hooked on the Twilight series of books over the break and read all four of them as fast as I could get my hands on them. Yeah, I know, it took me long enough (but this way, I didn't have to wait for any of them!). I've also enjoyed a few other books and am rediscovering reading "for pleasure" -- something I haven't done in a long time. And it's mainly because I tend to get so caught up in books that it's hard to pay attention to other things in my life, like dirty floors and laundry. But I'm working on some balance there.

The kids are back in school now and we're trying to get back into the routine of things. Hannah's 8th birthday is coming up on Saturday. She's having a party, which I still haven't planned, so I'm getting a little stressed about that. She's also so excited to start attending Activity Days at church and get baptized (not exactly sure of the date yet -- probably within the next couple of weeks). So there will definitely be many picture-worthy events happening soon! Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas

We had a nice, quiet Christmas this year. I tried to keep things as simple as possible and we've all enjoyed just being together at home the last couple of days.

We finally got our Christmas cookies frosted on Christmas Eve (and of course, I always end up eating way more than my share of them!)


But we managed to save out a couple to leave for Santa too...


The kids were excited to hang up stockings on Christmas Eve. We just taped them to the mantel (Brian wasn't sure how strong it was) and McKay left a note for Santa to leave the filled stockings on the couch.


Santa did manage to find our new house this year.


One of the things I tried this year was an idea I borrowed from my friend. I decided that rather than take the kids shopping to get presents for each other, I would help them make something. I chose some fairly simple proejcts and they were excited about it. Hayley helped me pick out felt and buttons to make some very basic cases for the kid's MP3 players.

Courtney picked out fleece and helped to sew some hats.


Hannah picked out flannel and made rice heating bags for everyone's feet at night (you fill the bags with rice and heat them in the microwave just before bed).


McKay picked out some fabric to sew some new pillowcases for the girls.


The kids enjoyed their presents and I felt good about not going too overboard this year. One of my favorite presents (from my sweet hubby) was an iPod Touch -- I'm having fun with it! And here's the dashing guy himself in his new leather jacket:


The family room afterward was a disaster zone, as usual! (And it still is -- we've all been too busy playing to clean up yet!)


We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!

Live Nativity

Last weekend, our ward participated in a live nativity at a ward member's home. Their neighborhood is well-known in this area for Christmas lights -- it is a favorite spot for people to drive through and several homes go all out with the decorating. (They even have little signs with arrows directing traffic through the neighborhood.) They got permission to have the live nativity for 3 nights. It was really neat and exciting to be a part of!

They built a stable, got some animals, made some great costumes and lots of people helped by wrapping up little bags of Hershey's Kisses attached to a pass-along card for the "Joy to the World" DVD.

Brian and McKay signed up to be shepherds on Saturday night. They had two groups for each night so they could trade off after 30-45 minutes and come inside to warm up!

(Brian had a little trouble with the rope tie on his head scarf...) Brian also said he ended up taking his gloves off later.

I took the girls over for a bit and took some pictures. The wise men would "travel" back and forth from their "camel" on the house to present their gifts. The missionaries were there where the cars passed by to hand out the pass-along cards and treats. It was a busy weekend -- I think they handed out over 2,000 cards!

The hosting ward member (who is also in our bishopric) wrote up a little article for the Church News web site. Read it here! What a neat experience.

Trim the Tree

Believe it or not, we have actually had our tree up for a little while now. It's just taking me a long time to get the blog updated (thanks in part, to a certain series of vampire books that I finally decided I needed to read -- yeah, couldn't have picked a busier time of year for that!)

It was a little tricky finding a spot for the tree in our new house, but we found one that seems to work okay with a little furniture rearrangement. The kids always love decorating the tree. We have one of those "kid-friendly" trees with all the handmade, school-project, non-matching ornaments. I love it!

We did have a slight problem this year with a middle section of lights not working. What's the point of a pre-lit tree if the lights won't work? Brian couldn't figure out what the problem was, so we ended up just stringing on a regular strand over that section. Kind of a pain, but hopefully it's not too noticeable. (We also ended up with some missing piece for the base that holds the tree up straight, so I had to improvise that with some piece of cardboard.)

Last year, I decided to start an ornament tradition in the kids that I heard about. Each year, I pick out a special ornament for each of them. At some point when they leave home, they will get to take the box of "their" ornaments with them. We started late last year, so they didn't get their ornaments until Christmas Eve. This year, I was prepared and had them for the tree-decorating night.

McKay got a "Cowboy Santa" ornament (you can pull on the string to make his arms and legs go up and down).

Courtney got an angel doll:

Hayley got a sparkly girl and puppy on a sled:

And then there's Hannah. I was a little worried about Hannah's ornament this year -- wanted to make sure I picked out the right one for her. Fortunately, she was quite happy with her snowman sled:

The reason for my worry was what happened last year (some of you might remember this). I was excited to start this tradition and spent quite a bit of time choosing their ornaments. I picked out some musical notes for Hannah, because she had recently started piano lessons and was doing really well with them, and also because she loves to sing and is the best singer of all the kids. I thought she would be thrilled with it. Boy, was I wrong. When I gave it to her, she burst into tears (this was on Christmas Eve, remember). For whatever reason (that I still don't understand), she just really did not like it. I took a picture of each kid with their ornament, and this was Hannah's:

She would hardly even hold it. (Oh, the drama in Hannah's life!) The rest of Christmas Eve, she was still teary-eyed and upset. (On a positive note, this year she told me that she was finally okay now with that ornament.)

Fire and Ice

Okay, so it was more snow than ice, but the title just didn't work as well that way. :-)

We saw our first snowfall here in Amarillo this past week. I don't know how much snow we'll see this winter, but the kids were excited to see even a little bit! We probably only got 1-2 inches.

The roads got a little icy (we heard about a big pile-up on the freeway just outside of town) and I had to grab a spatula to scrape the windshield off, but we survived. :-) I have since bought an official windshield scraper and my wonderful husband cleared out the garage so I could park the van there and not have to scrape it so much.

The weather is definitely a little colder than we're all used to --especially when that cold wind blows (it feelsl ike it will blow right through to your bones). Brian built our very first fire in the fireplace the other night. We had a fireplace in The Woodlands, but never once built an actual fire. We made some hot chocolate to sip and the kids thought it was so great. They've asked every night for another fire and hot chocolate.

Tonight is looking like it will be our coldest night yet -- it's about 11 degrees outside right now and is supposed to get down to about 8 degrees. Yikes! We'll see how well our house keeps warm!

Family Pictures

I tried a little photo-shoot with the kids the other day, hoping to get some decent "birthday" pictures (that we always used to go to the JC Penney studio for) and also one of the kids for our Christmas card.

Overall, I think they turned out good. I ran into a few issues -- like not having quite enough space in the sitting area where we had the backdrop draped on and getting bad reflections off McKay's glasses. I tweaked the color a bit in Photoshop -- sometimes it's hard to tell if your changes are better or worse!

So here you go!

Mr. McKay...

Hannah with those killer blue eyes...

Cute Courtney (I'm really liking the shorter hair on her)...

And little Miss Hayley...

Had to throw in this one too. Love the cooperation of a 4-year-old. :-)

All the kids together (very squished!)...

A couple of days later just before church, I wanted to try taking a family picture with the tripod. We couldn't use the same location (not enough room) so we tried our main room with the front door open for light. I was disappointed with how badly the glasses reflections showed up, and also wished we had moved a little farther back so there were more cropping options. It didn't make the cut for the Christmas card as a result, but you get to see it here anyway!

And I thought this was a cute one of the girls as I was testing the camera settings.

I've ordered some prints and am anxious to see how they turn out!