Cam's Hip Hop Class

My friend and visiting teacher from church owns a dance studio. Every once in a while when they don't fill their classes, she has offered my kids free classes. Bailey has taken tap, Addie hip hop, Emery ballet, and Cam hip hop. This is a video of him practicing his Christmas recital, dancing to "Electric Santa Claus". I like the part at the end when they roll over eachother and Cam ends up posing on their knees at the end. He was getting really good and I'm sad we can't afford for him and the girls to keep taking classes. Someday, we'll be able to afford to send them to dance and sports. I really want to get them back into Irish dance, they were all really good and I don't want them to forget it.

Cam's School Christmas Recital

I promise this is the last Christmas post. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, and yes I realize I'm posting Christmas posts in March. This was Cam's recital for his Christmas concert at school. It was just Joelle and myself that went. This was before my good camera, so the pictures aren't great, especially since we were towards the back. I was a bit irritated because Cam only sang one song and you had to sit there through all the other groups first just to hear one song. The sound was horrible too, so it's even worse on the video. If you can't tell, he's singing, "We Need A Little Christmas Now". He did a great job, but I didn't realize he was supposed to dress nice or at least wear Christmas colors, so he's wearing a bright orange shirt. At least I could tell which kid was mine :)

Stuffed Santa...again

Bailey was supposed to have a little Christmas get together with some of her friends, but 2 of them couldn't make it. So, Bailey and one of her friends from school decided to play the Stuff Santa game with all the other kids. First we did a race between 2 teams. Then the girls decided they wanted to try and fit all the balloons in one person. It was pretty funny, and we had a good time. Cam and Emery stuffing Addie

Bailey and Joelle stuffing Bailey's friend. (I'm leaving out names just for privacy for Bailey's friends)

Still stuffing...

Addie and Bailey's friend all stuffed

Rear fatty view

Bailey's friend with all the balloons stuffed

Cam and Bailey all stuffed

Work it...

Bailey peaking out.

Excited Cam and Bailey's rear view

Stuffed Emery

Side view Emery, being propped up by Bailey

Emery peaking

Emery waddling around

Emery's First School Christmas Program

Emery had her first Christmas program for preschool. Joelle and I went to watch her performance. It was a really cute program and Emery did great! Since this was preschool and there are only about 20 kids in her class, I got a real good seat. So, I was able to get some decent

pictures and video.

Addie's Friend Party, Christmas 2011

Addie had asked to have her new school friends over for a little party. We agreed that would be ok under one condition, she had to get her grades up and not get any alerts from school for an entire week. Well, she was able to follow through and so we rewarded her with a little party with her friends. It was Christmas themed since it was December after all.

I was so glad she made it, I really wanted her to be able to have her party. I am so thankful for all the good kids Addie has been able to make new friends with at school. It has been a difficult last 3 yrs as we've moved around due to Chase's lay off and new job. The kids had to leave friends and make new ones several times and it wasn't always easy and the kids weren't always very nice. So, I am thrilled for the good kids here at this school and am thankful to their awesome parents for raising them right.

Anyway, sorry to go off on a tangent. The kids had a lot of fun making cute little melted snow man cookies. We also played a game called "Stuff Santa". Stuff Santa has become a popular game with our family. We first played it in UT before we moved at the kids' going away party with their friends before we left. The kids put on my maternity and fat clothes and we stuffed them with as many balloons as you can fit in within a certain time. Idealy you have 2 people and you race, but with only a few kids, we just tried to fit in all the balloons and took turns being the stuffers and the stuffees.

Addie's best friend from school.

Addie and friends and siblings decorating snow man cookies.

Addie being stuffed by her friends.

Christmas Cookies 2011

I apologize for the late posts. I'm trying to put up all my pictures from my old camera that got put on the laptop. I decided to make Christmas cookies and tried something different to make them extra special. They turned out awesome, but were kind of a pain in the butt. They took a long time and I had to make 6 types of frosting...3 different colors in 2 different consitencies, to pull off the look that you see below. I got the recipe from Jamie Cooks it Up, who I believe in turn got that recipe from The Pioneer Woman (another food blog I follow, I can't help it I love food...and food blogs).

I believe Jamie Cooks it Up put up a Valentine cookie recipe that used the same frosting as the Christmas cookies, but she altered the consistency so she'd only have to make 1 of each color. So, this coming Christmas, when I've forgotten the work these cookies involved, I might try the different frosting consistency and do it again.

When the kids got home from school, I let them decorate some leftover cookies I had, Bailey actually tried my way of decorating and did a pretty good job all by herself. Most of the kids liked the eating more than the decorating, who can blame them :)

See, aren't they pretty!

Christmas Party 2011

I had been wanting to have a party or get together for some time. Halloween was my first choice, but didn't work out, so we went ahead and had a party for Christmas. My first thought was to do a cookie exchange of some sort, but it kind of spiraled from there. My good friend Amanda graciously offered to help me out. She is a complete party planning genius and is amazing. She was in charge of the decorations on the tables. I was kind of bummed that we were limited as to how many people we could invite because of the size of our house. Next year I think I will copy another friend's party which was the day after ours. She just made her party an open house which was brilliant because anyone can stop by at any time, leaving room for as many people as you can afford to feed :)

We had so much food it was ridiculous. We had little smokies from Costco, chicken roll ups, dipped cinnamon topped oreos, oreo bon bons or truffles, wreath cookies, pretzel peanut bark, rolo pretzel pecans, assorted Christmas candy, chips and rotel dip(made by our friend Jerry), bread and spinach dip, crackers and pretzels and another dip. Amanda made a buffalo chicken dip, cake pops, Christmas chex mix with the cutest little santa hats, yummy peppermint chip cookies, delicious red velvet cupcakes, and the toppings for the hot chocolate bar. I hope I didn't forget anything. Plus all our guests brought yummy food to share as well. I will try to come back later and write down recipes or links for some of the food shown.

We played stuff Santa which involved 2 lucky guests dressing up in my maternity and fat clothes and stuffing them with balloons. We played girls against guys and raced to see who could stuff their person with all their balloons the fastest. The second game we played was building a snowman. One person from each team was the snowman while teammates wrapped them with toilet paper, dressed them with gloves, boots, scarves, and hats, and put big black paper buttons on the front. The first team to finish building their snowman wins. I had prizes for everyone who participated for being such good sports. We also played name that toon. Our friends Jerry and Amanda had recorded several different Christmas songs and we had to match them with the artist that sang them. We played a present game where I had wrapped a gift several times in different boxes and each person got to take a turn trying to unwrap the present with oven mitts when they rolled a certain number. The kids also got to play pin the nose on Rudolph. It was a lot of fun and I wish I had taken a few more pictures.