gingerbread house PARTY!

we've done gingerbread houses a few times and its always such a big hit with the kids... but for whatever reason (lack of patience being the number one reason), i am usually angry at the kids and get so frustrated that something that should be a holly, jolly experience is tarnished by my yells. so i decided to switch things up this year! my plan was to have a gingerbread house decorating party with friends over. having friends was my insurance to keep me from being mean and grumpy. and you know what? it totally worked!

i made all the houses earlier in the day on monday and it was pretty painless since i hot glued the graham crackers together instead of using royal icing. that really cut back on frustration and bad words. i just made sure to tell the kids not to eat their actual houses :)

luckily for me, chris was post call monday and actually got the day off, which is pretty unheard of these days. he was kind enough to take pictures so i could make frosting, deal with frosting spills and whatever else came our way. he was a huge help!

each kid was able to invite a friend. 

ellie invited her bff anna. anna's little sister, kate, also came because she is a good friend of ellie's too and it just seemed like the right thing to do with so many boys in the house.

charlie invited his buddy from church named christopher.

he is probably the sweetest, most polite 6 year old you'll ever meet, saying things like "excuse me, but you could you please pass me the marshmallows?"

and he brought his magnifying glass and inspected each stage of the decorating process.

this is anna

this is kate

jack invited his friend ahmed, who is always making everyone crack up!

there was so much candy, both on the kid's houses and in the kid's mouths, like it should be!

i think this is owen's idea of heaven

jack has been friends with ahmed for a few years now. before thanksgiving his mom, Beena, invited our family to have dinner with them at our local Indian restaurant called R&R curry. it was so, so enjoyable and we have loved getting to know them both better. 

very grateful our kids have such good friends with kind, amazing families with good values.

after decorating houses, the kids hung out playing basketball and soccer with chris, doing magic tricks, and playing chess. everyone had a great time, even mom and dad! and after everyone left, we through stuff in the garbage, wiped off the table and counters and went out to dinner. it was great!

and just because its so cute, here is a video chris caught of jack while he was waiting for Ahmed to arrive. we are starting a little collection of these moments with jack and they are the best!

MVI_0396 from Lisa Brower on Vimeo.

school stuffs

we have had so many school projects/activities the past couple weeks. luckily, they have all been fun! here are a few that we documented with pictures:

first up was jack's 5th grade revolutionary war wax museum.

jack was a naval captain named John Paul Jones. he wasn't necessarily my favorite person, based on the little we know of him, but that doesn't matter. jack did a great job with his research and with his acting. we were one of jack's first visitors so he was a little tight. he told us that by the end he had it down and wasn't nervous anymore so it was a bit smoother.

he got to stand next to his buddy Ahmed, who was George Washington.

owen came with me to the wax museum and loved loved loved pushing everyones buttons... without actually listening to any of them :)

next up was caroling!

charlie was able to go caroling one day, but it was on a field trip to Crystal Bridges Museum so i wasn't able to go watch him. jack and ellie were also able to go caroling. jack went to the court house, a bank, a car dealership, and chic fil a and ellie caroled at walmart and cici's pizza, followed by pizza.  she was proud of the 5 slices she ate :)

ellie on her caroling field trip with her best friend anna. 

the kids have a great music teacher, mrs hill, who makes things like this super fun. the kids all love music class because of her. they sang songs that aren't usually sung and have a blast doing it, although ellie does get a little embarrassed when she asks the kids to dance.

the 5th grade christmas float parade was a fun project!

every year the 5th graders make floats out of shoe boxes and go on a little parade around the school. they get to do anything they want in regards to the holidays. its not graded, just a fun project. jack knew right away he wanted to do santa in florida, so we came up with the idea of santa, the day after christmas.

we worked on it together a couple saturday's before because we knew we'd have a lot going on around the time of the actual parade.

jack made everything out of sculpy clay. yes, i did do the santa, but jack did everything else, with some help from ellie. chris was the engineer to make sure our palm tree was stable. it ended up being a great saturday night family affair!

i thought the kids would be at the point in their lives where they wouldn't necessarily want their mama and baby brother to come visit them at their class christmas parties anymore. when they asked me this morning if i would be there and i said that i hadn't planned on it, they all shouted "WHAT? WHY?". obviously i didn't say "because I'm not cool" instead i said "because your baby brother isn't cool... is he???" and they all said they didn't care if he ate all their treats or played their games with them. grateful they still love me and want me to be there with them... and owen too!

and the following items have nothing to do with school, but they are awesome.

item #1:

we found a pizza crust recipe that we loved! its only taken about 5,000 other (yummy!) attempts

item #2:

saturday morning snuggles with my baby

this baby is POTTY TRAINED!!!!!!!!! he said he wanted to go to school and i told him he had to be 5 years old and he had to wear underwear. he took off his diaper right then and asked for undies and a backpack. we've only had a few messy accidents (including his first poop which he decided to do in my closet instead of on the toilet) but other than that he has done amazingly well!

item#3:

apparently santa shops at walmart on saturday night too. 

and he only needed some fresca and slippers.

december has been eventful!

the month is half over. 

the christmas shopping is done, the cards have been sent (probably my favorite ones to date!), the class projects/parties/caroling is completed, the ward and work parties are over, and winter break starts tomorrow. 

time is flying by!

we had to celebrate International Day of Root Beer on the 4th because we basically have that stuff flowing through our veins. 

don't mistaken this for National Root Beer Float Day, which is in august. this has to be celebrated with straight up root beer. we made a guessing game out of it with 8 different brands of root beer. jack and chris tied with the most correct guesses. it was pretty fun! 

i love this picture because that face ellie is making, that is not her being silly, that is pure excitement!

and because we dont drink soda very often, having 8 bottles of root beer in the fridge made dinner very exciting for a few nights :)

we have been working hard to make this year's Light the World experience just that, an experience. we hope the kids will remember service as a major part of their christmas traditions and Light the World is a great way to do that. one of the days challenges a couple weeks ago was to reach out to the neighbors. we decided i would make our homemade caramels while the kids were at school and then when dad got home from work we would deliver them to half a dozen neighbors. this was kind of a big deal because only one of our neighbors has ever talked with us. we wave at all of the others and say hi and if they return the hello it's very reluctantly.

well, we stopped by the nice neighbors first and then hit up the cat lady at the end of the cul de sac. she sits in her driveway up to a picnic table with a cigarette all day long, talking to her cats. sometimes she waters her plants. she's never waved back when we've said hello. well, we walked up and handed her the bag of treats and you could see the corners of her eyes and mouth instantly soften. she is from germany and her name is rose. she was visibly touched by our gesture and spoke to us for  a little while. two nights ago around bedtime we had a knock on the door. it was rose with a big gift and a very kind thank you for reaching out to her. she handed us the gift and said it was "from all of us". i looked at her confused and she said "oh! me and the cats!". we had a good laugh. she gave us several bars of german chocolate and a box of games. the kids have been playing chutes and ladders and chess solidly since. 

we've done a lot of other little services here and there each day, but this one has made the biggest impact on me this season because i did it grudgingly, thinking our neighbors would continue to be scrooges, but have seen the difference it makes in other peoples lives when we go out of our comfort zone to be kind. 

and that caramel was absolutely divine! we gave most of it away and it broke our hearts, so last monday i taught ellie and jack how to make it... complete with an ice bath to show them the various stages of candy making. they thought that was pretty cool. we then dipped them in milk chocolate and sprinkled it with sea salt. they didn't last long around here!

basketball season is under way and ellie is still as aggressive as ever!

her team isn't necessarily the greatest and i think after that first game (which they lost) her coaches realized she is a main player for them and put her in as point guard for the entire game last saturday.

man, last saturday's game was an emotional rollercoaster. 

we went in to the game thinking the girls would have a good chance of winning. well, they were down by several points most of the game. that was visibly frustrating for the girls. 

then somehow we managed to tie it up at the last minute! 

so we went into a three minute over time, and kept it tied up. we then did a shoot out and the other team went first and pulled it up by 3. that was significant because our girls are lucky to get one out of 6 free throws during half time (they let each girl shoot a free throw at half time to allow a chance for more points). 

but somehow, we managed to get our last 3 shots in, ellie making one of them! 

i loved watching the team as their teammates were shooting their free throws, it usually looked something like this:

so they went into sudden death, and cassidy got her first shot, winning the game!!! it was so intense!

 everyone was going nuts. because we had gone into overtime, the next game's teams and families were all there so it was a full house and it just added to the excitement because everyone was invested in the game by that point. i even heard one of the other coaches say to a parent near by that he'd been coaching for three years and hadn't ever seen a game like this one. definitely one we will remember forever and one that ellie keeps talking about! she was on a high for about two days after that!!!

speaking of winners:

owen's accessory of choice as of late is totally winning!