Ornament making

On Monday the 17th, we had a bunch of our friends over and painted some dough ornaments. The girls helped me make them earlier in the day and had a lot of fun. They also had a blast painting them and did a great job!

Painting the ornaments

 Hannah's finished products

 Evie's finished products

dashing through the snow...

There was no snow, it was raining....there were two horses and a wagon instead of a sled, but it's kind of the same right? The town we live in has a little holiday thing on the village green on Dec. 16th that we took the girls to. We saw lots of friends there, had some hot chocolate and the girls talked with Santa. All Evie said she wanted for Christmas was a unicorn. Easy right? And Hannah just wants Berenstain Bear books. Anyway, here are pictures from the fun.

 Hannah wouldn't sit on Santa's lap, but she did shake his hand.

 My ever so serious Evelyn. 

Evie on the hayride with Daddy.

Hannah did not want to look at the camera at all....

 The horses and the wagon coming....

 The horses were huge and Evie loved them! She and Nathan walked the entire ride route just so Evie could watch the horses.        

Close to home.....

We are only half an hour from Sandy Hook school. The main campus of our church, which we attended until September is almost on the Bethel/Newtown line, it's only about 10 minutes from the school. The youth pastor we work with on a weekly basis was at the school before anyone had a clue what had really happened....The community is grieving. They need prayer and hope. Was I directly affected, not really....I know people who know people who lost someone. I know that there are people at our church (main campus) who have kids that go to Sandy Hook....all the schools in the area were on lock down on Friday. It affected everyone to some extent, I'll learn more in the coming weeks of how and what those effects are. But now I'd like to ask you to join with us in prayer for the community here. In prayer for our church as we reach out to those who have lost family and friends. Pray that we would stand as a light, that we would share the hope we have in Christ.

Christmas Party!

Last Saturday Nathan's work hosted a family Christmas party. Complete with large dressed up characters such as Micky, Mini, Frosty and more! There was also Santa and his elves giving out gifts, face painting and balloon creations. Food for breakfast and lunch and a magic show! Needless to say there was lots to see and do and the girls had a great time. It is the one time each year families are actually allowed in the facility. So we all got to see Nathan's office as well (which was very dull and boring because he still has not unpacked/brought in his office toys and decorating stuff!).

 Snowflakes! 

Evie hugged every character she could! This picture is just after she had plowed Mini Mouse down giving her a hug :-)

 Evie and Rudolph

 Evie with Elmo

 Seeing Santa, don't they look happy?....not so much.

 

 Face paint....we were walking away from Santa out of the area and lost Evie. She had decided it was now time to get her face painted. After scanning the area where all the people were standing I scanned the seats in the areas set up for face painting and balloon making and there she was getting her face done. Yep, that's Evie. She told Nathan that she told me she was going to do that...I must have missed that.

 

 Here you can see Hannah's face paint. She's holding a heart given to her by the magician as a pre-magic show trick.

 

 Nathan helping out with the show, tying up the magician good.

 

Hmmmm....what is he doing in there?

 

 A very cute Santa.

 Have you been naughty or nice?

A cute elf too!

 And one very sleepy little girl after a morning of fun!

Fudge Making

Friday was our annual fudge making day! Nathan took the day off of work and it was great! We made 50+ pounds of fudge in eight flavors. The girls did great playing by themselves and helping now and then. It was a fun day!

 The basic ingredients!

The girls had fun opening and then crushing the candy canes for the mint fudge.

The girls did help stir the last batch and they had fun doing it.

Art!

Here is all the fudge. There was a lot of stirring going on and not so much picture taking during the actual fudge making process. Hence the lack of good pictures. And then there was a rush to get it all packaged and sent. But we got it all made and out the door by noon on Saturday :-)

New Rug!

Last Friday (12/7) we got a new rug for our play room downstairs. We're hoping it helps prevent heat loss. According to my resident thermal analyst it should work well for that. The girls have been playing down there a lot more since they don't have to be on the cold floor, at least we know it's working for something :-) It also adds a nice bit of color to the room!

 Doesn't it look fun to play in now?

Waiting....

I'm asked at least on a weekly basis by someone how our adoption is going and if we've heard anything. The answer has always been nope, just waiting. We're still waiting, but we did hear something last night. They had an emergency placement they were going to try and do today and our home study was thrown into the mix. We were told about it because our social worker wanted to make sure we were available if it happened. We didn't hear anything today, so obviously they picked someone else or decided to do something else with the kids. Our social worker keeps saying to adopt you need to be a risk taker, you really don't know what you're going to get and it's a risk. Nathan and I were talking last night about the fact that you have to be crazy too, suddenly changing your family over night with no notice. He was trying to get a backup for a meeting he had to present at at work today and people were wondering why...it's kind of a crazy answer to say, well I might be getting kids tomorrow. As I sit here and think about the craziness of the past 24 hours I think it's nicer not to know, not to know when our home study is being put out there and what exactly is going on, nicer to just be able to answer just waiting, when asked what's going on with the adoption than try to explain we might have kids, we might not we don't know. I'll go back to waiting now for the kids God has for us :-)

Letter Colors

Do your letters have colors associated with them? Numbers? Dates? Nathan at some point told me that each letter has a color that it is. And this leads to words being colored and such. Well, last night Hannah looks up at the Dr. Seuss ABC book sitting on a shelf in her room and said "those letters are the wrong color. B should be blue and C should be green" B is green and C is blue on the cover of the book. So of course the first question I asked was what is D? "Black" E? "Tan" What color is your name Hannah? "H is red, A is pink...." (sorry I forget exactly what she said, but she knew what colors each letter is). This totally intriguied me, I knew my husband was crazy, but now my daughter too. I spent some time looking into it this morning and it's pretty cool. It's called synesthesia and when it's specifically with colors it's Grapheme–color synesthesia. They think it has a genetic component. I'll have to talk to Lyn about this one. :-)

Think Pink!

Yesterday the library hosted a Think Pink story hour. They read some pink books and watched the pink panther. Then they made a pink panther craft.

 The story time happened to be right after the Home Depot workshop, so here are the girls and Daddy in pink before leaving. Nathan wouldn't wear the blanket to the library, so I had to get a picture while I could! 

Hannah really enjoyed listening to the stories and watching the pink panther. 

Evie enjoyed the books, but we had to leave the room midway through the movie, as she got too scared.

Pinkalicious anyone?

Look at all that pink!

Hannah opted for the quick color method. I think she was a little crafted out after the Home Depot work shop. But her panther still turned out nice!

Evie made a very colorful panther. After the panthers were made there were even pink snacks to enjoy!

Kids Workshop

The first Saturday of every month Home Depot offers a kids workshop. We've been doing it pretty much every month. I brought my camera to yesterdays craft and took some pictures of the girls making their picture frames.

 The projects are pretty simple, but they're great for the girls. This week they got to hammer and screw things together.

 Evie hammering.

They also had paint, which isn't normal, but the girls enjoyed. Hannah did a great job, she painted hers green and put white dashes on it (sort of like the frame in the background there)

 Here Daddy is helping Evie with her painting.  

Story Time

The girls (especially Hannah) have been playing school with their stuffed animals a lot lately. The other day they had them all lined up sitting nicely on the couch for "story time" I wanted to go join the animals, but Hannah said I wasn't allowed to. She did however say I could take pictures of her reading to her stuffed animals.

See all the animals on the blue couch? Aren't they cute? Hannah is actually reading out loud to the animals here. It's great!

Crafting

The Wednesday after Thanksgiving we hosted a Mom's group craft at our house. It was a "photo quilt", but we didn't quite get to the photos. Evie was the only one who actually finished the project. All the other kids had a lot of fun playing after finishing some squares of the quilt.

 Here's Evie working hard on her project. 

And the kids down stairs having a good time!

And this is Evie's finished product!

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Sorry I've been MIA, it's been a combination of being busy and not having much to say...but I figured I should catch you up on the happenings in the Mayer household. We went up to Albany for Thanksgiving and got to join my Mom's family there. It was great to be a part of the large family gathering again! It threw a new dynamic in the mix with small children, but everyone enjoyed it. Here are some pictures from our time there. Sorry there aren't many, I didn't take nearly as many as I should have! 

 

 Before dinner my Dad, Grandma, Nathan and I took the girls out to play. The adults had a little fun too :-) Here's my Dad in a tree, he was a bit more daring than Nathan and I, but all his kids are out of the house, so if he falls he doesn't have as much to worry about :-)

 Here I am in the same tree as my Dad, but not quite so high.

 And Nathan hanging out in a tree. My Aunt and Uncle have some great climbing trees!

 My Dad helped clear out some of the dead wood in the tree which resulted in some very large sticks to play with. My Grandmother and the girls held the sticks and walked around the house with them. They were having a grand time!

 There was also a nice straight sidewalk in front of their house that the girls enjoyed running to the end of and then coming back.  

 While we were outside playing the cooks were in the kitchen!

Preparing lots and LOTS of yummy food!

Here's my Aunt Pris (our hostess) with a large pile of dishes behind her! You can tell it took a lot of work to make the food. We had three or four people doing the dishes afterwards!

I didn't not take a picture of the pies, but there were almost as many pies as dishes for the main course! Hannah tried six different kinds, while Evie stuck with the two chocolate ones :-)

Family picture!