I probably shouldn't have told my kids that their cousins were coming to stay with us for a week while their parents went on a little getaway, as EARLY as I did.
I was bombarded with questions daily, sometimes hourly about WHEN, and HOW MUCH LONGER till they came.
When the day finally arrived, I capitalized on that excitement my leaving two boxes outside my door and asked Tiffany and Alex to place one of their kids in each, ring the doorbell, and hide. My kids were thrilled with the packages filled with cousin friends for the week.
Leo, just melts me. He is the easiest, most chill baby. He is a carbon copy of his Dad, and he was such a joy to have. As Tiff puts it, "He doesn't like to cry".
I was pretty thrilled too. I mean, look at these cute faces! Jade and Oaklyn are 3 weeks apart, and Leo and Paxton are a week apart. It was like having two sets of twins, and two older kids for the week. It was a PARTY!
They came on Thanksgiving, so we simplified a bit since we had already had a Thanksgiving dinner for Canadian Thanksgiving, and made homemade pizza.
I love these tiny chefs! Jade and Oaklyn MAY have eaten more toppings than they put on their pizza....
These two girls were inseparable! Oaklyn has no sisters, so it was fun to see her have a cousin sister.
Friends don't let friends fall in the toilet.
There were staring contests.
A little Thanksgiving football with Dad's old high school jerseys.
Double the cuteness everywhere I looked.
Double the bad hair days, and bed head.
Double the bath time giggles.
Their shape bath was pretty funny. There was an argument at one point between the two girls about how to say "triangle". They were both wrong:)
The girls getting ready for their big fashion debut.
Our cousin junior fashion show. The runway was red bubble wrap. The girls had such a great time picking their outfits, painting their nails and getting ready for their little project runway. These little fashionistas even got to wear lip gloss.
The girls weren't sure how do do a fashion show at first so I wrangled the boys into showing them how to get dressed up and walk down the runway. The boys were reluctant at first ,but then some interesting characters showed up for our fashion show....
The the girls took it from there.
We tried to do things that Jade loves. She loves play dough.
So, we made edible play dough.
Pom pom pictures. We used press and seal overtop the pictures so the pom pom's would stick.
For snack, they had to climb up the apple tree, pick an apple and climb back down without falling. They played with this for quite a while. We had a little apple tree chant as we did it, and it was so cute to see Jade repeating it later in the day. She is such a little smartie!
Jade loves apples! Look how cute this little apple picker is.
The best way to describe Jade, is she is a pint-sized party! She is so mini, and cute, but packed with giggles and personality. Jade is so goofy, and adds a bit of humor into every thing she does. She is also, smart, sweet, easy going, loving, and just a doll! I felt so lucky to have her and learn from her.
Jade also loves puppies and spends half her day pretending to be one, so we made it official and opened our own puppy pound. They made their own ears and the kids insisted the babies needed some too. They ate cereal (aka dog food) out of a bowl and tied leashes to their belt loops. I'd adopt these puppies any day!
There are a few things I did to stay as organized as I could. To make sure we had a plan, and babies were fed and kids were bathed.
This is what getting 6 kids ready for church looks like. I prepared the day before, and got everything out for the next day.
Daily schedule
Feeding chart.
My writing was often almost illegible because I was in a hurry, holding a baby, or writing with my opposite hand:)
I also prepared beforehand and made freezer meals, because there was too much going on during dinner time to worry about preparing a meal from start to finish.
Church was the only thing I was a bit nervous about, because Dave was working, and I would be all by myself. Tiff's kids are so good, but with the ages of all the kids, I wasn't sure how it would go.
Thanks to the help from some wonderful friends, I was able to enjoy church, and not just survive with two sets of twins, 6 kids under six, and Dave working. Thanks to all who helped and offered to help. And these little angels both fell asleep in their car seats at the same time for almost the entire sacrament meeting. I was feeling the love from both of them too!
Our Sunday afternoon snack, they went "fishing".
Then for a Sunday afternoon, we made these Moses parting the Red Sea crafts.
Jade loves stickers!
There were LOTS of tea parties!
For FHE, we watched the nativity video, and made our own nativity tree decorations.
We made this silky soft play dough. It is made with corn starch and conditioner. I had to sit down and play with it too.
It was so soft and fun!
Easton made this heart and it broke.
It immediately made me think of the achy breaky heart song from when I was growing up.
I started to sing it to the kids and they couldn't stop giggling.
Landon said it was the weirdest song he had ever heard, and Easton asked it I made it up on the spot.
Oh the 90s!
We had so much fun with cousins. Tiffany is such a great Mom, and I loved getting to know her kids a little bit more. Our house felt empty without them!
Random December Stuff:
Franklin is back, and wrapped up our Christmas books to open one a night till Christmas.
Frankie had a run-in with the tooth fairy mid-flight, and got fairy dust all over him. What a mess! Why a dollar and a penny you might ask? Landon lost his tooth at school and a visiting Mom told him that when you loose your tooth at school, the fairy brings you more money. Luckily, he has no concept of value, so he was pretty excited about the extra penny:)
For the past few years Franklin usually brings a note with a "kindness challenge" asking the kids to do something nice for somebody.
One day the note was inside an airplane he flew around in
One time Elsa came to visit and asked the kids to remember to smile at everybody they saw that day. Thanks for the idea Jlene!
But because of his little incident with Elsa, he caught a cold the next day, and our neighbor's elf had to come for a visit to nurse him back to health. Isn't she cute?
We made treats for teachers, principals, and crossing guards.
Franklin made a snowman.
Treats for the mailman.
There were snowball fights!
We used some for an after work family snowball fight.
Then the neatest thing happened...
Franklin asked each of the kids to take a dollar out of their piggy banks and tape it to this sign we put up at the dollar store.
The sign said, "Please take one dollar to buy your child a toy. Merry Christmas!"
They were so excited to sneak it in, and pleaded with me to stay for a while and watch. I told them that someone probably wouldn't come while we were there(the store was pretty empty), but that they could stay and look at toys for a bit. A couple minutes later, a family came down the isle that looked to me like they might need it, so I took the kids to the next isle over. We could hear the poster being tampered with, and the kids were delighted that someone was taking a dollar. We waited till they left and went back over to check. Landon counted up the money and we realized to our surprise that they had ADDED a dollar. Easton was thrilled and said, "Now someone else can get a toy!" It was such a great lesson for my kids and I. We were all touched and surprised by the unexpected act of giving.
As we were leaving, the kids BEGGED to go back and check one more time, and two of the dollars had been taken down. They were sooo happy!
Franklin had us come up with an act of service on our OWN one day, and fueled by the thrill of the dollar store incident, they wanted to leave a dollar and a sign outside the library vending machine. We went to go get books, and on our way out, somebody had used the dollar and left the change.
We also had a neat experience at Walmart.
This is the best picture I could get while checking out at the till.
While I was checking out our groceries, and everyone was telling me how full my hands were, an older man came over and did something about it.
He handed Oaklyn and Easton 2 coins each to put in this coin contraption.
He wished us a Merry Christmas, told me my children were beautiful, and then turned and walked away.
He could not have known how much I needed that.
This unsolicited kindness from a stranger made our day!
Santa came to Landon's school and a kind friend who was there sent me this cute picture.
All Landon wants for Christmas is his front tooth
The Doctors on Dave's floor have been wearing some pretty festive holiday sweaters. Dave asked me to make him into a Christmas tree so he could plug himself into the wall. He said when the kids on the cancer floor saw it, they really lit up. I love pediatrics!
Cookie decorating with friends.
I got to go to Easton's school to decorate gingerbread houses.
The kids afternoon project one day was making mistletoe.
It was fun to see the differences in development according to age.
Landon's:
Easton's:
Oaklyn's sweet mistletoe:
Dave and I secretly called it "mess"letoe. I LOVED it!
These mistletoes got lots of use:)
Two of my favorite Christmas traditions that we do:
Ever day in the month of December, we set aside our regular scripture reading we do in the morning, and do our reading at night by candlelight scriptures about the Savior's life and birth. There is something about the candlelight that make this a truly sacred unifying experience. The kids take turns who blows out the candle each night.
Also, every Christmas Eve we watch nativity video and then act out our own.
Landon was a wise man, Easton was a shepherd, I was Mary with Dave as Joseph, and Oaklyn couldn't decide till right before the nativity started. She went from wanting to be a camel, to a sheep, to a pig, and then
finally settled on angel:)
Baby Jesus was so cute that night!
Lastly, Some very random December pictures:
Easton was playing football one day, and asked me to stuff a diaper down the back of his pants. When I asked why, he said, "These are my pads Mom."
When you have 3 brothers, you sport one of your Dad's old jerseys, moon eyes, and play A LOT of football too:)
Just to prove, she has a very girly side too. She wanted "rollers" in her hair just like me. I do my hair with hot rollers, and I didn't think she was old enough to handle the heat. So, I used these foam rollers, and this girl beamed from ear to ear, even though she looked like a neon porcupine:)
The next morning, she came out looking like a young Shirley Temple, but she was thrilled!
This girl is very determined(just like her Momma). When she sets her mind to something, she does it. When she was 15 months old, she began climbing out of her crib even when we put it down as far as it could go, so we moved her to a big girl bed. Now she is almost 3, and despite having a bed in her room during nap time, she has decided that a crib is the way to go, and climbs back in, while Paxton isn't using it.
Homemade gak with a very sweet friend!
Snuggling on the couch watching a Christmas movie.
Paxton comes into our bed every morning. This little bed-hog owns us:)
My parents are busier and happier than they have ever been in their lives.
Dave brought this ornament back from his mission in Brazil years ago, and I have to admit, when we hung it up this year, I got a bit teary-eyed.
It might be one of my favorite decorations.
Last year, Santa left one of his old suits at our house and the kids love to play with it.
Easton was so proud of his block city!
I made these baby necklaces for Oaklyn and her same ages cousins.
Oaklyn loves hers. She is in a real baby loving stage right now.
Oaklyn reading in her tiara. She loves books and this tiara from a friend so much!
I spy with my little eyes, Easton sleeping:)
Our tree was fluffed by Batman himself!
And some other little cuties too...
We changed our Sunday rest time to "power hour". Journals, church books, and family history. Oaklie takes a church book, and a nativity up to her nap time. That's about as uplifting as I could think of for a 2-year-old:) Its amazing how this has transformed our Sunday, and made it more uplifting!
And..... Paxton as Alfalfa!
or nerdy Paxton.
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