a week in review

We had a very eventful week. It's been a fun build up to Christmas.

Monday-one of Elsa's friends came and we made sugar cookies. No pics of that. sorry.
Tuesday-Graham Cracker houses. See previous post. Here's a pic of all of them all lined up in a row.

Wednesday-I told myself I would say "yes" to anything that was asked of me, since it's Christmastime. Well, it seems that everyone knows! Wednesday afternoon I had 6 kids total. No sweat for some people, and it wasn't for me either! I started with my own two and two boys. Elsa and friend watched Dora on the computer

And after the little guys woke up from their nap that they took AT THE SAME TIME (what angels) they did this....

Then the other girls came and we added some chairs....
Yeah, I might not be the BEST babysitter, but everyone was happy!
That night was the ward party. We made it there on time. :)
Thursday-Parent-tot at the rec. center. I actually jogged around the gym for 20 min. Hooray for me! Chris' Wii arrived as we walked in the door (good thing we were home because we had to sign for it.) Chris stayed up late that night setting it up and playing a little bit. (note on the Wii: Chris has wanted one ever since we played at a friends over a year ago. He decided to get one with some of the money he earned from selling pottery. He was and is really excited about it. I'm nuetral. He lets me spend the "extra" money I earn on whatever I want, so I'm allowing him to do the same.)
Oh, and we got a "new" table. It's new to us and I'm really excited!!! It fits very nicely in our dining area and it has 3 leaves!! We can actually all fit around the table, and with visitors too! Some VERY wonderful, kind, generous friends gave it to us! I don't have any pictures right now, but I'll post some with our Christmas Eve dinner--because we'll actually have room for the food ON THE TABLE!! Hooray!
Friday-I cleaned the house. Chris had the afternoon off. This is what he and Elsa did for a large portion of the afternoon...
That night our friends brought us their pet chinchilla named Chi-Chi to pet sit while they're on vacation for 2 weeks. If you're wondering, it's a huge rodent thing-it's actually pretty cute. Elsa has had a lot of fun feeding her and watching her and petting her. She really likes her. Gibson likes to watch her too. He finds her very fascinating.We've redetermined that we don't want any pets.
Saturday-We decided to take a trip to the nearest "large town"(an hour away) for a Wal-mart run and last minute shopping. We finished cleaning the house, and played more Wii.
Today-We got up earlier than usual to be at church earlier than usual. Our family had been asked to sing a special musical number today. We wanted to get there early to practice with the other family we had asked to join us. We all got dressed in our Christmas Sunday best and went to practice. We have been practicing "Angels We Have Heard on High" for a few weeks and wanted to see if Elsa would do a solo. So, we got there early and practiced, and she was excited to sing in the microphone in front of all the people. Our turn to sing wasn't until the end of the meeting, so Elsa had to be patient (patience is not her strongest virtue). Finally, it was our turn. She got up there, I held her up to the microphone. She grabbed it and sang the first verse. She did pretty well. She did better when we were practicing, but I was really glad that she did it, and she was excited to do it. Maybe she has a little of me in her after all. She wanted to keep holding and singing in to the microphone even when the rest of us joined in. It was funny!
When we got home we tried to take some pictures of the kids. Here are the not so successful results. Actually, you can see that Gibson was pretty cooperative. He was very happy to hold his first ornament from his Great Grandma H. Elsa was just herself...

Gibson is now VERY mobile and curious. He is crawling and starting to climb. I found him digging things out of this box-something he wasn't able to do a week ago. Time to be a little more on the alert.