French Immersion Program

A throwback picture from nearly 16 years ago - my sister and I at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Why this random picture, you ask? I just found out that Tessa got into the French immersion program at Belmont. She'll spend 50% of her day totally immersed in a French classroom. I'm so excited for her. I can't wait to take her to this same place where this picture was taken when she can speak some French. I've been studying French on Duolingo so hopefully I'll speak some too at that point. I can't wait. Deux croissants au chocolat, s'il vous plaît!

My Silly Girls

My girls discovered the original funny faces app - playing dress up with the potato head parts!

Kids Say the Darndest Things IX

(The girls' cousin, Annabelle, was at our house and she was showing Tessa and Jenny a new toy - a makeup brush like for applying blush)

Annabelle: I have a brush!
Jenny: Sharing is caring.

----

(Over dinner)

Mom: Jenny would you like your hotdog plain or on a bun?
Jenny: Plain, but with ketchup and not ketchup.
Mom: Do you mean mustard?
Jenny: Yeah, mustard!

Christmas

We had a really good Christmas this year. We started it as usual with our tradition of setting up and decorating the Christmas tree after Thanksgiving and doing our normal family picture in front of the tree.

I couldn't resist including this one, Jenny, looking so excited in front of the tree.

We also had fun with cousins sledding.

And having snowball fights.

Also, this year, Terry and Anah invited us over for making Christmas cookies so we enjoyed doing that with them. Jenny, my cooking cutting fiend, especially loved it.

I'll give you one guess on who put the sprinkles on the above cookie.

We also did our normal decorating gingerbread houses tradition as a family.

Our last year's winner was dethroned this year ...

...by this beauty:

And pictured with it's proud owner and yes, that is a tumbleweed Christmas tree table center piece.

Fun was had by all and much candy sneaking!

We did our usual pictures with Santa at Adobe.

Tessa did great!

And this year, Jenny actually let herself be pictured alone instead of just being held by mom. Though I think you can tell from her body language, she definitely trusts Mrs. Claus more than the big guy, himself.

This year, for cookies for Santa, Jenny specifically asked if we could do homemade gingerbread cookies and she asked near the beginning of December. So we made sure to make it happen at Grandma's house where we did Christmas (thanks, mom!). By gingerbread cookies she meant sugar cookies that she could cut out into gingerbread men shapes. She really loves using the cookie cutters and she had fun decorating them too.

She wanted to make one for Santa, one for Mrs. Claus and one for their baby. Thus the three cookies in the three sizes.

Then this year David and I introduced a new Christmas/winter time tradition - snowshoeing. We snowshoed around Tibble Fork Reservoir twice now and it is really beautiful there.

I've liked hiking for a long time and I've really missed it in years passed during the winter so it has been really fun to start snowshoeing. It has really helped with making the winter feel less long and awful to be able to still get outside and enjoy nature. Yay for snowshoeing!

We also started a new tradition as a family - watching a Christmas movie. This year, mom picked it and I choose the Mickey's Christmas Carol, an old classic I liked as a kid so that was fun. I didn't get any photos of it so I'll just include this fun Christmasy picture from the office at Jenny and Tessa's school in it's stead.

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Tessa's First Choir Concert

Tessa had her first choir concert. She loved learning her songs for it and sang them around the house frequently. David and I definitely got the songs stuck in our head, but it was cute to watch her practice her choreography and listen to her sing around the house. It was really neat to see how much she enjoyed it and how excited she was to perform with her class. She asked me nearly everyday how many days there were left until the "Christmas Sing" for the 2 weeks leading up to the concert. Here she is practicing one of her songs at home.

Here she is performing with the rest of the first graders at her school. All the parents were excited to get videos of the performance so you'll see other parent's phones in my recording - LOL.

King and Queen

    Jenny's favorite thing to play at the moment is this game she made up called "King and Queen". It's this cute mash up of 'dress up' and 'house'. Generally, she'll want to play it first thing in the morning. So it starts with Jenny getting all dressed up to be the Queen. She has to put on a Princess dress, slippers, a crown, and jewelry which will usually include a few bracelets, a few rings, clip on earrings, and necklace. Then she'll sit at her vanity and do her make up.

Once she is all dressed up, she'll tell me that I'm the King and we'll get married which is super cute or sometimes we'll already be married and she'll find some dolls to be our babies and we'll take care of the babies giving them bottles. When Tessa plays too, she plays as our baby or older kid or sometimes as our royal kitten. I think it's super cute how much Jenny loves dressing up.

A Princess and an Owl

This year for Halloween, Tessa wanted to be a princess. Her Grandma Wilcox was already planning on making her a princess costume from a skirt she had so it worked out great! Princess dresses are way beyond my sewing expertise so thank you grandma!

Here is a picture of Tessa in her costume with Grandma Wilcox after trying it on for size. Extra credit to Grandma for the hat!!

It was unfortunately pretty cold on Halloween so Tessa's costume was partly covered by her winter coat, but I suppose that's just how it goes most Halloweens in Utah. 

Jenny kept flip flopping on what she wanted to be. First she wanted to be a pirate. Then she changed her mind to a mummy. Then she wanted to be a nose. When I asked her how she was planning to walk around in a nose costume, she said I would carry her the whole time. When vetoed mom holding her the whole time, she changed her mind to be a witch. Then she finally decided she wanted to be a Halloween Owl. After confirming a few days in a row she still wanted to be that, I told her she was locked in and began working on her costume. I cut out felt feathers and sewed them to a piece of fabric cut into a cape shape, sewed some feathers on some sweats, and painted her face. This was the result and while a few people seeing her guessed that she was a flower most everyone said bird or owl - success!

I had a lot of fun making her costume. It got me back into sewing and wanting to do it more. Maybe I'll even finish the baby blanket quilts I started for the girls before they were born someday -LOL. The girls had a lot of fun with trick-or-treating. We tried to keep up some traditions and do some fun Fall activities before Halloween as well. 

First, we had to pick out our pumpkins at our usual place - Bob's Pumpkin Patch.

Or just roll on them - LOL.

Silly Tessa! Then we had to climb the hay bales and go down the slides and feed the animals.

We had to paint our pumpkins.

Then a new thing - we went to the Witch Festival and Six Hags. The Witch Festival had a bunch of these cute decorations and displays of witches.

Then at the Six Hags, there were a bunch of fun little activities. Tessa's favorite was the rope swing.

Jenny's favorite was the corn pit. She had me bury her probably about 5 times. And she even buried me.

Happy Halloween!