Merry Christmas to you all- Wishes of Peace & Joy to you and your family!

 

For me this year has been very bittersweet.  I feel blessed in so many ways and also sad about things that have happened that I had no control over.   I know I must continue to put my faith in God and know that he has a plan for each and every one of us.  A new year is coming when all things will begin anew... hopefully this coming year will bring all my friends and family peace and comfort! :)

From My  Family to YOURS!  Wishing you a Merry Christmas.  

We  pray for you all to have a joyful and peaceful end of 2010 and a 

very HAPPY NEW YEAR in 2011!!

With lots of LOVE,

Happy Birthday Baby Jesus! (Party at our church)

I have been meaning to post this for awhile! :) At the beginning of December I helped put together our 3rd Baby Jesus Birthday party at my church. Moms in our group helped make cupcakes, bring drinks and snacks.  We also decorated with blues and white colors.  Everyone was asked to bring the baby Jesus from their creche for Father to bless!

 

Getting ready for the party- Baby Jesus birthday party hats!

 Little gift bags and craft activities to take home.

 

We had a craft activity- got it from Oriental trading online- love that place!! They had nativity pictures with stickers to place on the nativity scene... big stickers easy for little hands!

 

Everyone brought their baby Jesus from their own home creche... we had our fancy (adult creche) baby Jesus and then the girls brought their Little People baby Jesus as well!

 

Then the kids sat down and each child got a cupcake with a candle.  We lit the birthday candles and sang Happy Birthday to baby Jesus!

 

Blowing out the birthday candle at Baby Jesus party!

 

After we sang to baby jesus we at cupcakes and had drinks and watched a short (10 minute) cartoon on the Nativity story.  Love this little educational video I got! :)

 

Once the video was over some kids finished up their craft project, and others got ahold of the balloons and ran around with their friends! FUN! :)

 

Lily is ready to go with her special Baby Jesus gift bag and balloon too! 

What a special morning!

BALLET!

 I never thought I'd just melt while I watched my little one take her first ballet lessons...I was always sort of a "tomboy" when  I was younger. But I am absolutely loving all the fun girlie things that we get to do now that I have 2 (and soon to be 3!!) little girls.

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 First, she has Ballet for 30 minutes... and then Tap... that is pretty darn cute too! :)  Daddy got to see her last week and was pretty impressed too... how can you not love a little one in a tutu???

Then there is little sister... she is just DYING to get up there and dance too like her big sis!!She tries to take off her shoes the entire time we are there.  And for the past 2 weeks she wants to wear a tutu at home, on our daily excursions, during naptime, and at bedtime.... I have to sneak the tutu away to wash it every few days! :) She will be out there soon enough!

 

Preschool Playdate- Letter J- Christmas Activities!

For our last preschool playdate before the new year, we did lots of fun Christmas Activities and focused on the Letter J.

First, we read a story about Baby Jesus- it is called Stable in Bethlehem -a Christmas counting book.

We used small blocks that I got from Dollar Tree for the kids to used to count while reading the story.

My two year old LOVED pushing the button on the plastic candles and lighting all the lights! I thought that was a great fine motor skill-- she was so serious about it!

Then she used my old cardboard advent calendar and had to pull out each box... in each box was large gold jingle bell! She was so suprised at what was in the tiny boxes- she loved it! :) The other kiddos wanted to do it as well! :)

For playdate we sorted different Christmas tree patterns from the awesome 1+1+1=1 blog/website.

Then they had to put the Nativity scene in size order. I got most of these cute printable ideas  from 1+1+1=1.  She has the cutest things for tots and preschoolers! Love this blog/website!!

We talked about the letter J and used a candy cane (upside down) to make the letter J for baby Jesus!

We also put stickers on the letter J and talked about Jesus' birthday! :)

Both of these activities are also from 1+1+1=1.

Then we made Christmas tree cones.  We took ice cream cones and colored icing green. 

 They spread the green icing on the cones and sat them upside down.

Afterwards they put sprinkles all over the icing to make the trees look decorated.  It worked best to ROLL the trees in the sprinkles.  They turned out cute- and YUMMY too!

We read the story of the Little Drummer boy and each child played drums on different canisters and bowls that we had.  We have one drum and so each kiddo got to be the "drummer boy" for part of the song. 

Then we worked on colors and shapes with a cute christmas tree coloring activity.

We also worked on our letters and writing skills.  Tracing on these cute forms - I laminated them and we used dry erase markers.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2011! 

Our trip to Build A Bear

My husband's Aunt Mary sent our girls such a sweet gift this year ( I think I was almost as excited as them!) She sent them gift certificates to Build A Bear.  We took the girls a few nights ago (on a week night- weekends at the Mall are CRAZY in December!)

Scarlett chose a Bear and Lily chose a Cat.  Here they are helping press the foot pedal to STUFF their animals! 

Lily was so excited to help stuff her kitty!

They had to choose a heart to put into their animal- they had to give it a BIG kiss to fill it with love! :)

 After the stuffing was done they had to give their animals an AIR Bath... they are brushing and "cleaning" their new pets! They just LOVED this :)

Then they picked out outfits... Scarlett chose a princess dress and Lily chose this ballerina dress... they both also insisted on panties!! They have PANTIES for these animals! LOL (thought that was so funny!)

All dressed and ready to go on their way!  We went over to a special computer and had to name their new animals- Lily named hers "Bo Peep" (where did this come from?? I have not idea! lol) and Scarlett named her bear "sunshine".  She informed me today that she was not going to play with sunshine today because bears "hibernate" in the cold.... I was pretty impressed with this! lol

Off we go with our new pets!  Love these boxes... they were so excited! Thank you Aunt Mary! Wish you could have been here to enjoy all the excitement!  We love you!!