Saturday, December 29, 2012

Christmas in the Payne House

December seemed to fly by in a busy, overwhelming blur.  We always try to plan several activities to make this time of year extra special for the girlies, but this year we seemed to have way more going on than usual with Devin's school and traveling for work.  Still, we had a great month and an especially wonderful Christmas.  Some of our activities this month included:

Festival Of Trees


Forgotten Carols


Christmas Village




Finding Elves at Gardener Village



 Building our very own Frosty


Making cards 
We heard about a little boy with a terminal illness who's last wish was to beat the World record for receiving the most cards.  We wanted to help him with his wish and the girls were so excited to decorate cards for him.  


Decorating Cookies


Visiting Great Grandparents


Payne Family Party
Complete with Chimes and a Nativity


Wayment Christmas Eve Party 




Some things never change...


Christmas Eve Pajamas
After getting our Christmas Eve PJ's on, the girls were really excited about leaving milk and cookies out for Santa.  



Christmas Morning





Christmas Dinner with the Paynes





Christmas Movie
Devin surprised me with tickets to see Les Miserables on Christmas night.  It was an amazing movie and an awesome way to end the day!

We have been extremely blessed this Christmas and throughout this last year.  We are especially blessed with the continual love and service of our family and friends.  We can never seem to express enough gratitude for all that is done for our family.  My cup runneth over.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Back Tracking

I was looking through my pictures and realized that there were a few undocumented things that happened over the past few months. And since this blog serves as my journal/scrapbook, I figured I had better take a minute to catch up on the things I had missed.

At some point during September, Quincy decided that she was ready for potty training to start.  She started taking off her diapers (clean ones luckily), telling me when she was going, and started saying yes to going on the potty.  I was holding out for winter time when we would be stuck at home, but wasn't about to hold her back.  It has definitely had its ups and downs.  She does really well when she wants to, but sometimes she can get stubborn or distracted and accidents happen.  She really enjoyed the potty chart though and was really motivated after picking out her reward.  Its weird to not have any kids in diapers, I mean good-weird, but still weird!

                                (Playing on the toy she picked out for her reward for being potty trained)



Adalyn decided she wanted to try out swim lessons.  She has always been very cautious in the water.  I could never get her to dunk her whole head in or go down bigger slides on her own so we hoped that lessons would help.  Boy did they ever!  She loves being in the water now... and although she is still cautious, she jumps, and dunks, and swims underwater like a fish.  We will definitely be signing her up again.



We also started our At Home Preschool in September.  Man, I will never judge teachers very harshly after this experience!  I definitely took for granted how much work goes into just the curriculum alone, let alone the actual teaching. However, it is all worth it when I say, "Okay girls... Time for preschool!" and I always get a resounding, "Yay... Preschool!"  And I definitely love being a part of my girls' learning experiences.  Here are a few pics from our journey thus far...
                                                                  (D is for Dinosaur)

(E is for Elephant)

                                                                          (F is for Fish)



Adalyn's eyes have been consistently improving with her glasses over the last 7 months, but at her recent eye appointment the doctor said that she has plateaued.  In order for her eyes to continue to get better we had to take the next step.  She now wears an eye patch on her better eye for 2 hours a day, to force her "not so good" eye to work harder and continue to get better.  She is so good about wearing the patch, and luckily we were able to get some stylish ones so she is always eager to pick out the one she will wear each day.




Glad I had a minute to get this in before the holiday craziness begins!  Always love this time of year... but it is busy, busy!






Sunday, November 4, 2012

Halloween: A Very "Wicked" Day

Devin and I decided that this year (for the first time since we were married 7 years ago) we would be one of those "fun" families and celebrate Halloween like it is meant to be celebrated.  I mean, we fill our holidays with endless activities and crafts and we try to live it up as much as possible.  But are you really living if you don't dress up?  Well, we really lived it up this year... cause it's living even more when you have a family theme!

Devin and I had recently seen Wicked when it came to town, and I am not ashamed to admit that I am now obsessed (as in I listen to the music daily).  After seeing Wicked, a sweet lady in our ward brought over a gorgeous princess dress that she had made for Addie.  The moment she put it on I thought,  Wow... she looks just like Glinda, all pink and sparkly!  And that was the birth of our Wicked/Wizard of Oz theme.


Glinda:


Dorothy:


Elfaba/Wicked Witch:


Fiero/Scarecrow:


Together at the Trunk Or Treat:


Halloween Party with Cousins:


On Halloween Day we decided to throw together a Preschool Halloween Party.

The girls got to invite a few friends over and we played a few games, had a spooky lunch...



and decorated cookies.
 It was fun way to spend the morning of Halloween.


Trick or Treating was interesting this year. Last year we had to fight to get Addie to stop, but this year she was done before it even got dark.  That is until we got a text from her bestie (well her bestie's mom) seeing if we could go around with them.  With a friend by her side, she could have gone all night, even after the friend got tired!

I think I like this family dress up!  Let's see how long I can keep it going before Devin puts the kibosh on it!

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Family Pictures

We recently had the chance to get our yearly family pictures done.  As much as everyone in our family LOVES doing family pictures, I always love how they turn out.  Here are some of our favorites...