Christmas Pictures

Last week I got the kids pictures taken to be used on our Christmas card. The two oldest girls were great. They were instructed to smile and look at the camera no matter what their younger siblings were doing. Because of this they look exactly the same in EVERY picture. Connor and Mads, not so much. They were test on my patience and I'm sure the photographer's. Out of about 250 shots we found a few usable ones. Here are some of the better shots. Yes, these were the good ones.

All about Sam

On Tuesday Sam had her first band concert, since she started playing the clarinet. It was enjoyable and quite humorous! Mads and I had a great time! Here she is with her good friend, and fellow clarinetist, Shay.


Yesterday I got to go help out in Sammie's classroom for a little while. The fifth graders were all making big, paper mache globes with the explores routes on them. It was a lot of fun to be with her and some of her class mates, but I never want to teach fifth graders. Crazy bunch of kids!

Snowman snacks

Samantha is working on earning her child care badge in Girl Scouts and one of the requirements is to make a healthy and fun snack for a group of children. She asked if she could make something for my nursery class this Sunday. I said sure, so she searched on line and found these cute snowman snacks. She got up early Sunday morning and put them together. They turned out really cute and the kiddos in nursery loved them!



A whole army of them!

Disneyland with cousins!

On Monday we got to go to Disneyland with some of our Young cousins. We had such a fun time with them and I got to hold and squeeze my newest little nephew for the first time!


Kind of dark, but it's the only picture I got of all the kiddos.


This was the highlight of Madison's day. She LOVES Minnie Mouse!


Just before we had to say good bye I got a photo of the whole gang!


Why is Ashelyn missing in the last photo? She's there, she was just worn out!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving my parents drove down from Utah and picked Logan up in Redlands on the way. It is really fun to have family around for Thanksgiving. The kiddos had fun crafting with grandma Linda. They made these very cute and tasty turkeys for our Thanksgiving table. These were in fact the only turkeys that made it to our Thanksgiving table. We decided to go this year with what every one liked the most instead of tradition and had ham instead of turkey and Nothing Bundt Cakes for dessert instead of pie! It was very yummy and a lot of fun!


Connor concentrating on making the perfect waddle!


By rotten luck I bought a bag of really crumbly Oreos. A lot of the cookies crumbled and we had quite a few turkey heads left over. The girls decided to make baby turkeys with them. I think they turned out so cute!


A whole lotta turkeys!


Our Thanksgiving place settings. Turkeys made by the kids, place card by Logan and the napkin holders by Sammie!


Logan waiting for the feast to begin.

Family Feast Day

Today was Connor's Family Feast Day. Each kindergartner got to bring a favorite family food to share and we all had a big feast! Mads got to come with me and I really wanted to get a cute picture of both my kiddos, feasting. I could not get Madison to look at the camera. I kept telling her to look up at Mommy. This is what the majority of my pictures looked like.


Connor was tired of posing so he took matters into his own hands. When I told her to look up for this shot he grabbed one of her piggie tails and pulled her head back. What a sweet brother!

This was finally the best shot I got.


After the feast the kiddos got to go out and play for recess and Madison joined in. She really thought she was one of the big kids. Connor was really proud to show off his baby sister. He kept telling people, "This is my baby sister Madison. She'll eat ANYTHING!"

Soccer season

I can't believe the soccer season is winding down. I love it, but am excited for a small break from running to practices, scrimmages and games every day!

Connor plays in an indoor league and her received player of the week this week for scoring two goals! Unfortunately they lost, but Connor didn't seem to care, after scoring goals, and getting his certificate!


Amanda still has one more week of games but they are the tournament games, so her team had their party anyway because they ended the regular season in first place! Amanda loves playing soccer, but gets so embarrassed having the spotlight put on her. This is a picture of her getting her trophy and being super embarrassed!


This was Sam's last week of games and her team also ended the regular season in first place. We were in charge of snack so we made special victory cupcakes hoping that they would win the championship tournament.


They did end up winning the championship! This is a picture of Sam proudly displaying her first place medal!

3 reasons

I wasn't able to go with Connor this year to our schools book fair to help him make his selections. There are three reasons why I'm sorry I didn't get to go.


Reason #1
Reason #2
Reason #3
Pokemon books. Really Connor?

Merry Christmas!

Looks like Christmas came early to the Young household this year, at least for Madison. I had one of her presents, a baby doll, hidden in my closet. In my cleaning and reorganizing of my closet it became "unhidden". She quickly found it and had it ripped out of the box before I discovered her. What a stinker! Merry Christmas Madison.

Roomates

Madison moved out of her crib into a toddler bed a few months ago but only just recently figured out that she can get out of it herself! Since then Samantha has had a sleeping partner. This is what I see every night when I go in to check on the girls! I think it's adorable that Madison is such a bed hog! And Sam even likes it. One night Mads slept in another room while we had company and Sam commented on how much she missed her!

Halloween

We spent Halloween night at a party at our friend's house eating chili cheese dogs, nachos and tamales followed by lots and lots of candy. Does it get any better than that? Here's a picture of the kiddos ready to head over to the party. Yes, Amanda is missing. Her first Halloween not dressing up and going trick-or-treating! She did make a deal with me though, that if she took Mads out, she got half of Mads candy!
The gang getting ready to go out.
Post trick-or-treating trading.
The Mads.

A parade and a party

Yesterday was the elementary school's annual Halloween parade and class parties. Shaun was able to take the day off so that we could join in the festivities.


L.T. Young.
Dr. Young in the parade.
Mads checking out the parade.
After the parade Shaun and Mads hit the playground.
Connor partying Kindergarten style, doing a coloring page.
Mads crashing the party!

Pumpkins, candy corns and more pumpkins

This Halloween meal was the one I was most excited about making. Bread bowls made to look like pumpkins and my family's favorite cheddar chowder. I am not a bread maker. Sometimes I forget that and attempt to make it. My bread bowls were a bit of a flop. They didn't rise enough to fill with chowder and the stems just kind of melted into them instead of sticking out. Oh well. My family loved the chowder and they had some quite good tasting pumpkin shaped french bread rolls to eat with it!
For dessert more candy corn cookies. They're sugar cookies colored orange and dipped in white chocolate.
After dinner we carved our pumpkins. Funny story...I went to the grocery store the other day and decided to pick up our carving pumpkins while I was there. I stuck three of them in the bottom of the cart, did my shopping and then realized I needed one more pumpkin.I grabbed one and stuck it on top of my groceries. A little boy, probably about 4 years old said,to me "You have a big pumpkin on all your groceries." I said "I know, and I have three more underneath all my groceries!" The look on his face was priceless. The he said "You have that many kids?! That's a ton, no wonder you have so many groceries!" It was so funny, and so much like something Connor would say to a perfect stranger to cause me loads of embarrassment!
The finished products.
All lit up.

Mummies and meatloaf

Tonight's dinner starred mummies once again and the kiddos loved it. I made Shaun some real pizza which he loved and I'm sure appreciated too! I know my ideas are not original. Let's face it, if you've been to an elementary school class party you've had all of these.
If you're looking for something a little more original why not try this?! I wish my friend Jeanette had clued me in on this before I had already made my menus for the week. Who wouldn't want meatloaf hand for dinner? Shaun for one. He wouldn't even look at it up close. This from a man who cuts people open all day. If you really want to make it you can find the recipe here.

Mummies and eyeballs

For dinner last night we had Mummy dogs which everybody (except Shaun. I think he is already tiring of cutesy, kid friendly Halloween food for dinner!) including Connor loved!
With our Mummy dogs I served Frog "eyeball" salad. Originally known as frog eye salad, but saying eyeball makes it sound so much more Halloweeny. We will be having this salad every night this week, plus probably on to next week seeing as how the recipe makes enough for a small army and I'm the only one who would eat it!