On night 5 of advent we let the girls decorate the little tree in the bathroom, the girls have a little tree in their room but we don't quite trust them to not take the ornaments on and off during the night. :) 

Remember our little incident last year? Kenley took the little bulbs off of the tree in their room and put them all in Claire's crib. I walked in just as Claire was about to put a tiny bulb in her mouth! We put a different tree in their room this year, but I am not taking any chances! 

While the girls slept I set the tree up and decorated it! I decided to go really simple this year and just did silver and turquoise ornaments.

On night 6 of advent we let the girls decorate sugar cookies! They absolutely loved it! I used this recipe for the cookies and this one for the icing. The ingredients are definitely not on my healthy list but I don't mind them once a year! 

They loved decorating the cookies!

 It was so fun! I definitely want to decorate cookies with them again! 

Skyping with Auntie!

Kenley's Rainbow Craft

The other day I mentioned that we had read about Noah and that Kenley wanted to do a rainbow craft. We first tried doing this rainbow craft but it was a bit too complicated for Kenley right now, so I just let her paint the bowls however she wanted. 

Then I printed this rainbow and let her paint the dots to match the colors. 

 

She was so sweet and wanted to paint the rainbow picture for her BFF Gracen since she had been sick.

I love doing crafts with her and I am so thankful that she loves crafts too! 

Advent Night 4- ZooLights!

On the fourth night of Advent my mom and I drove down to Tacoma to take the girls to Zoo Lights! my cousin Nicole and Barbara and Ben met us down there! It was pouring down rain but we still had a great time! My phone was trapped in kid lock mode for the first half of our time there, so I don't have any pictures of Scuba Santa but he was so fun to see! Kenley yelled Happy Halloween to him. haha! 

Ben and Kenley watching the adorable meerkats 

The girls loved the carousel  

Husky for Daddy 

Coug for Auntie... Although she doesn't look that happy about it :) {Daddy will be proud of her!} 

The beautiful lights 

My Kenley girl!

My CLo girl!

Surgery Summary

I do apologize for not updating this as soon as things were happening, but here I am now...

As Keri already posted, she is back home and resting. Only 6 1/2 hours between getting there and getting home. That is definitely a record for shortest time at a hospital for Keri.

About 1 hour 15 minutes after they took Keri into the OR, the doc came out and started with "Well I have bad news for you." Now remember going into this, we thought the two options of what would happen are 1) Cysts need to be removed or 2) Scar tissue had formed again.

For about 15 minutes, he tried to explain to me what was happening with Keri and I won't lie, most of it went over my head (but I did get the whole explanation on video so Keri could get the same rundown). Long story short, Keri's insides are so messed up that they couldn't really do anything. He said so many adhesions had been formed that it would be impossible to fix without creating an even worse problem. The "cyst" that they had seen in the ultrasound was actually a huge clump of scar tissue filled with fluid.

All that to say, we are now unable to have any more children of our own.

That was difficult news to hear, and I'm still not sure it's totally sunk in for me yet.

There's your update. We're at home, doing fine. I'm studying for finals (she always manages to have surgery during my finals week). We are blessed to have the friends and family that we have and we have the two most wonderful girls that parents could ask for.

...Bring on the adoption process....

Keri wanted me to ask you to give her a little time before talking to her about it. Thanks!

out of surgery and home resting

Finally in!

They finally took Keri into surgery. Now just playing the waiting game. I'll let you know when something actually happens!

Surgery Day

I can't believe that surgery day is here already. I am feeling lots of mixed emotions, I am excited that the day is here and we can get this over with but I also am not feeling excited about being cut open and all the iv's and blood draws that accompany that. I check in for surgery at noon so that means that my surgery will probably be around 2pm. I think Brian will be updating the blog with surgery updates. 

I am very behind on posting pictures but hopefully I will have lots of free (recovery) time that I can catch up on posting all of our advent activities and recent pictures! 

For now, here is a super cute craft that we did with Kenley this week! 

I gave her 2 shades of blue and some purple paint and let her paint card stock. We let the card stock fully dry over night and then I used my Silhouette machine to cut the Nativity silhouettes out of black sparkly vellum. Then we let her glue the silhouettes to the painted card stock. We laid it out on the table so that she could see how it should go and then she glued them on the paper herself. I think they turned out so beautiful! 

Kenley's Crafts

Kenley LOVES doing crafts, coloring, and painting. Every time I lay Claire down for a nap she asks to do a craft. She also asks me to lay Claire down for naps all the time so that she can do crafts. :) 

I keep a lot of her artwork hanging in her bedroom but I have also started taking pictures of lots of them so that we don't have to keep everything but we can still remember how her drawings used to look. She is really into drawing people right now, I just love it! 

I think this one looks like a puppy... but she drew it in Church so maybe it is her first picture of Pastor Sean? Haha :)

Kenley told me that the pink lines on the sides are cheeks :) 

The children's museum had paper gingerbread men to color on in the art room. She loved it so I am going to cut a bunch with the Silhouette machine for her and her preschool friends to color at their Christmas party! 

Brian thinks that this one looks like a picture of a bacteria culture on a slide. His mind must be on his Biology class because I thought that she had drawn 2 suns overlooking the water! 

I wrote out who she told me the people were in this picture. If you can't read my writing is says Cinderella, Belle, Me, Gracen, and Claire. :)

We read about Noah this morning and I promised her that tomorrow we could do a rainbow craft so I am off to search pinterest for a rainbow craft! Any ideas? 

iPhone Pictures!

Since we have Preschool on Wednesdays and the Library on Fridays, Thursdays just tend to be a little lame around here. In an effort to make this past Thursday super fun I decided that we needed to go for a donut run! I let each girl pick out her very own donut.... (Though I didn't let them eat the entire thing). Kenley picked chocolate frosted with sprinkles and Claire picked out a tiger stripe bar which is half maple frosting half chocolate. I picked a chocolate frosted old fashioned because those are the best donuts ever! :)

While walking to the checkout the girls noticed the mirrors in the produce section...

Cheese! 

These freeze dried strawberries are a fun yummy snack.. I have lots of recipe ideas swirling around in my head about fun new uses for these! 

I used a little clearance photo book to make a flip book for our ABC verses! 

I can't decide between a waffle stick maker and a heart shaped waffle maker... Thoughts? I grew up with my Mom making heart shaped waffles but I feel like the waffle stick maker would be really convenient with the girls! 

 Gracen and Asher came to play! I can totally see these girls having super fun sleepovers in a few years! 

 We finally made it back to the Children's Museum! It had been so long since we were last there! 

Whenever there are Dad's in the construction brick room there are big buildings and fortresses :) 

CLo and I had a little Dora/Pasta party

While we were eating pasta on the floor, Brian took Kenley out on a date to Applebees and then out for Ice Cream! 

The girls are in a BIG Tarzan phase right now. If the movie isn't playing, chances are high that the Tarzan/Phil Collins station is playing on Pandora. Kenley loves belting out the lyrics to "You'll be in my Heart". 

While Claire was napping, Kenley was dancing in her underwear to Tarzan music :) Just a normal Sunday afternoon....

Silly Girls

Again with the Tarzan.... 

I guess Kenley isn't the only child who can sleep in funny positions! Silly CLo! 

Advent Night 1

I am really excited to start an advent tradition with the girls this year. We have decided to go through the Jesus Story Book Bible for advent this year. It is great because the book is already 24 chapters and each chapter points to our need for a Savior. 

I printed little strips of paper with the chapter that we will read that night, folded them, and then stuck them in an old Starbucks advent calendar. 

On each strip of paper I am also putting different colored star stickers to represent different activities that we will do. Gold stars mean that the girls get to open a present. Other colors of stars represent activities like Zoo Lights, driving to see Christmas lights, making Christmas cookies, going to pick a tree, special movie night, milk and cookies nights, decorating their room, etc.  

Our first night of advent was a gold star night and the girls got to open a Fisher Price Nativity Set. I am really excited about using this set to help explain all the people and their roles to the girls. 

Happy start of the Advent season! 

Silhouette Love

I am still loving my Silhouette machine! I have been working on CLo's birthday party invitations and party decor as well as a few things for our Preschool Christmas party! I'm excited! Here are a few screenshots of what I'm working on!

Did you know....

... that my husband started his very own blog? He did and its quite good! His topics include but are not limited to: politics, religion, marriage, parenthood, nutrition, and health. Pretty much every issue in which we humans struggle with apathy! 

Check it out: 

Apathetic No Longer