Self Image

I love projects that show how kids see themselves. Aeryn brought this home from school and gave it to me as a gift. I love it and don't ever want to forget what she wrote. Some of it was a complete surprise. Dentist? That's a new one. I suppose it gets tacked on to the end of the BYU cheerleader/4th grade teacher/veterinarian dream.

I am the one who is happiest when I have new friends.
I am the one who thinks about friendship.
I am the one who loves to play.
I am the one who is lucky because I'm awesome!
I am the one who will someday be a dentist.

Who am I? 

I am a girl who is kind and happy and amazing. I have blond hair and blue eyes and freckles. And I'm 4 foot 7 inches and 70 pounds. Do you know who I am?

My Favorite Things

My favorite things include lots of items. First I like lions. They are my best fans. Next, I like writing. Finally, it is fun to do drawing. Also, I love my teddy bear. I love my things.

My Family

My family is odd and kind. My family loves traveling. They also like waterfalls. We have 4 people in my family. We spend a lot of time together. Also we love wolves. My family loves me.

The best part about this? She knows she's loved and that we like to spend time together. Oh, and the family portrait where she and Ellie are both holding their favorite stuffed animals is pretty awesome too.

The Thankful Tree

At Thanksgiving, the kids and I decided very last minute to create a thankful tree. It wasn't anything fancy. Using paper grocery bags, I created a few tree limbs and  gave them free reign to color and cut out leaf shapes to go on it. I confess I was really surprised to see how small many of the leaves were and ended up cutting out some basic ones myself, just to be sure they would be large enough to write on. Part of me wanted to make a glamorous, beautiful thankful tree we could use year after year, but this one ended up being perfect because the kids felt ownership over it and were so excited to write down something they were thankful for each night at dinner. Especially Ellie. She thought this was the greatest thing ever and would add to it over and over again.

I didn't take any pictures of it once we added our thankful things, but I've kept the pile of leaves hanging around until I finally took a picture of them today. I want to remember what my kids and their sweet little hearts are thankful for. We only did this for the week of Thanksgiving when we were all together. I'd say we came up with a pretty good list for one crazy week.

The Davis Family Thankfuls 2012:

wolfs

dinner with my family

dogs

cats

love

apples

a healthy body

happiness

USA

the Priesthood in our home

food

others

volleyball

sports

teddy bears

flowers

me

United States of America

family

hearts

being able to run

hot water heaters

moms and dads

Any guesses who said what?

And, just because this picture is awesome, we can't wait to see Ellie in about a week, and I felt the need to begin a sentence with a conjunction, here is a cute little moment that I couldn't bear to let pass.

Ellie finished her after-dinner jobs really fast and then got to draw while Aeryn did her vacuuming. It's nice to know that one of our kids understands the value of expedience.

December Insanity

I remember being a kid and hearing all the adults around me talking about how busy the month of December was. It was something that I could not fathom with my busy schedule of playing, eating, going to school, more playing, staring longingly at each box under the tree wishing it were for me (since my dad didn't put names on anything to keep the mystery alive), and then some more playing. Each year it seems life gets a little bit crazier at Christmastime. 

The funny thing about feeling crazy this year is that we are keeping Christmas really simple. The girls are both with other parents for the holiday so we're keeping gifts at a minimum for them (since they will have already received about a billion) and forgoing them altogether for each other. Last year I made 17 batches of fresh pasta as neighbor gifts and this year I confess I haven't done anything. I expected that this would make life feel easygoing and carefree, but it hasn't. 

The past couple weeks have been a blur. We'll just focus on the past 24 hours. 

Last night was the Christmas party at church. I ended up *unofficially* on the activities committee for the event and have been pretty busy putting together a newspaper, helping to organize the food, set up, serve, clean up, take the kids' Santa pictures, and try to maintain the general sanity of other committee members. It's over. It was successful. I can breathe now. 

This morning Aeryn and I attended a cookie contest and exchange that was pretty much the most fun thing I've ever seen, as far as cookies exchanges go. There was a crown for the "cookie queen" as determined by taste testing and anonymous voting. Add lots of chocolate, really kind people, and spontaneous outbursts of singing "we are the champions" and it was a complete blast. 

Meanwhile, Jim was running 14 miles in the cold and mud with a few of our other runner friends. In his words, "this was the hardest race I've ever done" because it was extremely muddy, steep in places, and just downright hard. He's pretty sore and tired now, but I'm happy he did it. As for why there was a big stuffed gorilla at the finish line, I'm still not sure. 

This was followed by 4 loads of laundry, grocery shopping, and now finally life calming down a little bit. I'm ready for a breather.