Braces off!

Here is my beautiful baby girl (10 years old, but still my baby!) with her braces off! What a beautiful simile. Below is a before picture that was taken the day she got her braces on, one year ago to the month!

Talent show-Alyssa singing Happy Working Song from Enchanted

Here is my darling 10 year old daughter singing Happy Working Song from the movie Enchanted. This is for her school talent show. She loves preforming and had a great time doing this!

Another talented bunch!

This is Nathan, 8 years old, and Savannah, 7 years old, singing When Christmas Comes to town from the movie The Polar Express. This is for their school talent show. Their performance was a little eventful. The first time they sang the music cut out in the middle of sweet Savannah's little dance. They were quiet surprised. Fortunately I brought a back up CD that my amazing husband burned for me before he went out of town. After the intermission they were able to give an encore presentation and sing again. They were much happier after completing their song!! This is the full version shown here.

Meet the singers

Here is a photo of my little performers after the performance. They were so cute and so brave to get up in front of a huge audience and sign. They worked really hard practicing and they had such a great time. I love that we get to go to a school that allows the children to display their talents!

I won a book!

I am so excited!! I never win anything!! I follow a few crafting blogs (links are to the right on my blog). I love the many tutorials and inspirational ideas I see. Well, at SEW CHRISTINE, she had a giveaway for a very cute book of purse and craft ideas. I uploaded some of my recent projects and she choose a person at random and it was me! I am so excited and can't wait for my new book. I should enter giveaways more often! Here is the winning project of mine:

Happy Halloween!

This is what has kept me busy in my free time for the past few weeks. HALLOWEEN!!! My mother started the tradition of having a theme and making all of our costumes when I was young. I pretty much keep up the tradition. This year we did the Alice in Wonderland theme. Alyssa was Alice, Savannah was the Queen of Hearts (naturally), Nathan was a card that was painting the rose (Alanna) red, and Arya was the adorable Cheshire Cat. (Her costume was kind of tricky because I couldn't find striped fabric, so I had to cut strips and serge them together, and THEN cut out the costume. Fun.)

We had an AMAZING week of Halloween parties and fun! Alyssa went to a party last Friday with her friends and stayed out until 10pm! It was almost like she was a teenager (she thought!) Then on Thursday Nathan and Savannah went to a party where they bobbed for apples, dipped them in caramel, and had a ton of fun.

Friday was the most rock'n time. Our friends just bought an amazing house out in Fallbrook. It is on a huge piece of land and the house is huge! They went all out with decorations, games, food, and fun. The kids ran, seriously, ran nonstop. Jared and I even dressed up. He was Porthos from the Three Musketeers and I was his 'beautiful woman.' We didn't get photos together, unfortunately.

Saturday was our annual church party. There was yummy food, tons of fun carnival type games, contests, prizes, music, and of course, the famous Trunk or Treat. Arya was a little apprehensive at first, but after one trip around to each 'trunk,' she was on her own! She loved it.


Then we came home, trick or treated the neighborhood while dinner was cooking, then went to to visit our piano teacher. She promised the children a big candy bar! So we took her some scarecrow cookies and trick or treated her street. So much candy, so much fun! Arya kept saying, "More house? Yes?"

Field Trip

We took a field trip to The Brass Ring this week. It was a very cool lesson on matter. Thank you to Bruce for taking us on a tour of his shop!!