cinnamon ornaments

i made a decree this year (as i am apt to foolishly do) that all the ornaments on our tree would be homemade.

thus, it's december 10th, and our tree remains un-adorned.

but never fear:  the wheeler girls do have several projects in process, and we hope at least some of them make it to decorate our evergreen eventually.

up first, the cinnamon ornaments:

being the crazy, uptight, "hands-on" person/mother that i am, it's hard for me to find projects to do with my kids that i'm not all over and in their face about. as in, "no, no! not like that! there're going to be cracks! it's going to be sloppy! how old are you?? were you raised in a barn?? i'll just do it myself!" 

so....

i decided to make my own gingerbread ornaments one evening after the girls had gone to bed (that i could do myself) and then have a cinnamon soiree with the girls the next day where they could just go at it (and i could learn -- please, someone teach me! -- to relax).

it was great fun. (success!) and it turns out, summer is somewhat of a cookie rolling, cutting, excess-dough-removing prodigy (tear). and cutie-pie afton is well on her way.

recipe: 3/4 c. applesauce, 1 heaping c. cinnamon, 3 T. white glue. mix, roll, cut, and bake for 2 1/2 hours at 200 degrees and voila!

christmas cheer!

jolly old st. nick

no tears this year!

candy cane confection

and let the first cookie of the holiday season be baked!

peppermint powdered sugar cookies

merry and bright

let the first craft of the holiday season be done!

(now, on to hair accessories...)

blogs i love

so we got craft blogs, style blogs, cooking blogs, and even mormon mommy hipster lifestyle blogs. but below are a couple of my favorites that you might not yet have tried.

first off, i know it's so wrong, but i can't stop reading suri's burn book. it's out-of-the-box and darkly funny and sort of makes me want to be BFFs with suri cruise. think mean girls gone preschool hollywood.
http://surisburnbook.tumblr.com/

secondly, you MUST read the hilarious and spot-on verbal vomit. here, she so cleverly sums up my experience with the twilight series:
http://www.verbal-vomit.com/2011/11/team-anything-but-edward.html

sometimes you feel like a nut

and sometimes you feel like homemade chocolate hazelnut spread.

chocolate, hazelnuts, milk, and honey.

sinfully simple. delicious on everything. 

(try it on grilled pound cake with berries and fresh whipped cream.)

but best enjoyed straight up with a spoon.

les pommes

a direct quote from afton at lunch today:

"i don't like them apples."

introducing

lil peanut:

for those of our readers who may be less accustomed to examining ultrasound photos, the baby's head is on the right of the frame, and you can sort of make out the eye and nose sockets (and, is that a giant brain?!), and a hand/arm up by the left side of the baby's face. then the huge abdomen (full of all that chocolate) is on the left side of the screen.

dearest little baby: 

enjoy the rest of your time in my dark, quiet, calming womb because out here, you're going to have two crazy, loud (and all too cute) sisters who are going to love you to death and drive you nuts. 

see you soon, 

mom

cha-ching!

so summer recently came in to some money (courtesy of a birthday and four generous great-grandmothers).

and today, she took her cash to the grocery store in her little pink purse and made her very first purchase: two ring pops, one for her and one for her sister.

she excitedly picked out her treats, put them up on the conveyor belt, and handed the correct amount of money to the cashier. she waited for her change, which she tucked back into her pink purse, and very proudly took the receipt.

ps - in other firsts for the day, summer also filled out her first tithing slip to give to the bishop on sunday and sent out her first letter. her sunbeam teacher will soon be receiving words of gratitude and love from one little summer girl.

school girl

what's cooler than a chick in a tie?

a pregnant chick in a tie.

the ghost of christmas past

going through old photos today and remembering babies so cute and mommies so tired.

summer and me, december 2007

evergreen

ten days ago we were busy carving pumpkins; today we bundled up and headed to the carnation tree farm to select and secure our 2011 wheeler family christmas tree. my, the calendar pages pass quickly.

before we left, summer shared with us a few of her ideas on how best to cut down the tree: 1) daddy will shoot it with his gun.  2) she will knock it over with her princess wand. and after a brief discussion on why methods (1) and (2) were less than ideal, she finally settled on 3) she will bring her blue plastic saw to cut through the trunk.

ah, the physics of a four year old.

but after giving it her best go, summer eventually had to concede -- a little unwillingly -- to daddy cutting down our douglas fir with a much larger and a definitely not plastic saw. then our tannenbaum was baled, brought home, and the girls and i settled in for a winter's nap while bryan made dinner (really, what's there not to love about my life?). when we woke up, we enjoyed watching micky's christmas and treating ourselves to top pot doughnuts and deliciously rich sipping chocolate.

the christmas season can officially begin.

hot to trot

no tutorial for the turkey bows (or the other two little turkeys for that matter) -- i made them myself! (i guess bryan helped some with the girls...)

if you're interested in bow instructions, email me, and i'll see if i can remember ribbon measurements and what not for you.

little turkeys

tutorial here. 

curlz

summer and afton bounded down the stairs this morning and wanted curlers in their hair.

is there anything cuter than two little girls in curls?

marry me

on thanksgiving day eight years ago, bryan wheeler finished what i had started two years before and became the last man standing in my looooong (ha!) line of suitors. 

grateful everyday to be with someone who is as perfect for me as he is (left-handedness and all).

bryan and emily (young and dorky in every way), thanksgiving 2003.

i can't believe we made butter

for family home evening last night, we had our annual (i-can-call-anything-a-party) harvest party.

first, the girls made butter. they actually did a great job and enjoyed the shaking a lot (which they did while running around and dancing to various primary songs).  here's a tip for the young ones: we "started" the butter a little bit with a hand mixer to more correctly align the butter-making process with the girls' attention spans.

then we played a game called color me grateful. we went through six or so colors and had the girls name something of that color that they are grateful for (not surprisingly, most of their answers ended up being different kinds of fruit). then they colored in a sheet of various objects, trying to use the correct colors.

afterwards we went turkey hunting -- an easy activity that kids really dig. we had the girls leave the living room while we hid little turkey cards all around. then they came back in and raced around trying to find the most turkeys. summer had an obvious advantage and beat afton easily; however, she could not surpass little afton in sheer excitement every time a turkey was found.

finally, daddy baked us up some delicious scones that we smothered in the homemade butter, wild blueberry jam, and honey.

happy thanksgiving!

chocobabe

"Mfd. by The Hershey Company"

don't be surprised if wheeler threeler is born into this world with that inscription on his or her little tiny baby bum.

i'm not going to come clean about how many hershey bars i have eaten (so far) this pregnancy. but i am going to say, it's at least one a day, and thank heavens for costco.

lazy dayz

in case someone was wondering how long the 

wheeler girls stayed in their pajamas today,

it was until 12:07 pm.

on the edge

one of the most enlightening aspects of parenting a preschooler is all the questions you get to answer that make you feel like a total idiot.

i'm not talking about "why is the sky blue?" or "where do babies come from?" or "how long is forever?"

it's stuff that's much more complicated than that.

the other day, we were in the car, driving along, and listening to the radio.  lady gaga's "edge of glory" came on, and the girls and i jammed to its happy, upbeat tune. then, seemingly out of nowhere, summer inquires, "why is she in danger?"

blink. blink.

"uh, honey, she's not in real danger, it's just a song."

whew. narrow escape.

"but why does she say 'dangerous'?"

blink. blink. 

uh...uh...think back, think back, the song says, "it's hard to feel the rush/to push the dangerous/i'm gonna run right to, to the edge with you/where we can both fall over in love." it's nonsense.  nonsense, i tell you!

dangerous...dangerous...why does she say 'dangerous'? come on emily, answer the question. where's that college scholarship, that only person to get the bonus question on the calculus test right, that published research on positioning theory, that magna cum laude?  where are they to save me now?!

okay, it's lady gaga. she's probably at a bar. she sees a dude she likes. she wants to run around and be dangerous with him. she decides to write a power ballad about it...

just say something!!

"um, because it's dangerous to go home with people you don't know."


post script:  see update here.

we got that super bass

(http://youtu.be/daz9NPgnNV0)

no guts, no glory

we didn't mean to make this a tradition or anything, but it looks like the cool kids are still carving their pumpkins halfway through november.

wrapping up

the last of the birthday posts:  summer whacks (and whacks...and whacks....and whacks) her birthday pinata.

(http://youtu.be/auNh4UsjhGo)

thank you, summer girl, for filling the past four years of our 

lives with so much more joy than we ever could hope for.

mwah!

where a kid can be a kid

not too much to report on the chuck e. cheese front.  it's pretty much like we all remember it, only more crowded. and bryan and i have since learned that chuck e. cheese's is the site of more adult brawls than biker bars -- with some locations even sporting armed guards. who knew?

anyhoo, our time there wasn't that dramatic, but it wasn't without its drama.

summer and afton climbed up into those tubes that kids love which wound around the ceiling. this one had only one entry point and one exit point and quite a bit of tubing in between. a little less than half way into her journey, afton decided that she had had enough and began screaming to be rescued (the screaming being amplified, of course, by all the tubes). so momma did what mommas have to do and shimmied up and crawled around to rescue her frightened cub. that was pretty much all the exercise i'm getting in this month.

summer really loved all that chuck e. cheese's had to offer (like we knew she would);  afton, who pretty much hates machines, was afraid of not only the tubes, but all the games and rides and only loved collecting tickets.

so it's a good thing that mom and dad turned out to be pretty darn good at several of the chuckster's trickster games (who needs college?), won our fair share of tickets, and now our girls are the proud new owners of two rainbow slinkys (that i have since spent more than a few minutes every day untangling) and two sets of green dracula teeth. go team wheeler!

i feel pretty

summer and afton were so great getting their nails done. you never saw such little girls sit so still. summer chose a sparkly deep burgundy (a color about thirty years too old for her), and afton chose a sparkly green/gold (a color that's just, well, odd). they were singular and fastidious in their choices, though. and their nails -- like the girls -- are beautiful.

ps - yeah, i got a pedicure, too (who do you think is running this show?) i chose barbie pink, a color about ten years too young for me, but it still looks smokin'.