Merry Christmas!!

I thought I was pretty on top of the ball this Christmas - except for the whole Christmas card thing. We even had a decent family picture taken this year! Maybe I'll get around to it by Valentine's Day. Until then, this is as good as we could get with the kids in their Christmas outfits. Pretty typical :)

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Our Baby Boy...

is now 6! I can't believe it, 6 seems so much older than 5. I swear he matured over night as well.

This present needs a little backstory :) James has been OBSESSED with Bakugan for awhile. I told him that he had to wait until his birthday and MAYBE he would get some then. Ben kept telling him that he was just going to paint a bunch of rocks, call them "Rockugans" and that would be all he got. James thought it was the silliest thing ever.

Avery was so cute, helping him with his presents. She was just as excited as he was :)

Ben sculpted James' favorite Bakugan out of almond paste. Isn't it the cutest thing! Ben is totally taking over cupcake decorating for me now!

My Dad bought James a BB gun. After a long talk about gun safety and rules, Ben taught him how to shoot it. He can't even hold the gun against his shoulder because then he can't reach the trigger! He's actually a really good shot, once Ben had him wear an eye patch so he could focus better :)

Happy Birthday my darling boy. You bring us so much joy. You are so responsible and loving and kind and considerate and loyal and funny and handsome and smart and curious and the list goes on. We love you so much!

Hanging digital magic on your wall (by Ben)

So, what do you get you mom for her birthday when she's always asking you for recent pictures of your family. We'll that's easy if you are a regular subscriber to Popular Science magazine: You build her a digital photo frame. I saw this article a year or two ago and thought it would make a great present for my mom. I could set it up and she could hang it on her wall. As long as it had wireless internet access the frame would automatically take pictures from a flickr.com account and update them to the frame so that mom would always have fresh pictures of the family. It's bigger than most digital picture frames (It's an old 15" mac powerbook)

It was a little harder finding good software for the mac to run the flickr access than the article recommended for the PC. I tried about 10 different programs and finally found one called desklickr that ran with the older macs. It turned out to be a blessing. After spending a few hours unsuccessfully trying to get the program to automatically download pictures from my flickr account, and having all the kids in the family use my account to upload pictures... I realized that this program could also search the entire flickr website and download any picture from any account that had a specific tag. So I made up a random tag and gave it to the kids in the family so they could use their own accounts. After a few days of everyone uploading their best family pics, it came time to break apart the computer and stuff it into a frame.

Luckily, this old powerbook that Nicki wasn't using anymore was pretty busted up already. We wouldn't have been able to sell it on ebay.com for much. I disassembled the screen so that the only thing connecting it to the computer was the cables carrying the picture and power. Then I epoxied the screen to some spacers and to the back of the powerbook itself. Then I hot glued the screen to a matte I custom cut to just show the screen part of the laptop. Here you can see the laptop getting glued into the frame:



Once everything was glued into place, I used some dowels to provide a little bit of structural support and to keep things from getting all banged up and make sure it would stay in one piece until mom could get it up on her wall. I hot glued everything into one of those 16x20 display frames that is 3 inches deep, and drilled a bunch of vent holes in it to keep it all cool.



I missed her birthday by a couple of days, but it turned out to be a great gift. She always has up to date pictures (as long as we keep uploading them to flickr.com), and she told me that after she got it all installed she spent the better part of the day just staring at it enjoying all the pictures. It shows a new one every minute, so it should keep her entertained for a long, long time.



If anyone in the family wants to have unfettered access to davis pictures, you can use this screen saver for PC's, or this screensaver for macs. For all of the rest of you readers out there, maybe you've got an old laptop lying around, and still have time to whip up a present for the ol' parents before christmas rolls around.

Some Christmas stuff

Decorating the tree! The first year Ben and I were married we bought a little silver and glass angel to go on the top of our little tree. We upgraded to a gold star a few years ago but the angel has to be in close vicinity to it. Avery gets to put the angel on, and James gets to put the star on. I don't know what we're going to do when Briella is old enough to be involved.

I am huge into color-coordinated trees. It's the OCD in me. Our tree has been red and gold for awhile now so I decided to add some lime green to spice it up a bit.

When Ben was growing up in Detroit he spent the night under the tree every Christmas Eve. This was to deter the would-be robbers from stopping at their house and stealing all the family's presents. He's carried out that tradition since then. When our kids no longer believe in Santa (I got sad just writing that) we will let them join in. Until then, I figured it wouldn't hurt to let them have a camp-out on a different night. When I told them we were going to let them sleep by the tree, all night, without us, it was like they won the lottery. We set up their beds, watched a movie and then let them sleep. They had so much fun we will definitely be keeping this tradition up.

James was the star of his school's Christmas program, literally. I got a note awhile back about James' part in the program and that I needed to come up with a costume for him. Being the non-creative type I immediately hit up the internet and found this cute thing for cheap. The best part was the audience's reaction when he walked onstage. I wish we had captured it on film. It was priceless. He did awesome, as always.

Arts and crafts

I'm not a creative person, I am however, very good at copying other people's ideas. Every holiday season I have good intentions regarding decorating and such, just poor execution. After seeing lots of good ideas I finally bit the bullet and committed myself to a few.

It started with the kids making turkeys on Thanksgiving with oranges, gumdrops and marshmallows.

Then, in an effort to be more organized with our holiday activities I made this advent calendar (totally stole the idea here). Inside is a treat for each child along with an activity that will be happen that day. I have everything from getting a new Christmas book, to seeing Santa, to making a craft. My entire month is planned so I know we won't miss anything (like we did last year). I also have a scripture about Christ and his birth listed for each day that we will read as a family.

I got the idea for this here.

This was meant to be a present for the kids but it was taking a lot longer than I thought and James saw them before I could put them away. I made two sets of them and used pictures of the kids and then I'm going to make another set or two using pictures of their cousins, aunts and uncles. That is, if these ones don't burn me out :)

Tiny Dancer

Future make-up artist

This is Gavin, Avery's "boyfriend". Gavin sat, patiently I might add, on our couch for probably 20 minutes while Avery painted his lips with globs upon globs of princess lip gloss. Avery was taking the task very seriously, insisting that he stay still and not laugh. I wish I could convey the look of concentration she had.

I don't know if you can even tell how thick the gloss is, but it was ridiculous. Our darling Avery can charm anyone into doing what she wants :)

I guess it's true

When people tell me that my children look like me, I have had a hard time seeing it. Maybe it's the whole eye color thing (one day I'll get over it, hopefully.) I've been working on a MAJOR project for my parents for Christmas and ran across some baby pictures that changed my mind. I've seen these pictures before, but didn't think anything of it until now. I happen to be the same age in the pictures as Briella is now, so that must help.

Me

Brie

Me

Brie

Since we look so much alike as babies, is it vain to say we're the cutest ever*?

*Besides my other 2 darling children, of course

Happy Halloween

James as Anakin Skywalker

Avery as Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

Briella as a Rose Witch

We reached a milestone this year - James is now too cool to trick-or-treat with his mom. He made some friends at our ward trunk-or-treat and refused to accompany Avery and I. On top of that, Avery met a girl (dressed as a fairy) that was cooler than me as well. While Ben was manning the van, I walked around, keeping an eye out for my children that wanted nothing to do with me. Oh well, at least they had fun!

Afterwards we headed to my parents for dinner and more trick-or-treating.

I hope you all had an awesome Halloween, now I need to hit the gym - big time :)

Lucky spoiled girl!

When Ben comes home from work there is usually a mad dash between all three kids to see who gets to him first. On this particular day Avery happened to get to him first and was even more delighted to see what he had brought home.

Ben, being the awesome husband that he is, had brought me home flowers. Avery saw them first and automatically assumed that since they were pink, they were hers. She was so excited that Ben didn't have the heart to tell her that they were mine.


She helped Ben put them in a vase, smelling each one and declaring how beautiful they all were.


I hope Ben realizes that he's opened Pandora's Box with this gesture. He's going to have to bring home twice the flowers to keep his girls happy - good thing Briella is clueless, for now!