The Nutcracker

Last week I took Aly and her friend to see The Nutcracker. The year before I had taken Aly to see it in San Jose and she absolutely loved it! She talked about it all year and wanted to go this year too! I wasn't sure if we would be able to go since I was so sick with the pregnancy but when I started feeling better I purchased tickets. I purchased 3 tickets hoping to take KK as she had been wanting to go too!

A week or so before The Nutcracker we went to the movies to see The Princess and the Frog. KK could not sit through this movie so I knew there was no way she could sit through a ballet. So I decided it would be best to invite Aly's friend Maya.

I didn't tell Aly about it until we were in the car headed to pick up Maya. I didn't want to tell her any earlier because it would hurt KK's feelings to know that we were going and she wasn't. When we were in the car I let Aly know where we were going and why I kept it a secret. I asked her not to brag about it in front of KK when we got home later as it would hurt her feelings.

So we left our house at 10:00 a.m. to go pick up Maya. We picked her up and headed to Round Table Pizza for their all you can eat lunch special. I don't know why but I am craving Round Table practically everyday! One week I ate there 3 times and was not even getting tired of it! Plus I knew the girls would eat pizza so it was an easy decision. They had a great time having lunch together. Next it was off to the Nutcracker!

We were about 20 minutes away from the Theatre and had 50 minutes to get there. I thought for sure that would be plenty of time. I was so wrong! I made the mistake of listening to my navigation system and taking the 16th street exit. This exit was backed up to the freeway--this should have been clue number 1! I am just not familiar with downtown so I though I better just listen to the navigation system. Due to all the traffic getting off the freeway and all the lights down on 16th street and the backup, we had ten minutes to get from the parking garage to the show which was three blocks away! I decided we better do a light jog to ensure we got their on time. Here I am, pregnant lady holding two 6 year olds hands jogging down the street in our nice clothing! I bet people were laughing at us! The girls thought it was funny. You know the ballet, if you don't get there on time you have to wait until intermission!

The girls were absolutely perfect during the show! They had amazing theatre manners and didn't talk at all. They loved watching the snowflake kingdom part. It was definitely different than the San Jose Performance. The Sacramento performance uses 500 children so it is very child centered. The San Jose performances uses mainly adults except for the gift opening part and the mice part.

Aly and I decided despite how cute it was with all of the children in the show, we liked San Jose's version 10x better! They used far more scenery changes, their dancing was more technical, and they did a better job telling the story! It was much more clear what was happening. So next year, if baby can handle Terry babysitting, we may see the Nutcracker in San Jose and see a special shortened version which is only an hour lone. This way KK can join us and should be able to handle it. Plus if she makes a little noise it is to be expected since it is a children's matinee.

Hubby is on a role!

Woohoo, hubby is super motivated and accomplishing so much during his two weeks off! Even with a cold! This past week he tore apart the girls closets in both rooms, took all of the mirrored closet doors out of our house, as well as tearing down a wall in our living room and making our living room larger! We also got a dumpster and he has been filling it full of junk we needed to get rid of! I can't believe that it is already almost full!



I just love the new closet! This was the best picture I was able to get! The best part is the new organizer is so efficient I was able to let the girls share one closet!

I wasn't able to get a good picture of our new expanded living room. I am sure after he puts in the new pergo flooring and we paint the walls I will get a few good pictures. Lucky for us we bought enough pergo flooring for the living room and dining room about 5 years ago so it won't cost us anything! I am not sure on his timing of things but he may begin working on the pergo floors in the next day or two!

Christmas Day

Christmas morning in our house was a slow, peaceful start! I got up around 6:30 in the morning. Aly didn't get up until 7:30. When she came down she was so excited! I told her we couldn't start until Daddy and KK woke up. I told her she could go wake them up if she wanted to. She chose not to and decided to have breakfast instead. Around 8:30 I told Aly that she could go wake up KK if she wanted to. This time she decided she would.

KK came down the stairs all sleepy and tired. She was quite surprised at what she saw. Just the night before we were telling her Santa would be coming and she didn't believe us. She said, "No, not for 9 more days!" Daddy decided he wanted to get coffee first and start a fire. So the girls patiently waited for the next twenty minutes or so while Daddy got his coffee and Mommy started a fire.

The girls got to open their stockings first. They had a great time. KK got super excited over all of the floam in her stocking. Here is the video:

After opening their stockings they got to open their present from Santa. Each year Santa has special paper and a special bow just for his presents. The girls love it! Their favorite part is the bow that none of the other presents have!

Here is the video of them opening Santa's gift!

After they finished opening Santa's gift we let them play with it for awhile before we opened anymore gifts. The girls got used to opening a gift and playing with it so it was a nice and slow process. KK was so fun to watch open presents, she kept saying, "just what I always wanted!"

KK loved her playdoh ice cream maker. Aly loved her new doll. She even got matching jammies for her and her doll!

The baby in mommies tummy got presents too! Only because the girls insisted on buying the baby a toy for Christmas. I told them that the baby wouldn't be here yet but they still wanted to buy a toy. KK also asked Santa on two different occasions to bring the baby a rattle for Christmas. She didn't even ask him to bring her anything! So Santa brought the baby a rattle for Christmas. The girls opened the babies presents and put them in the closet.

They had a great day opening gifts and playing with all of their new things! It was so much fun to watch them!

Our Christmas Eve Jammie Tradition

Back in my early 20's I spent a Christmas Eve with a family I babysit for. They introduced me to their family tradition of opening a present on Christmas Eve which happened to be Christmas Jammies. They were also so kind as to give me a pair of Christmas jammies. I still have them too! They were red with white snowflakes on them! I decided then that when I had a family I would start this tradition with my family.





This year the girls are finally getting the tradition. Alyssa was asking days before Christmas if she was going to be able to open her Christmas Jammies on Christmas Eve. You all know me as frugal and you better believe that I scored a great deal on their jammies too! I bought them Disney Pajamas from the Disney store. I believe I got them in July on clearance for $5.99 a pair! First I had purchased the Mickey Jammies and later when the Minnie Jammies went on clearance I decided to splurge and buy those too. So this year they had two pair of jammies to choose from. The Minnie Jammies were a nightgown which can be kind of cold for us here. The girls decided to wear the Mickey jammie bottoms with their nightgowns so it was perfect!





I took a video of them opening up their jammies too!

Baby News

Yes, it is true, after four years of trying to get me to have another baby, I finally gave hubby his wish! If it were up to him, we would have four children! When I agreed to this one I made it clear, this would be it! I am sure he still has a glimer of hope that I may change my mind down the road...but hey, I am not getting any younger and soon enough it won't be a good idea to have anymore. Besides, I think we will have all we can handle with three children.

As many of you could tell I pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth during the month of November. I was SO SICK! I had morning sickness all day and night! I was throwing up every morning and every night! Heck, sometimes, for no reason I would throw up in the middle of the afternoon. I felt sea sick every second of the day! While I was sick with both Alyssa and Kayla, it wasn't this bad!

I also had a scare during the 7th week of pregnancy. I had a tear in between the uterus and the baby sac causing me to bleed. This is called a subchorionic bleed. This increases your chances at a miscarriage. Lucky for me it was small. I was put on bed rest for two weeks. We just had an ultrasound last Thursday that showed everything is great, the bleed is all healed, and the baby is fine. So now we are ready to announce it!

I am currently 12 weeks pregnant and just starting to feel better. I still have some bouts of nausea, but have only gotten sick once in the last week. I am hoping this will all just continue to get better and better and I will get my appetite and energy back! I think my family hopes so too!

I got rid of all of my baby stuff and maternity clothes so we will have to start all over again...oh well, what can you do? We do still have a car seat and some friends have offered some hand me downs which I will be so thrilled to borrow! We look forward to finding out what the baby is in February during our next ultrasound! Of course, once we find out we will announce it!

Gingerbread House

I think we have finally made a family tradition whether we like it or not! For three years in a row now we have made a gingerbread house. The girls love it! I don't really like the building of the house but the kids love the decorating! I have to say, KK eats much more candy then she actually puts on the house.

The funny thing is for the next few days KK kept sneaking candy off the house. Within a few days the house was striped of its decorations and ended up in the garbage!

Our Newly Remodeled Bathroom

When we moved into this house it had ALOT of work to be done! Let me just say, we still have a lot to go but we have made progress. Hubby recently remodeled our hallway bathroom upstairs. I have to say, it is now the nicest room in the house! He did a really nice job! Of course he always does nice work but this bathroom just really came together! I took some photos but it is a small bathroom so it was hard to fit it in the pictures.

We put a new toilet, sink, and flooring in. We painted the walls a neutral tan color. We added a new mirror and all new towel bars and accessories.

Online shopping

These past few weeks I have been scoring some great deals online. Deals such as free photo Christmas cards, free shipping plus an additional 30%, and so on. These deals have come at a great time too! I really haven't been in the mood to drive 45-60 minutes to go shopping and haven't been feeling well either. So to score free shipping and get the items on great sale prices has made my day!

I now spend some of my time reading frugal blogs that give links and such to online shopping deals. I am so happy to sit at home and accomplish the same thing that would have cost me quite a bit in gas money and my time! What perfect timing for Christmas shopping too! Last week I shopped online at Kohls and bought Christmas presents for the girls that were on sale, plus an additional 30% off, plus free shipping! They just arrived today and the effort was so minimal I am so pleased! If you are interested in some of these sites here they are:

http://freebies4mom.blogspot.com/
http://myfrugaladventures.com/
http://sisterlysavings.net/
http://www.couponcravings.com/

These sites have given me free things such as Christmas photo cards, as well as amazing deals! Well worth the read!

Harvest Festival

Aly's school has a great Harvest Festival every year near Halloween. This year it was the night before Halloween. They have carnival games, face painting, arts and crafts, trick or treating, a cake walk, and plenty of food. It is the perfect, safe Halloween event to do with the family. The best part is the girls don't get too much candy either!

This year since the girls decided to be dalmatians for Halloween I thought it would be fun to dress up as Cruella Devil. Aly was really excited about it, at first KK was scared. She ended up really liking it though once she saw me get dressed!

Mommy had to volunteer at the Harvest Festival for the first hour at Trick or Treat Alley. So Daddy and Grandma T took the girls around to all of the activities!

Aly chose to have a dalmatian painted on her face. KK wanted a rainbow. You know what was funny? When I went through the pictures on the camera I actually thought both of those pictures were KK! then I noticed the dalmatian and realized it was Aly.

When I was done at Trick or Treat Aly I found everyone in the Arts and Craft room having a great time!

KK's Halloween Party

Wow, what a busy morning for us! I had Aly's Parent/Teacher conference at 8:30 in the morning, then had to rush home to get KK changed for her Halloween party at school at 10:00 a.m. KK decided she wanted to be Pongo from the 101 Dalmatians! No surprise there right!

Her favorite thing to do at school is play outside. She spent most of the party outside and wasn't really interested in any of the activities. Her little friend Bryan followed us around the whole party. Everytime I am at her school he just talks my ear off! He has these big blue eyes and he is always happy. The funniest thing is even when he is getting disciplined at school for doing something wrong he has a smile on his face and is just the happiest little boy you ever did see.

This Halloween party didn't have any sugar...well, they did have a little bingo game with some M&M as markers but KK wasn't interested in playing. So she didn't have any sugar at her party. Kind of surprising right? She had fun though and loved running around and playing.

Disney On Ice

Last Night was great! We went to see Disney On Ice Princess Wishes at the Arco Arena. While the drive was not pleasant the show was great. I knew we would hit commute traffic so we left plenty of time to get there. The show started at 7 and even the very first princess skit was great. Aladdin came first and my favorite part was the carpet ride. Although I will have to say, they sure got their ethnicity's mixed up! Jasmine was a beautiful Asian girl instead of a beautiful East Indian girl, and Aladdin was a white boy instead of an East Indian boy.




They actually surprised me and did Jasmine, Aurora, Mulan, Snow White, Belle, and Ariel the first half of the show. The second half was entirely dedicated to Cinderella. It was really cute. We especially liked the stage coach.




We got to take Granny with us. Hubby would rather play volleyball then attend a Princess Show, can you believe it? LOL...yes, the audience was primarily female! Poor KK thought the show was too load and plugged her ears most of the show!

Last year we were lucky enough to win free tickets to the show. This year I was able to get 1/2 price tickets--that is why we had to go on Wednesday night. You know we didn't even get home until 11:00 P.M. at night! Good thing I brought Jammie's and we changed the girls in the car. They fell asleep shortly after leaving the arena.

KK and I liked last years show better. Aly loved this years show better. It was so cute to see her jumping and wabing at the princesses and dancing to the music. She really had a great time. Poor KK thought it was too loud and was really sad there was no whale this year like there was last year.

Crockpot Chicken Tikka Masala

Wow, I am so thrilled to have tweaked my harder version of Chicken Tikka Masala and made it into an easy crock pot recipe! This is a bit spicy so my suggestion if you want to tame it down is to use mild curry powder instead of hot. I buy all of my spices in bulk at an Indian Food grocery store in Folsom.

Ingredients:

6 chicken breasts cut up in cube size pieces

2 cups heavy whipping cream

12 ounces of Tomato Paste

1/2 cube of butter

1 tblsp. Paprika

1 tblsp. Curry Powder Hot

1 tblsp. Garam Masala

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ginger

1 tsp. black pepper

4-6 cloves garlic minced

Combine all ingredients in crock pot and put on low for 6-8 hours. Make a side of rice and some garlic naan bread. This is so good and a great dish to put leftovers in the freezer to take for lunch. For garnish you can add cilantro just before serving.

Beach Day

On Saturday we decided to take a beach trip. We hadn't been for a long time and we all needed a little family time together! We got to the beach shortly after 1. The first thing the girls wanted to do was fly kites. Aly flew her frog kite all by herself. She did a really good job. KK brought the dragon kite over to Daddy so they could fly it together. It was the prefect windy day for flying kites!

After we flew kites the girls enjoyed playing in the sand. Aly had a fun time burying herself. We both got some great pictures.

KK played in the dirt as if it were mud! She had a great time and didn't even care that she was getting really dirty!

Hubby took a few pictures of me. It was a bit chilly of a day. You can see in the background it was over cast. It was still fun to be there!

This beach had some huge sand dunes that the girls had so much fun running down them. I swear this is one of those activities if you let your children do it all day they are sure to sleep good that night!

I have never seen the girls get more dirty and I have never seen more sand on the bottom of the bath tub than this day! It was all worth it though. We all had a great time!

Aly was easy to get to pose for the camera. Yes we are still working on getting great photos for our holiday calendar!

Ed was able to get this cute picture of KK. She was actually running away from him as he was telling her to come. I think that must be a "naughty" girl smile...LOL

Slumber Party

On Friday the girls wanted to have a slumber party downstairs in their sleeping bags. Our floor is pretty hard so I put two layers of blankets down and got them nice and comfortable. Aly was most excited about the slumber party. The girls got to have glow in the dark bracelets. KK only lasted about ten minutes and then wanted to go to bed in her own bed. Aly stayed there all night by herself! When she woke up the next morning she told me that it was SO MUCH FUN!

Sisterly love

The girls were getting along so well this morning. It was so cute! They decided to lay next to each other on the couch and watch television. I sure hope they grow up to be best friends! As they get older they are enjoying playing the same things. KK loves to play dalmatians and so does Aly. They even play hide and seek together quite frequently!

Yes they fight a lot too. I will say, I definitely enjoy watching them play when they are getting along and having tender loving moments like these!