Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Christmas Prep

Kids have been off school since last Thursday.   Man, those teachers negotiate a mean contract.
So we are at home getting ready for the family invasion.  I've been making treats to share and the girls helped out with cut out cookies.  They did a good job cooperating with sprinkles.

And this year I didn't have to roll out the dough 10,000 times.  They did a great job of putting the cookie cutters very close together.

Later in the day, Paigie came over and I issued a LEGO challenge.  Make me a holiday decoration.  Here is Paige with her sweet baby Jesus.
Annalise made more sheep for the nativity.

And Evie made this Santa complete with belly and sack of toys slung over his shoulder.

These three have been a delight this week.  They have played together so well and for most of the day. 

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Gymnastics Showcase

The girls had the class in which the parents were allowed to record performances for when their kids are in the Olympics.  Because, as you will see, that is clearly where my kids are heading.  Enjoy

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Seibert Christmas

Not sure if you have heard me shout from the rooftops, but the Taller family is staying home this Christmas. That includes all the days leading up to Christmas and all the days following Christmas.  The whole darn vacation we are going to be home and sleeping in our own beds.  Instead, this year, all the family is coming to us.  We did have to make one last appearance in NWO this season.  Maybe we will come back when the ground thaws again. 
We drove up to NWO to visit my grandparents.  We had lunch with Grandma Wagner.  Then we went to Mass and hit the jackpot with a live nativity following mass (including shepards with real sheep and Mary riding in on a donkey).  We rounded out our weekend with some playtime with the Seibert kids and then the grand finale of the time honored SEIBERT CHRISTMAS.

This year, it was Natalie's turn to read the Christmas story.  She did a great job.


Annalise and Marin were paying close attention.

Then the paper started flying. 

Evie is very excited to grow her own crystals.  The lego set was put together in an instant.

I brought a craft project called Bendaroos. They are basically waxy pipecleaners.  This did keep the kiddos busy for most of the afternoon.

And this kid with the Kool Aid mustache had fun with her new playdough set.

All the fun came to an end and we had to drive back home.  And then the sugar crash happened.  We all took naps on the way home.  IT was a fun weekend.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Ordaments

WARNING!  Reading this post could possibly ruin your Christmas present. But only if you are on Santa's nice list.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  And try to act suprised when you open a present from us

The wonderful neighbors came up with a craft for this Christmas for the kids to do.  Miss Beth (who is hiding in this picture because she didn't get a shower in after her workout) and Paigie demonstrate the technique for painting the inside of clear glass ornaments.  And yes, I meant to write ORDAMENTs as the blog title because that is how Annalise is pronouncing it this year.



All three got into the action .  We had so much fun that mid-craft, we sent Jim to Michaels to fight the ladies for more ornaments.   It seems that he had to elbow a couple of seniors over to get the last 2 boxes.

Evie shakes and spins her ornament.

Annalise takes a break.

Paigie.  Did I mention we already had to coordinate our Christmas plans with the neighbors because the kids are off of school for 17 DAYS at Christmas!?!  There will be some serious playdates with Wii Just Dance tournaments.

Our girls and the finished products.

A better shot...but only if you are nice this year!

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Fireplace makeover

So we have some hip, young neighbors who moved in this spring and they had the same affliction of a shiny brass fireplace that we did.  They just went ahead and painted it.  On their lead, and seeing how well it turned out, we tried it ourselves.  Of course, we had to take care of some prep work.

 The last shot of the 80's.
 About a roll of blue tape, the Sunday newspaper and a half an hour later, we were ready to go.
The first coat!  We wanted to make sure it was nice and dry before it got the second coat and we did the inside.  But then it rained, I got sick, and so on.  It looked like this for a week before we could do the second coat.

And finally, the finished product.  We don't know if it will withstand the heat of a real fire so the candles are just doing the job for now.


Friday, December 2, 2011

November update

 
So now we have family members flat out refusing to update their blogs unless we update ours.  To be quite honest, we have been busy around here.  I had a craft show on Nov 11 and 12.  More on this later, but I took lots of orders that I am trying to fill before Christmas.  Also, basketball season has started and there is a lot of nonconference play that is interesting to me.  Love watching the Butler bulldogs play the Hoosiers!  Anyway, try to get comfy on top of your toy box and read up on our month of excitement.

November 10th was our first snowfall.  Of course, the kids had to run out right away and play in the snow.  They were out in their light weight fleece jackets and caught snowflakes on their tounges for about 7 minutes.  Then they came in and asked for hot chocolate.  No dice.  If you don't even zip up your light coat, there's no chance I'm making you brown sugary milk with fluffed sugar on top.  Have a banana.

maybe you heard about our Crafty Mamas Holiday sale.  I have 10 very talented friends who displayed their works in my house for an open house and sale.  The dinning room was only the Seibert women.  Me, Mom and Becky. 

Mom's aprons sold well as did my head wraps and chunky cowls. 

The head wraps.  I was even able to take orders for about 12 more items.  This is keeping me busy until at least Christmas.

The hair acccesory table.  I sold about half of my headbands.
And some of my infant hats.  I was pleased with my overall profit.  It went to pay for my plane ticket to India.  I do have to say, if you totalled up the time I had into this, I'm probably still in the hole.  But it kept me off the streets and busy while Jim traveled for 2 1/2 months.

Everyone at the sale contributed to a raffle basket that benefited a local family who's 5 year old daughter has cancer.  We were able to raise close to $150 for them and someone won a sweet prize.

Our good friend and neighbor, Mr. Gavin became an American recently.  He is a native of the UK, but has been working, living, and raising a family in the US for quite a few years now.  I guess he wanted to be taxed WITH representation now.  Anyway, I thought this was a good Civics lesson for my kids so I pulled them out of school to take them to the fair grounds to see him sworn in as an American.

There were 191 people from 65 countries being sworn in.  Since we weren't family or anything, we stuck to the back.  We are proud of our newest American Friend.  Congrats Mr. Gav!

And then it became that time of the year.  The girls were at a Birthday party for our neighbor, Paigie.  While they were gone, we set up the Christmas tree and Jim made sure that all the lights worked.  There is a song out there called Grown up Christmas wish.  It's all about world peace and illnesses being cured and other junk like that.  My personal grown up Christmas list is that all the lights on my Christmas trees stay lit for the entire season, the kids keep their feet off each other, and no one is sick for Christmas Eve and Chistmas Day.  Is that too much to ask from Santa?  It's not world peace or anything.

The girls spent lots of time sorting and hanging their ornaments.  They all landed on three branches on the tree.  It's charming.
A Taller Thanksgiving Tradition is to make these Turkey cookies using candy corn and orange icing.  Annalise is getting pretty good.  All I had to do is pipe the beak and legs.  next year I might not have to do anything.


Another Thanksgiving tradition is the preschool Thanksgiving program.  This was our 5th year of watching kids pick their nose, cry on stage and ham it up.  Annalise is now in the oldest class in the school and they did a nice job performing.  Maybe I will upload some videos when I recover from this massive update.

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Taller's in Cleveland.  Of course, other than eating, there was time to take the antiquites out to amaze and scare everyone.  Jim's Grandpa Koch used to be a barber.  He had some very strange equipement that was supposed to make your hair grow.  All it really did was send a mild electrical shock through your body.  Jim remembers getting the snot shocked out of him by his Grandpa.  Grandpa Seibert bravely checks this out.  We are happy to report that it didn't give him too much of a shock and we left it in Cleveland. 

Evie and Annalise and all their grandparents.  can you believe that Annalise is now as tall as Grandma Seibert?

After Thanksgiving, we recovered from our Turkey coma at the Great Lakes Science Center.  They had lots of hands on activities.  We didn't use the camera much because we were having so much fun. This is Evie working with the giant bubble wand.

Annalise and Mommy blow some big bubbles too

Evie faced her fear of falling by being strapped on a board and dropped backwards. 
Then we went out to Lorain County for the walk through Christmas light display.  WE marveled on how fast we walked through it but then we remembered that the last time we went was when Evie was 4 and Annalise was 2.  Their legs were much shorter back then and I think we had them in snowpants and boots.  This time it was much warmer and way more muddy.

Now we are back home and in the Christmas spirit.  We have most of the decor up and are thinking about cookies.  Only two more weeks until Christmas break.

Ok, Uncle Kevin and Aunt Becky.  There's your update.  See you in three weeks.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

pumkin chunkin

The second annual Stoney Creek Circle Punkin Chunk happened the Saturday after Halloween.  After all, you have to do something with all those jack o lanterns and they are going to end up as compost anyways.

This year, instead of just throwing them around in the street, Evie and Jim constructed this contraption.  This allowed the girls to get some air under those pumpkins


Taylor could really make it fly.

Paige's whole pumpkin took a flight.

And then Dad sent one soaring.  Stand back everyone!




Don't know why this picture loaded so big, but it is a very good shot of Glen busting up our simple machine.   Fortunately, we had extra lumber.  After this shot, Jim broke a board too.  Man is more powerful than pumpkin.

Evie's cute pumpkin before it hits it's fate
Evie sends her pumpkin flying we all had a great time watching them get smashed up.  Then they threw them all into the wheelbarrel to be compost for next year's garden.