December 2011

Merry Christmas!

The week leading up to Christmas was pretty great. I made gluten free gingerbread so the kids could make houses and invite their friends to come make some too. Thursday, when all the house making was planned, there was a huge snowstorm (white Christmas!!) so the party was pushed back to Friday… and not as many kids could come. Zach couldn’t let the pieces go to waste, so there is a huge house sitting on our table waiting to be decorated with the candy we keep pilfering from the bowl. Will it ever happen? Who knows. The gingerbread is pretty tasty, but is much better with the frosting. I’m hoping, for my sake, that the candy and frosting make it on to the house.
The kid sized houses:

Ezra’s


and India’s.

While trying to photograph these, I discovered my main camera body is not working. The shutter fires (maybe) and the mirror flips up (I can hear that), but there is no detail in the file created. Probably the shutter isn’t firing or there’s something terribly wrong with the sensor. These are taken with my back-up body. Man, I sure hope this is a quick and easy fix.

Anyway, this year’s favorite gifts are pictured below. Mostly the home made ones. I’m a little biased towards them.

Zed kept asking for Zombie Underwear… whatever that is. So the older kids and I made some for him. Freezer paper fabric painting sure does come in handy. He wears these over his diapers for now, since he still refuses to sit on the toilet. Why or why is he so difficult?

Harry Potter has also been popular in our house this year. Zed kept asking for a black HP wand, since the one we have is light brown and not HP. So he got his wand and a pair of glasses that hopefully won’t break as easily as the more “real” ones. He had no idea how cool a hat and scarf could be until his Grandma made and sent them to him. He is a true Hogwarts student now… or USC fan.

While living in Australia for a month and watching a large amount of tv, mostly Ben 10, Ezra grew quite fond of the show. So India and I worked on this Omnitrix for him. I saw a few online that boasted holograms and moving parts. All things buit to break and disappoint. So I thought we should make one and make it simple. So that’s what we did. If this thing breaks, I can fix it.

India loves legos, so that was her favorite gift this year. Ezra and I had planned to make her a friendship bracelet kit, but she received a pretty cool clipboard from her teacher at church (with a skier on it). Instead we just got her floss and scissors. Kind of a cop-out, but all these home made gifts were being made at the last minute.

The last photo is of the kids opening their gifts from Aunt Teri. While in Australia we visited the Chinese Garden where the kids dressed up in traditional Chinese clothes. They loved it. So Avatar, especially with the staff. Since then they’ve asked for Chinese dress-ups. While looking online for something to purchase Teri called to ask what she could get the kids. I told her what I was working on and she offered to make them for me! So cool!! The kids love them and have been wearing them around the house. All except for Zed. He must be convinced that his is a cool color. What 2 year old is picky about clothes?? Mine! Maybe I’ll get all of them to wear them and take a photo. Also, maybe I’ll put up one of the shots from the Chinese Garden that inspired all this.

Just Found

It’s the end of the year and I’m rummaging through all my images. I found this one tuck away in the March file and I think it’s pretty special.
This time of year, this year especially, we’ve been feeling homesick. Oh, probably not homesick. Just missing family. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a full house on Christmas? In my mind at least, having lots of family in my house seems pretty dreamy. Now I’m actually thinking about that and I don’t know where everyone would sleep. See, they just need to live nearby. You hear that?? You all need to LIVE NEARBY!

Christmas Baby

  • by

What can I even say about such a sweet little thing?

Manly to Shelly Beach

After taking the ferry to Manly Beach, we walked from there to Shelly Beach. I guess that was where, if we didn’t have 3 kids in tow, we could have hiked a nice trail through some of Sydney’s urban bush. As it was, the half mile was enough for our children. Here are some pics from that day:

The coolest thing we saw (in my opinion) was this ocean side pool. I guess these are made so people can swim laps without fear of sharks. I don’t know, that’s just a guess. I loved the colors and only wish there wasn’t any wind… and that I had a wider lens (curse you 50mm!).


This is Shelly Beach which had many… you guessed it… shells. Not anything too exotic, just a lot of tiny muscle shells. Muscles cover all the rocks throughout the harbor.



Just Another Day in Oz

So while in Australia Zach’s brother, Noah, came for a visit. He stayed with us our second week in Sydney. To his surprise, I was still going to sleep around 7:30pm. He thought I was crazy, but it took me about a week and a half to become accustomed to the time zone. While in Oz, we traveled on the famous Manly Ferry. It took us from Circular Quay (pronounced “key”) to the harbor side of Manly Beach. While changing from ferry to ferry at Circular Quay we saw some Aborigines dancing and playing a didgeridoo.

Then Noah decided to get in on the action. He began to dance too.

He tried to get the crowed into it (see Ezra there?), but they all thought he was a crazy American…