Wednesday, December 31, 2014

December 2014 Update

Oh December! How you've come so quickly! I can't believe its almost time to start a new year. So much has happened this year and we've made lots of fun memories. As I look back on it I can't help but count my many blessings! Heavenly Father truly is amazing and has given our family so much! I love this time of year and all that it represents. I love the feeling in the air and all the festivities that come with it. I love the lights on the tree and the joy on my kids faces as we do crafts, make cookies, sing carols, and wrap gifts. It really is a wonderful time of year.

This year we went with a white and blue lighted tree. My usual Red lights had some issues but I am kind of liking the "wintery" look with the blue and white lights.
 "All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" I think we've found the song Ethan gets to sing for this years talent show at our Christmas Eve get together.
 Mmmm Fudge and Peanut Brittle. 
Nothing like Christmas candy to spread Christmas cheer to all the neighbors!
 Ellie Grace is such a funny girl! She sure can make people smile!
 I got all the Christmas cards addressed and ready for the mail! The picture of the kids and our family newsletter took some time getting done but it's so nice to be able to check things off the list before its time to pack to head to Portland.
   This is a copy of the newsletter I sent out with the Christmas cards:



2014 Glenn Family Adventures
WOW what a year this has been! 2014 was full of all sorts of adventures. Some Fun, Some trying, some worth celebrating, some quite scary, but overall amazing.
The Beginning of the year started off great! The kids went back to school and not long after both Kiera and Ethan earned Student of the Month awards at school. They are such great kids and we are so proud of them! All of the kids are growing up so fast!
Speaking of growing up, Ethan turned 6 this year! He is all boy! Scrapes, cuts, bruises, and all that come with little boys, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. He also lost his 3rd tooth this year! The tooth fairy has been busy at the Glenn household. Apart from being our rough and tumble little boy, Ethan is our tenderhearted son. He is very sensitive to the spirit and on multiple occasions has been brought to tears after hearing a touching story being read to him or during a heartfelt movie. At one point he told me, “Mom I don’t like feeling the spirit!” I asked him why and he said, “Because it makes me cry.” I assured him that was quite alright. 
Emma who turned 3 in March is our girly girl. She loves everything pink, princess, and fancy. She has also been following in her mother’s and big sister’s footprints and is showing us her crafty side lately. She loves it whenever mom lets her get out the brushes and paints. She has made quite a few fun projects this year. Emma also started Preschool and loves it. She is making friends and is quite the little flirt with the boys in her class. But how can you blame the blonde haired blue eyed cutie?!
Kiera is still our budding artist. She is praised at school by many of the teachers on her artistic skills. She draws EVERYTHING! When we attended parent/teacher conferences this past month we heard 2 or 3 of the teachers compliment her on how much they love her artwork. Even at home she seems to always have a pencil in hand. She will even sit and draw the characters of the movies she is watching. But outside all that artsy stuff, Kiera reached a big milestone this year. She turned 8 in August and was baptized at the beginning of September. We are so proud of her!
August was probably our busiest month. We did put off Kiera’s baptism just a bit, but not due to Kiera’s unwillingness. In fact, she could hardly wait. No, instead it was to give mom time to rest and heal a little bit. You see, August was indeed our busy busy month, and adding one more thing to the mix was too much.  August was the month of Dan and Brittany’s Anniversary, Kiera’s B-day, back to school month AND the best part…Baby Ellie Grace arrived. So that’s why we waited til September for the baptism. It also made it nice so that visiting family could be here for both the baptism and Ellie’s baby blessing.
Ellie has been such a blessing. She is the most amazing baby you will ever meet! She hardly cries, she is happy, content and all smiles! She loves to observe people and has recently found her voice. She will sit and coo with you forever. Her new favorite’s songs to play with mom are “Eensy Weensy Spider” and “Pat-a-Cake.” Ethan says he wants a brother, but you should see how he plays with Ellie. He can get her to laugh out loud like nobody’s business.
Now to tell you about Dan, What a year for him! Dan lost over 50lbs this year! We are so happy for him. He is a much happier daddy and the kids love running around with him these days. Dan also had some big changes come about in his career this year. In June he was laid off from B/E Aerospace and was about to be coming up on his 7 year anniversary with.  It was a big blow for us! Him being laid off was very unexpected and hard to swallow. But as always, Heavenly Father was looking out for us. As soon as Dan was laid off he was picked up doing some consulting work and not long after that landed a job with Absolute Manufacturing a Senior Aerospace company just 5 minutes down the road from our house. Dan’s layoff was a huge blessing in disguise. We are very happy to have our daddy back!
Brittany has been busy busy as usual with various projects this year. Amid being pregnant for most of the year she managed to make a few quilts, do some canning, and some other various projects that are the norm with her, but one thing that she has added to her portfolio is photography. Yes, yes she has already been taking pictures for a long time but this year she started making an official business out of it. She did two photo sessions for graduating seniors, and one family photo shoot just weeks after advertising for it on Facebook! She hopes to keep the ball rolling and even has her own business cards now. She feels very professional now. She also hopes to start going back to Zumba now since Ellie is a few months old now.
We hope you all are having a great holiday season and that you are doing well. We love you and keep you in our prayers. Merry Christmas from the Glenn’s! Dan, Brittany, Kiera, Ethan, Emma, and Ellie.


This year we did what I think has become a Glenn family tradition. We stayed over night at the Lights of Christmas at Warm Beach Camp. It is a night to look forward to and the kids love staying in the cabins and sleeping in their bunk beds there. It is nice to have a warm place to retreat to after a long night of walking around looking at the lights and eating yummy food without having to fight the traffic to get home again. And the hot  breakfast they serve in the morning is quite nice too.







 We can't take a trip to the lights of Christmas without a visit to see Santa
 Emma, Ellie, and I took a break from the cold and hung out in the Tin Horn lodge to feed Ellie and warm up a bit. Emma had fun in the kids corner riding the horses.

Pretty soon the rest of the crew showed up and joined us before heading out again. Kiera loves horses! Even the stuffed kind.



This is us just after breakfast the next morning as we were getting ready to head home. It was a fun family outing. 

Look what we saw on our drive home! If you are familiar with the show Dr. Who you will know. Pretty cool to spot the Tardis in your very own hometown! :)

Emma's preschool put on a Christmas program for all the parents. It was very cute! Emma sang all the songs like a champ and even tried to get the little boy on her left to sing since he just seemed to only want to observe. It was cute watching her tug on his shirt a few times mouthing the words, "come on! sing!" to him.  I video taped the whole thing and afterwards the little boy's mom came up to me and asked if when I got the chance if she could get a copy.



 Ethan and Kiera's school had a their Christmas program the next day and each grade sang two Christmas songs. It was supposed to be a community sing-a-long on every other song but boy do we have some hum bugs. I think myself and another mom who I happen to visit teach whom I was sitting by were the only ones singing. Oh well...the kids did great!


 We were a little late on mailing our letters to Santa this year but we did manage to get them out before Christmas. Ethan decided to sprain his ankle on the neighbors trampoline that night too so it was a very slow long walk. I was grateful to have neighbors willing to lend me their set of children's crutches for a few days. And was also grateful it wasn't broken. Dan convinced me to wait and see how he was doing in the morning rather than take him in for x-rays. I was glad we waiting. He was much better in the morning and by that night was walking on it no problem. That little boy is going to be a handful when it comes to sports I fear :)


 


 Christmas at Dan's parents was great. We had fun at the Christmas Eve get together in McMinnville, OR at Shellie's sister-in-laws house. Dan's cousins are having kids of their own now so our kids are starting to have other kids to play with. We stayed up WAY late and didn't make it back to Bob and Shellie's til around 1:00 a.m. Luckily that wore the kids out enough that they didn't get up until after 8:00 in the morning. 
 Shellie made breakfast pizza and we all opened our gifts. It was a great Christmas. We also went to visit Dan's great aunt Beth and open the gifts she bought for them.





 Aunt Beth meeting Ellie Grace for the first time.



 When we got home from Oregon we found that Santa had also paid a visit to our house as well. The kids got ready for bed and then had their second round of Christmas.



 Grandma Tutu sent this fun Frozen playhouse for Emma. It was a big hit!

 Merry Christmas and on to a new adventure in 2015!


Sunday, November 30, 2014

November 2014 Update

November was a fun month too. Lots of family and gearing up for the holidays. I stayed busy with a couple different craft projects here and there and got started on a few more Christmas gifts. One thing I wanted to be sure to get was a good picture for our Christmas cards this year. I decided that I wanted to do one with all the kids dressed in white. I LOVE they way they turned out. My four perfect angels!



My cousin Courtney (Mitchell) Blaser sent my girls a fun surprise in the mail. Each got their custom made hair bow/headbands. Emma's is pink of course! Kiera got her favorite color blue, and Ellie got a cute black and white striped one. Thanks Courtney!
 November 9th is Dan's birthday. We had a little get together with Ben, Kara and Zachariah. He requested red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. He also requested something extravagant for dinner. I believe it was chicken cordon bleu or something like that. I can't remember if I managed to pull that off or not. I think I did, but you'll have to ask him.



 Happy Birthday Dan. We love you!



Thanksgiving was at our house this year too. I love hosting! I love the preparations and getting the house all decorated. But this year I especially liked our set up in the front room. We had two full sized tables since we had bought a dining room set from our neighbor who was moving. We bought it so that Ben and Kara could have it. Luckily they agreed to let us hang on to it until Thanksgiving was over. It worked out so nicely!

We had tons of awesome food! I didn't get many pictures of the food but I did manage to get a pic of one of the pies I made. I make a lattice apple pie with some leaf cutouts. mmmmm pie.


 



Still nothing but smiles from this little girl


Dan is still staying busy with cub scouts. To get ready for December's pack meeting/activity he made these cute little Christmas trees to go in the middle of goodie plates to give to people at the retirement home. The boys painted them and they turned out great! 
 These are the ones I painted up to be the examples for the boys to go off of.

I can't get enough of her!

I was asked to be in charge of one of the craft projects for our ward's Super Saturday craft fair. I taught the class to make these wooden nativities. It was a breeze since I already made a bunch last year.

I finally got around to finishing the quilt I had planned for this project ever since I recovered the baby swing seat back in July of 2011! I then quilted it with swirlies with my quilting foot. It is just scrumptious! One of these days I'll make something to give away right?

After making the quilt I was on a roll and decided to work on my other works in progress. I just have to bind this one together now.
 and no project is complete without starting another one right? I started another scrappy quilt top from some of the left over scraps. Who knows when that one will be done. Story of my life...

I have ADD when it comes to all my projects. I start something and then start something else, and when I've given that a go I decide to move onto something completely different. I was strolling JoAnne's Fabric store and decided to learn how to crochet again. A few YouTube videos and practice stitches and wha la! I am working on a baby afghan with a hood. Not too shabby eh?

And check out this little gem! Dan has been mulling this one over for months and we finally broke down and started it. I drew out each of the layers and Dan cut them out. Each layer is a different piece of wood.  Dan's dream is to make these to sell. We just need to figure out the best material to make them out of first.
I posted the above picture on my FB page and got a request from a friend to make 4 for her to buy and sell in their store (they own the pharmacy up in Darrington). She wanted one to look like wood. So I found this neat wood graining tool and put wood grain on each of the pieces. I thought it turned out pretty cool but Dan isn't happy with how the edges of the nativities are turning out with the material we are using. We are thinking it may be too humid for them. We're going to give it a try during the warmer months and see if they turn out any better.

This little girl has found her voice and is cooing up a storm. We spend many a night chatting away.

Look who's excited for Christmas.  They decided to play dress up Nativity style one day.

Ethan's class at school was learning about the first Thanksgiving had a Thanksgiving Feast. They each made their own costumes and Ethan decided to be an Indian. I love how he made a pattern with all the colored shapes.

This year I have fallen in love with Oriental Trading Company. I have found so many little crafts that are perfect for our Family Night activities. I love to stock up and love that I can order them online and have them delivered to my front door.  This is a pic of our animal masks we did for one FHE. 

 The day after Thanksgiving is Christmas Decor day! I was so excited for this day! Can you guess why? Look at all those Santa's! They finally have a place to hang out together! And check out that cute stocking advent calendar. That was one of our ward's Super Saturday crafts. I put a goody or surprise in each of the stockings for the kids to count down to Christmas. They are going to love it!
 Only 25 more days til Christmas! I'd better get busy!