Molly's recital

Thursday night was Molly's recital. She is in a singing and dancing class once a week. She loves it! It has been a fun thing for her. There are only 3 girls in her class, including Molly! Sorry about the pictures, we were on the back row :( Here is her class, she's on the far right.

Singing her solo! Each girl had a solo. Molly sang the 3rd verse of "Deck the Halls". She did a great job!

Here she is dancing to "Silent Night" with the other preschool class.

I love this picture! Look at her smiling face :)

Molly with her friend Carly at the end of the performance.

All of the TRIO performers with their teacher Miss Tricia! It was really cute and fun. The girls all knew their solos and did a great job!

After Molly took her costume off and came out she was being so funny about getting pictures taken! She didn't want us to take ANY! Silly girl! So this was the best we got.

Holiday Treat

Does this look yummy or what? Do you like peppermint? White chocolate? Popcorn? Then this is for you! 

Here's all you need! Microwave popcorn, Andes peppermint baking chips and white chocolate chips.
Pop 2 bags of popcorn. Place a sheet of wax paper over a cookie sheet and lay out popcorn evenly on the cookie sheet. Melt the peppermint chips. I put them in the microwave and stirred every 30 seconds.

 Then put the melted chips in a ziploc bag, cut one corner and drizzle evenly over popcorn.

Repeat with the white chocolate chips if desired. I was going to just do the peppermint, then decided it would only be better with white chocolate!

Let the popcorn sit until it dries (about 15-20 minutes or so), then break up and put in bags or in a bowl!

My mom actually found this bag topper on Shindig Parties to go, found here. She also has some little circles that you can put on the bottom of hershey kisses. My mom printed out some and put them in a jar and it turned out darling!

I made a few for gifts and the rest I ate :) Enjoy!

Christmas Lights

Last night for FHE we went to see the lights at Temple Square. Clearly we weren't the only ones with the idea :) But it actually wasn't too bad. No matter when you go, its crowded. We had fun! This was the first spot I was going to take a picture and a lady offered to take it for us! Sure! Then I had my one picture of all of us. Done.

 The temple looked beautiful, as always!

Here's Ali checking out the reflecting pool.

And when I pointed the camera at Molly, here's what I got...

Isn't she a lovely child?!

Molly wanted to walk up and go inside the temple, but she was satisfied with touching the doors.

Here's Ali wanting to go up the stairs with Molly and daddy! We are glad we threw in the stroller at the last minute. They took turns riding in it. If our double stroller hadn't been all the way downstairs, we probably would've grabbed that! Oh well. It worked out fine.

After we went into the Nauvoo Cafe to enjoy some boiling hot chocolate! Man was it hot! We had to get ice cubes to cool it down.

Not gonna lie, it was not the best hot chocolate ever. But I knew that going in :)

O Christmas Tree!

We went to pick out a Christmas tree with my parents this morning! My parents buy a real tree every year. Justin is a bit of a scrooge and doesn't want us to put one up since my parents do one upstairs. Oh well I guess! One day. Ali didn't want to be put down when we got there (I guess she was nervous or claustrophobic?) but Molly was telling us which ones she thought we should buy. "We should buy this one!"

We finally convinced Ali it was ok and she walked around with us for awhile.

Giving hugs.

It was quite the adventure! I think the girls had fun!

Here's the tree!

It was a successful outing! Justin was playing football with some friends this morning, so that's why you don't see him.

Just for fun, here's a few things I love about this time of year:

Baking
Sweater time and layering
Fires and blankets
Hot chocolate
Peppermint ice cream (well, peppermint anything!)
Chocolate covered cinnamon bears
Snow
Christmas decorations
Being with family and friends
Focusing on the Savior

I saw on someone's blog their list of favorite Christmas movies. Here's mine in no particular order:

Home Alone (it's just a classic)
While You Were Sleeping (ok so maybe it's not really a Xmas movie, but to me it is!)
The Holiday
Elf
Christmas Vacation

What are your favorites?!

Girl time

Today we went to the library and the girls picked out some books. On the way home Molly was reading her book out loud. We got home and Molly asked Ali if she wanted her to read the book to her. Of course she said yes! Molly is usually a really good big sister.

Molly just looked at the pages and made up the book. It was so cute. I had to get my camera out!

Then they wanted to play with something. So we pulled out the strawberry shortcake dolls and house.

I don't always think of documenting the day to day events, but today I thought it would be fun to have a little snapshot of what they do on a typical day! My girls are pretty good at playing with each other these days. It's so nice! Molly even let Ali have 3 dolls and she has 1! That's big for her.

I went to my doctor appointment this morning and it took some convincing, but the nurse allowed me to get my ultrasound before Christmas!! Yay!! I was so excited. I would have been seriously bummed if she didn't since I will be out of town the week after. So that would be like waiting 2 more weeks. You can't do that to a pregnant lady!! And I guess I have my dates wrong. I'm actually 16 weeks tomorrow. I thought I was 16 weeks this past Thursday. So I will technically be 18 1/2 weeks when I get my ultrasound, but hopefully that will be just fine! I'm scheduled for Friday, Dec. 23rd! I got the last appointment at my doctor's office (although I could have had it done at radiology in the hospital like I did last time). Merry Christmas to me! I hope baby isn't shy!

Today I'm working on getting our Christmas cards ready to be sent out. I hope to get them out this week! Tonight we are very lucky to get to see "A Christmas Carol" at the Hale Center Theatre. My friend Sara is in it and we are excited to see the show! We've never been and hear that everyone loves it.

The Proof...

is in the pooch! Here I am at 16 weeks. This is right after the gym today and there's no way I was gonna let you see my face! I have always been bad at taking pics of myself while pregnant, so this is my attempt at being better! I have been so unmotivated this pregnancy. I have just wanted to be lazy! Everything seems like a lot of work (sewing, crafts, etc). I think the 2nd trimester is going better though. I have more energy and don't want to just sleep all day (at least not all day anyway)!

Today Molly and I went to the Festival of Trees and my mom listened while Ali took her nap. I haven't been for a few years and it seemed like every other tree was for a child or baby who had passed away. I felt like I had to hold back tears, even though I didn't even know them or their stories. I was glad we could attend and help support Primary Children's Medical Center.

This was a tree Molly requested I take a picture of. Surprise, it's pink!

When we came to this one,  Molly asked if she could go and play with the toys. Um, sorry! But she wanted a picture by it.

 This was a fun tree that I thought of as "crafty". I loved the rosette wreaths and the banners hung all around the tree.

A close up. Isn't it cute?

Ok check out this gingerbread house!! Wow!! Seriously impressive!!

This lodge was awesome too I thought.

For $1 I bought Molly 3 tickets so she could do a little craft. She got to make a Christmas tree picture (what she's doing here) and a caterpillar. She had a lot of fun. We only made it through about 10 rows at the festival, but that's pretty good for a 4 yr. old! She also liked the dancers and performers. We watched them for a while. It was a fun little date for us. Thanks for watching Ali, mom! I think tomorrow is the last day, so if you live around here and haven't been, you should go!