Valentine's Festivities

Look at that- only 4 days after Valentine's Day and I'm already posting about it!  I'm trying to get better.  This year I wanted to have fun with the girls and get them excited for Valentine's Day.  We made some cute Valentine's for the grandparents and we decorated cookies to start.

Madylin and her masterpieces

Morgan

 We also made these cute candy cane heart "lollypops"

I gave them to my volleyball team (14 year-old girls) and they loved them!

 On Valentine's Day I started the day by making pink heart-shaped pancakes for the kids for breakfast.  That was a hit.  We then got ready to go to a little Valentine's Day party with friends.  I got to see some of my old friend's from singles ward, and the kids got to run around and make hats and decorate boxes and cookies.  We had a good time.  We ate lunch, which included heart-shaped jello jigglers and a heart-shaped sandwhich.

Here are all of the kids' boxes

Morgan and Madylin love to decorate (and eat!) cookies, but really what kid doesn't!

And this is what Nathan did during cookie making. He loves PB&J

After all the festivities I had to go to class and volleyball practice and Russell had the kids for the night.  I convinced him to make Shepherd's Pie for Dinner and to dye the mashed potatoes pink.  He did it and the girls LOVED that.  It looked pretty funny, but tasted yummy.  

(poor quality-picture taken w/ Russell's phone)

When I got home around 9:30 I had a paper to write, so I hardly saw Russell that day, but each of us had a good time with our little mini-Valentine's.  Hope you all had a fun day, too!

Cutest. Thing. Ever

I have to interrupt regular planned posts to bring you this . . .

My 18-Month old saying the prayer for dinner tonight.

Kinser Christmas 2010

We spent Christmas with my family this year because Russell's family was all in Utah.  On Christmas Eve we did the usual program with my family beginning with playing Christmas carols on the chimes

The nativity scene included Joseph, Mary with baby Jesus, an Angel, and a Shepherd with her sheep that wouldn't keep on his wool coat.

 Such a sweet angel (that night anyways)

 Christmas morning was so fun!  Santa brought the girls what they had asked for- BIKES! (of course Santa didn't realize how big the girls had gotten, so he had to take the bikes back and exchange them for bigger bikes.  He's only human, after all)

Nathan had a ball and was spoiled with LOTS of cars and trucks and other boy toys.

Morgan picked this toy camera to give to her brother and I just love this picture.

No Christmas album is complete without a picture of the kids in their Christmas church clothes (and yes, those are the same dresses from last year ;)

Getting Ready for Christmas

 We were so excited for Christmas this year.  Christmas is so much fun with a 3 year old, and double that of course with 2 of them!  We always start getting into the spirit by "decking the halls" so here is Morgan with her "Baby's 1st Christmas" ornament

 and Madylin with hers.

All the kids were so excited to see Santa this year.  Nathan would see pictures of Santa and say "ho ho ho" really slowly and with his "deep voice."  It was priceless.

I heard about this website from a friend where you could personalize a message from Santa to your child so I prepared one for each of the girls.  Santa said their names and had pictures of them and talked about things they'd done that year.  He also told each of them something he wanted them to work on.  Morgan was told to try hard to listen to her parents, and Madylin was told to try to eat everything off of her plate (Santa really knew what they struggled with :).  Let me just tell you the message was awesome and well received and it worked!!  The girls were always talking about what Santa told them to do and tried really hard to do it.

Here is a picture of part of Madylin's message.

and Morgan watching her message from Santa.

And just cause it's cute and he's wearing Christmas pajamas, here's a picture of my little fire fighter.