some things that we've been up to, Jillibean Soup and Scor Pal **lots of pictures

Good morning!

Guess what?

We have snow!!

We got a light dusting yesterday and the girls had so much fun playing after school. Since chances to play in the snow are rare in these parts, of course I had to take some pictures, some of which will surely make it onto future scrapbook pages.

Bella and birdie tracks on the patio

Yes, I guess it's time to get the pumpkins off of the porch. They worked well for Fall but now that we have snow...gotta do something with them. 

silly Aimee- 4 years old

I don't think they were too excited to pause their fun for a picture. 

Hailey- 7 years old. Not too long after this picture Aimee threw a snowball at her face!

She was excited to have her cute green coat back- we thought we'd lost it but after searching at the church, at the girls' gym and all over the house I found it wadded up in a corner on the floor by where the kids hang their coats. She has a thing for green lately and the thought that her coat was gone for good caused quite a disturbance yesterday morning before school.

Sarah- almost 6 years old- trying to catch snowflakes. She was amazed at how different they were as she watched them fall onto her coat. She has Lily's hat on in this picture ☺

We also had a lively snowball fight- those girls of mine were ruthless and had fun pounding their dear old mom with snowballs. It was so much fun!

This last weekend the girls had their Christmas Spectacular at the gym they go to. Each of the kids got to show off what they've been learning so far this year at gymnastics, karate or dance. We spent most of the day there on Saturday but the kids had lots of fun and even got to take pictures with Santa Claus.

Aimee with her teacher on the balance beam. She was so great on Saturday and excitedly hopped from one thing to another doing everything that she was supposed to do.

Hailey on the balance beam with her coach

and with Santa Claus during the award ceremony

 

Sarah during warm-ups

and on the balance beam. She says that the handstand dismount is "easy". 

Yeah, right. Maybe for a five year old. 

And Sarah with her coach and Santa

Hailey also got to show off her newly-acquired karate skills that have earned her an orange belt with a white stripe, up from a white belt. She really does enjoy it and one of these days she's going to break out of her shell and surprise her teachers with some aggressiveness. She's just so reserved. Just like her mama.

Here's Hailey with some of the kids in her class. She is to the left with the blue leotard under her karate uniform.

Another thing we've been up to is decking our halls. We pulled everything down out of the attic last week to look for nativities to take for our church Nativity exhibit and yesterday the girls got to decorate their own tree;  it's now chock-full of ornaments of the unbreakable variety. They took pride in placing each bulb and I had to laugh as I looked at some of the branches that had half a dozen ornaments. I would guess that my little 4-year-old helper could only reach just so high so many of her ornaments went on the same branches.

(don't you love the forced smiles?)

Baby Lily sat by just watching in amazement; it was so cute! Her first Christmas!

And now for something scrappy: 

We at Jillibean Soup had the fun opportunity this last month to do a cross-promotion for Scor-Pal.

Before this I'd never used a scoring board before but really like the plethora of things that you can do with it. I don't think mine will be gathering dust anytime too soon.

Here are some pictures of the "Merry" banner that I created using the Scor-Pal, Jillibean Soup's Christmas Eve Chowder collection, some tulle, twine and corrugated alphas.

I used the Scor-Pal to make the stars and the little accordion flowers:

I cut out the stars using my Cricut (thanks, Ginger) and then scored from the points to the center between points and folded on the scoring lines. 

The accordion flowers are pretty basic; I added corrugated flowers and alphas and used some ivory twine that I've had in my stash for quite some time along with some tulle from American Crafts. 

It was kind of tricky to photograph the whole thing since it's about 6 feet long but hopefully you get the idea: 

We are looking forward to more snow today and the kids don't have to be to school until 10 am so that the roads can thaw out a bit since it's only 13 degrees outside. Yep, there's an inch of snow on the ground and there is a 2-hour delay. You've gotta love snow in Texas! 

So, you see, we have been pretty busy. I really do need to be a better blogger, though. 

I have some other projects and a couple of fun guest designer things coming up this month that I can't wait to share with you!

Have a wonderful day!