Friday, December 30, 2011

We Love Taking Christmas Card Pictures!


Every year before Christmas, I torment the family by taking a neverending amount of pictures hoping for the best Christmas card picture.  

Usually this doesn't go very well, as the kids don't all smile, they fight, they complain, the camera goes fuzzy......and in the end we usually have to photoshop somebody's head to make it look better.

BUT,
this year we didn't have a problem!

We do it all by a timer and let it just click away, but this year we only had to set the timer a handful of times and we had some great pictures!  

It was amazing!!  I hope this isn't just luck and that things go more smoothly for the years to come.






Jewelia and Caleb Win Reflections!


Jewelia and Caleb both entered the Reflections contest at their school (the literary arts competition) and they won!!!

Jewelia drew a picture and Caleb wrote a song.

They both got trophies!

Now both their entries go on to see if they will win out of the district.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Performances Galore!


Well, it is Christmas time here at the Spjute house, and that means the busiest time of the year!!!  
Having 4 kids in different activities and different grades creates A LOT of Christmas concerts and activities!
Well, we started out performing at Maceys as we do every year.  The kids just love it.  


They have been performing at least once a week with Micah playing his guitar and singing, Caleb on piano, Jewelia on violin, and even little Macey sings a song this year!  

Here's a little video of her practicing at home:

          

Micah did a few guitar numbers, although he often had some technical issues at the store with amp or microphone problems.  Here he is at home working on Little Drummer Boy:

        

Jewelia brought all the crowds with her little violin numbers.  People couldn't get enough of her cuteness!  Her she is playing one of her songs with Caleb practicing at home:



Lucky for them they get to have a tip jar this year and have made a bit of money to put in their savings accounts.  

The kids were also asked to be in charge of all the entertainment for a ward in Kearns.  They put on a whole half hour program with a skit, music, singing, and dancing.  They were great!  

Next came Micah's Jazz Band concert at school.  He is doing really well in the jazz band and he loves it.  
Here he is with his fellow guitarists:


We still wish we could hear the guitars a little more.  The horns always seem to drown them out.


Then came Caleb's school choir performance. 


He got to sing, play the xylophone, and play the hand bells.



                                          

Oh, think we are done?  Nope, next comes Jewelia's 2nd Grade Christmas Program.


She was lucky, she even got to sing in a duet with another boy.

Here's a short clip of their duet:

                           

She did really well.


Oh, yes, still more.....
Micah had a choir concert as well!


I don't know why they have to put the giant piano on stage right in front of the singers like that.


He got to sing a small solo part, well, a "crying part".


Oh, yes, what about Macey?  
Yep, she had a Preschool program!


She has been doing well in Preschool this year.   


She sang some songs and rang some bells.


 She also had a dance class open house!


 This next picture is funny!


I asked her what that face was, and she said it was because it hurt to stretch.

She was pretty cute!

She did a little Christmas dance:



And of course we had Micah and Jewelia's dance open houses.

Micah had an open house in both ballet and tap.


Such a studly ballet dancer he is.


He had no problems keeping right up there with the girls!


He was great in ballet, and awesome in tap:

                             

And Jewelia had an open house in her ballet class.

She did a Christmas dance.

Wish we could upload it, but it's having issues...

Oh, are we done yet?  
Nope.

Then, Caleb had his winter piano recital!


He was a little hyped up on Christmas sugar, but he did pretty good.

         

AND, Jewelia had a violin recital at the mall.  
(Caleb helped out on accompaniment.)


It really was a lousy atmosphere for a recital since it was so loud you could barely hear them, but Jewelia did great just as well:

            

And then the kids went up to see their Great Grandma Lentz and perform for her there as well!

So, are we done?  Well, no.....there were still Christmas Eve talent show performances and then the kids were all part of the Christmas program in church on Christmas Day.

They did soooo well at church!  They were all so wonderful!  Troy and Micah sang in the choir, Micah sang in a duet and a quartet, all the kids sang a song with the primary, Caleb played a piano solo, and Jewelia played in church for the first time!  They were great!

Here's a video of Caleb's solo he played in church.  This is video of him playing it the night before at Maceys.



And here is Jewelia practicing at home.  She played sort of a medley of 2 songs, but here is the first one, The First Noel:



Here is the second, Hark! The Harold Angels Sing:



Well, PHEW!  What a crazy, busy Christmas season, but we loved every minute of it!!!  It's nice to be over, but the kids are excited thinking about what next year will bring!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Macey's 4 Year Old Photo Shoot


 Well, we finally got around to getting Macey's 4 year old pictures taken.  
She kind of looks OLD!!!!  Ohh!!!!  Sniff sniff sniff......

Of course, you know Macey and how she doesn't smile easily for the camera....

It took a while to soften her up.....


First just some little grins.....

But then we got some real smiles!

This last one was my favorite, although it made me a little mad it had to be the horizontal picture, as all my pictures framed on the walls here at home are vertical!  


 My cute baby precious!  Oh, don't get any older!!!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Happy Birthday Macey!!!


It's happened.  My baby has turned 4 years old!  

Oh, how depressing.  My little baby precious is so old!!!

We celebrated on Saturday and she had a Dora cake.  This poor cake had a rough start getting out of the pan, but I think I disguised it pretty well.


And as you can see, Dora survived as well:


Macey was so excited for her birthday.  It's all she talked about for the last couple of months.  
Here she is waiting to open her presents:


Micah was a big helper with the present opening part and reading of cards.


She had lots of family come to her party and got lots of fun presents.  

The kids loved putting her puzzles all together.


Even though she is 4 now, she promised me she will still be my baby precious until she is married.


That's good.  I suppose she can still be Daddy's little girl as well.



Thursday, November 3, 2011

Halloween Happiness!

 

OK, so during all our bad luck, life still went on, and we did have a great month of fun Halloween activities.  
It was like Halloween just went on and on.  The kids had many opportunities to dress up.  

First, Jewelia and Caleb were invited to a Halloween party.  Jewelia was going to be Supergirl this year, and although Caleb was going to be something else, he humored me to dress up like "Superboy" so he could look cute with his sister.


Then it was time for our church Halloween party.   

Macey dressed up like Princess Belle, and Jewelia was SuperGirl.


Caleb was to be Mickey Mouse Sorcerer, and Micah was a Ninja.



Then there were our costumes.

Can you tell what we are?  
Here, maybe if you put us together:


We're not elves, we're Garden Gnomes! 
I was very proud of myself for sewing the hats and making my vest.  
Troy even won Best Costume 2011 at work and got a trophy!

Our ward party was fun.  The kids had a good time and we took some fun pictures. 



This was all still a week before Halloween, so we had plenty of time to get our pumpkins ready.

Every year I do a Mr. Pumpkin Head type jack o' lantern with the kids at church.  Here is how it turned out this year:


 This year, Micah and Daddy had big plans for their pumpkins.  They took a long time and carved in some fancy video game characters on their pumpkins.


Micah made "Tails", and Daddy made Sonic the Hedgehog.


Macey had a Halloween Party at her dance class where she got to wear her costume.


 Then it was time for the kids' Halloween parade at school.  Although I was a little annoyed that the school was celebrating Halloween on a Thursday before Halloween when it wasn't even until Monday, I guess it was nice.  I suppose it made more days of Halloween.

Here are the kids ready before Halloween with their "big sister" Emily the cheerleader.


Well, after all this fun for weeks and weeks, Halloween actually came for real!  
Of course by this time, Macey's costume was pretty trashed and stained from all the parties and hot chocolate she had spilled down the front.  So for Halloween night, she became a "Sleeping Beauty fairy princess".


We went out and got lots and lots of candy!!!

I love this picture of Macey where it looks like she got caught in the act. 


So now we have tons and tons of candy and I'm probably going to get really fat.  I'll try to control myself.