Happy Birthday Kena!

Our baby girl is 3!!  We love our Kena..she always wants to be outside, is always singing a song, and can entertain herself for hours (but unfortunately not without making a mess)!  For her birthday, we celebrated on Sunday and she invited some friends over and wanted a heart cake to celebrate.  We decorated the house with balloons and dangly swirly things and she felt like a princess!  Her nursery teacher made her a darling crown out of felt and ribbon.  Her friends brought her some fancy fake nails, a strawberry shortcake dvd, and princess balloons.

On her actual birthday, we gave Kena a play doh set, took her to burger king for lunch so the kids could play on the play ground, and later that night we attended Lily's school Christmas performance.  I included a video of Lily doing her part.  She practiced to memorize it and we were so proud of her (she is still too shy to go up on stage for Primary, so we were impressed).

Christmas 2011

This is Erin hijacking the blog.

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas this year nice and cozy with our little family.  We spent the day making treats for Santa (we made home made oreos with crushed peppermint sticks rolled around the edges), cleaning the house (since Santa doesn't come to messy houses), and indulging in a traditional candle light feast (consisting of crab legs, gourmet aged steaks, salad, and mormon bubbly).  Later we smashed a pinata (which kena and lily made out of a fruit snack box), sprinkled reindeer dust/oatmeal on the lawn, and tried to enact the nativity with some ward members (...unsuccessfully because the next day we found out that we went to a house that looked similar to theirs a few houses down..we wondered why nobody answered and the house was dark).  The good news is that their neighbors were fortunate enough to receive a bag of homemade english toffee "from the Graybills" on their front porch on Christmas morning.

The girls were thrilled to get a Dora kitchen (especially Kena) from Grandma and Grandpa on Christmas morning (Kena calls it a "dora pie baker").  Other gifts that they enjoyed were books and colored pencils from Nana and Papa, princess barbies, snow globes, and hello kitty watches.  Riki got a rifle and I got running gear and a gps watch.  We are very blessed.

I played my violin with a quartet on Christmas in church and also had a choir performance with a flute.  It was really nice.  We are so grateful for the birth of our Savior and the gift of the atonement.