Busy, Busy, Busy

So I am thinking that I am a little overwhelmed right now.  I feel like I have so much to do in the next week and not enough time to do it.  I know I am not the only person that feels like this right now, but I thought I would complain a little about it.  My major problem is that for some reason this time of year is my most creative time.   I don't know if any of you are like that as well.  I think of all of the fun things I want to make, either to decorate my house with, or as presents for my nieces or for Hannah.  This year my niece Maddison called me and asked me if I would make her a dress for her school talent show.  She is singing the Taylor Swift song called Love Story.  Her request was that I make her a dress like the one Taylor wears in her video.  Of course I couldn't tell her no.  So I head off to the fabric store and try to find a pattern and fabric that would easily replicate this dress (but for a 10 year old).  I was surprised that it was relatively easy.  Anyway, I had to alter the pattern a little bit, but I didn't take into account that I wouldn't need as much fabric.  Needless to say, I had about 3 yards of fabric left over after making the dress.  So what do I decide to do, but make my other niece Brooklynn and Hannah matching dresses out of the same fabric.  While it has been a ton of fun, I have been either teaching school or sewing for the last month or so.  Well all my work has paid off and I have three beautiful dresses to show for it.  Hannah was able to wear her dress to church on Sunday and she looked absolutely beautiful.  

Family Traditions

The last couple of weeks at school we have been talking about family traditions during the holidays. I sent home a letter to parents for them to sign up for a 20 minute time period to come to school and share one of their families favorite traditions. I was actually surprised at the response. Everyday, we have had at least two families share sometimes as many as four. What also has surprised me is the number of dads that come with their wives to share. It has been a lot of fun for me to see the different things that other families do to bring in the spirit of the holiday. Last Friday, my mom and dad actually came into my class and helped me share one of my favorite family traditions. The thing I remember most about the holidays is getting matching pajamas on Christmas Eve with my four sisters. Then we would all have a big slumber party in one of our rooms and stay up all night. I showed my kids some pictures of me as a kid with my sisters in front of the tree in our pajamas. They got a real kick out of that. Here are some of the pictures that I shared.

1985

1989

1998

2004

Pretty Funny Huh!!!
Another one of my favorite traditions is making Almond Rocca. Maybe it's because I love eating it so much. Well for Family Night last night I taught Hannah how to make it. her job was to sprinkle the almonds on the pan before we poured the candy on the sheet and after the chocolate was melted. She thought this was the coolest thing ever. After a while she looked at me and said, "Mom, thanks for making candy with me." She is so sweet I know. I told her that it was a lot of fun for me and that I used to do it with my mom when I was little. Then she says, "And now I'm doing it with my mom!" It was really sweet and it made me realize how Thankful I am for families and the times that we spend together. So please comment and share some of the things that you do with your family to make the holidays a little more special.

Mom and Hannah making candy

Dad gets the hard job of stirring the candy forever. Like I said I am out of shape

Shout Out

Here is a shout out to my good friend Nisha. I went to her house last night to work out and well after 20 minutes I was done working out (I am so out of shape) and so I asked her to help me re-vamp my blog. As you can see the finished product is so cute! Thank you Nisha!!

Thank You

Thank you to all of you and your suggestions for the Ariel Baby doll. I was actually able to find one at Target. Now let's hope she doesn't come up with anything new.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I have been hearing over and over again the last couple of weeks from several different people that they can't get into Christmas because it's not snowing yet. I personally say that this feels exactly like Christmas to me and I am grateful that it hasn't started snowing. The last couple of weeks have been filled with "normal" Christmas time happenings. First of all we took Hannah to see Santa Claus at the mall. I was a little nervous about this because last year she totally flipped out. Needless to say, I spent the whole car ride down to Orem prepping her and letting her know if she doesn't tell Santa what she wants for Christmas, she might not get what she wants. Well she did great. I could see her talking and laughing with the big guy, but unfortunately I couldn't hear what she was saying. Afterwards, I asked her what she told him and she informed me that she asked for candy (check), books (check) and an Ariel baby doll (what!!) that is the first I have heard of this. I had to clarify this one, so I asked her you mean like the Barbie doll you already have. She looked at me all disgusted and then said, now mom a baby doll, that I can hold and rock. Oh great, where am I going to find one of those? Do they even make such a thing? If anybody out there knows of such a thing (that is inexpensive, because I was supposed to be done with her) just let me know.

I am Thankful for...

So a couple of weeks ago, Hannah ended up going to Activity Days with me because Chad was doing something else. Anyway, for our activity we talked about Gratitude. I had the girls look through magazines and cut out pictures of things that they were grateful for. To my surprise, Hannah got totally into it and she was able to identify many things she was thankful for such as princesses, necklaces, juice boxes etc. It was very cute and her collage has been hanging on the fridge ever since. Over the next couple of weeks she has continued to notice things around her that she is thankful for. Instead of saying I like this, or I like that, she says "Mom, I am thankful for this or that" It is really quite cute. Last night as I was tucking her into bed she looked at me and said Mom, I am thankful for you and for daddy, but I am especially thankful for Jesus." Needless to say, I couldn't help but feel extremely blessed. Hannah can be such a sweet girl and it scares me sometimes at how intuitive she is. I am thankful for her.

Beauty and the Beast

So last night we took Hannah to Lehi High School to see their production of Beauty and the Beast. I have to say I was totally impressed. Now you have to know something about me. I was a total drama geek in high school and totally into this kind of stuff. There was always one major problem though and that was that our theater program was really lacking in a lot of ways. We didn't have the means or the support to do anything so cool. Just to give you a mental picture, at one point we performed one of our plays in a rented retail space at the local strip mall where we had to build a stage. That's how pathetic it was. Anyway, enough about me, this play was really great. They had great costumes, sets, effects and the main characters all did a fantastic job. Hannah of course loved it (all except when the Beast yelled). All in all it was a great evening and I highly recommend to anyone in the area to go. It was well worth it.

My Sweet Little Princess

From This...

To This!!!

So many of you know that our little Hannah is crazy about princesses. She has always been all things girl, that is until just recently. It all started a couple of weeks ago when Chad was just flipping through the channels on TV. He stopped to watch The Incredible Hulk. Well it is safe to say Hannah was mesmorized. She had never seen anything like it. She was full of questions and Chad patiently answered all of them. I know he was thinking to himself, "This is great, my little girl is into the same things I am into." After that Hannah wanted to watch Hulk all the time. Of course it was never on when she was able to watch it! So Chad decides to introduce her to his collection of Batman cartoons. The life of my sweet little girl will never again be the same. She absolutely loves BAT MAN! She wants to watch it all of the time. I don't know how many of you have watched Bat Man recently, but it is in my opinion too scary for her to watch. Chad on the other hand doesn't agree with me because he still thinks its really cool that he has an excuse to watch the cartoons he loves most again. At dinner time we have conversations about Scarecrow, and The Mad Hatter, Clay Man and the Joker. I of course have no idea what the two of them are talking about so I try to change the subject. You would think in a family of two girls and one boy I wouldn't feel so outnumbered.
Anyway, last night we went to the local community center to go swimming and when we got there we noticed they were having a boutique. As we walked past the entrance Hannah spied nothing else but a BATMAN CAPE. She was falling all over it and saying over and over again that she just had to have one. So forget the dollhouse, I think I am going to have to make my sweet little princess a Bat Man cape for Christmas.

A Doll House for Hannah

Last night I was talking to my sister Jaci and she told me about a doll house they sell at Country Loft that is so cute.  I immediately got to thinking about getting it for Hannah for Christmas.  The deal is that I work at Country Loft a few hours a week doing displays.  For the amount of hours that I work I get trade in either inventory or preschool payment for Hannah.  So I worked it out that I could work 2 hours a week from now until Christmas and pay for the doll house and all the fun accessories.  When I got home and talked to Chad about it, he wasn't thrilled.  He tried to explain to me that even though it is trading hours for the doll house, it is still paying for it, and we don't need to do so much for her for Christmas.  Don't get me wrong I totally understand where he is coming from, my only dellema is that I don't know if I would ever be able to afford to actually buy her this kind of dollhouse and I know she would love it.  So what should I do.  Please vote to the right and/or comment to let me know what you think I should do.

2 going on 20

So I came home from school on Friday and had the most interesting conversation with my sweet little 20 year old, oh I mean 2 year old. This is how the conversation went
Me: Hi Hannah
Hannah: Hi mom, how was your day
Me: It was fine.
Hannah: Oh! Thank you so much for telling me that story about your day!
Me: How was your day Hannah?
Hannah: It was kind of long.
Me: Why do you think it was so long?
Hannah: Well, daddy was yelling at me.
Me: Why do you think he was yelling at you?
Hannah: Probably because I peed and pooped my pants
Me: Oh maybe you should try going potty in the toilet instead of your pants and daddy won't yell.
Hannah: Yeah your probably right. I will try that next time.

As we were having this conversation, I was trying really hard not to laugh. As I have thought about it since, I thought I should really appreciate this level of reasoning in a conversation considering once she hits about 10 there will be no reasoning with her at all and I won't have a clue what I am talking about.
Anyway, I hope this makes you laugh as much as it did me.

Happy Halloween!

So I have never been a really big fan of Halloween, but I have to say as a school teacher I love it! Let me explain by saying I do not love the days leading up to it at school, but I do love the actual day! It is so fun to see all of the kids in their costumes, and their excitement. In the last couple of years I have also learned that first graders have no clue who classic characters are. Last year as a team we all dressed up as Wizard of Oz characters, and this year we are all Alice in Wonderland characters. I have decided if you aren't Hannah Montana, Spiderman, or Iron Man they just don't know who you are! Anyway we are having a lot of fun and here are some pictures to enjoy

First Grade Team- Hidden Hollow 2008-2009

Picture Time

So we have figured out that if we take Hannah to get her pictures done on her birthday and around Halloween time, that gives us professional pictures every six months or so. This year Hannah has been so excited to dress up as Sleeping Beauty! I think she has been talking about it since June. Anyway here are the latest pictures. She is two and a half in these (give or take a couple of weeks!) Enjoy!

Strange things happen at night!!

So there are many members of the Coombs family that come alive at night, especially when they are young. (Not mentioning any names Uncle Terry) Anyway, since Hannah has always been a really good sleeper, I was hoping she wouldn't be one of those kids that got up in the middle of the night and did strange things. Well, I can officially say that Hannah falls into the category of things that go bump in the night.
Last night, I guess you could say early this morning, around 2:30 I woke up and Hannah's bedroom light was on. I yelled from my bed, Hannah what are you doing? To which she answered Mom, I need to play dress ups but I can't find my pink dress. I quickly got out of bed to talk to her. Of coarse she was wide awake and wanting to play. After a couple of minutes we reached a compromise where she could wear her pink dress up to bed.
I thought all was well and taken care of until about 4:15. Again I woke up to Hannah's light being on. When I looked up to see what was going on, I saw Hannah standing right next to my bed. This time she had not only her pink dress up on, but also her tiara, gloves, shoes and wand in hand. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied "I am waking you from the spell" Because I was so out of it, I said "What spell?" She calmly answered "Your sleeping spell, please give me a kiss!" This was just too much for me, I had to start laughing. Again I had to convince her that it was night time and not time to be playing. This time I wasn't as lucky and I couldn't convince her to take her tiara, or shoes off!

Halloween Soup!

So I don't know about any of you, but Halloween is not really my favorite holiday. Since becoming a school teacher, I have learned that I'd better start liking it or just be miserable for the entire month of October. (since that is all first graders want to talk about as soon as it turns October). Anyway, so last week we were reading in our poetry books about Halloween Soup. As we were reading I suddenly got a great idea. We were going to make Halloween soup at school. So the first thing I did was have the kids help me make a shopping list (of course making lists is on the state core). And then I told them that I was going to go to the store and see if I could find all of the things that I needed. So the poem mentions things like chicken ears, lizard tongues, zebra toes, spider tails (I know spiders don't have tails), etc. My next job was a bit harder and that was finding candy that went along with each item in the poem. I have to say I didn't get everything, but most things. The funniest part of the whole thing was that I totally had my kids freaked out. That is all they wanted to talk about for the entire week. A couple of kids said that their moms wanted the reciepe, others said that they wern't allowed to eat it. It was hillarious. I have to admit that for a short moment I actually liked Halloween. It was fun!
Ingredients that I used

Randomness

So I know it has been a totally long time since I have posted anything new. Not that nothing new has been going on, actually to the contrary. There has been so much going on that I don't have the time to post. So I thought I would just share a few pictures and update you on a few of the happenings in the Coombs household.

Hannah really enjoyed watching the Olympics. Her favorite of course was the gymnastics. I can't say that I blame her. Anyway she came downstairs one day with her leotard on and her metal that she got from swimming lessons on. She then informed me that she was a gymnastics winner.


Hannah has started preschool and she absolutely loves it. She can't wait to get there and she fights Chad everyday when it's time to go home. Her favorite thing to talk about is her school friends and Miss. Clarissa. The other day she informed me that she has bones in her face and hands. When I asked her if she has bones in her feet as well. She put her foot right in her face and then said "I totally do mom." I later realized that they were learning about their bodies at school.

Because I am at a brand new school this year, we went about three weeks without a playground. For weeks my students would write in their journals about the new playground and how excited they were for it to be finished. When it was finally ready for them to play on it looked like a million little ants on a crumb of bread. I was actually really impressed with how well behaved they were and how they all just waited their turn. It was really fun.

What a difference a day makes

I don't know really what to say with this post, except that I am so excited! Just take a look for yourselves.

Chances Are?

So I was going to post this to my Hannah says section of the blog, but it is too long of a story, so here goes. Hannah's new favorite thing to do is read stories to herself. As a first grade teacher, (and a biased mother) I would have to say that she is really good at looking at the pictures and telling an accurate story based on what is going on in the picture. Anyway, her favorite books right now are the "If you give a mouse a cookie" series. Recently her story telling has sounded something like this... Once upon a time there was a princess, and "Chances are" she didn't like her stepmother. It really cracks me up that she inserts the "Chances are" line from her favorite books into each story. Anyway yesterday she was reading a book she has about turkeys and this is what she says... "If you give a turkey a waddle, chances are, she'll want a neck!"
Isn't she the most clever girl ever. I have to say that I couldn't stop laughing at her. I hope this gives you at least one thing to laugh about today!

Disneyland Fun

All summer we have been looking forward to our trip to California, and most importantly to Disneyland. That is all Hannah has been talking about for months. I have to admit, I was looking forward to it, but it was a little bitter sweet. It was sweet in that I knew Hannah was going to love it and I was excited to see her little dreams come true. It was bitter in that I knew once it was over that marked the end of my summer and back to the grindstone.
Well the trip went on without a glitch and we had a wonderful time. One of the highlights was a Princess dinner full of fun and visits from the very best, i.e. Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White. Hannah could not stop smiling and was such a little princess herself. I loved to watch her and her little eyes light up.
Here are some fun pictures that show her great excitement.

Princess Hannah

Lately I have been trying to download all of our home videos onto my computer and put them all into one movie so that I can burn them onto a DVD. it has been a lot of fun to watch Hannah as a baby and growing up. She loves it!! Her new favorite topic of conversation is when she was a baby. She asks a million questions about things that she did, or things she didn't know how to do as a baby. It is really fun. Anyway, through the process I have realized that I haven't taken any video of her recently. So, I got the camera out yesterday and taped her doing two of her favorite things (singing and twirling). I hope you all enjoy and you don't get to dizzy watching.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Happy Father's Day

Hannah has the best dad in the whole world and here are a few reasons why...
- He tells really good jokes
- He plays games and reads stories to her
- He draws pictures with her on her art easel
- He teaches her about animals and takes her exploring by the lake
- He lets her help in the garden even if she makes more of a mess than he would like
- He loves her and kisses her all over every day
- He loves her mom and works really hard
- He has a testimony and shares it by the way he lives his life
- He says prayers and tucks her into bed every night

Free MySpace slideshows, photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

But I didn't get to ride the pink one!

Yesterday we took Hannah to Seven Peaks water park in Provo. I was a little leery of taking her because she is so little, but since we have been going to the Legacy Center this summer, she has gotten braver each time we go. She loves the water slide there so we thought why not. She absolutely loved it. As we drove up to the park she saw all the slides and the first thing she said is "I want to go on the pink one." Not because it looked fun to her but because it is pink and that is her only criteria. Well it turns out that she is too short to go on that particular slide, so it was a great disappointment to her. Multiple times throughout the day, she would ask again if she could go on the pink slide. Since then when anybody asks her about her trip to Seven Peaks the first thing she says is "I didn't get to go on the pink slide!"

It was a lot of fun to watch her get so excited about being there. As we walked up to go on the first slide, she looked at me and said,"Mom, this is going to be a great day! Thanks for bringing me here." I know, I know I have a really sweet little girl.
She loved going on the slides and wasn't afraid at all.

I was proud of how brave she was being. On one of our trips down a slide, when our tube went particularly high up the side of the slide, Hannah yelled out "I am flying like a bird!" It was so cute and I had to laugh out loud.

It was a day of many firsts for Hannah. Her first time to a water park, and she also tried cotton candy for the first time. I am still not sure which one she liked the best.

It's always fun when Grammy comes to visit

Chad's parents got here the other day for a visit. It is always so much fun when they come and it is all that Hannah has been able to talk about for the past several days. They got here on Saturday night and we went down to Provo to visit them at Grandma Greats house. Hannah was really excited to see them all and of course she got even more excited when she saw all the fun presents that Grammy brought her.

It is fun that even though Grammy lives so far away, she always knows what Hannah would love best. These dress ups are so perfect, and she hasn't taken them off for very long at all. Let me tell you it was a real struggle when we were getting ready for church to convince a 2 year old that a purple boa and patriotic crown are not appropriate for church.

Keeping a 2 year old entertained!

So this will probably be the most random post so far. The last couple of days have been really fun and so I just thought I would share some pictures.


So for many of you out there who have two year olds, it is a never ending quest to find something to keep them occupied for longer than 5 minutes. For me I think I have found the trick. Last summer we bought Hannah a sandbox and put it together. However, we never put sand in it and it sat all year just being destroyed by the wonderful Utah weather. So a few weeks ago, chad sanded the whole thing and sealed it so that we could put sand in it. It has proven to be a fantastic purchase. Hannah will stay outside and play in the sandbox for hours. I can work in the house and she will just entertain herself.

Last night we went to Liberty Park with Brett and Jaci. It is such a cute little park and Hannah could stay there for hours. There is this little man-made stream that goes through the park that the kids love to play in.

Hannah of course was no exception. Being the type-A personality that Hannah is, she immediately started cleaning all the leaves out of the stream. Before we knew it, all of the kids playing were cleaning out the leaves. Brett saw this as an opportunity to see if the kids could outlast the current in the stream by throwing leaves upstream and watching the kids chase after them. The kids were having a great time and it was fun to watch Brett enjoying himself.

Hannah trying to catch the leaves.

"I got one mom!"