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