heart craft

I found this link- http://judysturman.typepad.com/in_his_grip/2009/01/easy-heart-wreath.html through my favorite website sugardoodle.net to make this really pretty heart door hanging. I love it so much I had to share it with you. I want to make one for each holiday but its going to be hard to find styrofoam in other shapes. I guess I could cut it out. We'll see! Callie had several friends over the weekend I made it so I had lots of helps- this was a team effort. Everyone enjoyed making it.

The twist

For our February PTA meeting at the school I work at and Hayden attends the 3rd grade performed. Each class did several dances. Haydens class did the twist and the bunny hop. I videoed the twist so here it is. Notice towards the end Haydens stomach starts to hurt him. We also honored our life member for PTA and we choose a lady-Ms. Kitye, who had a granddaughter that used to go to West but has since moved on to intermediate school but Ms. Kitye volunteers every single day from the time the kids get to school until they go home (without taking a lunch break) since her granddaughter was in kindergarten and now she is in 6th grade. She works in the copy room all day long and copies and laminates and whatever the teachers need her to do. So we decided she would be perfect for the life member award plus she was turning 80 just a few days later so we could make it a birthday celebration too! This was all a surprise to her, we told her she needed to come to this PTA meeting to honor a teacher and we needed her help. So she came and along with several other teachers and students went up to the stage to honor the "life member" We all had a line to tell a quality about this life member. She even had a line to say (not knowing that it was her)! She was totally suprised when they announced her name for the life member. It was so cute! After we announced it we crowned her the "Xerox Queen". We had a crown for her and made her a sash. Anna ( one of our teachers aid) made it and I embrodairied "xerox queen" on it. Then we sang dancing queen to her while we circled around her on the stage. The words were changed to xerox queen along with some new lyrics about how she is the best at xeroxing. It was so fun. Hayden joined us up on stage and we have been singing xerox queen for several weeks now!

Wii Fit

I bought the Wii fit for myself with some Christmas money I had hoped I could use it on days I don't go the gym but as soon as I brought it home my children took over especially Mason. He does it everyday and loves it! Here he is doing the yoga part and notice how well he is at his comunication. We are sooo proud of him. He now answers my questions (he is still very hard to understand), communicates with words as to what he wants and he even teases us! He is saying some of the funniest things, kinda like when a 2 year old is just learning how to talk and how cute that is. I am going to have to start blogging his cute sayings so I will always remember. If you don't know Mason they won't sound so cute to you but if you do you'll know how exciting this is for us considering how long we have waited for it.

1. Shawns family has always had some really wierd sayings and they always use to say "poop in the water" (sorry Carol- I'm letting out the family secrets!). Well the other day we were eating dinner and Hayden was bothering Mason and Mason yells at him and says "shut up, poop in the water". We died! For those of you who don't know Mason- he is seven years old and is Autistic and just this past year has starting talking (communicating with us). He could say words but only if you told him to say it. I wanted to cry when he said that because it is such a milestone for him.

2. This week his teacher sent home a note asking me if Mason was afraid of death and blood. It sounds like a strange note to receive from your childs school teacher but she explained that in science class they were talking about the circulatory system and how you need blood to flow threw your body in order to live and Mason started crying. I asked him when he got home why he cried over that and he said "Ewww, thats gross!

New Years Day

For New Years Eve we spent the night at Robert and Caseys house and rang in the new year with them. The next morning Casey made us a great big breakfast and invited other friends over to join. Towards the end of our visit we went outside and Hayden thought it would be fun to jump in the pool. It wasn't that cold of a day but jumping in the pool the 1st of January in Texas is still pretty cold!

Poyfair talent show

To end our Christmas celebrations we had a Poyfair family Talent show. Everyone participated and did whatever they could. I quickly decided to sing with Mason and we sang a song I knew he would know-the ABC's, Shawn got talked into telling a story to the children (even though his talent was going to be to show off his world of warcraft characters but he couldn't get his server to work at Jasons house). Hayden counted to 20 in Japanese (learned it in his Karate class) and Callie played her clarinet even though she didn't want to- she was very shy! We also has some great acts from the rest of the family- Sara and Jason sang the theme song to cheers (their 2nd debute after "growing pains" at Danes wedding. Dane and family got all dressed up and danced to Pirates of the the Cariabean ( I have a little clip of it but I just got this camera for Christmas so obviously I didn't know how to work the video part). Grandma and Great Grandma sang and Ivy ended it with her mooning the crowd! After it was all over we applauded everyone who participated and whoever got the most applause won the talent show. Callie Rae was our winner. She was the recipient of a wonderful trophy Jason made from his old trophys as a child. He mutilated them and glued them back together to make one big Poyfair Talent Show Trophy that I'm sure we will continue this tradition for years to come and pass it on to the next winner.

Christmas with the Poyfairs

Christmas at the Poyfairs is always way over done- I grew up with a few presents thinking Santa only spent $25 per kid as I looked through the Sears Christmas catalog every year making a list with the sku #, page #, and price so Santa would get it right (per dad). Then I married into the Poyfair family!! Wow, I never knew Christmas could be so extravagant! Shawn insists that we spend just as much money on ourselves as we do the children- I agree! We had a great Christmas and got everything we wanted. The kids loved it too. We spent the morning opening gifts. Kim (Shawns sister), Mason her husband and her two children, Asher and Ruthanne stayed with us and joined us Christmas morning. After lunch we went to Sara and Jasons (another Poyfair) house and had Christmas dinner and gifts from grandparents. It was very nice to have all the family in town for Christmas. Shawn has 2 brothers and 1 sister who live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area while his brother Dane lives in Arkansas and sister Kim live in Arizona. After Christmas everyone loaded up to go to the Lake house in Tyler, Texas where their parents have a home. Callie and Hayden went with everyone while Shawn, Mason and I stayed behind since Shawn has to work. We will be going tomorrow(Monday)for his day off.

White elephant gift exchange

On Christmas Eve we went over to Shawns brother Brandons house for dinner, White elephant exchange and caroling. The whole family was there. Shawn is the oldest of 6 so it was very crowded. Everyone of his brothers and sisters is married with children ranging from 1-4 (ages 1-11, Callie being the oldest). We had a great time starting out with dinner and then we bundled up and went caroling around the neighborhood. We stopped by a few houses that Brandon and Sharee knew and left them with a Christmas mug and goodies. Then we went back to the house and had 5 rounds of white elephant. The kids started out first with Grandma and Grandpa gifts (new items). Where Callie started out with some sort of action figure or boy thing and Hayden got a baby rattle doll of some sort! They quickly stole something else and came home with spy gear for Hayden and Callie got some sort of secret door hand opener.