Maggie's Baptism: Eight IS Great!

Maggie turned 8 on 13 January 2013. It was a Sunday and she decided to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on that very day. In our church, children must be at least 8 years old to be baptized, because at that age they are capable of discerning between right and wrong and can make the baptismal covenant to keep the commandments and follow Jesus Christ. We are so proud of Maggie's decision to be a follower of Christ and become an official member of the Church. She was baptized by her dad.

Maggie's teacher from school, Mrs. Kim, accepted Maggie's invitation to come to the baptismal service. She lives near our church building and is friends with some of the church members who are also teachers in the school district. We were so happy that she came to support Maggie on this special day. Maggie really likes Mrs. Kim and is having a great 2nd grade year in her classroom. 

Audra is a friend from Maggie's first school in Milpitas. When Maggie moved to her current school, we didn't think we'd see her again. However, when Adah began learning the flute in a district band class, Audra's older sister was there learning the trumpet, so we ran into Audra after the first class! I have since become friends with Audra's mom and Adah is friends with her older sister. We were happy to have Audra and her mom join us for Maggie's baptism.

Lots of friends from primary came to witness the baptism and wish Maggie well. She got a candy lei from one family. . .

. . . and all the kids wrote her notes on the chalkboard in the adjoining classroom.

And, of course, all our California family was also there to watch Maggie take this important step. Holly got cozy with Grandma and was sacked out by the end of the service. (Maybe she found my talk boring.) Grandpa also came, as well as Uncle Jotham and Aunt Dana and kids, and Uncle Jed and Aunt Joette and kids. And we were so happy to have the Potters there from Washington. Uncle Jed and Brother Potter were able to help Damon confirm Maggie.

After the baptismal service at the church, the whole family, the Potters, and Audra & her mom, came to our house for a pasta buffet and double birthday cakes! We figured we needed a lot of cake to feed all those people, so we put four candles on each cake (photos did not turn out) to get the required eight. Maggie also got to open all her gifts from the family during this party. It was a really fun evening.

Before everyone went home, we tried to get a photo of all the cousins together. (Keep in mind that these are cousins from the McMillan and Wangsgard side, so technically not all of them are cousins with each other--just cousins to my kids.) As you can see, trying to get 10 children ages 10, 9, 8, 6, 6, 5, 3, 3, 2, and 2 months to all sit still and smile nicely for the camera was pretty tricky. And, again, the photography job was pretty lousy anyway. Still, you get the idea of how much fun and craziness must have been happening at our house as we celebrated Maggie's birthday and baptism.

A little better. . .

Almost. . .

but not quite. : )

FYI: The kids (from the top) are Holly, Cassie, Braden, & Christian; Anya, Kiera, & Adah; Gunnar, Kara, & Maggie.

Eight is Great! (And Maggie is, too.)

Maggie invited several friends from her church primary class to come and "get crafty" at her birthday party on January 12 (the day before her actual birthday).  Everyone made collages on clipboards and also painted metal washers with fingernail polish to create necklace pendants. This was the QUIETEST group of little girls I've ever been around. They hardly made a peep and just worked away at their little projects.

We designed Maggie's cake to look like an artist's palette. You see that, right?

  

 Opening gifts:

The best gift was that our friends, the Potters, drove down from Washington to be with us for the weekend to celebrate Maggie's birthday and attend her baptism. They arrived just as the party was starting and stayed until Monday morning. We wish their visit could have been longer, but they squeezed us into their busy family holiday travels and preparations to leave on their mission in March.

Making a wish:

At eight, Maggie is still a cheerful addition to our family, making us laugh with her dancing and lip syncing (Tangled songs are her specialty these days). She's still playing the violin, right now as the youngest student in a school district group class. Her 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Kim, is always sharing funny stories that Maggie likes to repeat to us. Maggie's excelling in school with 100% spelling tests every week and reading at a 5th grade level! We're so proud of all her hard work in school, the help and attention she gives to her younger siblings (she's great at reading to them), and in seeing her learn the gospel and make good choices.  We love you, Maggie. Happy Birthday! 

How Could I Miss?

Somehow I missed uploading these other photos from visiting Grandma's and Grandpa's house. Somebody needs to get a better camera, because it seems that lately we can't get many good photographs. There's so much sun in this state, we just don't seem to know what to do with it. (You'll see what I mean in some up-coming posts.)  Nevertheless, the memories are still captured in these sunny, blurry shots, so I'm sharing them anyway.

For the Thanksgiving and Christmas visits we took our sleeping bags so our kids could just camp out in the sitting room portion of the master suite. At Thanksgiving, Damon's parents were upstairs with the big kids while we slept downstairs with Holly on our floor. At Christmastime, they insisted we take the master suite and our whole family took over the upstairs of the house.

Here the girls are having a leisurely time reading in their sleeping bags in the morning sun.

Here, no doubt, they are watching something on TV. Probably Animal Planet. Gotta love Grandpa's cable.

And here was a favorite pastime: obstacle course races. The couches, of course, were the obstacles, and the kids came up with all kinds of serpentine and figure-eight-type routes that had to be run, timing everyone with a stopwatch.

 

Of course, Uncle Justin was right there racing and bounding around those couches as well.

We love going to Grandma's and Grandpa's house!!

 

Aaaaaand....Christmas #3!

And, once Uncle Jotham, Aunt Dana, and the cousins arrived, we got to exchange even MORE presents. It was double the fun for Cassie, too, since her birthday is just a few days after Christmas.

I love Gunnar's face in this picture:

Braden got some super-hero dress-ups that he shared with Holly.

Batman!

and Robin! 

 Once again, baby Kara was a favorite:

 

Another great Gunnar expression. Don't you love how they are looking at each other?

One of the fun things we did in Grandma's kitchen was make homemade pasta! It's quite a process. Once the dough is made, you have to knead it and then you take a small portion and crank it through the pasta maker. That flattens it out, making the piece of dough longer and thinner. Then you fold it in thirds and crank it through again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Each time it gets longer and thinner. It has to be cranked through a total of ten times before you can actually cut it into the noodles. Whew! Everyone wanted to help and the kids did a pretty good job cranking.  As the dough comes out and is getting longer, it's helpful to have a second pair of hands to prevent all the dough from just piling up. Damon and I actually got a pretty good system worked out of feeding and cranking and feeding again. Lots of fun...but lots of work.

You can see how long those noodles eventually got. It was tricky finding enough counter space on which to put them without having them stick together before we were ready to cook them.

It was fun being with the family and having the time to make such a fun and tasty dinner. We loved all the Bananagrams and popcorn and beach fun. It was a great way to finish our 2012.

Christmas #2 and Lots of Beach Play

On December 27th we headed south to spend the rest of the holiday week with Damon's family at his parents' new house near Pismo Beach. Uncle Justin was already there and Uncle Jotham, Aunt Dana, and the 3 cousins would join us a few days later.

It was a second Christmas, because we got to exchange presents with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Justin.

Two gifts that were a big hit: Gunnar's "race car costume" and the popcorn cart! Uncle Justin bought the popcorn cart for the whole McMillan clan to share. He created a whole treasure hunt with rhymes based on Christmas carols that led the children from one clue to another until we finally came upon the cart hiding in the garage. Popcorn for everyone! All the time!! Seriously, for the next four days there was always popcorn to eat and ready at kid level, which didn't help any of the children to have an appetite at mealtimes. (Eventually Grandma cut them off so they'd eat their dinner.)

We spent a lot of time enjoying the beach on this trip. We found sea anemones and hermit crabs in the tide pools right by Grandma's and Grandpa's house. How cool is that? Just wander down the street anytime (well, anytime it's low tide) and find these cool critters living among the rocks and seaweed.

 

I don't know if Justin took this amazing picture of the starfish and anemones at the tide pools by his parents' house or on the guided walk we took at Montana de Oro State Park on the 28th.

These rocks, great for climbing from the beach up to the clifftop sidewalk, are right by Damon's parents' house.

 

 

 

Playing on Avila Beach, about a 10-minute drive from the house:

 

 

Grandparents, watching the play:

Parents, watching the play (Notice I'm wearing my jacket and gloves and Gunnar is barefoot with this pants rolled up; that boy does NOT get cold.):

 

Milpitas Merry Christmas

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas day at home.  Here's a shot of all our loot before the gift-openers descended. This is the first time we've had an actual fireplace where we could hang our stockings (knit by my mom--aren't they cool?).

"Santa Claus" brought that new blue bike for Gunnar. It was a really luck Craigslist find just 2 days before Christmas! Damon was planning to paint a pink Barbie bike, but that was proving complicated, and a quick search found this bike that was perfect. Maggie got the art easel on the right, Holly got some new play dishes, and Adah got a remote control helicopter.

I put Santa Claus in quotation marks because this is the year we decided to come clean with our children--all of them.  For several reasons, we decided that we were no longer going to do Santa Claus in our house. When we told them, Maggie was convinced we'd ruined Christmas and forbade us to mention it anymore. However, the season still progressed and Christmas morning dawned with as much magic and with the stockings filled just the same. I think she's okay now. For me, the season was actually much less stressful because I wasn't always watching myself and distinguishing between secrets. I openly bought candy and other stocking stuffers in front of the children.  They weren't in on everything, and we had just as much fun surprising and giving as any other year.   

 

What is it?

Here's the mess in the living room once all of the presents were opened and we were lounging about and playing. Maggie is reading Gunnar Click, Clack, Moo! Cows That Type. If you haven't read that book, or any of the follow-ups, I highly recommend that you do. Very funny.

I gave Damon Guitar for Dummies and a new set of guitar strings. We have a child-size acoustic guitar that he loves to goof around on, but he doesn't really know how to play. I figured if he could get into the book a little using the small guitar, we'd see if it's worth getting him a big guitar. The verdict now that it's March? He hasn't had a lot of time to learn and practice, but he's also realized he'll need a big guitar to really make any progress. It's a bit of a Catch-22, I suppose, but maybe we'll start keeping our eyes open for an inexpensive guitar.

Gunnar got a dinosaur excavation kit that was a big hit with all of the kids, and Gunnar happily let everyone participate. 

They spent a long time hunched over this box, working together with the provided tools and our own paint brushes, scraping and sweeping away the rock and dust until they finally had a T-rex skeleton to put together. Just like real paleontologists!

We spent some type on Skype with my parents in Canada and my brother in Massachusetts. Mostly we just relaxed and played with our new toys and being grateful for so many blessings.