Scenes from the MOPS Christmas Party

On Monday, December 12th, we spent the evening celebrating Christmas together at MOPS. We had such a fun night of food, fellowship, crafts, games, and plenty of laughter! What a wonderful way to celebrate such special season!

Lindsey kicked the night off with a reading of the Christmas story from Luke. Such a meaningful way to remind us what Christmas is all about!

Then it was time to get our craft on! The mamas from LIFE group could not agree more!

We had 3 craft stations set up. We made homemade bath salts (not the illegal kind, folks! We're a family affair here!) Jen P. loved shaking up her bath salts!

We also made peppermint marshmallow stir sticks to make our hot chocolate and coffee SOOOO yummy! My favorite were our glitter ornaments! Thanks, Heather, for all of the fun crafts! We could even do these at home for our friends and family!

Then it was on to the Ugly Christmas Sweater Contest! And I must say we had a room full of very ugly and tacky Christmas sweaters! Ladies, you outdid yourselves!

Some were just as ugly coming as they were going!

The winning sweater, as modeled by Stacy P., and the winning sweater's owner, Kendra B. in her lovely kitty sweater (meow)!

Now that the winning sweater was declared, it was time for fun and games! Kimberly put together some of the best Christmas Minute-To-Win-It games and we all had fun playing, laughing, and cheering our MOPS mamas on to victory!

Heather, trying to squash the competition! No fair cheating!

Brittany L. and Amanda L. rocking the Merry Christmas Nutstacker game!

Sheree and Robyn working their hardest to get that darned cookie to their mouth! Not as easy as you think!

Almost there!

We hope you all had a wonderful night at our first Heartland MOPS Christmas celebration! We loved every minute of it (some loved it a little TOO much!)

Merry Christmas from your Heartland MOPS steering team! We can't wait to see what 2012 brings to our MOPS group!

Spiced Dough Ornaments

This is a wonderful activity to make with your kids of any age! Toddlers and even teens love making these wonderfully scented ornaments. And they make your house smell SO GOOD! Just make sure that no one mistakes them for gingerbread and eats them! 

Spiced Dough Ornaments

1 cup ground cinnamon

1 Tbsp ground cloves

1 Tbsp ground ginger

1 Tbsp ground nutmeg

1 cup applesauce

2 Tbsp white glue (I used Elmers)

Food coloring (optional)

A few Tbsp flour

Combine the cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg in a mixing bowl.

Add the applesauce and glue.

Mix ingredients thoroughly, using your hands.
Add food coloring, if desired. (I didn't add any).
Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness.
Using cookie cutters, cut dough into various shapes.
Make a hole in the top of each ornament using a drinking straw.
Lay the ornaments out flat to dry at room temperature for 3-5 days, turning over often. OR bake for one hour in a 200 degree oven.
When completely dry, attach a ribbon and hang on your tree!

Christmas Party Date Change!

Hey mamas! We have moved the date of the Heartland MOPS Christmas Party to Monday, December 12th. Don't forget your Teen MOPS items! Don't remember what you were bringing? Ask your discussion group leader! Want to volunteer to bring more items? Call Ome at 837-9346. And don't forget to wear your ugliest and tackiest Christmas sweater, vest, shirt, dress, headgear, whatever! The crazier the better! Prizes will be given to the ugliest sweaters!

November Meeting- Self Defense!

November's meeting was so much fun! Our meeting focused on basic self-defense techniques that all women should know. Our instructor was Steven Dunn, 6th degree black belt and instructor in tae kwondo at Health Point. Mr. Dunn spent our entire meeting helping us learn these simple techniques so we can better protect ourselves and our children! The three most important steps to self-defense are:awareness, preparation, and training! And tonight's MOPS meeting certainly helped all of us become more aware and more prepared as women and moms!

Here are some photo highlights from the meeting.

Don't forget, all MOPS moms get 2 free weeks of martial arts classes at Health Point! These classes can be for your kids as well as you! Get started today!

MOPS T Shirts

Hey mamas! If you want to rock your MOPS pride in a cute t-shirt, you have come to the right place! We are offering our cute MOPS design on t-shirts, long sleeve tees, hoodies, baseball tees, and sweatshirts. You can order these in ANY color you want! Every shirt will feature the MOPS design on the front with "Motherhood: Not For Sissies" on the back in white print.

T-shirts cost $10. To see the t shirt colors go HERE and click on the color chart link.

Long sleeve tees cost $15. To see the long sleeve colors go HERE and click on the color chart link.

Sweatshirts cost $20 and hoodies cost $22. To see the sweatshirt and hoodie colors go HERE and click on the color chart link.

Baseball tees cost $15. To see the baseball tee colors go HERE and click on the color chart link. Remember baseball sleeves are 3/4 long!

(Please do not choose a white shirt since all lettering will be in white! And if you don't specify a color your shirt will be our lovely MOPS pink.)

Ready to order?  Print out the order form HERE or e-mail your order to Kimberly Smith at kimberly_aggertt@hotmail.com. If you have any questions about the order e-mail her or call her at 332-8664.

Hope to see you all wearing your MOPS shirt with pride!

October Meeting - PICTIONARY

We were so glad to welcome back all of our MOPS mamas to the October meeting! We even had a few new faces join us tonight! It was so great to see you all!

Our meeting kicked off with a rousing game of Halloween BINGO! People were BINGO-ing left and right! All of the winners got to pick out a door prize.

Ann proudly showed off her door prize! If only we all could be so lucky. At least we got to eat all the candy corn we wanted even if we didn't win!
 

To continue with the "game" theme, our topic tonight was PICTIONARY: HOW TO TAKE GREAT PICTURES OF YOUR KIDS. Local photographer DeAnna Arevalo was on hand to give us some wonderful tips and advice on how to turn our every day snapshots in to frame-worthy photos! 

Some of her best advice:

1. Turn off the flash! Nothing washes out a photo or causes red-eye worse than the flash. Let mother nature light your photos!
2. Use editing software! You can purchase programs (Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, etc.) or use free ones that came with your camera or found on-line (Picnik, Picasa, etc.)
3. Keep your camera handy! That's a rule I personally follow, too. How can you capture those fun and spontaneous moments if you never have your camera around?
4. Shoot, shoot, shoot! In the digital age don't be afraid to take lots of pictures! 
5. Remember the important "rule of threes"! Don't center your subjects. A subject that is off center or to the side is much more interesting and pleasing to the eye than one smack dab in the middle of the frame every time!
6. Get on their level! Don't be afraid to stoop, sit, crawl, or lay down to get on the eye level of your littles.

Thank you, DeAnna, for your advice! And mamas, don't forget to take advantage of her special Heartland MOPS offer! Check out her website www.arevalophotography.com  for more information, or "LIKE" her on Facebook: Arevalo Photography. 

We also made a fabulous fall craft! Everyone's sparkly pumpkins turned out beautifully!

Want to make your own at home? Paint your pumpkin with the glue mixture (1/2 glue, 1/2 water), sprinkle on Epsom salts, and let it dry! Beautiful and inexpensive! 

We hope all of you mamas had a lots of fun at the October MOPS meeting! We know your Steering Team sure did! Maybe we had a little too much fun cleaning up after the meeting?
 

We hope to see you all at the next MOPS meeting!

MOPS @ Pioneer Orchard

Today was a  beautiful day to go to the pumpkin patch! We had so much fun going on a tractor ride, picking out our own pumpkins, playing with the animals (but NOT the BAD goat!), digging in the sand box, eating apples, drinking cider, and visiting with other MOPS mamas!

We hope to see you at our next MOPS meet up!

MOPS @ The Park!

We had a beautiful morning at Arena Park last Monday. We had several MOPS mamas turn out, and we even met some new mamas who were excited to learn about MOPS. It was a great time to chat while our kids had fun playing!

Hope to see you all at our next MOPS gathering!

Kickoff!

Monday night was our Heartland MOPS kick-off night! We had a fun night introducing the MOPS "Momsense" game theme and meeting our discussion group members. Almost 40 mamas attended the kick-off meeting! Wow! God has really answered our prayers at Heartland MOPS. But there is plenty of room for more mamas to join in on the fun!

We have been blessed to have some wonderful "seasoned" mamas to join us as our Mentor Moms. Thank you, Sharon, Chereyl, and Sharon!

For our first meeting we wanted everyone to relax and have a good time. We made a cute (and economical!) craft of paint chip book marks. Thanks, Heather, for the fun craft idea!

But the best part of the night was the "Hungry Hungry Hippo" contest! Who knew what competitive mamas we had!

Several heated rounds of play-offs, we were down to the head-to-head battle for the ultimate Hungry Hungry Hippo player. It was Courtney on the orange hippo versus Amanda on the green hippo. In the end, Courtney's patient and steady munching hippo beat out Amanda's fast gobbling hippo! Slow and steady DOES win the race!

Congratulations to Courtney, our ultimate "Hungry Hungry Hippo" winner!

We hope that all of you mamas had a great time at the meeting! We hope that you are all excited about the fun year we have ahead of us at MOPS!