Christmas Gifts!

Santa (and santa's helpers) was good to our family this year. The girls got Barbie mp3 players, webkinz, clothes from their favorite store (Justice), a telescope, and.....

....a Wii with lots of fun games! Our whole family spent way too much time bowling, playing tennis, dancing to dance dance revolution, and singing high school musical! It was a lot of fun!

Jacob had the most fun with the paper, ribbons, and bows!

One of the best presents was that Nana and Aunt Brittany spent Christmas with us. We were so happy to have them here to share it with us and sad to see them go on the 26th.

We hope everyone had a terrific Christmas and has a wonderful New Year!

We got Elfed! Merry Christmas!

Love this program-- so we recorded several :) Click on the titles below to view. Enjoy!

Elf yourself 1 with Ashley, Jacob, Hannah, and Marc

Elf yourself 2 starring Hannah, Ashley, Jacob, mommy

Scrooged starring Ashley

Scrooged starring Hannah

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Every year, as Thanksgiving dinner settles and everyones focus moves to Christmas, I find myself secretly dreading many things about "the season". Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Christmas as much as a kid.... but now that I'm adult, I have many of the less fun responsibilites... like cleaning up after decorating, stressing over how I'm going to get that perfect, hard-to-find gift, and dealing with stupid people in mall or store parking lots!!! But I digress, we started our decorating frenzy last weekend. I am a believer in artificial LIGHTED Christmas trees--easy peasy and looks nice, too. Marc, however, is not. I choose to pick my battles, and this is one that I really don't think I could win. The unfair part, though, is that even though I'd prefer the other route-- I get stuck putting the lights on the tree. I understand why, if anyone else did it, I would not be happy. And if mom's not happy.... I'm picky, I like my lights wound in and out of the branches to add depth-- with as much cord hidden as possible. Nope, no wrapping the tree with lights like a rolled up rug-- big pet peeve! So off we went to cut down our tree at a local tree farm. We got there, browsed the varieties of trees, and decided that we needed the Fraiser Fir. Go figure, this is the one tree that was hauled in from North Carolina around Thanksgiving already cut. I thought about it for a split second, looked at the mud and thick fog in the air, and told the men to head to the barn where the pre-cut trees were. I think they were secretly relieved. It had rained that morning and after looking at my once white van as we got out, I was already dreading the "search for the perfect tree". Once in the barn, there were dozens of trees lined up all around. We easily decided on the height we needed which narrowed the selection down. One of the workers held one up, I looked at it for about 5 seconds and said, "I like it, sold, wrap it up". He looked at Marc in amazement and said, "That never happens". We look around to see families that looked as if they'd been in the barn for half an hour-- one lady was holding a glass of wine-- she knew it would take a while! Needless to say, I got overruled by Hannah-- she liked an equally nice tree right next to the one I picked. So we took an extra minute, and got the second tree we saw. The lady with the glass of wine, pounced on our reject :) It was a fun trip... every family needs a little tradition, right?

Happy Birthday Big Girl!

Hannah turned 7! Her birthday was on a Thursday, so we let her pick our dinner destination...and guess what she picked... Chuck E. Cheese's. Needless to say, she didn't do a lot of eating there. Our neighbors went with us and the kids had a blast! Her birthday celebration resumed on Saturday with friends, family, and classmates at Pump It Up! I know the kids enjoyed bouncing and playing! Rumor has it that Aunt Brit, Mommy, and Daddy had just as much fun as the kids... recovery time was much greater, though :)

This picture was taken earlier in the day as she played dress up-- notice the obviously "painted" lips.

Be a Goodmama

I promise to post some Happy 7th Birthday Hannah pictures soon...but for today, I had to brag a little about another photo contest. When I heard the announcement for this one, I tried to think of something creative to do... but with Thanksgiving approaching and my photography Chrstimas crunch setting in, my brain was dead. So the girls and I stood on all sides of the bed and watched Jacob crawl from one side to the other. I was lucky enough to capture one cute shot-- but low and behold, my white balance was off (this makes the picture have a funny yellow cast to it). I fixed it the best I could in photoshop and shipped it off to Suzanne at Goodmama. I came back from vacation to find that-- we won the contest! Yay! So we get a new diaper, how fun! Here's the picture and below is the link to the website and blog for the company that ran the contest.



Goodmama Blog

Goodmama Website

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a safe and yummy Thanksgiving! Since I can't post without pictures... here's two of my subject that can't get away... at least not fast enough :)

This girl can knit!

Hannah went to a knitting class last weekend with Grandma and she is a natural. She's so proud of what she can do. At this rate, she'll be done with that pink hat in no time.

Bring a Mom to School Day

Ashley shared her day at school with me. We made dream catchers, played games, read poems, and drew pictures. It was a special day for both of us. Here she is drawing a picture of her Native Amercian alias-- Riding Horse.

Jacob's Crawling Debut...

So I think I've finally figured out how to use the video portion of our point and shoot camera. I was using either the really big setting or the really small-- i think I've found a happy medium... so I managed to catch Jacob in action. Please don't mind the "wooly bear" that walks in front of him-- its the only way Copper can get any attention these days-- poor puppy. And I'm sure (like most excited parents) I sound like an idiot on the sound clip that goes along with this video-- so turn your sound down if you don't want to hear me talking :)

Six Fat Turkeys

Hannah's first grade class had a Thanksgiving play yesterday. Each first grade class was a different fall themed person or thing-- Hannah's class was a pumpkin patch. Then they had one representative from each of the classes as a Turkey-- thus 6 fat turkeys. Hannah was a little disappointed that she didn't get picked to be the turkey-- but she was very cute nonetheless. Here's a mini clip of one of the songs. I know it is a bit blurry-- I had to use the compact version in order to upload here.

She's got a way...

about her, don't know what it is...sorry Billy Joel is in my head...

So I'm waiting on the bus with Ashley. It's a rainy, cold, gross day. We usually sit on the porch and act silly while waiting on the bus. Today I have my blanket covering me in the rocking chair... all I need is Marc's knitting needles and nobody would ever know that I'm a 30 something mom :0 Anywho... so I decide that since the bus is always late, I need something to keep me warm... what do I do? Run inside and get my camera, of course! Ashley and I were acting silly on the porch and I snapped a few. I always seem to embarass her when I sing and dance... I have no idea why other than I do both very badly!

Morning Sunrise Surprise!

So this morning at 6:30 I heard happy shouts from Jacob's room. He usually doesn't cry in the morning, but shouts LOUDLY so that we know he's awake. Even without the monitor we could easily hear him throughout the house! So I pull my lazy butt out of bed. Normally I would already be dressed and showered by this point, but I'm working at home today-- no traffic, no commute, no need to get up early! Anyway, back to my story-- I sleepily walk into Jacob's room expecting to see this:


But what did I see?



What? When did he learn to do that? Papa just put the crib down from its newborn height two weeks ago (long overdue). He had some little red marks on his forehead-- probably from trying to do this before I discovered his standing position. No worries, they aren't bruises-- but based on what we've seen from him so far--I'm sure we'll have many of those to come.

It's on...

Ok so while we were in New York-- I stopped in a knitting cafe called Knit New York to pick up some yarn for Hannah. She's learning to knit with Grandma. It was raining and I had to get a lesson on choosing yarn... so we were in there a while. Long enough for Marc and Steve to peruse the yarn and pattern books and decide that they were going to learn to knit so that they could make a pair of Alpaca boxers. If you have never felt Alpaca wool... it is the softest thing I have ever touched... ok minkee might have it beaten... but it is pretty soft. So Marc quizzed a Russian lady that was knitting to figure out if it was feasible and decided it was. Its only natural for siblings to turn it into a contest... so first one to knit a pair of alpaca boxers wins... what? I have no idea... the right to brag, I guess. So here's Marc during his first lesson-- learning to cast on and the knitting stitch... purling came later... oh and you don't see the beer that was sitting next to him-- very funny site! Please laugh hard and make sure you send Mr. Crafty an email inquiring about his newly found hobby!

Autumn... here and gone before we know it...

Today I noticed that our neigborhood trees that had been so beautiful just a couple days ago were almost bare-- well except for ours, for some reason our house is one of the few that has trees that stay green and most of them don't even lose the leaves until long after the rest have gone! How sad-- I love the fall, but it never seems to last long enough. We always tend to have 80 degree weather one day... a few days of gorgeous fall weather in the 60s... and then straight to winter. At least I have a camera to capture it and a subject that can't get away...yet!

All I want for Christmas....

Well besides Hannah's two front teeth... I've been asking the girls to start thinking about what they want for Christmas and birthday... I'll keep adding to the blog as I find out things.

Hannah is a high fashion queen lately and refuses to wear anything that I pick out for her. She's out of her skateboarder/camo phase and only wants to wear clothes from a store called Justice for All. Great-- the only catch is that there's no way to order online and the closest store here is 30 or more miles away-- so with 3 kids a 1 hour drive for clothes is not something that we do often! There's one near Nana-- so Hannah makes all her requests through Nana-- isn't that conveniently cheap for me (sorry mom). Anyway here's a link for inquiring minds:

http://www.justicejustforgirls.com/

She also loves to read. She's reading at a 4th grade level, so chapter books are best for her. She loves Junie B. Jones and has discovered a couple other series of books that she enjoys. I'll post those soon.

For Ashley-- she keeps talking about this doll called Betty Spaghetti:

Probably one of those toys that will go to the bottom of the toy box, but she has asked for it several times.

For Jacob-- well he's too young to really care... but if there really was a Santa, he would bring him these a pair of Crankypants. I say that only Santa could bring them because they are handmade by this very talented lady in small quantities. She has a waiting list a mile long-- so the liklihood of supply = demand factor in the near future is miniscule... so until then we'll be happy with mass production. Check out the site-- we love the monster booty ones:





As for me, if I had to splurge on any one thing right now, I'd go with this throw from Garnet Hill. Marc says this is a crazy gift-- so until he learns to knit one for me (another story entirely), I'll probably just be eyeing this one in a catalog :)



And Marc... well his latest request was the movie Transformers... he just got a NASCAR package, so I don't think Santa is coming for him this year!

Driving School