The 12 Days of Christmas- Day 3

On the 3rd day of Christmasy blog posts I give you "The Nutcracker"

For many years my sister Aliece has been involved with Ballet Etudes Nutcracker and it was always tradition to go and see it or be involved with it one way or another. After we moved to Idaho that sort of fell by the wayside. Now that we are back in Arizona and now that Aliece has passed the performing torch to her daughter, Audrey, we decided we better go and see it again.  So Kindra (my sister-in-law) and I decided we should take our girls and have a little girls night fun. The performance was lovely as always and aside from sitting in the squeakiest chair known to man and having to pay full price for my 4 month old baby we had a wonderful time. Darn it all if I didn't get a picture of all of the girls together! After the show we had fun getting frozen yogurt with Audrey and Aliece. This may have to be a new tradition!

The 12 Days of Christmas- Day 2

On the 2nd day of Christmasy blog posts I give to you "Santa"

Rex and the Big Guy

 Santa has a seat on Owen's lap

 Gracie may be gettin' a little too big to sit on Santa's lap

 Leelee's first Santa pic, she's too small to be afraid of him yet

 The gang's all here.

Colby thinks Santa is "nice but scary" (like on Despicable Me) so he would hold his finger but he would not go near his lap. 

"Alas! How dreary would be the world if there was no Santa Claus!... There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence." -Francis P. Church

The 12 Days of Christmas- Day 1

So I had this great idea to do 12 days of Christmasy blog posts leading up to Christmas.  I'm sure it's super original and nobody else is doing it (insert huge eye roll here), buy heyyyy the more the merrier! 

Without further ado here we go:

On the 1st day of Christmas blog posts I give you the "Decorated Tree"

 We had a jolly good time. Especially since Kris hung all the lights, what a gem of a husband I have! (Someday we'll have a prelit tree again.) We also went with a paper chainlink garland that the kids made this year instead of the usual ribbon around the tree. They were pretty excited and proud of themselves about that.

 Chock-full of home-made, school-made, grandma-made, relief-society-made ornaments. Just the way I like it. I'm a sentimental schmuck and I like my tree to be full of ornaments that evoke wonderful memories every time I look at them. No show tree for me.

Frankenstein joined in on the fun. And we moved the tree into the corner after we were all done, it was just easier to decorate it over by the door.

"The best of all Christmas gifts around any tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other." -Burton Hillis

Why We Call Her 'SqueaLee'

"O"vember

Soooo, November was a big month for the O-man. He turned the big EIGHT! But I don't have any pictures worth posting because I could not get the edited ones to upload, it's making me crazy but some pictures of me first thing in the morning are not suitable for the public to view. :) These kids just won't stop growing up. It's all passing me by too quickly. Please! Time. Slow. Down. I'm begging you!

On the 11th of November we went to the Veterans' Day parade. We were glad we did. It brought back memories of the 4th of July parades in Rexburg and they even threw out some candy for good measure. I honestly didn't think we'd ever see a parade like that in Mesa. We were very happy. A picnic in the park with cousins rounded out our awesome day. Thank you Veterans' for making it all possible!

The next day Owen lost his first top tooth. He's eight and he had only lost two bottom teeth. I guess he's a late loser. He'd been working on this tooth for quite awhile and finally Dad was able to get it out. Soon all he'll want for Christmas is his two front teeth.



The Sunday after his birthday we finally had his birthday cake at family dinner. He requested a wizard's hat on his cake. Please ignore the horrific editing job on this photo. I was trying something and it went awry and of course I can't get the unedited one to upload, but that picture isn't all that great either. Oh well. Can you tell I'm a little frustrated with blogger at the moment?

On the 26th Owen was baptized. It was a beautiful time with a wonderful spirit and good family and friends there. I'll admit it was a little hectic having it Thanksgiving weekend but we survived. Barely.

Imagine being late for your own son's baptism. Yes, I was. Only about three minutes but luckily the font was late getting filled, and well, since I'm the mom they wouldn't have started without me anyway. :)

My handsome boys!

Grannie and Pops

Aunt Hayley and Uncle EJ
(My, my Owen sure does look handsome in his suit!)

Future missionaries

Owen with his cousin Nick

I couldn't resist posting a few photos of this little cutie!

I could just eat her up!

Budding Photog

Colby loves to get ahold of the camera and take pictures. I think some of them are actually pretty good. Of course this drives Kris up a wall crazy, a three year old running amuck with the camera. But sometimes I just can't wait to see what turns up on the memory card. 

Here's a view of his portfolio:

And just in case ya missed it (ahem Mom) be sure and look below at Leelee's blessing post. She's such a sweet little angel. We kinda like her (alot).

I

I

I

V

Blessed

Beautiful day, beautiful baby, beautiful blessing.

Yep, that about sums it up.

 Pops and Grannie

 Aunt Hayley and Uncle EJ

The Bunch

Christmas photo? Perhaps.

Big Bro. Matthew being silly.

Beautiful Sisters

Big Bro. Owen

Big Bro. Rex

Big Bro. Colby

Dang, this girl is going to have some serious protection!

Beautiful Leelee

She's wearing a bracelet made by Aunt Michelle, glad we had a piece of her with us.

She loved the crinkly texture of the bow on her dress and it was so easy grab and suck on, which she's doing a lot of these days.

We are so blessed to have this sweet, special little girl in our family!