A picture that tells a story.............

So at first this started off as a photography class assignment for a former piano student of mine who needed a picture that told a story all on its own with just a title. So we came up with the idea to take Addison and all his teenage heart throbs....(or as many as we could get together) and do this picture. However, plans changed and the person who was going to take the picture backed out and changed her mind, however, the girls were still excited to do the picture and I needed a picture for his Student of the Month wall at the Elementary School, so we got together and took these pictures, and well this picture fits him.

After we were done with the first picture I asked the girls if there was anything else they thought would be fun and they were going to all go sit on the slide but it was VERY WET so that was dropped but we did these two. I was dissapointed that one of the pictures came out blurry but hoping with some photoshop to correct some of that. I may even switch it to Black and White


It was funny how excited he was to see majority of the girls, however, in the same sense he got a little embarrassed as they all know that he likes or at some point has liked them all.

Christmas Day

The Tree Christmas Morning before the kids got to it!







This is what happens when you stay awake majority of the night waiting for Santa. You fall asleep in your lunch, and so give up and go to bed for the evening.

Christmas Eve

Our Christmas Eve started with a dinner of Santa Pancakes, Bacon, Sausage, Egg Nog, & Chocolate Milk



The kids love to decorate their snowman with whipped cream.
After dinner the kids opened the new pajamas, took their showers and got ready for bed. We then read the Polar Express, Watch A King Is Born, & Read from the Scriptures the Birth of our Savior. We put the kids in bed at 7:30 knowing it would be a late night as they would have problems falling asleep. The three little ones were all asleep by 10pm but Vincent was up pretty much all night long. It made Santa's job HARD!

Gingerbread Houses

We got together with the Hunter's and had a BBQ and then made gingerbread houses with graham crackers, frosting, candy, more frosting, and even more candy.

Addison's House












Little Ben's Shrine to Candy. Just like decorating cookies. He had layer upon layer of of frosting and candy. It was hard not to laugh when the roof came tumbling in with the weight of his candy. He was crushed.



Eating the frosting and candy was just as much fun and putting them on the houses.

Nursery Nativity

As they do every year our nursery kids dress up as the nativity and walk through all the rest of the organizations. Eliza as the oldest little girl was Mary this year. Her friend Ethan was Joseph and in her own words his job was to take care of her. Abagail Clift and Brynna Hunter were the angels, and not in this picture Seth McBride was the shepherd. They were cute as always!

Christmas Princess Eliza

In our ward a sister started up a kids clothes trading thing. It is great. There are two ward members who have girls older than my Eliza so when their girls grow out of things, they are boxed up and brought to me. Same thing with another sister who has a son older than Vincent. She packs up his clothes and brings them to me for them to be used by my boys. When Nicholas is done with clothes I box them up and I have someone I pass them on too, and same with Eliza, when she outgrows things they are boxed up and passed along to another little girl in the ward. Kids grow so fast they dont usually wear out their clothes so it is so nice to get some outfits for my kids to wear. In the last box we got last month for Eliza there were 5 beautiful dresses. I was so excited. I didnt have to go buy her a Christmas Dress. We got it free with our trading group with have.

Merry Grinchmas!

Wrestling Sounded like a good activity to pass the time waiting for the parade to start.
Ethan, John, & Eliza
Little Ben
Erik, Vincent, & Addison
Vincent
Nicholas
Little Miss Brynna

We went to the Porterville Christmas Parade with the Hunter's and Vincent's friend Erik also came along for the ride. This years theme was the Whooville, Grinchmas. So the floats were sure cute this year and we saw the Grinch a lot. We had a lot of fun as a large group yelling out the name of people we knew in the parade and waving at them. Megan was such a good mom and friend. She brought hot chocolate and licorice strings. The kids were all in heaven!
We only had one situation that upset us, was we went an hour before it started to make sure we could get good seating for our large group. We found it and had a lady come with her two grand kids and plop herself right at the top corner of our blanket, and the proceeded to start smoking like crazy. As fast as she would finish one she would light up again. I have an asthmatic and so does Megan and so they both started having difficulties breathing. I understand we are outside in a public place, but show some consideration when you are packed on the sides of the street like that. Megan finally asked her to put it out telling her we had small children and two of them were asthmatic, to which she did, but then promptly stood up with her grand kids and stood right in front of our group. ARGH!