Happy Anniversary!

After 12 years....still as madly in love as ever! 

Merry Christmas E-card!

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For those of you out there whose addresses I don't have 
I am posting this e-card. If you would like to get one in the mail, please email me your address. We hope you all 
have a wonderful holiday season!

Get 50 FREE Shutterfly Cards!!!

Do you love FREE stuff? I'm a sucker for FREE stuff! Especially when it's something I was planning to buy anyway. Well, for a limited time  Shutterly is offering bloggers 50 free holiday cards. You heard me right-FREE! Go check it out! The promotion lasts till December 15th, so go like right now! While you're there order a  photobook   or calendar for the grandparents or  turn your prints into wall art by making a canvas. For a family Christmas gift this year I made a Disneyworld photo book for our kids to remember our trip from last year. My kids LOVE looking through our photo books and enjoy recounting the trips or memories we captured in the photobook. Our 12 year anniversary is also coming up this saturday so I made a photo book of our  10 year anniversary trip to Mexico (I know what you're thinking -  2 years later- really? that's how long it takes to finish projects when you've got 5 kids;). I can't wait to flip through our wedding album AND our new photo book on saturday with Mike and remember our wedding day and that special trip! In case you can't tell, the photo books are my favorite! Here are some cute samples of Christmas cards:

(Mounted Wall art)

(my fave)

**I always get my prints from shutterfly (either shipped to my door or you can pick them up at target or walgreens) and I have ordered several of their photobooks too! Great quality, reasonably priced and you can often get free shipping. They always have a promotion going so go check it out and get your gift list checked off! Happy Shopping!

spoiler alert

We had our family pictures taken by my amazingly talented friend Kristen. you can check out a few more shots over on her blog www.kristendukephotography.com. It's one of my favorite blogs. Love her work, love her crafts, love her! Thanks Kristen!

the spoiler part * you may or may not be seeing this picture sometime in December in your mailbox*

October in a nutshell

Brace yourself, I'm purging pictures of October off my SD card...these are only a few! 

So...In the month of October.....

We celebrated Bella's 4th Birthday! (technically Sept 30th) We had co op preschool at our house and called it a birthday party. We had Ariel cake, made paper crowns, played pin the crown on Belle, frosted cupcakes, read stories, played outside and danced to princess music. Pretty simple yet very fun.That's what I love about 3 and 4 year olds!

We had a family party and ate her favorite dinner, opened presents and had cake and icecream. here's the bday girl opening presents, and enjoying an ABC book (that goes from A to D:) made by Savannah.

 Josh earned his Webelos! Way to go J!

Random: Here he is mowing the lawn in MOON SHOES! Totally awkward, but hey, what ever makes it fun and gets the job done!

 A favorite part of October for our family...General Conference. We took Grammy's idea of pitching our tents towards the temple and hearing from our beloved Prophet. (to learn more go to www.lds.org)

We also have a tradition (not pictured) of eating conference crepes, and playing conference bingo while listening. Can you see Lily folding her arms then bowing her head during the prayer ?

We also made a trip to Dallas to visit Grammy and Grampy! Grammy, Kjirsten and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend at Time Out For Women while Mike worked at the State Fair of Texas in a teeth whitening booth and Grampy took on my 5 kiddos all by himself! (thanks super Grampy!)

 Then the next weekend we made it back to Elgin Pumpkin Farm and enjoyed hayrides, games, face painting, mazes, pumpkin painting and the petting zoo.

(yes they are wearing the same outfits from the weekend before, I only have so many matching outfits:)

Then the weekend after that we had a little impromptu invite to go camping with some dear friends of ours whose kids are the same ages as ours, and who my kids love!  Very fun! 

 Random: Here is one of our fhe halloween crafts...a spook house made of gingerbread and candy!

Mike and I went to a friend's adult halloween party! We had a blast and I actually got Mike to dress up! We stole this idea from my sis-in-law Carrie. She threw her husband an amazing 40's birthday Soiree . I made cake balls and dinner in a pumpkin (not shown) for the party.

 Another halloween treat...spider web sugar cookies!

For our Church Fall Festival I made these...I'm pretty  proud of them..my ghosts and mummy cupcakes! I made fondant for the first time ever! This was an easy way to work with it for the first time since I just had to make it, roll it out, and cut circles and strips and just lay it on top. I got this idea from a craft blog (make it love it)
For Halloween Dinner we had witches toes, mummy dogs and alien tomatoes. We watched Hook and had a popcorn and candy party with our all the lights out (since we didn't go trick or treating on Halloween...luckily we had tons of candy from the church fall festival/ trunk or treat the night before, the library party the day before that, and the city fall festival the day before that! all not pictured of course:)
Here are the costumes one more time. Josh was a Mime (he thinks they are hilarious), Zach made up his own, he was "Super Hero Turtle Man" (thanks aunt Carrie for the personalized super hero cape, he uses it A LOT), Can you guess who Sav is? Bella was a Fairy, and Lils was a sweet little Sunflower. I am halloweened out!
We love the month of October with all of the festivities, but look forward to slowing down and enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas and contemplating what we are thankful for and what we value most, spending time with family.

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!!!
Here's a little preview of the Halloween line up for this year.
More to come later. I'm off to watch a scary movie (sixth sense:)  with
my hubby!

The "B" Word....

 As in "BIG" ... it's a bad word in our house. Well not really, it just makes me sad when they keep telling me  what big girls they are. They're still my little girls- just don't tell them I said so. So lately....

 
Savannah is a big kindergartner! . To celebrate her big day, we went on a date after her first week of school to the ceramic place to paint some pottery (flip flop piggy bank was her choice). The girl LOVES art!  (ie drawing, painting,and all things crafty) She also started a Ballet/ Tap combo class which she is also crazy about.. It's been fun watching her dance. Tap is her favorite (and mine too- I sneak peeks through the window during class)
 
Here she is practicing before class

 

Bella started a preschool co-op 2 days a week this year with 5 other little girly friends (that's right- 6 girls NO boys this year) and has loved feeling like one of the big kids sporting a back pack and having places to go and people to see. She is my little buddy this year. I have really enjoyed spending more time with her and taking her and Lils everywhere with me. It seems so much easier this year taking just the 2 little girlsies with me compared to last year.  She is also in the younger ballet/tap class during the day. I think she enjoys it too, but seems to be more reserved than Sav in class. Surprising since she is the most expressive of all our kids especially at home. She still looks forward to going each week and getting all dressed up.

 

and then there's Lily-B...she just keeps getting bigger and bigger each day :( aaahhhh!!I used the B word again! I took these pictures of her one day when she was in a silly mood. She was singing, talking, clapping and being her cute self. She recently sprouted her 4 top teeth all at once and has fortunately managed to stay in good spirits despite the owie gums. I love her little hippo teeth, reminds me of Joshi when he was a baby. She and Bella are becoming fast little friends, each morning when I get her from her crib she looks around until she spots Bella. Then she gets excited, bouncy and giggly. I  wish she would stop growing. self fish, I know. 

 

In other news, I got a new camera for my birthday! my old point and shoot died on me...so just for fun, I'm posting an old picture from summer taken right before it died. Here are the 4 big kids in their "reading center" that they made for reading time in the afternoons. Seems like that was just yesterday!
the new camera works much better- don't ya think?

And they're off!

She never looked back :(

I can't believe my girl is in kindergarten! I miss her already! 

And here are their wonderful teachers...

Mrs. H and Mrs.C (Josh's Tag teachers)

Mrs. H- Zach's 2nd grade teacher

Mrs. T- Savannah's (and was Zach's! :) kindergarten teacher

 
Mrs. S- Josh's 5th grade teacher

3 out of 5 kiddos at school this year! For the 1st time ever, I will have more kids at school than at home...how did that happen so fast? I'm feeling kind of weepy today. I get like this every year, even if it's not kindergarten. Am I weird or do you get this way too?

Collage Mania...with a Spanish twist

For sometime I had been feeling guilty for not taking the time to teach my kids spanish. Being raised in a bilingual home I knew firsthand the advantages of being able to speak another language...in applying for jobs, in learning at school, understanding that there are different cultures and being able to connect with them, having opportunities that I may have not had otherwise...I always swore I would pass that on to my kids. Fast forward to a few months ago...Mike and I are conversing in Spanish in attempts to talk about our kids in front of them with out them understanding, when Josh asks "why haven't you taught us Spanish?"....enter guilt.
So in that instant I  decided with summer coming up that I would buckle down and DO IT while I have them at home with no other school responsibilities and fewer scheduled activities. But how?... I mean I'm fluent, it should be easy right? Wrong. I needed some structure (to make sure I was going to follow through and do it) so I researched and bought a curriculum. Now I just needed to make it fun and interesting.  So in mentioning my summer plans to teach my kids spanish to some of my lady friends... they showed interest in having their kids learn spanish too and asked if  I would have their kids join in on the "spanish lessons"....FRIENDS!! that was exactly what I needed to add the fun & interesting factor. So I sent an email out and found that there were quite a few kids from our church that were interested. And so spanish explorers program was born.
Over the last 2 1/2 months I have had the pleasure of introducing spanish to some really FUN kids! I had a younger explorers class of 6 kiddos including my girls B and S (3-6 yr) and an older explorers class of 12 kiddos including my boys J and Z (7-11yrs).Each class came over for 1 to 1- 1/2 hours once a week and  we played games,learned some pretty silly/sometimes cheesy songs, made up silly memory tricks to help them remember the sp words, and with the littles we danced a lot! This last week we had our class fiesta and boy was it fun! I will miss you my little and big explorers! Till next year!

The Younger Explorers

for the party we had chips and queso and salsa, tres leches cake, made a tamborine, sang, dance, and a pinata (wouldn't be a fiesta with out one!) We were missing Ez

 

The Older Explorers

for the big kids we played spanish jeopardy to review what we learned, spanish bingo while they had horchata (sp cinnamon rice drink)  flan (spanish dessert), and a pinata. We were missing Sarah and Micah.

 

and the reason I did this....

post edit- excuse ALL of the collage pictures lately- not very aesthetic- I know. It's a little much, even for me... BUT  it's ten times faster than up loading  individual pictures. It's better than nothing I guess :)

The Grants came to visit!...and Lils turned 1!!

I still can't believe that my littlest babe turned 1 yesterday!! She is our chill baby and we just love having her in our family! Even though it's only been one year, I can't imagine what life would be like with out her. She is sweet, silly, easy going, and best of all squishy- all things good!We love you lily-bee!

We took some pictures after church since they were all sorta matching and also to capture the girly on her day. (if you double click you can check out her baby tooth in the crib pictures)

 
Here she is enjoying her first bite of partially hydrogenated goodness...strawberry cupcake with cream cheese frosting! She ate every last crumb, and licked her fingers clean! can you tell?
 

 
These pics are for Grammy. She loves her presents! In that top middle picture she is showing you how much she loves you! Thanks Grammy and Grampy! 

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We had a special treat this week...our Grant cousins and aunt Kjirsten came to visit!!!! a highlight of our summer! We had so much fun, these pictures don't do it justice! Josh cried when his "BF Liam" left. We had 3 1/2  jammed packed days of fun- it went by WAY too fast and we already can't wait to see them again! In these pictures you see the Austin Museum of Science and History, McDonald's icecream break, beauty Claire with her self applied lipgloss and the 2 mamas that carted these 9 kids to many fun little places. What you don't see here is the fort they built, hamilton pools, musical in the park Annie, backyard antics and all the fun little things these cousins like to do when they get together. I'm hoping these visits become a yearly summer tradition!