December in a nutshell....a really large nutshell

Savannah was excited to decorate the tree..

not so excited...

not sure what expression this one is.

And finally some normal happy faces 

 

presents for the teachers, handmade popcorn bowls (made by the kiddies) with treats and movie tickets

Class parties

We visited with Santa at our Ward Christmas Breakfast 

Ginger bread house making and eating

I got to watch Sav do a mini recital to the Nutcracker

Josh had a choir performance in which I think he yawned like 20 or more times...wish I could've caught it on camera, it was pretty amusing

 
The girls made cookies for their primary teachers

and had a taste or two

A little bull fighting to pass the time till Christmas. Z is the bull charging while wearing head gear, 

J is fending him off with an umbrella)

The kids earned a "late night" where we switched places. they where the parents and we were the kids. they put us to bed and they stayed up and played video games, watched movies and had snacks with the condition that they couldn't trash the house and they had to pick up after them selves. this is how we found a couple of them in the morning

 
I'm thinking they didn't last long. the house was clean.

Christmas Eve morning we all made breakfast. Bella is mixing up the batter for our yummy pumpkin waffles

Sav loves to make faces with her food, can you see it?

That night we got together with some dear friends of ours and the kids acted out the Nativity. they did such a great job!

getting ready to open one family gift on Christmas eve...we're starting a new tradition of opening one family gift the night of Christmas Eve (it will be a new family game to play each year)

We got Creationary! We give it 2 thumbs up! All of our kids from Josh to Bella love legos, so this was right up our alley.

Leaving Santa some cookies and milk and a little picture

translation "for Santa, Take it. From: Savannah"

Sprinkling Reindeer food on the lawn

Here they come...what did Santa bring?

A bike for Sav

A nintendo DS lite for the boys! in blue

and in red

Santa made a Lion King and Narnia coloring book for Bella (her latest obsession)

for our family gift exchange Zach drew Josh and gave him these hilarious glasses.

An apron from grammy and grampy...very perfect for Sav

 
And a Madame Alexander from grammy and grampy. She named her Sarah. They're best friends already.

 

playing a little ds

Lily finally woke up and decided to join us at 10am (she's a sleepy head like her mommma)

 
She didn't quite understand what all the fuss was about Christmas morning.

after we played with our toys in the morning, we had one more present to go... a quick trip to San Antonio for a little family getaway. We surprised the kids with this one. So we quickly packed up and made our way to the Hyatt Wild Oak Ranch. Awesome place. Very family oriented.
 
We got to do lots of indoor swimming and sliding

Smore roasting

riverwalk strolling

 this ginormous tree was in front of the alamo

bubble baths


we had a few movie and game nights, slept in, swam, lounged and just relaxed. a great Christmas gift.


We got a 1 bedroom suite, so the kids took over the living room. they slept on a pull out and they got creative with the bed making. Bella slept on these 2 poshy chairs pushed together, and  J slept on the couch cushions pushed together. Their choice.and they loved it. silly kids.






















 we ended the trip celebrating Sav's 6th bday (on the 27th) We went to see Tangled and ate lunch at her favorite place- Chickfil-A. She also helped make her own cake with her new apron, and watched the sound of music in our room with daddy and Sarah:)

So that was a bit of our december in a nutshell. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Happy Anniversary!

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

Merry Christmas E-card!

.

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!