December

Just a few of the things we did in December.

First...drumroll...Shane graduated with his Masters! *Confetti*
It was a long road, but we made it through and I'm so proud of this guy!

The Hooding

This is Dr. Cena who was Shane's professor and commitee chair for his project. Shane would be embarrassed if he knew I was writing this, but I have to say it hon. When I met Dr. Cena at the graduation, he was pouring on the praise about Shane and then said, "Your husband has been one of the greatest scholars I have worked with." Way to go Shane, you deserve it!

Jayne turned 3!

This little girl is all sass, but all sweetness too. I know, it's a weird combo, but she pulls it off somehow :)

  
 

My best pal in the world was in town and came to Jayne's party with her cute kids. Jayne and Ruby hit it off...especially after Ruby gave Jayne this Snow White dress.

Little did Ruby know that Jayne lives in dress up clothes. (see example below later) Her favorite present, bar none.

 

So for some reason I had Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T." stuck in my head the day of Jayne's birthday.  So I decided to play it at her party and dance.  I had no idea how much my kids would love it.  They beg for it daily and it has been a non-stop dance party ever since, especially when people come over.

 

 

 Max's performance.
We put Max in a little singing class since he has already had 2 years of preschool.  Max was always really outgoing, but then he went through a really shy stage...almost had anxiety to do anything new, even fun stuff like birthday parties.  Primary programs, no way.  Wouldn't even get up on the stand.  He has slowly been coming out of it.  You can imagine how proud I was when he was actually excited to get up on stage.  He sang all his parts and did all the actions.

 

He's the one in the middle, second row, next to the kid in the argyle sweater.

Christmas!

Christmas was as wonderful as always.  We loved being together, starting some new traditions, and thinking about our Savior's birth.

Picking out a tree and decorating it

We loved our elf on the shelf (thanks Al and Em!).  So cute to watch the kids find him and sneak private conversations with him.  They named him Charlie.  If Lucy would have been a boy, she would most definitely have been Charlie.  I guess the kids didn't want the name to go to waste :)

 

Leaving a treat for Santa.  I'm pretty sure Max doesn't think Santa's name is Stu, that's just how he sounded it out :)

Fort Christmas.  So when I was a kid, my bros and I would build a fort to sleep in on Christmas Eve.  We have loved carrying that tradition on in our little family.

The fort lighting ceremony

Dad was cordially invited into the lair

 

Christmas Morning

 This constituted much of the kids activities at Shane's parents house.  Our nephew, also Max, lining the kids up and jumping over them, sans shirts.  They couldn't get enough of it.

 

our Christmas card

And we'll end this gigantic post with some random cuteness...enjoy!

Lucy finds a friend :)

Jayne in some of her daily uniforms.  The last two are with her friend Lily.

 

Silly faces with cousins Masey and Kaya

 

 

Halloween 2011

Yeah, I know my posts are always a little anticlimactic because they're always at least a month late, but here it goes anyway...

I think it's no secret now that I LOVE Halloween...everything about it. I start dreaming up what costumes we could make sometime in July (actually, most of the time sooner...I usually tuck away ideas throughout the year. I already know what half of us are going to be next year :)

Shane and I didn't really dress up this year...I know lame. Not sure what happened, but we still had fun with the kid's costumes.

Now I want you to know that I don't force my kids into their costumes. I do ask them what they want to be (yeah occasionally I plant ideas, but still :). Just lucky for me, they haven't wanted to be the commercial stuff yet (you know like Disney and what not...nothing wrong with those at all and i know they'll want to be those soon enough, but I can have a lot more fun with the generic stuff.).

Max requested to be a robot. So without further adieu, meet the xam bot 3000.

Max and I had a lot of fun together planning his costume. He gave a lot of great ideas and even drew a few blue prints. Here is one of them:



Xam bot slices, dices, vacuums your carpet, and even lights your way on a dark night.

He is also very eco-friendly. As a hybrid, he runs on fuel and electricity. And he's made from recycled materials. I know, we're very green around here.

Don't forget to put candy in his fuel tank or he'll go into meltdown.

Can't get enough of that cute robot bootie :) This is the part of the photo shoot where he was "powering down" if you will. He was d.o.n.e.

Luckily, we fueled him back up later on and got a little robot boogie out of him

So technically, I didn't ask Jayne what she wanted to be and wait for the response, but I did ask, "Do you want to be a cupcake?" and thankfully she was all for it. I saw this genius idea from a friend's sister-in-law and I was instantly smitten and had to do it. Just made a couple changes to make it our own and voila...

...a delicious cupcake with a cherry on top. Made with a lamp shade, spray paint, an old sheet, some plastic bags for stuffing, ribbon, rolled up paper and a little felt.

Jumping in a cupcake can be tricky, but she pulled it off :)

Now for Lucy, I could not decide what I wanted her to be. Thank heavens for my friend Sig...she came to the rescue and sent me a link for this awesome idea and as soon as I saw it, I was on board...

Lucy: hot air balloon pilot extraordinaire . It doesn't get much cuter than that folks. Sorry, it just doesn't.

Well, so I said Shane and I didn't dress up, but as we were running out the door to go to our neighborhood trunk-or-treat, Shane whipped together this little concoction

I think this partly came because of the fact that I almost had us dress up as Magnum P.I. and Higgins. (Maybe someday soon :) Yep, I'm a sucker for a good 'stache, what can I say :)

Happy late Halloween y'all!

Pix of my kids...way late

I guess while I was pregnant with Lucy, editing pictures was one of the last things I wanted to do because these pictures have been sitting in my computer collecting dust. So, although I stayed up WAY too late tonight letting Jimmy Fallon entertain me via hulu whilst I edit, I vowed to get them done! So here they finally are, basically a year later, Max's 4 year pictures and Jayne's 2 year pictures. To see them all go the my photog blog. Scroll down an extra post to see Max's. I know, I know, you want to squish their little faces. Wish you could :)