Blake's 1st Movie

Over Thanksgiving break (yes I forgot to blog this) I took the boys to the movies to see Arthur Christmas. This was Blake's 1st time ever going to the movies!
We of course brought the good movie candy and got popcorn and an Icee. He did so good, he sat and watched it (having all the fun snacks I am sure helped).

Logan's Candy Store

Tis the season for Candy Canes! There is a local candy store that makes candy canes for all to see and for 1.39 you get a warm one to shape to your desire!
My good friend Jenn and I took the kids and stood in line for about an hour to get in. Once we were inside the kids all loved watching them make candy canes!

Christmas Light Night

Saturday night we set out for our annual Christmas light night. We stop and get hot chocolate, then drive around and look at Christmas light. We found a few houses that are set up and correspond with music! Those are the really fun one! The kids love going and pick out their favorite houses.Kyle and mom get ideas for next year that dad poo poo's!! Oh well we can dream!

!st Grade Christmas program

Only in 1st grade at our kids school do they do a Christmas program! It is so cute!
Luke was a "sleeper" so he had to wear his pj's, hang a stocking and then go to bed and sleep! They sang lots of Christmas songs, they really got into it, singing loud and dancing.

18 years later

18 years ago on December 6, 1993 my life changed forever! I finally knew what love was and thats the day I started wearing my heart on my sleeve!
After 21 hours of long hard labor I delivered a 8lb 10 oz baby girl. Unlike most birth stories, I didnt get the fairytale delivery where she was born, Dr announces its a girl and lets me hold her. Instead I got "call the NICU and they tossed her into a bed where they started pounding on her little chest to get her to breathe! All I kept saying was "Is it a boy or a girl, is it ok" No one was answering. After about 25 minutes I finally got to hold my baby girl for 3 minutes before they told me they needed to take her done to the NICU to monitor her.

She spent the next 4 days down there and I was there most of the time too. Luckly the hospital didnt send me home with out her!

Now she is a very beautiful healthy 18 year old! Time sure does fly!

She stayed home from school on her birthday, the boys and I had gone and gotten balloons, her favorite danish and a Starbucks gift card and made the kitchen table all cute for her to wake up to. Britt, her best friend and myself  went out and had sushi for lunch. Then she went and hung out with her friends the rest of the day!

She had a good 18th Birthday!!!

Pursuing a dream

I have always loved Photography, so in Feb. I bought myself a nice camera and started teaching myself to take good pictures and editing. Of course I have the cutest 4 models anyone could ask for even though the 3 boys aren't always thrilled to let me practice on them! Thankfully Brittney will willing be my model.
This November I decided to advertise through local friends about the start up of my new business. I actually got 5 families book dates! I know that doesn't sound like much but to me it was perfect because the editing takes so much time. Since I am new to all this it gave me the right time between shoots!
 After my very first one I got a phone call from the girl asking me to please fax a letter of release to Wal-Mart so she could print her pictures! She said they told her that they can clearly see that they were professionally taken. That made me feel so good!
 I had so much fun doing this and it was so exciting to see the Christmas Cards come in that I had taken the picture! I am so grateful for the experience and the extra Christmas money was nice too!

Thanksgiving

We have the same traditions every year for Thanksgiving, we got up to my parents house, some years we have a hockey game usually early morning but this year the tournament started the day after. We us to go out to Glamis for the week of Thanksgiving but Hockey knocked that off. We miss it but it was so crazy busy and dangerous its nice not having to worry about someone getting hurt.
On the way up to my parents G and the boys (Brittney had to work, welcome to retail) dropped me off in Redlands at the Mormon temple so I could do my sister and her families pictures! It was fun! It was funny to get to see another family getting irritated with someone for not smiling or goofing around! I thought it was just my family who did that during pictures!

On the way up to my parents my stomach started getting upset and hurting, it went away.

We had a yummy dinner with all the traditional Thanksgiving food! The kids played, wrestled and ran around like they always do.

My stomach started to really hurt after dinner so I asked my mom for some meds. She gives me 2 and I take them, then asked what did you give me and looked at the bottle.... THEY HAD EXPIRED IN MAY 2006!!! I said "are you trying to kill me" and she assured me they were fine.

My sister and brother n law had brought up the video game Just Dance, the kids had a blast.

My brother in law and nephew started swinging the kids in blankets and boy did the kids love that!

The kids all took turns but had a hard time waiting until their next turn!

Late that night my stomach was a mess and I spent 3 hours throwing up! I obviously had the flu. So I spent the next day in bed. G took all 3 boys to Kyle and Luke's hockey games, Brittney was working, since it was Black Friday. I would have loved to have had the entire day to myself just not like that! I was happy to be feeling better the next day and got to go to Luke's 2 games and Kyles game!

Traditions

I started the tradition of going to see Santa Claus and taking our Christmas card photo the Monday of Thanksgiving week! Its working out very nicely! The kids know so there isn't anything to complain about because it just that day every year! 
This year we headed to the mall and pretty much walked right up to see Santa (lets face it everyone is at the grocery stores shopping for Turkey, Santa is not in high demand yet) Blake liked him from afar but wanted nothing to do with him up close. Thankfully Brittney will still go willing with us and get her picture taken with Santa and her little brothers, so she can hold Blake. Not that it made him happier.

After Santa we went and had lunch then headed to my favorite place, yep the beach! It was gorgeous down there! We did about 45 minutes of pictures and just had fun!

Blake was loving it, his little feet, hands and mouth were covered in sand and I loved getting it in the pictures! The kids built a "sandman" for our Christmas cards but we forgot to put their Santa hats on too when we did that pose and I really wanted them to have on Santa hats for our Christmas cards.

He was so cute and we really loved him, so I did what anyone else would do and Photoshopped him into our card picture!

But after we got the card done the snowflakes went right over him and he was hard to see, so I removed him! Our sandman was fun and cute and maybe we will include him in our family again soon!

Not sure what this melt down was about, maybe because he wanted to play and we wanted to do pictures.

It was a fun day! Hopefully we can do a family Christmas card picture soon, its just hard with a busy teen, 2 boys in hockey and a hubby who works long hours.