A Recent Snow Day

The other day the plows came down our street and created a nifty snowbank in the front yard. Daddy and the kids promptly got to work carving an elaborate tunnel through it. After much toil and many hours, they finally broke through from one side to the other only to promptly abandon their project to go sledding.

Wow. Miss me?

I can't believe my last post was about Christmas. I am failing miserably at blogging lately. I haven't even been THAT busy. Maybe that's it. Not busy means I nothing interesting to say.

Well, let's catch up to date, shall we? January is a month of reflection for many people (including myself) and it reminds us to look to the future and set goals accordingly. It's also about organization according to all the home magazines I subscribe to. So I dutifully went out and purchased an assortment of tote bins at Target and now they sit, empty still, in the basement.

Also in the basement at this moment is a stack of 15 boxes full of assorted garments which we purchased for a few very large shirt factory orders we have right now. This was our biggest investment ever in product (and two new-fangled machines) and we hope it all pays off in the end. The end being January 30th.

Instead of helping Darrin sell this massive amount of garments at the January 30th event, I will be at an event of my own. As the photographer of a wedding. This will be my second wedding, the first having been a small, intimate affair at a home with twenty people in attendance. This wedding is a bit larger in scale, including 8 attendants, and 200 guests. I am so excited! And by excited I mean terrified.

Hopefully, at the end of the wedding event, I will be able to rush over to Darrin's shirt event and help him finish up. The event is the regional cheerleading competition and by choosing to sell shirts and such, Darrin had to doff his most recent "hat" which is the radio announcer hat. You see, recently, Darrin landed the job of radio announcer for all of our school's away basketball games. It's pretty adorable. We get to listen to him ramble on about his first love, basketball, for six hours every time there is an away game. It also means he's out of town a lot.

Broadcasting in Cordova with the girl's coach, Daniel (who happens to be the husband of my photo business partner, Tracy). Looks like too much fun.

On to Jaycob. Bubba is doing great in school and getting straight A's in everything except handwriting (B). He is still taking gymnastics and liking it. Next week he starts piano lessons at school. I think I'm the most excited about that.

Jake and Josh had fun playing with Daddy's broadcasting equipment.

Jordy is also doing gymnastics and loves it. She still collects straws. She is currently obsessed with Transformers.

Jordy and her new custom shirt by Daddy.

Josh is taking gymanstics and ADORES IT. Seriously. He talks about it constantly. He is also playing the drums. In his room. ALL DAY.

The boys, being cuddly.

I am still busy with photography and this week I started running again. After slacking for a year I am very dejected to find that I have lost any and all endurance. I could run 10 miles when I stopped running. Now I can barely do one and it ain't pretty.

Working that wedding

Now that everyone is caught up, I will try to post some snow pictures tomorrow.

Christmas Day Chaos

Christmas Day was awesome. Fun, exciting and relaxing all at the same time. We stayed in our PJs all day and just spent time together playing with toys. At one point the kids all disappeared into various corners of the house to play and Darrin and I were left sitting in a pile of Legos, fighting over the pieces to the fire station we were building "together".

Darrin made us a prime rib for dinner and I'm pretty sure that that is going to be our new go-to holiday meal. That was some good meat right there. We had other eats too but I can't seem to remember what they were because all I can think about is prime rib. The only thing better than prime rib on Christmas is left over prime rib the day after...and the day after that.

Something is wrong with this blog situation and I can only load one picture at a time. Each picture takes about fifteen minutes to load and since I (surprisingly) don't sit in front of my computer all day every day, this has taken three days to finish. So here are some of our Christmas pictures. Please excuse the quality, I was using my point and shoot camera because my other camera's memory card is still full of wedding photos from two weeks ago.


Doobie's "big present" was this sweet drum set. It is awesome. It is also completely adorable. He is going to take after his Uncle JR someday.


Jordy is very into being a "little mommy" these days. I never thought this day would come but she absolutely loves to follow me around and help me do dishes and laundry. We have to call her "mommy Jordy" or "little mommy" when she is in mommy mode. So her big present was this kitchen. She hasn't stopped cooking for us since.


The big Star Wars fan of the house received this incredibly intricate Battle Walker. It holds a multitude of Star Wars guys, it shoots things and it makes all sorts of cool sound effects. Someone was VERY EXCITED about it. Jake was too. :)


All my little artists received lots of fun art stuff for Christmas. Coloring books, finger paints, crayons, pens and MORE! If you've never used Color Wonder coloring supplies, you are missing out. They are amazing. They are regular coloring pens that only color on the special color books. They also never dry out no matter how long you leave the lids off. And we found some color wonder finger paints too. No mess. Just fun. HELLO!


The Lego pile. Awesome.


Figuring out how to transform our new Transformers.


I have three little puzzle finatics in this house. I LOVE PUZZLES!

I hope everyone out there had a wonderful, blessed and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Twas the Night Before...

After the candlelight service at church, we all came home and tried to prepare for sleep. I remember how impossible that was when I was little so I was surprised at how fast even Jakey zonked out once we finally got them in bed. First though, we had to do some serious stuff...like reading the Christmas story and putting out goodies for Santa.


Jake is studying this very intently.


Jake, setting out the cookies they all made for Santa. Having watched each of them meticulously decorating, licking their fingers, sneezing on everything and even taking bites out of some of the cookies, we didn't blame Santa for not actually eating any of them. Instead, he crumbled some up on a plate and the rest mysteriously disappeared.


Jordy bringing in the mug of milk.


Doobie bringing up the rear with a plate of carrots for the reindeer.


The spread. Two seconds after it was all laid out, Jake moved everything off to the side so that Santa wouldn't step on it when he came down the chimney.


SO EXCITED!

Christmas Eve 2009

Could it have taken me any longer to post the rest of our Christmas updates? I have tried for days, (DAYS, I say!) to upload these pictures but they would not load. So I'm trying it one by one.

This is Christmas Eve at church. We attended the candelight service and Jake and Jordan sat in the service with us. They love the candle part.




Bugaroo, looking all adorable and stuff.


Doobie cheesing it up and showing the other kids how it's done.


Bubba, always camera ready.


Bros


Sweet little Munchkins

Apron Project

This year I decided to make December more hectic by starting an apron project. The genius idea was to sew aprons for my friends for Christmas. I fell in love with this particular pattern when I saw it online so I tracked it down on ebay. Then I went to JoAnn Fabrics and was severely disappointed in the fabric selection there. The only fabrics I liked were home decor (dry clean only) designs. With a little research, I tracked down a store in town that specialized in designer apparel fabrics.

I picked out three fabrics for each reversable apron and went home to start sewing. The project was a little larger than I anticipated. Each apron took me about about eight times longer to create than I expected. Inevitably, I ran out of time. So here we are a few days past Christmas and some aprons still aren't finished. They will be though. Eventually.

Here are the ones I DID manage to complete.

Cinnamin Rolls

Thanks to my sister in law, Raychel, Darrin's mom and I (mostly her) got it in our heads that we were going to make cinnamin rolls for Christmas. LOTS OF THEM.

Suddenly I want a Kitchenaid mixer.


Doobie, pouring the sugar.


Bubba, pouring the milk


Bugaroo, pouring the oil (all over Grandma's hand)


HOURS later, Bubba prepping the rolling area.


Kneading the dough.


Rolling the dough AND watching TV at the same time.


After some rolling and more rolling, pouring some stuff on and then more rolling and then some cuttting. Pretty in the pans. Lots and lots of pans.


Frosting and eating.

Thanks to Grandma Diana for taking this project on. I promised to help but I SO did not help. I took a few pictures and I stepped in a little at the end, but mostly she slaved away in the kitchen for hours and hours. I was too wrapped up in editing the photos from my very first wedding shoot. They are pretty spiffy by the way.

Jake's Christmas Concert

This past week Bubba participated in his school's elementary Christmas concert. It was so fun to see him up on stage, very seriously singing his way through the program. On the very first note he put his hands up to start directing the music and then hurried to put them down again, looking around to see if anyone noticed. He sang each song and then gasped for breath at the end of every one, sometimes with a hand clutch to his heart as though he could barely contain his exhaustion. Seriously, it was killing me. I laughed until I cried.


Can you see him? He's the little handsome dude in the front row with the white shirt and plaid tie.


Here's a closeup after the show. He did so great!

Jaycob's Art

Everyday after school I go through Jake's backpack and unload all his school work from the day. Today I found this bit of art.

Snow Princess

We have had some interesting ice fog over the past few days and the frost coating all the tree branches is beautiful to look at. And so is my little snow princess, posing for me after church this morning.

Christmas Around the House

Just a bits of festive-ness around the house.


The advent calendar that I bought at Target last year.


The wreath I made at GAL time last month.


The bow tree topper I learned to make on You Tube a couple of weeks ago.


The giant ornaments that were just calling my name at Costco this year.


The stockings that my sweet friend Lucy made me (twice because the first set got ruined) for my birthday last year.


The ceramic nativity scene that I painted in high school.

The New Christmas Tree

The kids were so excited to help decorate the tree. I tortured them for a couple of days before I let them at it though. The tree was up, but I hadn't dug out our boxes of decorations yet. When the time finally came, they attacked their job with gusto. As usual the bottom third of the tree was thoroughly bedazzled. Jake finally realized this year that the top was being ignored so he improvised a ladder and set to work. Josh got frustrated early on so he didn't help much. He just couldn't understand why things didn't just stick to the tree when he threw them at it.





I am definitely an official fan of the skinny tree. It's amazing how little room this thing requires compared to our old monster. I likey.