Merry Christmas 2011

It's been crazy and busy leading up to Christmas here...and we've been loving it! We went to our local botanical gardens which goes all out decorating with lights for Christmas. It was freezing, but it was beautiful and our friend, Lindsey, snapped this GREAT pic of the 5 of us! (Nice pictures with all 5 of us in it AND smiling are so few and far between nowadays.)


And of course, Santa was there at the botanical gardens so we had to pop in and say HELLO. Emilee graciously posed for a picture with man in red...

And Carter wanted NOTHING to do with Santa haha! He was gung ho until it was his turn and then he sorta flipped out and all we got was "Mom! YOU tell him what I want for Christmas, I don't want to sit on his lap!" So here's what the camera guy snapped...

(I carried him up there and plopped him in Santa's lap.) I'm coaxing "come on, honey, smile for the camera." Carter is thinking "get me outta here." Santa is wondering "why does this kid hate me?!"

Mommy and Santa smile while Carter continues to will the torture to be over

Very cute picture after Trevor sitting with Santa...

And my FAVORITE PICTURE...the one that made us spend the crazy amount of money on the CD when we were just going to go for the sit on his lap and skip the pic plan. The look on both Trev and Santa's face was just priceless. Santa is intently listening and Trevor is sharing his big Christmas wish.

And a few more Holiday fun pics.

Carter made a herd of candy cand reindeer to share with his classmates.

Joshua and Emilee cooked a whole bakery's worth of bread, as is Joshua's Christmas eve family tradition.

And we decorated Christmas cookies.

I'm off to get the hyper, Santa-anticipating monkeys snuggled into bed. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!!!

trip to CA

Here are just a couple of odd pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to CA...

Joshua got home unexpectedly so we left for our trip to CA half a day early. This meant that I was not completely packed (ie. missing a few smaller detail last minute items...like FOOD). The first leg of the trip involves 5 hours of NOTHING. I had heard about this "nothing" and sorta just thought it meant there's not alot along the road, but there will be some drive thru where we can grab a bite to eat. Uhhhh nope..."nothing" meant ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. About three hours into the "nothing" the kids were starving and we finally spotted a scary run down gas station with a C store. We eagerly stopped and after passing on most of the items for sale because they were expired we made a pathetic dinner out of frozen microwaved hot pockets, mac n cheese, peanuts and a yogurt for Carter. I snapped this picture because the remnants of our meal cracked Joshua and I up. Our dash board looked like that of some hill billy jalopy!!

This would be Carter and Trevor (hiding under Blankie) NOT wanting to get their picture taken at about mile 500 into our trip.

Going over Donner Pass was a bit yucky driving-wise, but our whole family was tickled to see the snow!

Our monkeys have participated in several Guinness Book of World Record titles...so we couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit The World's Tallest Thermometer on our way home.

decorating the house

Joshua got the lights up on the outside of the house the weekend before Thanksgiving since we'd be gone on his traditional decorating day of the Friday after. He's pretty serious about his house lights and he had to start over this year since it is our first whole Christmas being in our new house (yes, this means scale drawings etc to make sure that the lights are exactly spaced and never error his red-white-white pattern from any side of the house). And can I also mention how stinkin' HIGH our second story roof is? We've never had a house this high to decorate and I chewed my fingernails the ENTIRE time he was up there!

But with a little help from Emilee up top and Trevor handling technical issues down below, it came out amazing as usual!