Christmas Portraits, 2016

Here are this year's Christmas portraits, taken at the usual place (JCPenny).  I'm not too thrilled about them, mostly because I don't like the letters in the pictures.  I should have said something about that during the session, but I didn't.  I originally ordered 48 5x7 Christmas cards, but that wasn't enough because Erik wanted to send some to all of his co-workers.  So I had to order 30 more online, for twice the price.  They were completely different layout and only 4x6's.  So we sent out two different Christmas cards this year! We hardly got any cards in return, and this was such a big, expensive hassle, that I think we're going to skip the cards this year, and just send close family members nice pictures of the kids!

All He Wants for Christmas...Is His Two Front Teeth!

 Gabe's right top tooth had been wiggly so oh so long.  He didn't even try to wiggle it out until I told him we'd go to the dentist and the dentist would pull it out, then he started working on it.  This was in November 2016.  I helped coach him on the proper way to wiggle that tooth, and this went on for a couple of weeks.  Then, one day at school, it popped out! Finally!  He got a dollar or two under his pillow from the tooth fairy. Here is Gabe with his top right tooth all gone:

Then, only a few weeks later, the tooth next to it popped out (in school)!  Gabe looks so cute with no two front teeth!! I love the way he talks, too!  Poor Gabe however, can't just bite into things--he has to chomp into whatever he's eating with his side teeth.  He looks like a little puppy dog chewing on a chew toy when he eats, haha! Cute, cute, cute!! I tried to get him to sing the "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" song, but it didn't happen.  Even though his toothless-wonder is adorable, it will be nice for him to have his front teeth back so he can eat like a regular person!

Thanksgiving

We would have liked to go up to Utah for Thanksgiving, but since Erik was on call to work the day after Thanksgiving, it unfortunately did not work out.  Fortunately, my dad said he could come down to have Thanksgiving with us!  I was glad that we wouldn't be all alone like we were last year.  It was a nice, simple Thanksgiving.  I made my stuffing and some pies, and Erik made his acini fruit salad (frog-eye as he likes to call it) and stuffed mushrooms, my dad made the potatoes, and the rest was a collaboration or store bought.

After eating a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, we headed over to my uncle Spencer's house (my dad's brother) for dessert.  I brought a cherry pie--side story: it was left over from pies I made for Elisa's Thanksgiving celebration at school; I had made cherry pies but forgot homemade wasn't allowed.  Fine, picky school.  Enjoy your chemical-infested pies. I also brought a squash pie that I assumed would taste okay since pumpkin is a squash and I prepared it mostly the same as I do pumpkin pies, but yikes, it wasn't even close.  It tasted exactly like squashed squash.  Not appetizing to me at all.  Even whipped cream didn't help! But, it got eaten, and I'm happy with that (since I wasn't the one that had to eat it!).  

The kids love having visitors!  They enjoyed have Grandpa around. He only stayed for the weekend, and went home after sacrament meeting Sunday morning. The day after Thanksgiving me and my dad took the kids to see the Trolls movie.  The kids liked it (except Ian, who tried to run away the entire time) later that night we also went to Logan's RoadHouse! It was a nice, fun Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend!

Here are the pictures:

Ian and Grandpa

Preparing the feast...putting the men to work!

Setting the table

Ready to eat! Yum! Everything was delicious!!

Me and my cute Ian-bean!

At Spencer's house, eating pie (and someone's birthday cake!).  It was fun chatting with everyone.

At the movies.  The chairs were big recliners, so nice!  I unfortunately lost my sunglasses there, boo.  I bet Ian ran off with them and left them somewhere.

November Randomness

November came and went pretty quickly.  It was filled with school days for the kids, work for Erik, lots of sewing for me, Christmas preparations, and more growing for Ian:

 

Ian enjoying himself at Savers.

 

Ian and I on my Birthday.  My birthday present was the piano.  We couldn't find a babysitter for a Wednesday night so we all went to Texas Road House. I ordered the awesome blossom that nobody touched but me, and my ribs were dry and old, but otherwise it was fun.  My Visiting Teachers stopped by to give me a gift, and Erik made me a cake.  That's about it for my birthday!

My old ironing board cover was trashed, so I ordered an ironing board cover from Amazon.  I received six!

Nutella is irresistible.  So is my darling Ian!

Oh hello, Mr. Nutella-face!

My pretty girl in her new dress!

I found this 18-inch dolly at Joanns at their Black Friday sale for $12!  I got busy making her lots of cute (and often matching Elisa's) outfits.  I thought I wouldn't like making dolly clothes, but they're actually kind of fun to make.  They take so much less time than a real girl's dress.

That hair!

Can you guess who got a hold of my phone??

A cute little stinker messing around in the sink.

I took some pictures of my cuties sleeping when I went in to check on them.  Adorable!!

Fall & Winter is a great time to go hot air ballooning appearantly, because we see them almost every day! This particular time was the closet I've seen them come over our house.  Someday I'd like to take a ride in a hot air balloon!

Going Goth.  However, Goth and cute don't match so Ian was partially Goth for maybe 30 seconds until I wiped the black off his face.  It was my eyeliner he thought would somehow taste good.

A yummy pumpkin roll I made!  I make one every fall.  Fall just wouldn't be the same without one of these!

Those animated stuffies scare me too, Ian.  Heaven forbid anyone would ever get one of those for me.

It's a little hard to see, but poor little Ian got himself trapped.  He was pushing the dolly stroller in the rocks and then the sprinklers turned on.  I, being the super nice mom that I am, rescued him.  And I, being the dummy that I am, went right through the sprinklers instead of going around! Haha!

Waiting on little sisters to finish their two-hours of dance class.  Gabe playing a game on his buddy Gavin's iPad. 

My cute & creative Gabe made some Train Man Figures and tried to sell them outside in the front yard.  A couple people took pity on Gabie and bought some.  Gabe made about $3! Someday, he will learn supply and demand and all that boring economic stuff, but for right now, he's just an adorable small business owner!

A lemon from our lemon tree!  I have a black thumb, so I was surprised when the lemon tree actually produced lemons! They are perfect and delicious.  

Oooh, just so much cheek-pinching adorableness going on here!

A cryptic note that Elisa wrote.  In fact, its so cryptic, that even Elisa herself doesn't know what it means! 

My smart Gabe.  We already know he's smart, but its always nice to have proof.  He's getting straight, solid A's in all of subjects right now!

Gabe's bear her got at a field trip to the Stuffington Bear Factory.  He named his bear Mikey and for awhile, took Mikey everywhere with him and treated Mikey quite well!

His outfit and this silly hat he put on at the dollar store make Ian look like a little soldier!  So adorable!

Church Hoe-Down

 The month of November started with a "Hoe-Down" hosted by some people in our church.  Their house was just over the hill from ours, so we walked instead of driving.  We enjoyed walking through the beautiful desert landscape, and the fact that it was finally cool(ish), made it even better!
The party itself was okay.  The kids had a lot of fun and the food (particularly the beef stew) was good, but since we didn't know very many people and sat at our own table by ourselves made it a little boring. 

 The walk across the hill

 

 Little girl, big cactus!

 Fishing for prizes in the hay.  Elisa found a slap bracelet!

 

 

 

 

Erik and I hardly saw Gabe and Elisa during the Hoe-down; they were so busy with the obstacle course almost the entire time!