End of year

I'm really behind on blogging about Christmas. I've been trying to catch up on our family "year books" a lot lately. I took up digital scrapbooking a while back and started back at the beginning of our marriage and I'm doing a book for each year. Right now I'm on 2006 so almost half way there!

Anyways, we had a fabulous Christmas. I love the online shopping world and all the great deals I can find. The UPS guys become very familiar with our house and visit us most days in December it seems. The kids loved all their gifts and we were lucky enough to have Josh's parents sleep over at our house Christmas Eve and be there for when the kids opened presents in the morning. We booked them about a year ago to do this. :) Camryn and all of us adults got up around 6 and waited until 7 to wake up the kids Christmas morning. Isn't that a little backwards? We had to wake them up because Camryn was starting to do this.

And we didn't want her going back to bed before her siblings even woke up. Josh spoiled me this year. I got a new lens for our anniversary the week before Christmas, Lightroom 3, and a GPS. The GPS has been a necessity for a while now, pretty much ever since I turned 16 actually. I get lost every time I go anywhere new. So it's been great to have! And Lightroom 3 and the new lens have really made a difference in my little photography hobby.

We actually made plans for New Years Eve which is something we usually forget. Our wonderful friends the Okelberry's came over for some games and food and it was a very fun night. We always love hanging out with their family. We celebrated the New Year about an hour early so they could drive back up to Bountiful before all the crazy drunk people got on the road. Josh and I were in bed when we heard the midnight fireworks going off. Yeah we know how to party hard.

So far 2011 has been a great year so far and I can't believe we're already through the first month!

Homecoming

Josh's parents made it home from their mission in Hawaii on December 23rd, just in time for Christmas. This was their 4th mission and for some reason this is the first time we've gone to the airport to see them. Don't know why we haven't done it before! Their flight got in at 7:22 so it was an early morning but totally worth it.

They brought us girls all fresh flower leis from Hawaii which were beautiful and smelled so good. The guys got kukui nut necklaces and Eileen knitted furry leis for the kids.

I must say I love skype. It was great to be able to talk with them every few weeks and our kids could see their grandparents. We're so happy to have them home again!

6 and 7 months

Here are a few pictures from our 6 and 7 month photo shoots. I recently downloaded the 30-day trial of Lightroom 3 and it was such a fun program to play around with. I'm crossing my fingers that I get that for Christmas since the price dropped to irresistibly low levels around Black Friday. Anyways, I took these in our backyard and I'm glad I caught the fall leaves when I did because winter hit before fall was over this year. I don't think we ever got a chance to rake our leaves before they were covered in snow. That will be fun to deal with in the spring.

I was contemplating a camera upgrade a couple months ago. I was considering switching from the Nikon family to the Canon family. I asked everyone I knew who was into photography what their opinions were on cameras. Everyone had something different to say. In fact two people even owned the same camera and one loved it and one hated it. I think choosing a camera is like a choosing a wand in Harry Potter. You hold it and you just know it's yours - the camera chooses you. Okay, maybe it's not that magical. Anyways, so I just ended up getting confused and I decided not to upgrade at all for now. I did decide to stick with the Nikon brand because it's what I know now. So Josh got me a new lens for our anniversary and I've been having a lot of fun with it. It's a great lens for portraits but has no zoom so that's been a bit of an adjustment. I'm constantly twisting it out of habit. So far I've really loved it. Here's our little baby cutie.

It's a winter wonderland!

Wow where does the time go? I have been completely ignoring my blog so hopefully someone out there is still checking up on it! I guess I mostly write on this for myself though. We had some pretty big snow storms a few weeks ago which made the world so lovely. It snowed just the way I like it to - a whole bunch all at once so you only have to shovel the driveway once or twice and you're done. Not that I ever shovel the driveway. Usually Josh does it and quite often our neighbor does it for us with his snow plow attached to his 4-wheeler. We have the best neighbors. Anyways I really like the snow as long as I don't have to go anywhere in it and it's not April when snow season should be DONE. It's just so pretty though.

It's nice that this year they can put their snow suits on mostly by themselves. It's still a lot of work but doesn't take nearly as long as last year! However, now that the twins are potty trained, inevitably somebody has to go potty 2 minutes after we've gone through the whole process of getting the suits on.

We're running on a tight schedule this December. Almost every day until Christmas has something. I love to go downtown and see the lights at temple square as a family. It just puts me in the Christmas mood. It's generally a bit of a pain to Josh but since it's important to me he does it and tries not to get stressed out. We picked the best night to go! It was hardly even cold and the kids were great and we got the best parking spot right on main street. We lasted almost twice as long as last year! We also got all the kids a new hat and pair of gloves since last year I was unprepared for the cold so that helped a lot.

We think maybe Tanner was yawning in this picture. He's pulling quite a face.

Camryn was wearing her warm, little duck suit so she pulled her duck face. She does this face all the time. It's so funny.

So fashionable

We had our first snow storm of the season the other day. Natalie and Tanner wanted to go out to play right away but Natalie was dressed like it was still 100 degrees outside so I told her to go change. This is what I got.

She's ready to go! Tank top, biking shorts, tights, snow boots and her snow coat. I was actually just impressed that she was wearing something other than a princess dress. She wears her princesses dresses every minute except for at preschool and church when I make her pretend NOT to be a princess.

Happy Halloween

We were so busy partying this Halloween that I didn't get very many pictures. Lame! Since we had a cute frog costume that fit Tanner and the girls always love being princesses, we went with The Princesses and the Frog theme. My mom got Natalie this awesome red and gold very regal, almost queenly looking costume that even had a hoop skirt. She was so excited about it and begged to wear it everywhere. But while we were getting in the car to go to our first Halloween party she had a potty accident. I was already stressed out about getting everyone ready in the first place so I didn't handle that well. Especially since I had no idea how to wash a dress with a hoop in it. I told her many times how unhappy I was about this while I made her change into one of her old princess dress-ups. She kept asking "Are you happy with me now mommy?" while we got her dressed and I kept saying no, but finally I told her "I'm not happy right now but I still love you." And she said "You still love me?!" like she was sure that was out of the question. So I felt a little bad about that and learned my lesson that I need to chill out about the potty accidents. I got her dress cleaned the next day but after that she was too worried to wear it so we don't have any pictures of her in it.

So we had six parties the week of Halloween. It was a fun crazy week. Here are a few pictures.

This is the best picture I got of my kids. The little guy on the left is my nephew Noah who definitely looks like he could be one of mine too. Tanner and Sydney look so bored in this picture. I vow to do better at getting more pictures next year!

Sydney loved getting all dolled up every day and I've gotten a lot faster at doing my girls' hair from all the up-dos lately.

We go to my parents' ward party every year. Our ward doesn't do a Halloween party so we have to crash theirs. :)

We went to "trunk or treat" for Josh's work. There were no trunks involved and it was all indoors so that was nice.

Camryn was a fairy princess. We lost her little tiara in the parking lot at our first party so she's mostly just a fairy, but still super cute.

We carved pumpkins too. The kids took out a few seeds and then put their orders in for how they would like me to carve their pumpkin. I don't really mind because I really like carving pumpkins. Someday it will be fun to have them participate a bit more.

Like I said, the kids picked what the pumpkins would look like. We had the scariest pumpkins on the block. :)

Well that was fast...

My baby is 5 months old! Crazy how fast that went. I don't remember the other kids growing up this fast. I've been doing our own little photo shoot with Camryn every month. This is something I didn't really do with the other kids, but I didn't have as much of an interest in photography back then either. I think it's good though. At least she won't be the last child who never has any pictures taken of her!

One day old...

I didn't take her first pictures. This one was done by Baby Bella at the hospital.

Ten days...

This picture was taken by my awesome photographer sister-in-law Wende.

One month...

I love naked baby pictures. We had a hard time getting one at her newborn photoshoot so this was the best I could do at her one month!

Two months...

Three months...

Four months...

Five months...