Pictures you don't care about, but I'm posting them anyway

Santa was very sneaky this year. He bought me a video camera a couple weeks ago and then last night after he had already left presents for the kids he came back and left these two purple boxes for me. I got a much needed set of pots and a large stock pot. They are so pretty I'm almost afraid to use them!



He was really good to the kids this year as well. Josh and I were just talking the other night about how great life is for us. Sure, sometimes we wish we had this and that, but we never have to go without. In fact, we really have so much more than we even need. Christmas morning is a great reminder of that.

The traditional Christmas morning picture on the stairs. Thanks you Grandma Betty for the cozy new pj's!

James finally got the Nintendo DS that he has been begging asking Santa for for the past 3 years!

Samm is by far my favorite child to take pictures of on Christmas morning because everything is soooo wonderful and exciting!

Laila slept away most of the morning, but I wanted to make sure and get a quick picture of the kids all dressed up in their new outfits from Grandma Morgan before we left for church..."Oh shoot, Laila is starting to cry, lets try it again guys."

"Macy, what are you doing, lift up your head."

"No, don't turn to the side, lift your chin up."

"Macy, stop trying to poop, and smile!"

"Darn it, Laila is crying again."

"OK I give up, that's good enough!"

Laila was much happier after church.

Good gracious she is cute!!!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. Samm started lamenting around 4:00 that the day was already almost over and we would have to wait a whole other year for Christmas again, but I'm breathing a sigh of relief. I need a year to recover!

For your viewing pleasure...

America's next favorite dancers. Enjoy!

Go WYO

Even if they did loose, it was still pretty exciting that our team was playing in a bowl game!

Even Laila dressed up for the occassion, which resulted in the question "how old is he?" about 15 times while we were out running errands. I told the first lady that he was actually a she, but after that I just answered the question and didn't bother with the rest. I had too much to get done and didn't want to spend any extra time explaining that my adorable little boy was actually my adorable little girl.

When mom is in bed sick for 24 hours

I woke up Sunday morning with the nursing mother's nightmare and spent the entire day in bed alternating between shivering and burning up.  Laila stayed in bed with me while the other 3 sat in front of the TV and fed themselves cereal and fruit snacks. When I finally emerged on Monday morning this is what I came downstairs too.

I was grateful that the house was at least still standing and all the children were still alive. And even though my poor body was still aching and I felt run over by a truck, the sight of the mess actually made me a little bit happy.

They really would fall apart without me!

I am needed!

Laila's Blessing

Or blessing photo shoot, I guess. We blessed her a couple weeks ago but we didn't have any family in town for it so we didn't take any pictures. I had to have pictures of her in the dress though, so this morning I got it back out and much to Laila's objection, took pictures. This is the dress that my mom was christened in as a baby, the dress my sisters and I were all blessed in, and now the dress that all three of my girls have been blessed in. It should be noted that my husband absolutely hates the bonnet, so I didn't have her wear it for the actual blessing, but I did make her wear it for the pictures, which may or may not be part of why she didn't love the photo shoot!

And just for fun, her are pictures of the other girls on their blessing days.

                                                                         Macy

                                                                     Samm

Laughter is the best medicine

Laila has turned into quite a giggly little thing and I never get tired of it. Neither do the kids. Even James will act like a complete goof ball just to get her laughing. Sorry you can't really see her whole face though. I was holding her and recording so I had no idea how much of her I was actually getting.

Nov 25th 2011

I never ever buy the pictures the kids take at school. I think they are over priced and look like the kids have been running around school all day. I would much rather spend that money to take the kids to a studio where I can supervise what their hair looks like or even better have someone take some nice pictures for me outside.

It has been time for our yearly pictures for a while now, but I've been debating on what to do since Laila is so little still. In the end I decided to wait until spring to have my friend take nice pictures for us, but since I still want updated pictures of the kids for our frames I decided to play photographer myself.

And considering I have absolutely no clue how to use my camera still other than put it on auto and the sun was going down quickly, the wind was blowing, and Laila was not happy about our little outing, I'm happy with the few good ones that we got.

This was Macy's idea of a silly pose.

James was being a goober and kept giving me his goofy smile, but that is him, so I'll take it

We did this one just for uncle Keith!

This one says it all, although after we were done all of them said "That was so fun! Can we do it again?"

I didn't even have to tell Samm what to do. She came up with all her own poses.

This one is my favorite because it really shows how much they love each other. I didn't even tell James to hug them, I just said scooch in close and he reached around and pulled them to him.

And we had to throw Laila in for a couple so we could get a Christmas card photo. She wasn't too thrilled about the whole photo shoot thing though so we only got a few with her.