Family Pictures and Concerts

It always seems like less of a hassle, and less expensive, to do our own pictures to send out with a Christmas card.  But, seriously, it's practically impossible to get all five kids looking in the same direction and smiling.  Maybe some day I'll learn my lesson...

Aidan was a stinker...no smile, or totally goofy.

 Notice Ellie's newest trick...cross eyed, she was doing it in at least a quarter of the pictures.

 Maybe if we swap the little brother for the dog?

 We could always get Liam back from the upset crying by singing Pat-a-Cake...so he's clapping in most pictures.

 Enough is enough.  We took at least 100 pictures, and none of them were very great.  Ho-hum.

 Ellie's Christmas Concert was cute, as you might imagine a Preschool Christmas concert would be.

 At the end of the program she noticed how soft her friend's dress was, and wouldn't keep her hands off.

Colin's winter concert

 Aidan's, too.                                                

Liam's 1st Birthday

Liam turned 1 on Dec 11th.  The year has FLOWN by!!!!  We had a fun family party, and even Oma was there to celebrate with us.  Please excuse Liam's sore, red runny nose...he's almost always suffering from a cold this winter.  Poor little guy.

Ellie and I call Liam "Chunky Monkey", so I thought this cake was be perfect.  It didn't turn out as cute as I had hoped.  Oh well.  It was fun to make a big and a small one.  

More pics

Liam went through a stage when he put everything on his head.  Kinda cute.

I can't keep my kitchen clean....

Ellie and Colin thought Liam was onto a great idea.

Family Movie Night welcomes Liam

Picture Catch-Up

Time flies when you're havin' fun...

Here are some pics of what we've been up to the last few months.  I hope to get caught up in the next few days, so keep checking back.  :)

Ellie had her first preschool field trip to a fire station.

 On the field trip I found out the fire station was having an open house on Saturday, so we went back with the brothers.

Ellie tried on her dance costume (Is it just me?  I think $75 dollars for a costume, plus you have to pay for tickets to go to the recital....for a 4 year old who may very well freak out and not want to do it when the day comes, it just doesn't seem right.  So, we don't do all the costume, pictures, recitals, etc.  She enjoys dance class, and doesn't even know about the stuff.  Maybe next year, or the year after that....)

Snaggletooth Cade

Girl after my own heart...sleeping with her favorite (that day) handbag.

Cutie Liam

 Halloween

Tom was out of town on Halloween, so I enlisted the help of one of our babysitters for trick or treating...I think she was pretty excited to have an excuse to go too.  (Notice how non-freezing it is, yeah!)

 

I just have to mention my Halloween miracle.  First off, I really hate Halloween, it's such a waste of money/time for the costumes and then all the blasted candy just drives me crazy.  So I asked everyone what they wanted to be for Halloween this year.  I was so glad Aidan wanted to repeat his Army man costume-I even had the camo make up from last year still.  I started looking online for the other costumes.  I bid on a bunch of Harry Potter and unicorn costumes on eBay...I'm so glad I didn't win though (because I always bid more than I really want to pay because I just want to WIN).  SO, once I gave up hope on eBay, I started looking for no sew homemade costumes.   On my way to JoAnn's to get some felt for a cheesy looking unicorn costume I had found, I decided to stop in at Saver's, which is next to JoAnn's and had a huge HALLOWEEN sign posted.  I thought I'd just check it out real quick.  JACKPOT!  I found everyone's costumes for less than $10 each...Harry Potter and Dracula were new with tags even.  The unicorn costume I had bid $20+ was just $6, it needed some cleaning, but that's okay. I was one happy momma!