The Interloper

I know I haven't posted Christmas day yet...but this picture cracks me up every time I look at it. Let's call it "The Interloper"...or "Middle Child Syndrome". I was just trying to take a cute photo of Jules and Xander snuggling on Christmas Day. Leia had other plans.

Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve. We spent Christmas Eve in our favorite way. Spending time at home together, just the 6 of us. We had dinner, read the Christmas Story in our scriptures, watched a short video, and the kids exchanged their secret sibling Christmas gifts. It was very calm. Which was great, because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, and we were hosting at our house...so Christmas day was a marathon of church, presents, cooking, more presents, eating, playing, etc.

Baking Girls and CCC #4

I did a substandard job of covering topics in photos over the holidays. Exhibit #1, I took this picture of my girls and I doing the annual baking for our holiday cake deliveries to a few friends, but didn't take any pictures of the wrapped up cake platters or delivery process. You'll have to use your imagination. On the upside...look at that little smirk on my baby girl. I could lick her little face off. "Look at me being cute while my sisters are doing serious baking work over here!"

Exhibit #2: 4th annual Cousin Christmas Crafts took place at the cousins' house for the first time this year. I took a few shots of the crafting going on, but no pictures of the finished crafts. I'm awesomely on top of things like that. We did some cute button Christmas trees on canvas (idea thanks to Pinterest), some 3 dimensional paper snowglobe thingies that I cut out with my Silhouette Cameo, and a cute reindeer flower pot thing that Aunt M came up with. The kids had fun, they always do. CCC is a tradition that they treasure annually.

Exhibit #3: I just loaded up my Christmas photos (138 of them) and found that I appear in precisely ZERO photos. Not that I enjoy photos of myself...but Zero? My kids will ask, where was Mama during Christmas 2011? Behind the camera, as always. :)

Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from our family to yours!

Violin Trio

Jules played in a violin trio at church yesterday. It isn't appropriate to record performances in the chapel, but I did take this video of them practicing a couple of weeks ago. They did great yesterday in church, it sounded SO GOOD. This practice session was a couple of weeks ago, so it is rough, and the power flicked out momentarily. But, if will give you a general idea of what they played. I wasn't going to post it on the blog since there are 2 other children in the video who aren't mine...but I was filming the tops of their heads from upstairs with my low quality phone camera, in low light, lol. So, I figured it would be okay.

5th grade choir production

Bella decided that she wanted to be involved in the stage crew for the 5th grade choir Christmas production. It was actually quite an elaborate production, I was very surprised. She was chosen to operate the lights, which she informed me quite excitedly, "IS THE BEST JOB IN STAGE CREW!!!" So funny. I guess it was an honor or something due to the complexity. I was also quite surprised when I saw her script for the lighting changes how complex it actually was. In my mind I thought she would just be flipping a few switches on and off, but no! It was definitely a lot of directions like, mid stage lights to 2.5 and whatnot. She did a great job though and there were no lighting mishaps, for which I was grateful.

We know she is Daniel's girl because she was all about being the lighting engineer and had ZERO interest in performing on stage....unless she is playing the piano. That doesn't make her nervous at all. Personally I was a big fan of stage time when I was her age. :) Not anymore.There was also a section in the beginning and end where she jumped up from the lighting booth and grabbed a prop, then ran into her place in line for a processional of sorts. She carried a star, marched up in the line, swayed back and forth, and tried not to make eye contact with the huge audience, lol.

So, that is now finished! I'm glad that she was interested in doing it and that her application to stage crew was accepted. It was a good experience for her all around. Merry Christmas! :)

Decorating Fatty

We kept it simple this year by forgetting to put on any ribbon or garland before we hung the ornaments. So she's looking a little au naturale. The above photo is from my phone, because my phone is killing me in the photo/blog department. It is so much easier to snap a poor quality phone picture and press the facebook button than it is to take real pictures, load them onto the computer and then compose a blog post about said pictures. My blogging has always been largely dependent on essentially journaling with pictures. So basically, my smartphone has been trying to kill my blog since a year ago September when I got it. Don't blame me! Blame the phone and its blasted convenience factor!So the girls and I fell in love with this slightly short and super fat 2 trunked Christmas tree on our tree acquisition outing a couple of weeks ago. It was a challenge to figure out where to put the star without a single top branch to work with, but it turned out fine. Unfortunately, our tree stopped drinking water 24 hours after we got it (almost 2 weeks ago now) and is dropping needles like CRAZY. Hopefully it will not be entirely brown a week from now when it is actually Christmas. I'm one who likes to get the tree down immediately after Christmas though...so it should be fine.
Trying to get Jules to smile for a picture is like asking for a kidney donation.

Belle was on star duty this year. The last 2 years Leia and Juli had that job. Next year, it will be Xander's turn...that should be interesting. Merry Christmas. :)

Bella Piano Recital Fall 2011

We Ran Away to Mexico

What do people with 4 kids do after 7 months without a single date? If their mother/mother-in-law lives 3 miles away...they run away to Mexico. Maybe we're just lucky...but that's what we do. Here's a little secret people...cruises can be a cheap getaway if you live near an embarkation point...and we do. So, instead of planning a few days away nearby, booking a hotel, driving, figuring out some entertainment, etc. We just drove over to the port (45 minutes) and hopped on a ship for 4 days. No more planning required. We took like a grand total of 10 pictures, so there is not much to show, we mostly "relaxed" (foreign concept for us), read books, ate way too much, and reflected on the fact that we still actually like each other, which we occasionally forget...what with the 4 kids and all. Bad news I gained 4 pounds in 4 days (and I wasn't the only one)...good news, I've been home for a week and it fell off on its own. See...cruises have magical properties. You should try one. Very relaxing.This was the only picture of Daniel. He is not angry, he is squinting. That explains his eyes. His frowny mouth...that he was born with. Poor guy...people always think he's angry when he isn't.I totally folded this towel dog myself. Daniel was making fun of me for being so pleased with myself after watching a towel folding demonstration.