12th day of Christmas

Santa reactions!

There is something absolutely magical about seeing Christmas through the eyes of your own children! This has been the best Christmas morning by far! Both kids are big enough to open their presents by themselves and they can say the cutest things. I have a whole post of the cute things they said on Christmas morning, but it will have to wait. Jeremy needs the computer to work and I promised just to get caught up and then let him have it.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to a Happy New Year! I know that I am ready for 2008 to be over and to look toward the future in 2009! Let's be thinking about what we want to accomplish in '09 and maybe some of you will even share! I am thinking I am going to break mine up into monthly "goals" instead of a bunch of resolutions I won't keep anyways!

Okay, so that was a very interesting 12 days of Christmas and I can't wait to see how the mini album turns out. I also took a bunch of pictures of all the food my mom fixed on Christmas day and have to say that I got some fabulous shots. I am thinking a little mini album about food would be good....especially since I got the cutest little ones 1/2 off!

11th day of Christmas

School Christmas Crafts!

And just in case you wondered, there are such things as Rock Star Gingerbread Men and this is one of them!

10th day of Christmas

I didn't intend to start a snowman collection...it just happened over time. But now that I have one, I love it! (What I might love even more is that photoshop did all the hard work creating this panoramic shot! I took 4 pictures and they magically turned into this one shot! Gotta love technology)

9th day of Christmas

Spending time with family over the holidays (and no one griping about having to take a group photo!)

8th day of Christmas

Holiday yard decorations, christmas lights...I SOOOO wish we had more lights/decorations in our yard! Jeremy says that one day he will suprise me and we will have the Griswald's light show....I am still waiting!
(This is at my Grandma's House and is just one of many blow-up decorations. You should really listen to my brother tell about the time he stopped by in July to visit and had to set one up! It's hilarious....leave it in the comments Russ)

7th day of Christmas

Okay, this is a day late, but we were traveling yesterday, got home late, I am sick and it just didn't get done! Enough whining though here it is

Here's to toy packaging that takes half the morning to get undone!

6th day of Christmas

Patiently waiting to open presents at Papa Rusty's!

5th day of Christmas

$3 teacher gifts! This year I was the mom who totally forgot about teacher gifts until the night before! I came up with this idea...mom had the jars, I made the tags and the bag of peanut m&m's cost $2.99! The bonus, there was a handful of candy left that I just HAD to eat!

4th day of Christmas

I promise this is my last picture of the tree. But there is something magical about looking at the tree all lit up at night!

The 3rd day of Christmas

Having all the ornaments on one branch....and the tree falls over during naptime! My kids won't always want to decorate the tree this way, but for now I cherish it.

2nd Day of Christmas

Today's picture is the camel from our nativity scene. I was taking a picture of the entire scene when Cambree Jane said, "Here mom, you can take a picture of the buckaroo." I know you are wondering just where in the world this came from, so I will tell you. We have a game called 'Buckaroo' and the goal of the game is to try and load this horse up with supplies before he "bucks" them off. I am actually quite impressed with Cambree's intelligence, because I had never thought of it, but our camel does actually resemble buckaroo!

Another interesting sidenote is that Preston knows the name of our camel. While putting him on the table a few weeks back, he mentioned that he knew the camels name. Being the inquisitive mother that I am I had to ask. "What is that camels name?" "Humper. Yep, when that camel was little they called him Humper." I had a very swift talk with myself and managed not to crack up, because you know Preston was very serious about this.

Now would also be as good a time as any to tell you what Preston said about the angel. As we were setting up our scene the other day, Preston wondered where Jesus was. I asked, "Well, when was Jesus born?" He correctly answered, "Christmas". A few second later he asked what the angel was for and again I answered with a question, "What did the angel do?" He thought for just a moment and replied, "Made Jesus disappear?" No my little one, she is an angel, not a magician!

12 days of Christmas

Today is the beginning of the 12 days of Christmas and I have issued myself a challenge to document the things I am most grateful for/make me happy/I enjoy about the holidays. Then my goal after that is to create a little mini album with photos/journaling...and make one each year and pull them all out to look at each year. I think it will be fun as the years go by and the kids grow and our lives continue to change.




Today...playing wrestling with our doo-rags on, while the christmas tree lights twinkle behind us and it snows outside! What intrigues me so much about this scene is that even though my kids know that Christmas is coming it doesn't stop them for imagining and playing. To them it is not December 14th and only 12 days left to get all the holiday shopping and preparing done, it's just Sunday afternoon and they get to play wrestling in the house. The other thing I love about this picture is that this is the third day Cambree Jane has worn this shirt around the house. We keep putting it in the laundry basket and she keeps digging it out and telling me "I found my bear shirt!" I probably would have soon forgotten this little thing she did, but now it is going to be documented for us to remember next year and the next and the next!

The Phone

I just spent 56 minutes & 32 seconds on the phone with PayPal, but by golly I got my money back. For those of you who don't know, back in November someone made $350 worth of unauthorized transactions from my account. I have been on the phone several times during the last month and no one has been very helpful...until today! I finally insisted they let me talk to a supervisor in the disputes department and TADA, I got my issue resolved. John was a very helpful supervisor and he took care of my issue within 10 minutes of being transferred to him! I learned this much today. If your hotmail (or any other unsecure email account), ebay and probably countless other sites have the same password as your paypal account........CHANGE THEM IMMEDIATELY! You heard me, go right now to paypal, login and change your current password to something else. John suggested using a capital letter in the middle and a symbol such as the % sign or a number. I took his advice and hope to never have to deal with this situation again!

Have a GREAT weekend!

Santa Letters

Okay, all you moms out there have to do this for your kids this year. And if you don't want to (it only takes a few minutes) call me and I will do it for you. Go to this site, click on Holiday Crafts, then Christmas. Now you will see the Santa Communication Center link. This is where the fun begins! Go through this until you get to the page where you can type a letter from Santa. You don't have to type the entire letter. It's really nifty....this pre-typed letter pops up and all you have to do is fill in the red parts and customize the letter for your child. I made one for both kids in under 5 minutes. I am going to actually mail them to the kids. We go and get our mail together each day and I know that whatever day I send them, they will arrive the next day! Can't wait!




They also have a neat thing where you can make your own gift tags. You can leave them blank or type in the names and they will print for you. I made one sheet of them and I am going to let the kids color them and I will probably laminate them, just so they make it until Christmas!

Have fun creating some holiday magic!!!

I know, I know...

...it's been almost a month since my last post. Where has the time gone and when did I get so busy? Not that I am complaining, it has been a good type of busy. My photography business has really taken off the last month and for that I am grateful. But it has meant more time editing and posting and placing orders and that means my little tidbits of life are getting left out. I have been keeping a little notebook full of blog-worthy materials, they just haven't made it here yet.



Besides the photography thing, I have some really exciting news that I can't believe I haven't posted until now. I have a new neice. Jordyn Paige Wensler was born November 16th @ 3:43 am, weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 19.5 inches long. She is almost exactly the same size as Cambree was and Jordyn has dark hair like Cambree had too! Aunt Janelle says she looks just like Jace only with hair, but I don't see it in the pictures. We won't get to see her until Christmas, but we have gotten to see Grandma Janis's pictures and she sure is a cutie. I would share one here, but I don't have a digital copy and I don't have a scanner. So you will just have to wait until Christmas to see her.



Our other exciting news is that the Sooners are going to Miami for the BCS National Championship game and SO ARE WE!!!! Yay! I can't wait. Jeremy and I have never really had a vacation by ourselves since we started having kids. We have gotten away for a day or two to Wichita or to a ballgame, but nothing like this. We are flying out of Wichita on Wednesday Jan. 7th and back home on Saturday Jan 10th. We are staying here

at the Hilton Doubletree. It's not right on South Beach, but just a short bus ride over there. It will most likely be too cold to swim or lay on the beach, but I LOVE the beach and it will be fun just to be there for awhile. We have our plane tickets purchased and our hotel booked, our only hitch now is transportation. We would like to avoid renting a car, but taking public transportation to the game will take us most of the day. So we are still working on that aspect of our trip. I am so excited, I can't wait to get away for a few days and see a National Championship ballgame...it should be a good one!

Well that is going to have to do it for now. I do have a job I still have to go to, so I guess I should get out of my sweats and put on something more suitable for being seen in public!

5th day of Christmas

SNOW ANGELS!!!

& little footprints in the snow....