Christmas Eve Traditions

Carrying on my parents tradition, we invited a ton of people over on Christmas Eve for potato soup and a table full of desserts.

I think the highlight for me was when one of the Cannon's boys walked into the dining room and said "This must be what it looks like when you get to heaven!".

The girls used left overs from the party for Santa and celery for the reindeer.

We read the Christmas story in Luke, then the girls all got to open their new jammies and head to bed.

The express christmas tree

Because we were on vacation the beginning of December we ended up not buying our tree until the 17th of December. It was technically my year to choose the tree, but I let the girls choose.

It was Lucy's turn to put the star on the top and since it was about 12 ft tall, she was very brave to climb up to do it.

By 2pm Christmas day Eric had all the ornaments cleaned off the tree and the tree completely dismantled and sitting in out burn pile out back.  It really felt like an express Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas!

Keaton

Lucy's obsession

If you have been around Lucy for any length of time over the past 2 years then you know that she LOVES pandas. She has panda everything and wants everything panda. She has been asking to go to China to see real pandas. So since we were in southern California we decided that we really needed to make it down to the San Diego zoo. We had heard horror stories about how crowded it usually is, but we were lucky and practically had the zoo to ourselves.

Most importantly Lucy got to see real pandas... up close and personal. They were even cuter then I had imagined they would be.

We even got to hold baby pandas...with the help of photoshop :)

Disneyland

Since we moved away from California Eric has been having withdrawls for Disneyland.  We found an awesome Disney package deal that we couldn't pass.  Eric talked to his brothers and it quickly turned into a family reunion.  We did not want to have to deal with big crowds so we all pulled our kids out of school and went the 1st week of December. It was perfect timing.

The four guys on the back row are Eric and his brothers (Eric, Greg, Alan and Wayne).  I still can't believe that at 6' 3" Eric is the shortest of his brothers. 

It really worked out well. All the cousins got along great.

Even though Eric and his brothers used to not be so kind to each other growing up, they all had a great time together.

My good friend Nicole and her kids met us at the park. I miss her so much!

Ruby could not wait to see Ellie. They were inseparable. 

Can you spot Keaton in this photo, Lucy was helping him out :)

The Sharps

On our way down to Disneyland we got to visit with the Sharps. When we lived in California we spent tons of time with the Sharps. We carpooled, swam and got together almost every day. It was heart  breaking to move away from them but so much fun to get to visit them again. My girls asked if they could skip Disneyland and spend more time with them. We love you guys! 

The Festival of Trees

My friend Jill and I were in charge of the santa's sleigh for the Festival of trees. We went with a sports theme and purchased the toys last January when Target had all their toys 75% off. Eric made the goal posts and football field for us. Our budget for the toys was $400 and it sold for $3,000!!!! All the toys were donated to a local charity. 

Thanksgiving & Keaton's blessing

My sister and her family and my mom all came to our house for Thanksgiving. It was the first time my nieces and nephews meet Keaton.  He was all smiles for them and quite the attraction. I think he appreciated having the extra guys in the house.

My mom hates tie- dye and was worried that when we moved to Oregon we were going to become hippies.... so of course my kids wanted to put this outfit on for Grandma's arrival. She was not thrilled with it.

My nephews are very into sports and especially baseball. I knew that Jeremy Guthrie was in town visiting family and I called his mom and asked if my nephews could meet him. She was very gracious and offered to have them over to the house. The boys were so excited they could hardly stand it. He talked to them about priorities, signed baseballs and took photos with them. He is a really fantastic guy and such a good role model.

While all my family was here we blessed Keaton. The blessing was beautiful and he did not cry at all durring it. Whew. He was even sporting a bow tie like his dad.

Happy 41st Birthday Eric

You know you are old when there are so many candles on your cake this happens...

Ever since I have known Eric he has wanted a john Deere riding mower/tractor. We have joked about it for years, I have given him a little toy one and this morning in his card he got this photo that said "Even though you stand out in your field... we think you should be riding." 

Then later in the day while all the girls were getting haircuts, the real thing was delivered to our house. Eric had already been mowing our field when we got home. He let the girls take turns trying it out.

Happy Birthday babe, I love you!

Family portraits

I realized that the last real family portrait we had taken was when Lucy was 3 years old.... so I called a photographer and asked her to come take some photos on our property. We had a great time and I loved the photos. Here are just a few of my favorites;

Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and usually we go all out with tons of decorations and dinner parties, but this year I was a little busy with a new baby. We did put up some decorations but we didn't throw any parties. A huge thing for our girls is Witchalena, she comes the week before Halloween no matter what. But this year even though she left treats there was no treasure hunts or hidden treats. Everything was left on the table with the lesson/poem for the day. I was proud that she even showed up, but Ruby told me she was really disappointed that Witchalena seemed lazy this year. I have to agree with her, Witchalena did not have the energy and time she normally has. Hopefully next year she will do better. I did however snap some photos of the girls in the morning.

As for Halloween night, I only snapped a few photos of the kids costumes.
Keaton went as a skeleton (an appropriate costume for the son of a radiologist).

Ruby and Lucy went as twin witches.

Haley went as a cereal killer.