Christmas

We had a good Christmas this year. Our Christmas Eve traditions include going to my mom and dad's house and eating a ton a good food and then exchanging gifts. Easton is crying in this picture because he did not want to be held down for the picture. After my parent's house, we go to Porter's parent's house and do more gift exchanges.




This is our house after Santa came. I think the kids got quite a bit of stuff even though Santa was broke this year. Yeah that is our tree with the two different colors of white lights. It bugged Porter but I wasn't about to do the tree all over again. I guess two sets were LED and the other two weren't. Oh well, it looked alright for a while but the cat kept jumping in the tree and knocking off ornaments and smashing branches so by Christmas eve the tree was pretty roughed up. As you can tell there aren't many ornaments left on the bottom half of the tree.

The kids Christmas morning. They got up their usual time between 7 and 7:30. The girls were just waiting in their room for us to get Easton and tell them it was o.k. to come out.

Easton wasn't really sure what was going on. He was just wandering around and would occasionally rip a little of his present. The girls were excited and were just ripping through presents. Easton got this little Buzz Lightyear car from the girls for Christmas and he loves it when the girls push him around the house . He also got a tool bench that plays music and does fun sounds, balls, a bedtime gloworm that sings lullaby's, and some clothes and football slippers.

Rylie got a Liv doll and Barbies and a bunch of earrings and clothes. She told me that this was the best Christmas ever, even though they didn't get as much as they usually do. She is turning out to be a grateful little girl.

Brynlie got Barbie stuff, puppy swim school set, pet shop and clothes. They both received playdoh, art stuff and a bead kits to make necklaces and bracelets. Porter also got them both pink camo play guns and Easton a play shotgun.

Porter got me some earrings, necklaces, perfumes, lotions, slippers and socks. Porter got shirts, hat, pajama pants and a new wallet. So, I think we had a pretty good Christmas. My parents came up on Christmas day to see what the girls got. Later Porter's parents came to see us. It is always fun to have family around to spend the holidays with.

Kids

On one of our photo sessions we went to we had to bring our kids, so after it was over we went ahead and got some pretty cute pictures of our little runts.
I have been having fun with photoshop and just learned how to enhance the eyes and make it look like there is lip gloss. I did it all myself without the aid of an action. For those who don't know what a photoshop action is, it is a thing you run in photoshop that does all the work for you to achieve a certain look. I had to figure it out step by step because our computer won't allow us to download actions. Rylie calls these her scary eyes. I'm just learning, so maybe I did make the outside of the iris a little too dark, but I can only get better at it.

Rylie finally decided to get her ears pierced. She is the one that I thought would never do it because she can't handle pain. She asked us one day at the mall after we looked at earrings and Grandma Judy was sweet enough to pay for it. It is so expensive to get ears pierced I couldn't believe it. Her ears aren't pierced in this picture, but this was the day she got it done.( I think)

Another thing that happened to Rylie recently was having a boy at school tell her Santa wasn't real. He told her to sleep by her parents bedroom door to prove it. I was so mad when she told me this. I can't believe that boys parents never told him to keep this information to himself and to not ruin other children's Christmas. I asked Rylie what she believed and she said she thought Santa was real. I told her that as long as she believed that was all that mattered and to not listen to what other kids tell her. I hope she really still does believe because I think 7 is way to young to stop believing. I think the eye enhancement on Brynlie worked out really good. Now I just need to post the pictures of our latest photo session. We took some of a family, a couple, and a single guy

Easton is getting big and is so much fun. He is running around and climbing on everything. He loves to be in the bathrooms. As soon as a bathroom door opens he is running for it. He loves to unroll toilet paper and likes to climb on top of the toilet and stand. He also loves to get into our shower and grab whatever he can off the bench in there (razors, shampoo, soap). Right now as I am typing this he is in my kitchen cabinet pulling out every single mixing bowl I have and hitting the cat with them. Yes, we now have an inside cat. I really don't know what I was thinking. We got some cats from my sister Mindi, for outside after our last cat got ran over. But this one was so cute and fluffy and we knew that with all the bur bushes all over the hillside it wouldn't stay cute and fluffy for long so we brought it in. It really is the most evil cat I have ever seen. It attacks our Christmas tree every few minutes, our children's faces daily, and pretty much anything else that can annoy me. I actually hate it but I can't really put it back out because the kids love it so much.

One last story to tell about my crazy little Brynlie. Notice the face she is making in the picture below. Well one day the kids asked me about the handicap parking spaces and the people that had handicap license plates. I was trying to tell them the different reasons a person would need a handicap license plate. You know like wheelchairs, heart conditions, etc. Another day we were at the mall and she made this face and started walking funny and said "Look mom, I'm a handicap". I have no idea how she got this from the conversation we had. I'm sure people will think I'm a horrible mother and must teach her awful things but I really don't know why she thinks this is a handicap. This is probably a story I should have kept locked in the closet but the face was so funny. The picture isn't quite the face she made that day but close. Later that day she told me she wanted to be a handicap for Halloween next year. I really have to wonder about that girl sometimes.