Last Few Christmas Pics ...

ABSOLUTE LAST UPDATE FOR THE YEAR !!!

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This was our Cookies For Santa annual party, yeah no ... next year I will take my own pics coz Dave really got little to no pics of the people at the party, sorry :-(

Here Amber is waiting for her little friends to arrive.  One of the three tables set up with stuff to decorate cookies and cupcakes.  This table was for the younger kids.

This one was for the bigger kids ...

Just two pics from the party ... it was a smaller party this year compared to last year, so many more families were out of town for Christmas this year.  I will keep this up though, it's a fun get together for the kids :-)

Our house on Christmas Eve just after the kids went to bed.  It was a late night out for them so they went to sleep pretty quickly thank Heavens.  This December was just as festive as normal and just as busy too but we had a lot of fun at all the Christmas parties, gosh I so love Christmas here in this neighborhood :-)  Christmas in the USA Rocks !!!

This is what the kids saw Christmas morning.

My banisters this year.

The Nativity Scene with Jesus in it.

Santa has been and left the house :-) and taken Shelfy with him :-(

This was Christmas Day Evening ...

And at Dinner Time.

Happy Birthday Jesus.

Another Christmas down, it is always so sad once Christmas is over with, other than the actual day that is super fun, just the entire season is just a whirlwind of activities and just so festive and so much fun for both kids and adults.  I love that my kids are growing up with all this, we really are so blessed to have the life we have here.

Anyway I guess all that is left to say is ... Happy New Year to all of you, I hope it is the best year ever for you guys.

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Christmas Family Pics.

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Ok this was a crazy morning, I wanted to get some family Christmas pics done but I was also trying to get ready for a baby shower and a bunch of other things so there was a lot of screaming and crying and bad moods but thankfully in an hour we managed to get a few decent ones.

Love this one of the four of us, don't often get family pics anymore but this one wasn't too bad, Amber didn't want to smile at this point but oh well .. not too bad :-)  

Mom and her girls ... very rare pic too.

Another family shot ... yeah I know we need a way bigger tree !!!

Daddy and daughters picture.

David bored while waiting for the next clothing change ... what to live in a house of girls right :-)

My Amber that lights up a room with her smile.

Look how big my oldest is getting, where did the time go ?

These were not posed shots they were just playing around but they were some of the best and cutest shots I got.

This is my absolute favorite, Christmas attitude, Jade just crossed her arms and Amber followed ... as usual but too cute.

Trying to recreate the picture I took last year but Amber would not play along.

But Jade doesn't give up  ...

Third dress change.

The girls were very tired of pics by this point I had to bring in daddy making farting noises, yeah ... apparently that is the funniest thing.

Last one on that day ...

These last two were taken at our neighborhood clubhouse at the Cookies with Santa function.

The next is the Christmas Eve shots ... 

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First Lot Of Inside Decorations ...

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Ok so these are some pictures taken the weekend that we put up all the Christmas stuff inside and out.  It was a little early due to us going on the cruise but still, I love Christmas so much and my house looking so pretty, other than the rush of it all, I loved having it up a little early.

Let me start by telling you about this new little lady in our house ... it has been a craze for the past say two or three years but I have not bought into it till now and honestly now I wish I had done it long ago, it was such fun and the girls totally loved her.  One day the doorbell went and there was a parcel at the door, it was a box with a story book and a little girl Elf in it.  The girls and I sat down on the couch and I read the the story of The Elf On The Shelf.  First things first we had to name our little elf and the girls decided to call her Shelfy ... yeah I know not very original but still, there we go !!!

The story of Shelfy is that she is sent by Santa to watch over the kids, she goes home to the North Pole every night to report how they have been that day, naughty or nice ... then when she appears in the morning, she is on a new spot, sometime just sitting there or other times doing something naught, she has been known to get up to all sorts of mischief.  Mommy is not very creative but thankfully many of my friends are and post what they are up to on Facebook or Pinterest so I could get ideas.

Below there is a picture of one of the messages she left the girls.  One morning Jade shrieked, Shelfy was sitting on her TV, she thought that was totally creepy and asked whether I thought she had been there all night watching her, so I didn't put her in Ambers room ever, didn't want to scare her.  Every day the first thing they did was hunt for Shelfy, sometimes she was in an easy spot but other times you really had to look for her, like the day she was in the fridge ... and the next day after being in the fridge all day, she slept in the oven mitt.  She also threw her line into a bowl of Goldfish (crackers that look like little fish) and caught one, wish I had taken a picture of that.  She was also found upside down looking into one of Jades presents bags on her birthday.  Oh and my favorite, the day before Christmas, she left them a message at a bowl of sugar that had four red beans on top of the sugar, telling them to push them into the sugar and the next day they would find a surprise, well the next day the beans were gone and four red and white candy canes had appeared.  The kids loved it ... for me as I said it was a bit of a challenge but they loved it which made it fun for me.  One of the rules is though that you can never touch her or she loses her magic to get back to the North Pole and she was never touch ... oh maybe Jade did once but I will never know for sure, Shelfy had the Tooth Fairy bag around her neck with Jades money in from the fairy and in the morning when I saw it knew she had taken if off from around Shelfy's neck but she never owned up to that !!!

The funny thing was that if the kids were bad, I would find them apologizing to no ... not me but to Shelfy !!!  Amber was super bad on Christmas Eve and well she and Jade both had a long chat with Shelfy apologizing for everything and promising her the earth if she took good news back to Santa, very cute.  So yeah, this year we introduced this little lady to our girls, thank God Jade at 10 still absolutely believes in it all, when she doesn't I will recruit her to help me with Shelfy !!!  Such fun, I love this season.

Oh I know it looks the same every year but I definitely make changes every year, wish you could see them all for real.

The mantle and the Christmas Tree this year, those large flowers on the tree were on the staircases last year.

The mantle, Jade said I swapped the stockings around this year, didn't notice that but some of the balls are new and I put lights on my two little trees I don't think I did last year and I have new mini hurricanes on the mantle which are different.  We really had issues with lights this year all over the show, it was terrible and such a frustration, you will see my Christmas Eve pics the mantle is not as lit up, because a strand of lights went out.  Oh and the tree, that's just sad ... but I so want a much much much bigger tree but we will have to wait till one bigger that is affordable comes along.

The normal Nativity scene.

The balls also had a Nativity scene on them, those were new too.

These are the mini hurricanes, you know I am all into my hurricanes now, love them.

Just a picture taken into the mirror.

And into the same mirror but how weird is this picture because everything is opposite.  Love it though.

Just some new snowman ornaments.

You know my theme is always snowmen or snow families :-)  Oh and snow babies and Christmas flowers.

There my snow family on my window sill.

And these are my hurricanes on my dining room table.

Ok enough already for those that are bored to death ... I know but the moms enjoy all these pics ok !!!

This one is for the guys, this is my clever hubby putting up all the decorations outside ...

How cool is that right ?  Only I told him it should have continued till they were on that night but those pics you will have to wait for in another update.  I think I might be done for today ... stay tuned, you know I am on a roll here.


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Jades Birthday Week.

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It's terrible to have your birthday on a week day, there is no time for anything before we get her out of the door by 6h30 for the school bus :-(

I went and had lunch with her at school that day and for her it was super special for two reason, one she had me all to myself, normally Amber goes with but Amber was at school and secondly we had lunch on the 12th of the 12th, 2012 at exactly 12:12, something that only happens once in a lifetime :-)

Then when she came home from school since I had to work that night, I let her peek in some of her presents which we had bagged under the Christmas tree but told her that it will probably be way more fun for her to open them with David and Amber that night which is what they did.

We had a quick dinner together as a family on my way to work and that was that :-( not a normal birthday for sure but I promised her that we would go to McAddenville Friday and do dinner out again then and she was having a big party this year too so we were doing a lot for that.

This was the afternoon while Amber was napping and Jade got to peek in all the presents with me :-)

Normally we do McAddenville on the day of her birthday but this year I did not want to take off the Wednesday at work, it was nearing the end of our work year so would rather not have, she gave me a hard time about it but I think eventually was ok with it.

I love McAddenville, Christmas Town USA ... there are definitely classy houses and then for sure there are the nasty ones, told Dave when I start inflating stuff on our grass outside, shoot me :-)

One of my favorite houses this time, it was just so different.

Yeah no ... shoot me !!!

The traffic really wasn't too bad considering it was a Friday ...

And the girls were excited we got to see Santa.

Jades birthday was a Glamour Dance Party !!!  We invited her entire cheer squad and almost all of them came, we had about 20 girls in the house and David (hehehe) yeah I felt bad for him at times, should have invited all the boys that were across the road sleeping over at Vincents party to come over and dance with them ... but sadly that was an afterthought.

Anyway, I had one of the young ladies that works with me, Meredith and one of her friends come over to do hair and make up and then I took pics of the girls individually after they were done up and then lots of group pics too, I took soooooooooooo many pictures that night.  Then they went into the lounge area which I had cleared to make a dance floor.  We had lights going to make it disco like, it was super cool only, if I used my flash, you could not get the effect and if I didn't well I just couldn't figure it out so many of my pics were not great :-(  But the girls had fun and that was the main thing.

The plan was that Meredith and Co would do hear and then be done with them and help out with dance games but these girls had other ideas, the line to get your hair done did not stop for three hours, they wanted curls and then when they were done they would go and get it made straight again ... it was crazy but again the girls had fun but I felt bad for the hair stylists that really hardly got a break !!!  They did a great job though :-)

Here is Jade having her first hair do done, lost track of how many she had done through the night.

Jade and her bestie Laurin.

Oh my gosh, who is this girl ?

This is how my dining room / salon looked all night !!!

I invited Laurins sister Ava who is one of Ambers friends to keep her company.

Do number two and I stopped there coz it got too much really.  Her hair was really cute at the back, sorry I didn't get a shot of that, I need to take a photography lesson for sure.

I took lots of group shots.  Need to print some of these for Jades bedroom, she has a pin board they would look cute on.

Sadly only got one shot of them all together and it was when we did the cake, there was always two having hair and makeup done.

I surprised Jade with this cake :-) cute right ?  So I had it done at Harris Teeter close to our house and about an hour and a half before the party I went to get it and it was a little messed up so I complained and they redid it for me quickly ... for free !!!  Yay !!!

My favorite shot of all the girls together.  She looks so happy ... love it.

We tried to save Jades face till last ...

Ok so this is what it looked like when I took it with the flash, you could not get the disco feel from that :-(  Also never got all the girls on the dance floor at one time because there was always a line at the salon !!!  Wish now in hindsight I had got them all on the floor for a group shot.

This must have been them doing The Wobble Baby song.

Getting down !!!

So here's a couple where you can get an idea of lights but still it was really dark and you can't see that here :-( the girls loved it though.

Oh my gosh this girl cracked me up, she wanted to be in every shot, but this shot really just made me laugh coz you can totally see what I mean right.  I think I got more shots of her than the birthday girl !!!

Ok I am going to try and paste a video or two here but you can't see much but you can get an idea of how dark it was and the lights and music, was pretty cool.

Thought I had another one where I took flash pictures inbetween which lightened the room at times but don't think Dave loaded it to YouTube which means it will take too long to load now and I want to get done here but hope you get the idea of how the lights looked, sorry.

Everyone asked what Jade wanted for her birthday and we told them Target gift cards as she was saving to buy an iPod Touch which she did manage to buy.  Dave is so anti all the i products that he said if she wanted to buy it for herself she needed to go ahead and did she show him (hehehe) now we just hope she really looks after it coz we sure as hell are not replacing it if it gets broken.

Just one last video, this is Jade showing her dad her scooter that uncle Gavin and aunty Gigi gave her for her birthday, she still has not opened it up yet to go full speed, I told her to wait till she got a helmet which she got for Christmas so stayed tuned for the next video after Christmas :-)

Thank you to all those that sent cards, emailed her, called her or left messages and of course either sent gifts or had me buy them for her, thank you for making her day so special and for spoiling her so :-)  There is yet another year down, can't believe my oldest baby is 10 years old !!!

REMEMBER TO SCROLL UP AND DOWN TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T MISS ANYTHING, CRAZY BIG CATCH UP SESSION AGAIN.