Decorating cookies with cousins

12/10/11
We got together with Mark's older brother Matt's boys to decorate Christmas cookies.  Mark's parents brought the cookies and the kids had fun just playing around and decorating the cookies!

Lincoln

Jake

Noah

Zach and Spencer

Cousins.

Lincoln tried to eat his cookie while on the plate and got frosting all over his glasses!

Thanks, everyone!  We had a lot of fun!

Choosing our Christmas Tree

12/10/11
Ten years ago it was the first year that Mark and I were married and we had a fresh (real) Christmas tree, but we haven't had one since then.  This being our first year in our first home (that we own) it seemed like a good time to celebrate the holidays with a fresh tree again.  So, we headed out to a local lot to snag a tree.

We wandered the rows of trees...

The boys were excited when the workers gave them little candy canes...

We found the tree.

The workers pulling our tree off the lot...

They drilled holes into the trunk to it would fit right into our tree stand...

Then they taught the boys about how to tell how old the tree is by looking at the rings on the cross section of the tree trunk...

And lastly they loaded the tree on top of our van!

And then we headed to Krispy Kreme for some breakfast doughnuts!

A little clip of the boys "helping" Mark set up the tree inside our house...

Stomp rocket

12/9/11  Yes...this really was December (in Utah).  Warmest Utah winter I ever remember.  Anyway!  Lincoln got this stomp rocket from my parents (thank you!) a few weeks prior for his birthday.  I thought I would document its initiation.

Here are a few video clips of the boys figuring the thing out.  The first try that I filmed was a dud, but I have to include it because it cracks me up.  Lincoln is standing there posing (not understanding that the camera I'm using is filming instead of taking still shots) and his cute/funny little "yeahh" has to be documented for the day when it is oh so different than it was here at barely 4 years old...

Success:

"This is amazing":

You have to watch this one just for Noah in the background...

Max's first time in the jumper

11/8/11
While these are perhaps boring home movies for a lot of people...they are clips that I'm including because, well, they make me smile (and this is my family blog after all).  And because I don't want to forget what these baby squeals and babbling sound like.  So!  Here are a few clips of Max (at 5 1/2 months old) hanging out for the first time in the jumper:

Family pictures 2011

The fabulous Barb Gabriel-Conley of Simply Fabulous Photography who did my maternity pictures, documented Max's birth (yes, in the operating room), and took Max's newborn photos...also did this family session (from 12/2/11), which we love.  Anybody living withing the vicinity of the Phoenix area should seriously consider hiring this talented woman to capture some beautiful images (and memories!) for them.

This is a little slideshow I threw together of some of the images from our family session (turn your sound off if you don't want the music) - or if you prefer to just scroll down through them quickly, then I will post the same pictures below the slideshow also.  **Click the icon on the bottom right of the slideshow to view it larger (full screen)**

My boys.

At this point we'd been married for 10 1/2 years, and it was almost exactly 17 years since our first date.

Lincoln and Noah using sticks to play various games (involving swords or guns naturally).  Oh how I love boys.

Noah starting to look like such a big boy.  These were taken just 2 months before his 5th birthday.

Lincoln had just turned 4 years old.  I love all of his expressions.

Our cute little 5 month old Max.

We promised the kids some "fun" pictures during this session.  We changed into our jammies and sat on a bed in the middle of the pecan grove.  Then we tickled, read books, and ate popcorn.  Loved it!

The boys having a little impromptu popcorn fight of course.

Brothers.

Thanks again to Barb for helping us to create and so beautifully capture these memories.