Family Pictures

I recently went to get our family photos done for some Christmas gifts.  Usually we do them ourselves, but this year I didn't really feel like it.  We ended up going to Picture Me Portraits....in Walmart.  Yes, I know!  I learned my lesson.  We had so many problems with them.  They first double charged me, then said they would give me a discount for some more prints that I bought and they would put the difference back on my credit card.  Yeah, that was the middle of November and I still have yet to see that credit on my credit card.  I've tried calling the district manager, but she won't return my phone calls.  The photo shoot went great after I got the kids some goldfish to eat to get them to take good pictures.  The photographer was great and everything, but I later tried to use coupons the next time I went in to get Tali's photos done and they gave me a little bit of a discount, but said that I had to "pay more to save more" when there were no stipulations on the back of the coupon things they give you with your pictures.  So I think I'm convinced I will do my own photos from now on.  Anyway, here is our family photo.

Thankful

Last month, one night as I was putting the kids to bed, Jairus ran over to Tali to give her a hug and kiss good night and Tali yelled back to Jairus "Na night Jairus.  Dream good dreams!"  She can seriously be so thoughtful and so sweet.  No wonder she is so loved by so many.

Our new bishop's daughter and Tali just adore each other along with another one of the young women in my ward.  They are such angels and are so good with Tali.  One particular Sunday, I was kind of frustrated because Tali had sat with us, then moved without me knowing it to sit with one of the young women behind us and then went to sit with my friend and then saw our bishop's daughter.  She sat with them for quite a while and then later came back to sit with us.  I was so frustrated with her, but something happened that totally changed my attitude.  Our bishop's daughter knows that Tali LOVES Rapunzel and always draws the sun for her and other Rapunzel stuff.  Well, this particular day, this young woman wrote Tali the sweetest, most precious letter I had ever read.  It made me so proud to be her mom.  This young woman had said that she was a long lost princess and was a child of God and complimented her on helping another little girl that had been crying, etc.  I had to tell the bishop and his wife how amazing their daughter was and how much her letter to my daughter had touched me.  I don't know if that young woman will ever know how much she made my day.  I absolutely adore her and my little "princess."

Glasses???

On November 13th, I decided I should probably get my eyes checked considering I was sitting in church one day in Sacrament meeting and I started seeing white spots that were kind of like kaleidoscope shapes in my peripheral vision from my right eye and my left eye started seeing black spots.  I also got a slight headache, but I've had worse headaches than that before so I wasn't sure what it was.  It freaked me out.  I also thought I should get my eyes checked before our insurance changes. 

Well, it turned out that the reason i was having vision problems was due to a migraine.  Which I thought was kind of odd.  I'd never had a migraine before.  When I went in they dilated both eyes which just felt really weird!  I completed the eye exam and my eyes weren't as bad as I thought they may have been.  In one eye, I had 20/20 vision and the other eye was 20/25.  Some how they still suckered me into buying glasses.  It's a good thing we had insurance!  I can actually tell a significant difference in my vision without the glasses.  When I got my glasses, Brian kept telling me I looked like one of those models on one of those eye glass commercials.  I just laugh at him.  He's got quite a sense of humor!  :)  Here is the "new" me.

 My feeble attempt at being sultry and seductive.  HAHA!

 I love this picture of me and my baby girl.  I absolutely love her!  She's such a sweetheart!

Little Monsters

Brian loves beets and introduced the kids to them and they seem to love them too.  Me, not so much.  Brian had given the kids beets one day and thought the kids looked so hilarious, so of course we broke out the camera.  He thought they looked like little vampires.

  Our little monsters.  :)

Lookin' Good!

We recently decided we are going to put our home up for sell hopefully sometime in the spring.  So we've been fixing things up trying to give our house and yard more appeal.  We recently put in landscaping cloth and rubber mulch in our flower beds.  We also had some paint chipping off of the trim on our house that my hubby repainted.  It already looks a ton better!

Halloween Festivites: Part 2

For Halloween this year, Brian and I dressed up as Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas.  Tali and Jairus didn't exactly match our costumes, but Tali dressed up as a witch and Jairus dressed up as a vampire since those two characters are in the movie.  These photos were taken at our ward chili cook-off/trunk-or-treat.

Yes, we sprayed my son's hair.

 Me and my baby girl.

 This is our previous bishop's wife.  She's hilarious! 

 Our friend Betsy.  Her costume was pretty awesome.

 People must have really loved our costumes.  We got so many compliments.  There were people there at the party we didn't know that asked to take our pictures.  Even the missionaries took our pictures.  It was pretty awesome!

 I think out of all of the costumes we've had, these ones are my favorite!

First Haircut

On October 29th, Brian gave Jairus his first haircut/buzz cut.  Our little man's hair was getting a bit too long, I thought, so we decided to cut it.

 I was surprised Jairus was so good about it.

 

 He's such a cute and funny little guy.  He was really getting a kick out of the razor.

 This is what we took of our little man's hair.  I can't believe he's growing up so fast!  Where is the time going???

Halloween Festivities: Part 1

 Here is my little princess all ready for her preschool Halloween parade.  She really wanted to be a witch.  She kept holding up her hand in a witchy voice "Eeeeee heeee heeee heee!" 

 Tali's teachers and class. 

 I loved this picture of Tali.  She's just so darn cute!

 After her preschool let out, we decided to go over to the local library to party some more.  The game Tali was playing, you had to go around in a circle on those orange squares and when the music stopped, the librarian would pick a number and if they picked your number, you got a prize.  This was when Tali won.

 She won the last cupcake.  She was elated!

 She ate the frosting and left most of the cupcake.

 They even did face painting and Tali wanted a spider web on her cheek.

 Tali also wanted me to paint her nails so I painted them a purple-ish sparkly color and on this hand on one of her fingers I wrote the word "Boo!"

 And on this hand I drew a little ghost.  They actually turned out better than I had thought they would.

Harvest & Pumpkin Patch

 Well the harvest season is officially over as of October 21st for us.  :(  This was the last of our zucchini.  The reason why some of them are so oddly shaped and big is because they were hiding in the zucchini plant.  It wasn't as good of a season as I would have hoped, but we got what we needed.  My mom even gave us some of her apples because her apple tree was overloaded with a ton of apples, so we took some off of her hands to make apple pie filling and apple crisp.  My wonderful hubby decided he wanted to put them up, so of course I had to take pictures of my hot honey at work.  :)

 Here he is shaking up the pan to mix the spices he put in it.

"Shake it!  Shake it like a polaroid picture"

My mom had taken the kids and I to a pumpkin patch.  Brian was going to go, but couldn't because he was tired and needed some sleep.  We weren't in the pumpkin patch for very long because it was cold and the kids were starting to get hungry.  Which is why our little man wasn't very happy in this picture.

 Tali on the other hand didn't want to leave.  She loved seeing all the pumpkins and going down a slide made out of a big white tube.

Picky Eater Eating

One day around Halloween, I decided to make brownies in a Halloween cookie sheet.  Tali thought they were the coolest thing ever.  I think I may have just won the "Mother-of-the-year" award with those.

Later that night I decided to make some angel hair pasta with herbs.  Tali wouldn't eat it at all at first....that is until I told her that they were brains.  Yes, brains.  The funny thing is, after that she ate it all gone and she would look at me and say "Mom, I'm a zombie and I'm eating BRAINS!  Hahahha."  She thought she was so funny.
 
After dinner, Tali helped me make "orgre toes."  They were so easy to make.  All you do is get those orange circus peanut candies (the marshmallow ones) smash them down a little with a cup on a piece of wax paper, then dip them in melted green chocolate chips.  Then you take the colored fruity flavored tootsie rolls and cut them up with kitchen shears, then mold them into "toe nail" shapes.  Then take a toothpick to make markings for the knuckles.  Here is how they turned out.  They were so much fun to make!

 I thought they turned out so darn cute!  I particularly liked the pink ones.  I got this recipe from this website from pinterest.com