her name was lola...

...she was a show girl. :)
this is uncle charley and mandy's dog.
what a sweetie!

merry christmas!

hope you all had a wonderful christmas!!! we had such a great time! we spent most of sunday with kurt's family. the kids and their cousins have a great time playing together. we all had fun playing uno attack and eating karla's wonderful food.

christmas eve and christmas day was spent at mimi and papa's. what a fun time! uncle charley and mandy brought their new puppy lola. she is such a cutie! anna got really attached to her very quickly. she did a great job of taking care of her, and even took her out a time or two. wilson loved yelling, "lola! lola!," but when she got close he said, "no no no" and ran away. uncle andy and diana brought their beagle jack a little later in the evening. jack is quite a bit bigger than lola and the kids were a little scared of him. but wilson loved yelling for him and running away from him too.

of course there was way too much food and WAY too many presents! the girls loved ALL of their presents! uncle charley and mandy gave ella a dress up bride gown. she didn't take that off all night. uncle john and aunt tall gave her a karoke machine. oh my. we are all having fun with that. i think wilson most of all! anna got not one, but 2 digital cameras. she had so much fun snapping pictures of everyone. wilson loves all of his toys and all of the girls toys and all of the boxes and wrapping paper and all of everything. he had so much fun! he's totally wiped and exhausted today!

of course there were quite a few hilarious moments during the weekend. wilson was the life of the party. he has everyone wrapped around his little finger. the most hilarious moment was when he and kurt were "sharing" chex mix. but apparently wilson didn't care to share, because when kurt put his hand in the bowl wilson pushed his hand out and said, "noooooo." ella had quite a few rare moments too, of course. she painted my nails for me yesterday. one hand is magenta and the other hand has alternating light pink and purple nails. as she was painting them this is what she said:
mom! when you go outside people are going to see your nails and say wow!
did you get those done at a makeover? and you can say no! ella did them!
she's so funny! and of course we've had hilarious karoke moments. i think my favorite was this morning. ella was saying, "give it up fooooor..." and then shouting an animal name. and then anna and wilson would make animal sounds. except no matter what animal ella said wilson said baa. lol! guess we need to keep working on our animal sounds, huh? :)

hopefully i'll have time to edit pictures soon.

busy, busy, busy!

it's been a bit crazy around here! we are having SO much fun! Christmas is just SO fun with the kids! we had a few of anna's friends over yesterday and made mini albums with them. oh! i forgot to take pictures of the albums - i'll have to show anna's in the next post. she's quite proud of it! she did a great job! i had the paper on the pages and they added all of the embellishments. one friend was hoping to add one of everything in her book. lol! she scraps like me! :) we took a few pictures beforehand to put in our books too. it was fun to have cooperative people to photograph! :) all i had to do was to remind them that no giggling was allowed in our house, and none of them could control themselves. lol! they had the most contagious giggles. we've also been enjoying the snow, doing a little baking and making TONS of paper snowflakes. we're so excited to see our families soon!






i've done a little scrapping of my own too. january's play it forward it kit is so fun! it gave me the perfect opportunity to print and scrap some of the pictures that becky took of us this fall.

snow day!!!

our first one this year! and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. we all need the day to rest and recooperate from our colds and coughs. i've always wanted to do an advent activity with the girls, so today we finally started using kate teague's advent fun kit at 2 peas. she has some really fun suggestions in the kit! we did 6 days in one today. lol! we read a Christmas story (the hat by jan brett), made snowflakes, had a bubble bath (with green and red color tabs. lol!), sang Christmas carols and decorated the tree with candy canes. the bad thing is that i only got one picture! it was nice to just enjoy our time without a camera in front of my face. just for today. ;) and i think you can tell that anna still isn't feeling great and neither are any of us, really. i think we could use a whole week of snow days! lol!

we're still here...

i haven't been able to bring myself to blog. i can't not say anything about what happened here wednesday. but i have so much to say about it. and yet nothing. i just don't understand. i love von maur. i can't remember one single time that i've been there and haven't been helped on by a nice, friendly person. i'm just so sad and sick for all of them and their families. and of course for all of the customers too.

on top of that stress we've all been sick. we mostly just have colds, but wilson was finally diagnosed with pneumonia and an ear infection on thursday. i say finally because he has had piggy backing colds (or so the doc said at our last appt not too long ago), and it seems like he's been since since october. this season has been the worst for us yet so far. it's just so hard to see them sick and tired and not themselves.

i haven't gotten much farther on my shopping or decorating. and i'm starting to panic just a tidge. i have so many projects and fun things i'd really like to do with the kids too. so i guess i should get to cracking!!!

2ps2sday...

on tuesdays two peas does a fun challenge and chat on their digi boards and they release their new kits for the week. if you've ever thought about trying out digital scrapbooking you should really join in! there are usually 2 or more garden girls there to answer questions. but don't come hungry - we almost always end up talking about food! i'm usually starving by the end of the night. this page is the one i did for this week's challenge - use an overlay. i don't think i've done very many pages with so much white space, so i'm not quite sure about it. but i love this pictures. i love those jammies of wilson's (that the girls wore too.) and i love that he's holding his book upside down. lol! we'll be doing lots of snuggling and reading today - he has a fever and i'm not feeling great myself. :P is it too early to be wishing for spring? lol!

weekend pictures...

here are a few picts from our weekend and our trip to see george. i didn't get many good ones of george. wilson was so excited! he gave him a few pats at first, and then walked away. later i took wilson up to see george again and he gave him huge hugs and high fives. but i was holding him so i missed out on the pictures. bummer! we all had a great time at the children's museum, and i think wilson loved it the most! we'll be heading back there more often for sure. what a great place for learning and for the kids to burn up some energy! :D

i started using flickr for some of our pictures. (to see them just click on the little picture bar on the left.) i took a few for my brothers and a few at grandpa k's wedding. i'm trying to learn as much as i can before my brother andy and his fiance diana get married this spring. i'm really hoping to dive into it after the holidays. i have SO much to learn! i'm hoping to participate a lot more on a few photography boards and i really want to take some classes. i'm kind of freaking out about all of it already, if you couldn't tell. it's so scary to put yourself out there. and i'm not confident at all to begin with. but i know it's the only way to improve, and i have a LONG way to go! i'm always open for any constructive criticism and advice about it all. just be gentle! lol!

speaking of the holidays - i am totally unorganized when it comes to that too! i do have most of the kids' presents bought, but that's as far as i've gottten. well and we did make our chex mix and puppy chow. we do have priorties. lol! we tried to get our tree up, but a few strands of lights aren't working. and the girls decorated the tree themselves, and well, there aren't any ornaments about the 4 foot line. lol! so i've been trying to get it all fixed and to get the other decorations out. but i can't seem to make any progress. i know it's only december 4th, but we're usually so much farther along by now. hopefully we'll get more in the spirit and get to moving soon!

2 posts in 2 days!

is that a record? for me it is! lol! we are iced in today and having a great day. we've been baking and playing and i even got a little scrapbooking in. katja kromann has just released 2 new digital kits. they are available at ScrapScandiStyle.com and pages done with her kit can be seen at her website as well. i used her silver bells kit to scrap pictures from anna's school christmas party from last year. she has grown up so much since then!