Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Kara's first basketball game

Kara is playing basketball this year (and Brooke is too, but she doesn't start until January).

Kara's team had their first game today... Here are some photos!

Kara is excellent at defense and even though she is a full head shorter and a year younger than some of these players (her group is 5th & 6th graders), she wasn't afraid to go after the ball. She even dove for it and sacrificed her knees then held onto the ball and got dragged and elbowed down the court. But she never let go and made her coach (and her parents) proud!

Merry Christmas!

While at the mall wandering around and waiting for the choir performance to start (see previous post), the girls made a mandatory stop at Claire's. We saw these little santa hat clips and I knew we had everything we'd need to make them. So last night I did, and today both kids are enjoying their new clips! :)

Keeping us busy

Our kids' activities have filled the December calendar... just one of the many activities this year: school choir. These are a couple of shots taken at the mall performance last night.

'tis the season

Because Brooke's school can apparantly still get away with singing holiday songs, they had a 3rd grade program in which Brooke played an elf (one of many) who did not like the new elf (and they thought she was an 'elf impersonator' named Elfis). Cute!

Christmastime in St George

One of our favorite Christmas traditions... going to watch Mr. Kreuger's Christmas at the temple visitor center and seeing the nativity and Christmas lights.

A couple of pictures:

Shutterfly's 50 Free Christmas Cards Promotion

This is a shout-out for Shutterfly's awesome 2010 holiday collection!

Shutterfly was holding a promotion for bloggers to take advantage of getting 50 free Christmas Cards... and I barely made the deadline!

Shutterfly has sooo many awesome designs to choose from, I'm not sure which one we're going to go with yet.

One of my frontrunners for cards is this design which gives us room to share 5 photos (which would be nice because I can never pick just one). The full list of Christmas cards is here.

Some of my favorite baby announcements from friends have been done through Shutterfly. All of their cute baby announcement designs can be found here.

My third favorite (and this was not in any particular order) item Shutterfly offers are these awesome calendars, which my sister-in-law is always kind enough to organize for a gift for Grandma!

In the future, I'm thinking of ordering a picture for our home in one of these home decor areas. I love the frameless designs and I think I'm going to start planning which pictures to use and where to put one! :) But I can't decide if we'll use a gallery style print on canvas, the mounted wall art, or maybe even some fun wall decals for the girls' rooms! Shutterfly gives too many good options to even pick!

Possible new blog/site

Tell me what you think... Jeff has been asking me to try and sell some of my homemade crafts for awhile now, but I have looked into etsy and don't really want to deal with that yet unless I knew I could make this work. I was thinking of starting on a smaller scale and starting another blog to showcase and take orders for some of my handywork.

Any thoughts, comments?

Also, any suggestions on pricing for items? Should I base them off of what I can find on etsy?

Thanksgiving Poem

Kara's class had a poetry contest in class yesterday... Kara won 1st place! Jeff & I were very impressed by this poem and had to share (and I didn't notice until the second time through it that the first letter of each line spells out 'Thanksgiving').

Turkey talk starts Thanksgiving day
Happy children run and play
Always fun on Thanksgiving day
Never greedy on that special day
Kicking off the football players begin to play
Shouting dads fill the house
Grumpy moms cook all day
In every turkey there is a wishbone
Very full children break the wishbone
In every wishbone is a wish
Never does this wish fail
Giving is always good on Thanksgiving day

Hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Family Pictures

Jeff's work gave us a family photo session and some free prints! We had fun taking these in and around downtown St George! Enjoy! :)

Look what's coming!

I can't believe our baby is old enough for this...

And yes, I made the dress!

Trick or Treating

With Halloween on a Sunday this year, our neighborhood (most of it anyway) participated in Trick or Treating on Sunday. Here are a couple pictures of the kids (and Amber) going Trick or Treating.

Happy Halloween! :)

Trunk or Treat

This year's church Halloween party included a soup/chili dinner and then a costume parade by the kids. Afterwards we got to go outside and go Trunk or Treating from car to car in the parking lot... great way to get lots of candy quickly! :)

Some pictures of the kids during the costume parade:

Halloween Preview

Night 1 of 3 of wearing their costumes... one sweet (for a change this year) and one scary!

Kara as a rag doll & Brooke as a zombie:

Pumpkin Carving

Thanks to a fun kids activity at church on Saturday night, our pumpkin carving is done! :)

Kara & Brooke carving their pumpkins:

















Brooke's spooky owl on a tree branch:

Kara's creepy cat coming out of a witch's boot:

Both of the pumpkins lit up tonight:

Brooke's Birthday Party

This year for Brooke's birthday she invited some friends to the movie theater to see Toy Story 3. The girls had a blast! Can't believe she's grown up enough for this kind of party... but I'm glad I didn't have to do much... just supervise 5 giggly girls. Great success!

More Birthday

Even though it was late when we got home from Brooke's birthday dinner, we still had to make time to sing Happy Birthday... and Brooke's dessert of choice: Brownies! :)

Now just to wrestle with unruly 8 & 9 year olds for Brooke's party on Saturday then we're all done for another year!