Ch-ch-ch-changes

So this past Tuesday, right around lunch time, the door to my house opens.  I figure it's one of the neighbor kids, who sometimes knock, sometimes not, and whom I have issues with!  I go to look, and it's my husband.  Clearly much earlier than he's expected.  He had just been fired.  Really long story short, his "boss" was taking some heat, he was afraid for his job, so in order to "appease the Gods" he fired Cameron.  Hoping that would take enough heat off of him....show that "things had been handled."  It was in no way an appropriate action for the issue at hand, and I can assure you Cameron was not at fault.  Nonetheless, four days before Christmas, we find him without a job.  Things will be fine, we hope! and we have started the job search and going through all the fun unemployment stuff that we hope will be sufficient to keep us in our house and not moving back in with Cameron's mom.  But even if it's not, we recognize that we are very blessed with alternatives and supportive family.  I figured you all would find out anyway, so might as well rip the band aid off all at once!  Thankfully we have Christmas all done and taken care of already so that's not a stress, and now we just have extra time to spend with Cameron!  We are very blessed for all that we have and we recognize that the timing is good...if there can ever be good timing in these things. 

So with that, if you hear of any jobs we'd be appreciative!  Hope you all have a Merry Christmas, and I will be back after with some pictures of the festivities!!  Love to all!

One for the folks

So it may come as a shock to you that my folks don't really do Christmas anymore.  I know, right?!  Me who has the tree up before Thanksgiving has parents who don't even put a tree up.  (shakes head in disbelief).  Mostly we just give them a hard time and don't really care :)

One day I came across this picture from pottery barn, because Dena had seen them in the store and said they were amazing so I went and looked for it online...and once I saw them, I knew I had to do them for the 'rents.  (that's slang for parents.  because I'm going on little sleep and lots of crazy right now). 

(Did you go see the link?  Ok good.)

So here is Dena and I's version. 

Ok, so they're not perfect.  But they were fun, and someday when I have a house and a bookshelf (actually it'll be a wall of bookshelves) I'm going to make some for me too!  We took framing squares and wood from Home Depot, cut it down, sanded and stained it.  The squares were too shiny so we "distressed" them with some black paint.  Then glued the wood together and then bought really weird glue to glue the squares to the wood.  They turned out pretty fun!  My parents are big on books...as in they have hundreds, and my dad has done construction his whole life, so I was hoping it would be cool and personal.  They liked them :)

Happy Kwanza mom and dad!  (remember, they don't do Christmas.)

One more

for today.  Although I could have spaced them all out...but no time like the present!  ooh!  Presents!!!  :)  Can't wait for Christmas.

Here's one of Kennedi yesterday at Kai's class.  She cracks me up.  Apparently she's concerned about the picture being taken.

It's Official.

We have an author in the family :)  Kai's class all wrote books, and yesterday they were spotlighted with an Author's Chair.  It was so cute, they had the classroom dark with a chair set up on a desk and christmas lights and a spotlight over it.  They were completely spotlighted, and they all did great!  I tried to get my video on here, but it's not working, so pictures will have to suffice.

(PS, I didn't use my flash on purpose, I wanted to help create the feel that was in the class, it was so fun!)

 Making a face at Kennedi...

He is actually turning into a really great reader.  We'll go to the library and he'll pick books and read them entirely on his own.  I'm so proud of him!!!

Here are a couple pictures of his book.

We're so proud of our kindergartner! 

Tis the season

And apparently it's been a while since I've been on here! We've had a few things going on....trying to get ready for Christmas!

Kennedi is getting a mostly handmade Christmas.  She is in love with babies of all kinds (real and not so real), so I'm making her a baby bed (it's half way done!) and I made her a little quilt to go on top of it.

She saw it a few weeks ago and was like "OH!!  MINE!!"  She was pretty excited for it.  But it's been hidden away since then. 

We also started a new tradition that I really like and the kids are LOVING it!  I wrapped up a bunch of Christmas books and we have been picking one every night and reading it next to the tree.  There are some silly ones and serious ones, long and short, and it's been really fun! 

The only problem was the first night we did it Kennedi thought we could open all the presents under the tree!  Poor girl was a bit confused and upset.  But she's on board now and loving it!  This is my favorite one so far, it's totally vintage, in great shape, and the illustrations are amazing!

In other news, we have more decorations up!  Stockings have been hung and Kai wrote his letter to Santa.  I didn't even get to read it.  He put it in his stocking, with instructions to Santa that he can keep the letter :)  So cute.  I'm sure Santa will be pleased.

Our nativity is out, to help remind us the reason for the season.

Kai came home with the perfect decoration for our walls.  He made him in class!

His name is Elfie the Elf.  Or Buddy the Elf.  Depends on the day.  And time.  And general feeling of the household.

And a true sign it's Christmas around here, we finally got our annual treat basket from the owners of Cameron's company.  They are amazing (the owners.  Well, the treats are too) and it's always a reminder of how blessed we are for Cameron to have such a good job!

Happy Holidays!  I'm hoping to blog a couple more times before Christmas, but that would require finishing a few projects...so we'll see!  Wish me luck!

Silly me.

I thought we had already hit the terrible two's months ago.  Who would have guessed that that was just a warm up? 

Heaven help me.

On the plus side I have some fun Christmas projects to share, as soon as I get off my lazy duff to take pictures of them.  But then again, I think I deserve a moment or two to myself.

Did I mention that we've hit the terrible two's?

I can't believe I just did that

So I'm going on 3 hours of sleep today.

Because I just HAD to do it.

You know what I'm talking about.


Breaking Dawn, baby.

Midnight movie showing.

6 girlfriends.

Pie.

Exhaustion.

The End.




And yes, it was totally worth it.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

My post today is sure to arouse some emotions in some of you.  Some of you who read this beat me to the punch already, and others probably think I should be shot for even considering putting up Christmas decor before Thanksgiving.  It's so funny how people have such strong opinions about this :)  But nonetheless, you can't see it from your house, and we love it.  There's something about Christmas, and the decorations and the music and the weather, it's just all a bit magical...and we want to have it around as long as we can.  So this weekend we put up our Christmas stuff!  To see the excitement in my kiddo's eyes...they just make everything so fun.  Kennedi was so enthralled with the tree and loved helping put the ornaments and candy canes on!  Kai was fun, remembering ornaments from last year and his tradition of putting on the star.  So around here....it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas :)

P.S.  Did you know Santa is a Broncos fan?  Totally is.

Family pics

So I took some family pictures for some friends of ours for their Christmas cards.  They turned out pretty fun!  I promised to show my mom a few, so here you go mom!  :)

This is the one they'll probably use for the card....cute!  They were all so great with smiling and having fun!

Then after we got the business of family pics taken care of, we had some fun!

 

Then we got a few of each of the kids....but this was my most favorite one.  He's so cute!

It was so fun!  Thanks D family for letting me take your pictures!

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween. Earlier this year I saw a picture floating around on pinterest...

As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to do something like that for Kennedi!  So with a little help from Dena, and a little help from my hubby, and a lot of patience on my part, I came up with this!

Ok, that's a really bad washed out picture!!  I promise it's cute!!  My favorite part is the "hat" as Kennedi kept calling it...

I just used a bunch of scraps and fabrics and buttons I had laying around.  It was a super fun project, and as soon as I saw it on her, it made all the effort worth it!!

The first debut was at Kai's Kindergarten Parade/Party.  The whole school lines up and marches around the school to show off their costumes.  So funny.  So of course, Kennedi needed to dress up too, and all the kids loved her!  They had just learned about owls a few weeks before, so it was very fitting!

 

Here's Kai, marching around as Optimus Prime.  He went through about 12 costume ideas before he settled on a transformer.  This is the same costume as two years ago...thank goodness we bought it big so we didn't have to pay for the same costume twice!

A few more pics of the afternoon....

Then we came home for a dinner of too spicy chili :( and yummy cornbread and then headed to the church trunk or treat.  Kennedi was HILARIOUS.  We were setting up our trunk and the treat bowl was on the ground...she started taking the treats from the bowl and putting it in her bucket, it was hilarious!  So we started around to the other cars and she would hold up her bucket for the candy, check to make sure it got in there and then move on to the next car.  It was so funny.  So a few pictures of the trunk or treat....

Cameron and I like to dress in themes together....so since Kennedi was an owl, I was a bird watcher, and Cameron thought it would be hilarious to be a bird hunter.  I was less than amused.

 

After the trunk or treat we headed to our favorite neighborhood for some trick or treating, then over to Dena's for a post-trick or treating party!  She made the coolest dip ever, it's a spinach/artichoke dip...but just look at it!!

All in all it was a great night!  It was so fun to see Kennedi with her first real halloween experience, and of course, Kai loved it all, it's always fun to do stuff like that with him.  Well, I'm off to go raid the stash!!!