Christmas Part 3 - The Bittles

Another installment of Christmas photos! Brad made another of his now-famous turkeys (the Alton Brown brine can't be beat), and we had all the holiday trimmings at Nonny & Poppy's Christmas Day in the afternoon.





These just make my heart melt. My girl. :)

Christmas Part 2 - The Pulleys

Josh and Carolyn hosted our Pulley Christmas gathering again this year. We always have fun at their place - plenty for the kiddos to do, and they always have new changes in their house for me to admire! :)

The kids had fun ripping into their stockings to find ornaments chosen with care for each of them by Oma as well as gold $1 coins - and candy. Gotta love the candy. :)

Christmas Part 1 - Ohio

We made our annual Ohio Christmas Trek early this year, but that didn't stop anyone from being in the Christmas Spirit! We even were able to go to the big Fanning Christmas party, something that we're never around for. It was lots of fun seeing the Fannings (and Ranks, of course!) and visiting Tom & Janel's gorgeous home. Try as we might, we were not able to get any photos with all of our kiddos smiling - or actually, even just LOOKING at the camera. Such is life. I just had to post this one to show what could have been! ;)



Oh, and at least THESE cuties smiled and looked at me! I'll be getting these to Charlet soon! :)





Opening gifts at Mammy & Pappy's couldn't have been more fun for the kids if Santa himself had been there! :)







My fave! :)

Cool Yule!

Again, I'm late on the upload. Here are my favorite photos from Natalie's Christmas dance recital "Cool Yule," and a video to boot! :)

I was SO proud of our little snow princess. You can tell she has matured and changed so much just since June in her Mary Poppins recital. She's really trying to learn the routines and follow Miss Jesi!

Thanksgiving . . . a little late

So I'm uploading and going through Christmas photos to post, and I realized two things:
1. I haven't uploaded or posted photos from Thanksgiving!
2. I haven't posted anything at all on the blog since August 22!

Bad, bad blogger mama!!!!

Sooooo without further ado, here are Thanksgiving photos - with Christmas ones soon to come!

Gram & Mollie | Kindred Spirits :)

I was uploading these photos and realized that Gram and Mollie share a love of dolls! :)



And here's another sweet one of Gram & Nat


Happy Monday to you!

JBF Goodies

It's that time again! The JBF Fall/Winter sale! I tried really hard to limit myself this year, and Natalie has laid down the law that she.wants.to.wear.dresses. She already has a couple pairs of jeans, a few long-sleeved shirts, and a ton of leggings (bought on deep sale with the intentions of wearing under all.the.dresses.), so I tried to mainly buy dresses for her, and not a ton. It's harder to get super cute awesomely-priced stuff at JBF when you're looking for specific items. I may pick up a couple more dresses at Target or something. I did get her some brand new Children's Place rainboots. She's been begging for some every time we go to Target, so when I saw these, I had to get them. She's positively thrilled and has been wearing them all day.

For Mollie, she's pretty much already set, but I got her a few cute tops, some simple canvas Mary Janes, and a couple of dresses.

Shoes & Tutu skirt (part of Natalie's Halloween costume)


Mollie's Dresses (Avg $5 each)


Mollie's Tops (Avg $3.50 each)


Natalie's PJs (Avg $4.50 each)


Natalie's Tops (Avg $3.75 each)


Natalie's Dresses (Avg $5.50 each)




I also got a TON of books. Last year, we did a new book every day during December for Advent, and I wanted to do it again this year. I got 21 books for $46. Pretty good, I think!

Mollie Pretending to Sleep

This pretty much speaks for itself. Except that you have to know when she says "that," she means "there." :)

Mollie's Very Hungry Caterpillar Party

I had so much fun planning Mollie's second birthday party. She probably didn't have as much fun as I did working on it, but she did seem to really enjoy her day. :) It's hard to believe that she's now TWO!

We had ALL of the food that the caterpillar ate! I took photos of each thing, but I'll spare you. Here are some of my favorites.



The cupcake cake. It wasn't quite what I had envisioned because Wal-Mart totally messed up my order (gave me WAY more red ones than I asked for), but it was kinda cute.


Mollie enjoyed it, anyway!


Brad's brilliant idea for the kids to eat - since it's hard to "seat" a dozen kiddos under the age of 4, we let them have a picnic on a Very Hungry Caterpillar made from posterboard.


And some other random party pics. :)

Happy Birthday Mollie!

Today marks my littlest little one's second birthday. We went out for a real live photo session to mark the occasion.

















Happy birthday, my sweet, funny, loving, feisty, adorable, mischievous, beautiful baby!

Happy Birthday Zane!

Just wanted to share some photos from Mr. Zane's first foray into the big world of SWEETS! yesterday! If he's anything like his dear ol' dad, though, it won't become an obsession. ;)