getting with it

the letter

Last year we didn’t get a Christmas letter written or a single card sent.  I was newly pregnant and oh, so tired and nauseous, with in-laws in town.  That was my excuse.  There’s always an excuse though, isn’t there?  Now I have a new baby and on top of that pink eye ravaged through our family these last couple of weeks so I couldn’t take a good Christmas picture for our card.

I faced those would-be excuses head on, went through our photos and found one of each kid that was cute, enlisted the help of my husband to make them fit right, and placed my order at Costco.  The bummer– we didn’t notice Hunter’s name was misspelled until we had 100 HunDers in our hands.  Oh well, done imperfectly is better that not done at all.  Right?

team effort

Getting them out the door was a team effort.  One big kid did address labels, another return addresses, and the third did stamps.

lots of envelopes

The little kids obviously couldn’t be left out, so they had stickers and envelopes of their own.

his own stickers

look

The littlest supervised while doing her favorite new activity– sucking her finger.

the supervisor

just for me

There were even a couple addressed to me :)

Halloweeners

For the whole month of October I tried to ignore the fact that Halloween was coming– maybe if I ignored it well enough it would just go away?  It didn’t go away.  Everything turned out fine anyway.  We even used some store bought costumes this year! *gasp*

Brenna was an elf.

elf ears

magical elf

We made some pointy ears out of skin colored felt and she scrounged the scrap bag for cape fabric.  Easy-peasy.

Jonah was a fly.

fly

fly wings

Glasses from the Halloween store, pipe cleaner antennae, cheap shower curtain wings.  Easy again.

Logan was a black dragon.

Logan-made dragon man

dragon wings

He made his snout thing, got out his bat wing-cape that I made him several years ago, and Barry sprayed his hair and painted his face for him.

I bought some costumes

Hunter and Ian were Iron Man and Bumblebee.  They LOVE these costumes and wear them every day.  I figure that since they are part of their regular wardrobe they were worth the investment– and earned me some cool mom points too.

Eva was a little skeleton.

screaming skeleton

She wasn’t nearly as excited about Halloween as the other kids.

Halloweeners

This is my kids very favorite holiday.  Jonah said, “Halloween is fun in our family.  It brings out our creative genius.”

Yeah, that and candy.  I’m glad it’s nearly all gone already.

a pumpkin post

A family of 8 needs a lot of Jack-o-Lanterns this time of year.  I made the suggestion that we get just 2 or 3 pumpkins and carve them in teams, but I guess the precedent has been set and each person MUST have their own pumpkin.

That’s a lot of guts…

eeww

carving

yikes!

the design

concentration

carving

and a lot of work– but traditions are so fun for everyone.

that's a big family! 8 Jack-o-lanterns do make a much more impressive display than 2 anyway.

the two littles

><

all aglow

tiny

No Manners Dinner 2011

On April Fool’s day we’ve started the tradition of holding our “No Manners Dinner.”  We have breakfast for dinner and get random kitchen implements to use as our plate, fork, and cup.  Here are some highlights from this year…

April Fool's

April Fool's

April Fool's

April Fool's

April Fool's

April Fool's

This year one of Brenna’s friends stayed for the fun.  We decided that next year we should invite a family.  Would you come?

(Click here to remember last year, if you’d like.)