The Cookie, The Bike and The PJ's

The Santa Cookie...When Santa came to our home on Christmas to deliver toys, he only took a couple bites out of this huge cookie we left for him. Well Christmas morning during all the hoopla and craziness as the gifts were being attacked by the two oldest children, little Alyssa found the leftover cookie. As I look through the pictures taken Christmas morning several have Alyssa munching on the Santa Cookie. Luckily Alyssa didn't have to worry about opening gifts because Zach took care of that for almost everyone. He kept picking up presents and saying they were for him and opening them.


The Bike...the second most photographed item on Christmas morning is Zach on his brand new bike. I don't know that he got off that thing much that morning.


The new PJ's...the third most photographed item on Christmas morning were the pajama's we gave the kids on Christmas Eve. We didn't take pictures of the pajamas on Christmas Eve because it was late and the kids were so cranky that night. Then the next morning the kids did everything but look at the camera at the same time as we attempted to have them poise for the pictures.

When you turn 6 all you need are SPRINKLES

Emilee turned the big "SIX" this month. Her birthday was the Saturday before Christmas and unfortunately it has taken until now to get something down in writing about the event. One tradition we have with the kids is to hang streamers on the door. Lucky for us Emilee took pictures of the streamers after Alyssa had her way with them.


The day prior to the big event I had baked a cake while Emilee was at a friends. Emilee had picked out a carriage (ie. Cinderella's carriage from the ball) cake pan. I pulled the cake out of the oven just before leaving to pick Emilee up and the cake ended up sitting in the pan a lot lot lot lot lot longer than it should have. Needless to say, when I took the cake out of the pan, some of it did not pop out on its own. About 1/4 of the cake needed some strong coaxing at knife point to get out. Then we had to leave to go to Emilee's performance detailed in the previous blog. So nothing was done with the cake on Friday.

On Saturday we were busy all morning with birthday stuff and Christmas stuff... Then that afternoon we went to Chuck E. Cheese.






By the time we got home I didn't have time to even try to make the cake pretty so I begged Emilee to let us make it into a triffle and I would decorate a pretty cake for her in a day or two. So with the wisdom that comes to a mature six year old she told me that it was no problem. We could solve everything with sprinkles. So Emilee and I patched the cake together and I frosted it with white frosting. We then pulled out all the sprinkles we could find in the house. There were at least 7 different bottles of sprinkles on the counter when Emilee went to work. When she was done she declared that it was the prettiest cake ever. Her friend Laurynn came over on Monday and gushed over the cake saying it was so beautiful.




So I was lucky because I didn't have to spend hours decorating a carriage cake, but Emilee thinks she is lucky because she got to decorate her own birthday cake. The morale of this story is that you don't have to spend hours doing tedious work for my girl. All she needs is some sprinkles.

Stage Fright?

Stage Fright? Not my girl. On Friday night Emilee had the opportunity to perform in a Holiday showcase for her pom and cheer class. She started taking classes in September and she loves it. It was not a simple recital with just her class. Oh no, it was on a stage at an elementary school. The auditorium was full. I only wish that I took a picture of the audience.


Emilee is in the back. She is the sixth girl starting from the left.

In fact the parking lot was full and according to my cousin Barb there was no parking to be found for at least three blocks from the school. Barb ended up missing the performance so Emilee has decided that Barb needs to drive with us next time. Unfortunately, Emilee is in the back so we didn't get a good view of her. I'm just so happy that she actually danced. She tells us she cannot wait to do it again. Yeah Emilee!!

I've been trying to upload a video clip all day without any luck. Hopefully I can get it to work sometime this weekend.

Doritos Commerical

So back when I lived in Utah almost 9 1/2 years ago, I worked at a law firm with my friend Kristy. Her husband is pretty amazing with his videography skills. Well he's entered a Doritos commercial contest. The commercial that he did is incredibly innovative, fun and well amazing!

How this contest works is the Doritos judges will pick 5 winners to compete for 1 million dollars. The top 5 commercials compete for first place with open voting some time in January.

Right now they are just trying to make sure that it gets noticed amongst all of the entries and they are trying to find their way into the "most viewed" arena.

If you don't mind taking a peek at the video that would be so great! And heck....if you're bored, feel free to peek at it again, and again, and again and....well you get the point.

Also if you feel comfortable in spreading the word that would be great!

Here is the address to his video. You'll have to copy and paste into your browser.
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/video/971/

Baby Steps

A couple weeks ago Alyssa took her first step. Last week she could be seen pushing her brother around the house on the little scooter. So with a little coaxing she started walking across the room on Saturday night. This is what I was able to record this morning.

Way to go Alyssa!!

Halloween 2008

Way too much candy!!!

Zach hiding behind Emilee

Alyssa dressed up as Belle

The three kids after trick-or-treaing.

Our Minnie Mouse pumpkin

Halloween this year was interesting. Everything was going along great during the day of the 31st and even into the early evening. Emilee went on a field trip during the day to a farm and came of exhausted. She got home from school and went to take a nap. Since the house was quite, Zach and Alyssa also decided to take a nap. The three kids were asleep during the day at the same time. That never ever ever ever happens...ever. Life is good. I first woke up Emilee because she was dressing up as a cheerleader and we needed time to curl the hair and apply make-up. Then I woke up Alyssa to get her fed and dressed. I woke Zach up last and he seemed to be doing fine. At 6:00pm my cousin Barb came over to hand out candy at our home so we could go out trick-or-treating as a family. I went back to Zach to get him dressed in his pirate getup and he went ballistic. It was the tantrum to end all tantrums. Robert came home during the midst of the tantrum and took over. Emilee, Alyssa and I started out trick-or-treating and I soon realized that even though Alyssa is only 17 1/2 lbs. she gets heavy after holding her for 20 minutes. We turned around so I could get the stroller and ran into Robert and Zach a few houses away. Apparently after the girls and I left the home Zach realized he was going to miss out on all the fun, finished his meltdown and quickly got ready to go out. Children and candy, gotta love it!

Picture Time

Ok, so I know this is the time when the Halloween photos are suppose to be displayed...and I will get to them. Actually, I am downloading the pictures off the camera as I do this blog so hopefully I can do a blog about halloween soon. Then maybe I can get to the Disneyland pics from fall break, but I digress.

Emilee just had her picture taken at school and we just took Alyssa in to get pictures for her first birthday. So it's picture time....