You'll never believe it!

Can you believe how beautiful and full our Christmas cactus is?! I just had to take a picture!


And can you believe that Elle decided she doesn't need her bag of activities and things at Church anymore?! A few Sundays ago she said she was going to leave it at home and she hasn't taken it since.
And most amazing of all. . .we bought a new chair!! Can you believe it?!

And even more amazing that all of that. . .we bought a new couch! And it is white! And HUGE!
And we don't have it yet. We're still working out how to get it home.
Believe it. . . Or Not.

Christmas Joy 2007

Here's a collage of our Christmas celebration this year.
Elle and I made snicker doodles for "Santa" to start the festivities. I even let her take them off the hot cookie sheet for the very first time.
We played winter BINGO and "Don't eat Santa." We read a couple Christmas stories then acted out the nativity with Elle starring as Mary, the angel and the star.
Then, we opened up the traditional one gift each and we all got pajamas.
Just like Elle said, she left only two cookies and a big carrot for Santa and his reindeer.
In the morning, Chris carried Elle into our room and made her keep her eyes closed. Then we went in to see the tree together.
I think the favorite gifts were Elle's bathtub for her doll, my digital picture frame and Chris' xbox. I was excited to give Chris a giant sketch book that I had made by cutting hundreds of sheets of old animation paper in half.
Elle was very excited to give Chris oil paints--red and green-- and some paper so he can paint a Christmas tree. She was very particular about which red and which green and which thickness of paper she wanted. It was so cute to shop with her!
Later, we had Christmas dinner with the Vandykes and the Thomsons at our place. It was very fun and very yummy.
After dinner, the guys played with Chris' xbox and we all ended up playing Tyler's game, "Guitar Hero" (I was by far the worst player--I guess there's just not a rock star buried inside me like everyone else who played:)
We had a fun and exhausting day.
Merry Christmas!

Those silly people!

Here are some crazy pictures of our crazy little family.
Here are all the Christmas pictures we took trying to find a good shot of us to put on our card. They're all pretty fuzzy for some reason, so we picked the one where the seagull looked good. (it's not here, it's on the Christmas card and, yes, the seagull is real)

Then, one day, Elle decided to walk, or rather, dance in her daddy's shoes.

And finally today, Chris and Elle had WAY too much fun with empty wrapping paper rolls! I''m not sure how, but Elle's arms completely disappeared in one shot!

HOW many days 'till Christmas?

On Monday, Elle was so sad that there were eight whole days until Christmas! (it seemed like it's SO far away--to her that is)
Luckily, we've had a fun-filled week to make the time go by.
On Tuesday, we were invited to the bishop's house to make gingerbread houses. As you can see, Elle had a blast!
On Wednesday, we went to Disneyland and California Adventure for eight hours. It wasn't very busy and we got to go on rides twice in a row. We were very happy that she was finally tall enough for Indiana Jones.
At one point, Elle wanted to choose the ride we went on next, so she asked to see the map. We stopped a few times for her to get her bearings and look at the map, but we finally made it to thunder mountain, which we rode twice.
Thursday (today) we went shopping for Connor and Fletcher and then she wanted a couple things for Chris. When we were getting the gifts for Chris, she said, "This is finally fun!"
After lunch, we went ice skating for two and a half hours. It was Elle's first time. I was impressed at how well she picked it up. She still fell, but we both had a great time. It was really fun, but very cold. We decided that we'll bring gloves next time.
Tomorrow, we have a tentative date for a museum with Elle's friend. This month hasn't seemed slow to me, but now it has gone by amazingly fast!
Hopefully, it feels like that to Elle too.

The disillusionment of Elle

The other day, Chris put the antenna up on Elle's little TV so she could watch Shrek the Halls. (We never watch TV here)
The next day, Elle asked me if she could watch TV again. I said sure. A few minutes after we turned it on, Elle came running out all excited. "There's a little boy standing in the street and there's a lot of WATER! It's been raining really hard!" Apparently, she was watching the news. And it was very exciting.
Later, we let her stay up and watch another Christmas special on TV. When I asked her how it was, she said, "They kept coming and saying, 'News at 11! News at 11! News at 11!' All the time! And then they kept showing the SAME ads over and over!" She hasn't asked to watch it again.
AND. . .
Yesterday, Elle asked me the BIG question (no, not that one, she's still young) "Mom, do YOU believe in Santa?" I told her she could believe in Santa if she wanted to. "Who REALLY puts the presents under the tree? I wanna know the TRUTH" she said. So, I spilled it. She took it really well. I told her how my niece was furious with her parents for lying to her all that time. Elle told me she wasn't mad. I think she liked the idea of being in on a special secret. I told her it was still fun to pretend. After all, her own grown-up aunts were upset the year Santa didn't come and all the gifts were from Mom and Dad.
Later she asked, "So, who eats all the cookies? Do you and dad eat ALL of them?" I told her we usually just put them back. She said, "This year, I'll only put TWO cookies on the plate for Santa." She seems happy about the whole thing, but I, on the other hand, am so sad that she's no longer a believer.

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday!
That's me with the candles. Just add twenty-seven more candles to that pink cake and you have my age today. 30! Yea! (I think)



I'm number 8 of 8 in my family. I'm the baby in my big sister's arms.














And apparently, I was always small.

more Thanksgiving

We had the traditional cranberry-that -looks-like -a-can, so we decided to spice it up and make it look like a candle instead. We also had the traditional crowded kitchen.

And the traditional ninja .
The table was beautiful.
The host was
gracious.
















The kids were well-behaved.
And the leftovers were plentiful. All in all, it was a great day!

Thanksgiving--better late than never

Grandma and Gradpa Harvey came for Thanksgiving this year. Grandma, Elle and I went to the skirball museum. It was prety fun. They had all sorts of creative animals like this alligator (or is it a crocadile?)











Elle loved all the attention.
Chris is carving a yam (you can see the lips) for our yam casserole. (It was very good).
No one saw his art work since we just cut the thing up with the rest of its family.
Grandpa had the honor of carving the turkey.

I'm back!

After a long absence, I am back to blogging! I've been volunteering at the school's book fair for two weeks straight. I lived at the school. It was fun to be at Elle's school and all, but I'm glad it's over.
1 MORE WEEK OF SCHOOL!! yea! Then we're off for 3 yes, Three, whole weeks!

Winter fun

We did a little bit of snow flake making again this year.
Aren't Elle and Chris so cute?!
And, of course, Chris's very first snow flake was elaborate and beautiful. He said he had to do it that way because his dad always make elaborate snow flakes when Chris was a kid. TRADITION!!
I took our snow flakes to school as decoration for this year's book fair. Everyone was quite impressed.

Oh my HAIR!

I decided I'd like a change for my hair. I bought a hair magazine and everything. Chris suggested I have it layered. I thought it sounded like a good idea.
So, I take my little magazine to "Sheer Delights." It was my first time there. I was surrounded by old ladies getting their hair dyed. I did not heed the warning sign.
They said they'd cut my hair for $30.
I brought in this picture:
I just want to look like a movie star, is that too much to ask? I mean really!
The lady did in fact cut my hair with some layers. It looked really cute when it was wet. THEN she asked if I wanted it blow dried. I said yes. (stupid, stupid, stupid). It cost an extra $20 apparently. And when I was done, I was a mushroom head!



Yes! She styled my hair like a mushroom! And then she asked, "Do you like it?" I said yes. (I always say yes. I totally lie). I sure didn't want her to try to make it better! I just said yes hoping she'd let me out of there.
She made some comment about how now I have lots of volume! Yippee. All I need. More volume. As a mushroom head.
I'm sorry to say that I did not think of my faithful blog readers, and I didn't get a picture of me as a mushroom.
Don't worry, my hair looks fine now. You can't even tell I was a mushroom yesterday! You can't even really tell I had my haircut. Maybe I'll post a picture when I can figure out how to make it look like Hayden's. :)

Chris the amazing book ripper

I've been meaning to post these pictures for a while now. Chris always said it's possible to rip an entire phone book in half, but he's never tried it. . . .until now. (well, it's actually our health directory, but it was still really big). He was mighty proud. And I am too, of course. :)

awww!

The other day, I was in Elle's class and I was looking at all the kids' work on the walls. One paper was a form they had filled out answering all sorts of questions. One of the questions was, "Who is your hero/heroine?" and my sweet little Elle wrote, "Mom." Aw! I wanted to cry!