Samuel's 6th Birthday

Since we were all recovering from some form of strep, we did a very small gathering for Samuel's 6th birthday. He really wanted to eat at Red Robin and open presents at home. After that, Colin took he and Jude out for a special movie theater date, complete with popcorn and soda.Samuel has this obsession with fire - so naturally he wanted to set up his own birthday candles and light them.
He wanted my homemade chocolate cake for his birthday this year.


I think the highlight of this birthday was Colin buying Samuel a Swiss Army knife. And I have to say that thing comes in use a lot.

Juliet's' 2nd Birthday

Here are some pictures of Juliet's second birthday party, which took place the day before her actual birthday, on December 12th (I know, I'm a month late in posting!). It was a small Hello Kitty party and here she is enjoying her cupcake:
She also got these sparkly shoes from my mom and she insists on wearing those every few days.
Here she is trying on new cowboy boots from her other grandparents.
I love this picture. She has a pretty neat regard for Grandpa Tim.
Grandma Jan and Jude doing his typical pose.
This is where I discovered all the guys after awhile - at the food table.
Ok, I am terrible at decorating cupcakes, but I made it a group effort and anyone that wanted to help got to cut up candies and put the Hello Kitty faces on - kids and adults alike. It was so fun!
My baby is 2 - I can't believe how fast time has gone. It really is bittersweet celebrating her birthday.

Reasons to Have Kids...

One of the benefits of having lots of kids is that you can get more cleaning done by putting them to work:In this instance, they volunteered to wash the sliding glass door - it's something about boys and mechanisms that spray that lured them in...
And having kids just add humor to your life. Like when they sit naked by the fire and pose for pictures:

Christmas Eve & Crafty Time

I have been taking a much needed break from the computer this last month (as you can probably tell) and focused on organizing my crazy Christmas season and attempting to make a few gifts. I managed to make two purses for my mother-in-laws and an apron for my mom. I used this pattern for the purses. Here is how one of the purses turned out (I really wanted to keep it for myself!):While sewing I watched (well, I don't really watch them so much as listen and glance over at the TV every now and again) many movies. This holiday craft time really gave me some much needed down time during the busyness of the season.

And here's a pictures of Colin, my brother Joel and I on Christmas Eve at my parent's house. We all attended church together in Vancouver there and it was very sweet - it's been so long since our whole family has been at the same church during the same service.
Today is Colin and my 13th wedding anniversary! We couldn't do too much exciting, what with three kids and all. But we may get really crazy and watch "Inception" after we put the kids to bed. And that, folks, is what anniversaries look like after 13 years and 3 kids =). Just kidding. We plan on celebrating sometime during the next week by getting out together w/out kids.