Visit with Santa

I went to the annual Christmas in the South craft fair this year, where I've had the kids take pictures with Santa before, but a tight time schedule and a pooped mama meant that I chose a different venue to visit with the jolly gift giver in.

We had to bribe Samuel with a cookie to sit with Santa

Danielle is used to having her picture taken :)

There is a real estate office nearby that had a pictures with Santa event. I didn't know it was an event until we got there though. They had Mrs. Claus reading stories, Christmas crafts to make, platters of cookies and boxes of juice, and CDs provided of your photos with Santa. It was amazing and free (with a Toys for Tots donation suggested). I think they do it every year, and if so, I'm definitely going to take the kids again. They were so friendly and prepared to keep kids busy while you waited for your photos, and it was close to home. Just all around awesome.

 Ryan thought the bow tie I made to match Danielle's skirt was girlie, so he just wore a plain white button-up (store bought, even). He did NOT want to cooperate for pictures, but Santa, his elves and his photographer were all so patient and kind and a cookie bribe made it work. Danielle was playing with her skirt (and unintentionally lifting it up) in most of the pictures, as you can see above. But that's okay. This time of year is about celebrating Jesus' birth, not being a perfect family or having perfect pictures!

Frozen Anna

Me and Mimi took Danielle to the movie theater for the first time on the day after Thanksgiving. We saw "Frozen". I absolutely loved it, and I'm pretty sure Danielle did too. She got to have her own Icee and popcorn, which I think was the most exciting part. I had a chance to pattern test the dress of the main character, Princess Anna. She doesn't have "freezing powers" like her sister, so I don't know if Danielle likes her as much, but Danielle loves the dress and will be wearing it to the class Christmas party tomorrow. Ryan has Fridays off, and she's very excited Daddy will be able to come to the party. He also has Samuel's party to go to, and my work holiday party, so he'll be living it up tomorrow!

Halloween (even though it's almost Christmas)

Halloween is getting more fun, the older the kids. Danielle is starting to understand the concept of months and looks forward to holidays. Samuel likes candy. It's a win for both of them. We had to bribe Samuel with a candy bar to get him to wear his Yoda costume that I picked up at a garage sale last year. He ran behind the end table with it so we couldn't take it away, I guess.

Danielle was Rapunzel, from the Disney movie "Tangled". I was going to have her wear a blonde wig I used to use, but it was too big and too much trouble for a 4 year old. We have a lot of older folks in the neighborhood who didn't recognize the dress, but Danielle loved it. I made it for her for Disney on Ice, but it'll get some mileage, since it's a play dress now that we're past Halloween.

I made the Flintstones costumes that I bought the fabric for last year. The kids at Danielle's school didn't know who I was, so I'm glad I didn't make the kids BamBam and Pebbles. I wore my costume to work, and we both wore our costumes around the neighborhood with the kids (Mimi helped out by passing out candy).  The neighbors loved it.

Ryan even shaved his beard down to stubble for the costume. That's commitment!

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Life in the Ray Home

Here's some more pictures. Some of them might be duplicates of what I post on Facebook, but ain't nobody got time for worrying about that.

Little Cheeser

You can't really tell with this face, but
Danielle LOVES donuts!

Samuel enjoyed the frosting on his. For some reason, he eats
food in a very non-intuitive way--in this case, he turned the
top of the donut towards him and tried to take a bit (he
does the same thing with hamburgers)

Danielle loved the fresh zucchini I made
from a co-workers garden

Random picture of the kids hanging out (and trying
to watch t.v. around Mommy who's taking a picture)

"I'm gonna get ya!"

My beautiful girl. It's cool to be jealous of a 4yo's tan, right?

My boys, watching t.v.

Samuel learned how to read! (Just kidding, he's only 2. But he does like books)

He's getting so big

My goofy model

Danielle and Mimi

My Little Rockstars

Here's a video from the night we hung out playing RockBand.

Recent Pictures

I'm not even going to attempt to play catch up at this point! Here are some pictures of the family when Mimi and Grammy came over to hang out one Friday evening. We ate dinner and hung out and then decided to play RockBand.

Broken :(

So I moved my personal and crafty photos into one account, following the directions exactly, but it seems to have broken all the links on this blog :( I will work on manually updating the old photos as I can.

This actually was a good thing, as it made me realize that this blog is for documenting my kids and family, and I don't always need pictures to do that. I want to remember the funny things they say and do, and I don't always have a camera to record it. So I may end up posting more text than pictures at times.

Haha, so now that I've said that, I'm going to include a picture, so I can do a little testing on how my account is working.