All I Want

After having wiggly teeth for months now, front tooth #1 popped out last week and #2 popped out tonight! Just in time to really enjoy singing "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth."



Kudos to Eleanor for being so brave. She pulled them both out herself. She thinks she's the luckiest girl ever to have the Tooth Fairy and Santa visit in the same week.

Merry Christmas

For those of you who didn't get our Christmas card in the mail, you can enjoy it online!



Here's the text on the card, if you can't see it well enough. It works best read outloud, in character!

Hello Friends. How are you? Fabulous.
Look at your family. Now back at us.
Now back at your family.
Now back to us. Sadly, you're not with us.
But if you call or send us an email you could be!

What's in your hand? Look back at us. We have it.
It's a picture of these people you love.
Look again. The picture is now a card for that season you love.

Anything is possible when you're friends with the Paynes!

We're on a card... Yah!

We wish you all the merriest of Christmases! May the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, fill you with joy and gratitude that can last throughout the year.

We're Celebrating

It's our Solomon's 5th Birthday today. Visit his blog to see how we like to celebrate his birthday every year.

Exercizing

During Family Home Evening last night, Katie started entertaining herself by holding on to the ottoman and lifting her legs into the air. She started calling it "exercising."

Hilarious! I don't know how she did it, but she must have repeated it 15 or 20 times. Sorry Dad, I know you were in the middle of a good lesson.

Worn out after all that strength training!

Family Time

We had the special treat of having family with us for all of October. Our brother and sister-in-law and their cute kids stayed with us while Ryan was doing a podiatry internship in the area.

We tried to find fun adventures to go on every weekend. Here we are enjoying Boulder and NCAR.

We took in two pumpkin patches to enjoy our gorgeous fall weather. We also made every pumpkin dessert we could think of in a month! I am missing that - the scale is not. :)

Sara and I bravely took 4 kids under 4 to the Zoo and the Nature and Science Museum. No big deal. As my friend says, "We're professionals, right?"

The cousins enjoyed a variety of sculpture on one of our Saturday adventures.

Sara so kindly watched my kids while I took on a crazy month of photo shoots. We did a little photo shoot of their own too. This was one of my favorites. Their kids are so sweet to each other. You give them one treat and they instantly offer to share with each other!

My kids completely loved having cousins downstairs to play with every day. Katie was so in love with little Davis (ok, young Davis - since he's almost as big as her). I'd catch her giving him hugs and kisses, which she doesn't do for anyone else! The girls are both in withdrawals now - not a day goes by without Katie asking for each of them. I'm so glad they got a chance to enjoy each other and this special time together. We secretly have our fingers crossed that Ryan does his residency in Colorado.

If You Go Out in the Woods Today...

...Be sure of a big surprise.

For Halloween this year we were Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Many thanks to my friend who made the bear heads for their family years ago and let us borrow them! I just made Eleanor's dress, and some ribbon curls, which I'm sorry don't show up in the picture so well. I tried to get Eleanor to carry a bowl of porridge, but was overruled. Now I need to get Katie to say Baby Bear for the camera, because it is just adorable. We couldn't have done this without you, Baby Bear!

Bunch of Paynes

We had a great time getting together with the Payne's this fall. It was a fantastic location in the forest, by a lake, with lots of nice hikes close by. We always fit in some picture time when we're all together.


Uncle Ri-Ri entertaining the kids. We're lucky enough to have him at our house now entertaining my kids!

Can't say enough how much I love the chance to get up at sunrise to take pictures of this gorgeous scenery! Ok, especially when sunrise is at 7:00am. :)

I nearly lost all these pictures when my full camera card fell out of my back pocket onto this boardwalk - which is over the lake. All I could find was the empty case, so I backtracked a full mile around the lake looking for my 1" square card. I went back to the spot where I found the case and the card was standing up in the crack between these boards - luckily in a spot where there was wood underneath and not just water! And luckily with just enough space for me to angle it out. Whew! Talk about a miracle.

We went on a hike with the whole family - 19 members, including lots of babies!

Thank you Mama and Papa Payne - we had a great time!