Project 365

No matter how late we stay up tonight to ring in the new year, I will be getting up at 7:40am, turning on my computer with my credit card and issues of Creating Keepsakes in hand and I will be ordering this kit.
Taking a picture a day for a whole year and showcasing it in this amazing album will be a great way to see a whole year of our life. I am really excited and I have already started taking pictures and journaling for it. I am so excited!!!!

Christmas at the Harris'

Okay, so Christmas with the Harris' was actually on Saturday, but I just got the pictures uploaded a few minutes ago so that is why it is out of order. Please excuse me!
We had a nice morning of opening up presents and spending the morning together. Everyone had to wait to have breakfast for me because I had to go to the church for a drama rehearsal.
The boys loved their new ride on toys and spent most of the day riding them around and crashing into each other. The day was also filled with other fun activities like:
Neil and Wade decided to wrestle and prove their manliness. Neil dominated most of the match (sorry Wade!) but Neil was getting pretty tired by the end. Luckily our son saved him by crying thinking that Daddy was being hurt. And Marilyn guarded the TV!
The girls decorated gingerbread houses although they were actually made with graham crackers, they came out really cute!
We also did English crackers, a new tradition started last year. We had a lot of fun with them now that we know how to get them to make the pop sound. We look so cute in our paper crowns!
We had a great Christmas, we love you all!!!

A Rough Few Days

Today while I tried to recover my house from Christmas, Zach tried to sweep the kitchen floor. In the process he knocked the tree topper off of the kitchen island and it broke into tiny pieces. It was a rough day and now starts the search for a tree topper as awesome as this one was!
The tree topper was sitting on the kitchen island because Neil had not yet had a chance to put it back onto the tree since Sunday night when a bird flew into our house. Neil tried to trap it by throwing a small blanket onto the tree when the bird landed on Tinker Bell. But when he pulled the blanket off (no matter how carefully) it pulled things off with it like the tree topper and the Happy Anniversary ornament that no longer has a head on Minnie. That can hopefully be fixed with glue.
But after almost an hour we got the bird out. I had to put our faux tree in the doorway and throw myself onto the floor in order to close the front door and shut it out. After three tries it worked, thankfully!

Christmas Chaos

We had a great Christmas Day, with the festivities being at our house this year. It was nice to not have to drive around with four kids. And Neil enjoyed cooking for everyone. The girls had a great time opening up all of their gifts. The biggest hits were Bailey the puppy that grows and even knows Madison's name. And Kaley with her first doll house.
The boys had more fun messing with everyone's presents than anything else. Although they did get quite a few things that they either could hardly wait for us to get them out of the box for them to start playing with or they fought over them! Like the Sesame Street guitar!
This was Christmas before the real chaos began! Unfortunately, we do not have a real fire place which seemed odd to not have one going on Christmas morning. So we turned on channel 5 which had Christmas music with an HD shot of a fire. Almost just like the real thing!
The girls wanted to leave cookies out for Santa so when they woke up in the morning they were surprised to see a note left for them.
We hope that you all had a great Christmas too!!

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas to everyone! We hope you are having as much fun (and chaos) as we are.
God bless you all.

A Really Incredible Day

We had the opportunity to go to Disneyland with our friends Amanda & Brian yesterday after church. I dropped the kids off with my mom & dad (thank you!) and we headed off to the Merriest Place on Earth. First we had to get lunch and so we went to Fuddrucker's, one of our favorite places. Yumm!
Then we went to Disneyland where we went on lots of rides like: Pirates, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and Toy Story (I beat Amanda!). We shopped and I got some more ornaments for my tree and we even got a cut-in-line pass because of some non-rule-following shoppers. So after the fireworks, which were amazing, we went on the Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones.
To end our day, since by midnight we were finally starting to get hungry after the huge lunch we had, we stopped at the Hat in Brea and had chili fries and onion rings. We didn't get home until 2am, but we had an unforgettable day of fun and great friends! I love Disneyland at Christmas, which is why I try to recreate it at home!

If only!

If only the view from my kitchen window was this incredible every day, if so maybe I would do a lot more dishes!
Actually, I took this picture on Thursday. There is still snow out there, but the grass is becoming more visible as it all starts to melt away. I have really enjoyed these past few days.

Something creative

Yesterday I had the chance to take a break from the cleaning and baking in preparation for Christmas to do something a little creative. It was really great to get into my office for a couple of hours and let my mind re-gather. This is what I made, gift tags!
I used my new Making Memories Slice Machine (have I said how much I love it!!!!!) and the Fa la la collection and design card. Along with the Creative Memories tag punch (which is incredible!) I was able to make this in a relatively short amount of time. I even took the Making Memories Fa la la acrylic stamp set and stamped a To/From image on the back of each one. The Noel tags are attached with 3D adhesive squares to give them a little punch. Some are stamped with snowy like dots too!
I really had a lot of fun doing these so I hope that you special people who will get them really enjoy them! It is a gift along with your gift!

Their first snowman

The girls got to make their first snowman while their brothers took a nap this afternoon. You don't realize how much work making a snow friend is until you do it. But we got him all made and packed with fresh snow and then realized that we had to find stuff for his face!








So with two button eyes, a playdoh roller for a nose and a mouth borrowed from Mr. Potato Head, we had a face. Daddy added the stick arms, the santa hat, and borrowed one of my scarves to make him or her look just perfect. The girls loved doing it.

BTW: we had to bring the hat in about a half hour later so that it didn't get ruined, it already had an inch of snow on it!

Fun in the snow

We were so excited to have snow on the ground this morning since Kaley has never been in the snow and of course neither have the boys.

First, we took the girls out while the boys slept in, we had a snowball fight and made snow angels.














Then we got the boys up and took them out to see if they liked it. Gabriel did pretty well, but Zachary did not like it one little bit and couldn't wait to get back in the house.

Neil had a really good time throwing snowballs and tackling us.







It has been a day that we will never forget, if only it could last forever (but only if we were prepared with lots of food). Maybe I could get some scrapbooking done if I couldn't leave the house!

P.S. Madison's school has already been canceled for tomorrow so we are really disappointed that we will not be able to see her christmas play. Hopefully, they will get to do it just for fun in the new year.

It's snowing!!!!

We cannot believe how much it has snowed today! We have never seen it snow like this in the high desert before.

It has been a great day for us, but more pictures of that to come!

This is at 4pm!







This is what it looked like at 7am this morning (the bottom picture).

Yay, he did it!

After the recent ladder incident, I was fearful of Neil putting up the Christmas lights on the house even with just our little step ladder.
But he did it, very well actually, and the house looks beautiful. I am a simple girl (when it comes to lights!) All white and very minimal. I love it!!

The Festival of Meat

After a whole year, the waiting was over, the best part about being on the worship team, the festival of meat at Lucille's BBQ! (Just kidding, I really love being on the worship team for many reasons!)



It was a chance for everyone in the band, the tech team and the creative team to come together and celebrate a great year while enjoying six different kinds of meat plus sides and dessert. At the end of the meal was the part that we dread, the feeling of being sooo full and then trying to leave! If only they had a carting around service so that I could still shop and yet not have to walk.
We have great friends that we get to work with and getting to spend some fun time with them today was great, and without kids!! Thanks Grandma & Grandpa for watching them!
We have been truly blessed this year and today was a great celebration of that. Merry Christmas!!

Our not so perfect family

For a Sunday afternoon, when the kids have been up since 6am and haven't had a nap except in the car, this is the best picture that I could have asked for. Kaley with messed up hair, Madison playing with her brother and the boys doing their own thing. This is our family and it is perfection.

Trimming the Tree

After waiting a few days to see if the boys would really mess with the christmas tree we put the ornaments on. Now I am a perfectionist, of sorts, so it was really hard to let go of the reigns and let the girls put the ornaments on the tree this year.

But I really tried, and other than a couple of areas that had an ornament on pretty much every branch, they did a really good job.

The funny thing about our tree this year is that it is bare the whole bottom foot of the tree. Although the boys don't mess with the tree itself because it is too prickly, they do still try and touch the ornaments. So we keep moving them higher.
The even funnier thing is that when Neil went to put the tree topper on our 9 foot tree, he had to get on our step ladder. So I made sure to be right there next to him just in case he started to fall! I would hate to have that happen again! But he did just fine. Now I'm just worried about him putting up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house!!!!

One of my favorite things

One of my favorite things about winter is footsie
pajamas! I love the soft fleece and the zippers,
and the diapered tushies.
















Now don't get me wrong, I love stinky baby feet. I love how soft they are, and those
cute little toes.

But there is just something about those
footsie jammies that I just can't get enough
of. I love winter!

Happy Birthday Kaley!

Kaley is now a big bad four year old with even more personality than she seemed to have yesterday.

Even though her birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year she got to celebrate with lots of family, a giant chocolate chip cookie and a cake made by mom!

Kaley loved her presents and spent all afternoon (and all day today) changing the clothes on her new doll. And Minnie Mouse even had to wear her Tinker Bell outfit while we watched her new Tinker Bell movie on Blue Ray.


She so badly wanted to be able to read her cards!
Before we know it she will be reading, where has the time gone!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving was a great day full of great food, family, the Macy's parade on TV and the Cowboys winning! This year we are thankful for a lot of things, one of them is all of you! Thanks for being such great friends and family, we love you all. The boys really loved all of the food. But, big surprise, the boys and a holiday surrounded by food. It's a match made in heaven! Now if only the Turkey had taken its sleeping effect on them.







Kaley even got a Turkey since her birthday was on Thanksgiving!
The Harris Family all together.