Christmas and more...

Cash's school Christmas program was super cute.  He stood on the stage in front of a massive crowd and actually sang along this time.  In the past he has tried to hide his face and he covered his ears because he doesn't like the loud clapping from the audience.  I didn't get many pictures because we were sitting so far back in the church.

In December we got a little bit of snow, about 8 inches.  At the time we thought it was a lot because we rarely get that much to stick in the valley.  Then came the snow storm in February, but I'll post about that later.  Here are a couple pictures of the kids playing in the snow in December.  They wore the scarves that Nana made them.

I started the Elf on a Shelf tradition this year.  Cash thought it was really fun.  I just don't know how I'll top it next year.  It's a convoy, elf style!

We went to The Zoo Lights at the Portland Zoo for the first time this year.  The weather was decent and the lights were so pretty.  Not sure we'll be doing it every year, it's a long drive, but it was fun to do something new.

And finally, Christmas...My dad and Kathy flew in from Michigan to spend a few days with us.  Kathy is the perfect house guest.  I would cook and she would clean the kitchen afterwards.  Such a huge blessing to this mama!  Christmas Eve Church service.

Christmas pajamas...

 Millie got a play kitchen.  It was a huge hit!

Although I'm not a fan of kids playing video games, we finally broke down and got Cash a Nabi tablet.  It has a bunch of learning apps on it and best of all, it's excellent leverage to get him to pick up his messes!
Grandpa Eddy was teaching Cash how to use it.

The only group picture we got while Dad and Kathy were visiting.

Thanksgiving

I'm going to make this post short and sweet because I have a few other photo projects right now to work on.  I'm in the middle of catching up on the family scrapbooking and I just started Millie's baby album.  On top of that, all of our family photos from 2007 to present were deleted off of the photo storing website I use.  Most of them I have backed up on USB drives but I like to have them in a second place just in case our house burns down or the USB drives get lost, etc...  It's time consuming to download this many pictures but I'm determined! 

For Thanksgiving we went down to Klamath Falls to visit Nana and Papa.  We've been seeing them a lot less this year, only every few months, because my mom has been working a lot and can't travel up here very often.  We were happy to go down for a couple of nights and have a relaxing time with them.  Cash and I went ice skating again this year while Josh and Millie stayed cozy by the fire pit with hot chocolate.  Cash is a lot heavier than he was last year which made my job a lot harder since I virtually have to hold him up the entire time but neither one of us fell so I consider it a success!

Playing catch up with the blog....

Now that we're almost done with November, maybe I should get the rest of October pictures up, huh?  Cash's Kindergarten class went on their first field trip.  Millie and I tagged along to help chaperone.  It was also school spirit week and "crazy hair day" which explains Cash's spike hairdo.

This is a picture of both Kindergarten classes together.

I have a tradition of taking pics of each kiddo on their birthday, a special photo shoot just for them.  Here are Millie's 2 year pics that I took at Avery Park.

We had two little birthday parties for Millie.  It's tough to have a big party for her, given they have to be inside at this time of year and our house starts to feel cramped with more than a dozen people.  Especially if those people are of the small, energetic variety.  The first party was with Nana and Papa then we had a second party with Millie's cousins and our friends, the Smiths.  We had a Minnie mouse cake and a silly string shoot out.  I'm so terrible at making sure we take pictures at the parties because I'm so busy hosting.    I've tried handing that responsibility over to Josh but he always takes 2 obligatory pictures then sets the camera down and we once again end up with no pictures.  Someone has to give me some tips on how to handle it.

For the harvest carnival this year Cash wanted to dress up as a Ninja Turtle.  I made most of his costume, excluding the mask and nunchucks.  If you have a son between 5 and 10 years old then you probably need no explanation for my costume but I was April, the Ninja Turtle sidekick from the cartoon.  Millie was, no surprise here, Minnie Mouse.  She loves her costume and especially the little ears.  She wears them all the time.  Josh was in Bandon for cranberry harvest the week of the harvest carnival so I took the kiddos solo.  We had a lot of fun playing Bible themed games and Cash won a drawing and came home with a new bike!!!  I was so excited for him, I almost cried.  I've never won anything in my life and I'm so glad that I signed him up for the raffle.  What an awesome blessing!

Family Pictures

This is totally out of order chronologically.  I forgot to post about our family pics back in September.  Whoops!  I wasn't thrilled with how they turned out.  Cash was running around and really not into posing for pictures.  Apparently he thought the photographer wanted action shots.  Millie kept pulling her headband down over her face and instead of smiling for the photographer she eyed him with a great amount of suspicion.  We got a few decent ones but considering we could have spent an entire weekend at Sunriver for the cost of this photo session, I had set my expectations pretty high and ended up disappointed.  These are the best ones.

Love, love, love the Fall!

I've taken so many fun pictures lately which has inspired me to actually put up my 2nd post within the course of a month.  Miracles do happen!  First up, Santiam Christian had a Grandparent's Day and Nana and Papa were able to come up for it.  It was special for them to be a part of it because it had been over 3 months since we had seen them and because Cash is the only grandchild they can do these things with.  After the school program and classroom tour Cash went out to lunch with them.  We also had a small birthday party for Millie (the first of two) while Nana and Papa were here.

A trip to the pumpkin patch as a family.  Sometimes Josh opts out of these things but he agreed to go this year.  He even took charge of the picture taking and got some cute shots of me with the kiddos! Also let me just say, I never look this good (without the help of photoshop anyway).  I should have Josh take the pictures more often!

 

Off to Kindergarten...

Oh my gosh, this is so overdue! Cash started half day Kindergarten on September 6th at Santiam Christian School.  His teacher is Mrs. Mason, who has a very sweet gentle spirit.  I have to admit, I was a little concerned Cash would walk all over her but he responds to her quiet gentle directions amazingly well.  I may need to borrow some pages from her play book...  Here are a couple of pictures from Cash's first morning. 

You can't imagine how much I missed this kid.  When I picked him up I told him, "I missed you sooooo much Buddy."  His reply was, "In four hours?"  It's true, he was only gone four hours but that's still considerably longer than the 2 1/2 hours he went to preschool last year.  Here is a picture of him running towards me when I came to pick him up.  When he's a teenager and refuses to be seen with me I'm going to show him this and remind him that there was a time he would throw his arms out as wide as they would go and leap into my arms.

Cash's school has a carnival at the end of September each year.  I took both the kiddos and the highlights for Cash were playing life size Angry Birds and dunking his principal, Mr. Ness, on his first throw at the dunk tank.