Christmas Card 2012

Elodie's Christmas Concert.

11 years...

11 years ago today I married this guy.

 I love this life we live. We are in the mist of family bike rides and park dates. Putting the girls to bed early and a quiet house at night. Making lunches, checking homework, church callings, and preschool.

I wouldn't change a thing. Except maybe more trips to Disneyland and weekend getaways....

In November....

-I had a birthday. Big 32. Christopher and the girls got me a bike cruiser which I love!
-We had family pictures done.
-Elodie rode her bike to and from school every day. We love living so close!
-Sadly, I took down all my Halloween decorations.
-We put up our Thankful tree the first Monday in November.
-I had 10 photoshoots. My last one was on the 24th.
-Evyn Kate found the moon and loves to go outside at night and look at it.
-Evyn also figured out the word "NO"
-Addysen practiced riding her bike with no training wheels.
-We had so many fun family bike rides!
- I bought more Christmas presents.
-I volunteered in Elodie's classroom.
-We planted a tree in our front yard.
-Chris and I played words with friends 1000 times.
-Addysen learned to ride her bike without training wheels! Big day indeed!
-Saw the last Twilight movie with Book Club. Mixed emotions about it ending...I loved it!
-We hosted Thanksgiving at our house. Chris' parents came over and we enjoyed spending time with them.
-No Black Friday Shopping for us.
-Chris spent a few days out of town.
-We put our Christmas Tree up.
-Chris put all the lights up on the outside of our house.
-The Civic hit 200,000 miles. The car we bought 6 months before we were married, used as our main vehicle until Evyn was born, and now Chris uses as a commuter car.
-We are so ready for Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2012

Via Instagram:

I made Thanksgiving skirts for the girls- love them. 

We did our Thankful tree again this year. This picture was taken the night before Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for! Even if some of the leaves said things like "Polar Pops", "Early Bedtimes", and "popcorn and m&ms"

On Thanksgiving Day we took our first family bike ride with my new bike. We had to borrow a trailer from a friend to make it happen but it did. Up until then we were taking bike rides around our house while Evyn was napping. Or Chris would take the older girls by himself for more lengthy rides. We are  on the hunt for our bike trailer and hope to get one soon. 

I took zero pictures of our first Thanksgiving in our new house. Chris' parents came over for lunch and we had a small feast with them. It was perfect. They stayed and visited for a while and after they left we took another family bike ride. 

Later in the evening we put up our Christmas tree. We also pulled out our Little People Christmas collections. Evyn loved them and all 3 girls spent a good part of the evening playing with them. 

Christopher also put up all the Christmas lights on our house yesterday. First one on our street! We love the way our house looks and the girls love taking turns turning on the lights. 

It was a perfect day. Perfect Week. 

Addysen Whitney

I was helping my neighbor across the street with her camera settings and I was using Addysen as my little model.

She is such a sweet little model....

Pre-Thanksgiving Feast.

Since we are spending Thanksgiving Day with Chris' parents and Melissa and Mace are headed to Utah, we thought it would still be fun to have a Thankgiving dinner with our two families. I mean, you can't have too much turkey right?

We are so very grateful and feel very blessed to have such great friends. We are especially thankful for The Hamblins and that we live so close to them. They are truly family to us!

I didn't take a ton of pictures but wanted to document the ones I did get!

Breaking Dawn Part 2

What a fun night! I can't believe this was the last Twilight Movie! I have seen every single movie with these girls and I'm so glad we made it a tradition! Our numbers have been bigger in the past and we missed the girls who couldn't make it!

We had a great time and I love spending time with these girls!

{Out of sheer laziness I decided not to edit these pictures: Sorry ladies! Enjoy the red eyes in all their glory!}

 Meliss and I decided to wear our very first Twilight shirts....

The girls...

We had our family pictures taken on my birthday. While we were waiting for our photographer to get to our location I took a few pictures of the girls. I have this weird irk about having someone else take pictures of my girls. Obviously it's great to have someone else take pictures of me and Chris together and us as a whole family but I just love knowing that the pictures of my girls are ones that I took.

Plus it made things run a lot fast since I had already done them. Atleast that's what I told myself to justify my quirk...

I love these little ladies!

I had a birthday!

Big 32! Crazy! The girls and Christopher made sure I had a great day! Christopher surprised me with a cruiser bike, which I have wanted for a really long time! I am so excited to be able to go on family bike rides! Our subdivision has really great bike trails so it should make for really fun evenings and weekends!

We also had our family pictures done-so happy to have those out of the way- and afterwards we went to dinner as a family. Later in the evening we went over to Mace and Melissa's for cake, we put all the kids to bed, and stayed up late playing games.

It was a great day for me!

Big Day for Addysen!

Chris has been working with Addysen for a few weeks to get her to ride her bike without training wheels. She has been ready for a while-most of the time when she rides her bike her training wheels don't even touch the ground! But, it had become a safety net for her and anytime Chris would take them off, she would freak out! Let's just say there were a lot of tears in the last few weeks!

But she finally got it. And as soon as she figured it out she took off! We are so proud of her and you can tell from the pictures, she is very proud of herself too!

Happy Halloween!

We had a fun Halloween this year! Between the girls halloween parties, the ward trunk-r-treat, classroom parties, and trick-or-treating, we are officially Halloween'd out! In a good way!

Chris's parents came over for dinner and walked the subdivision with us. Afterwards we hung out in our driveway and passed out candy. It was a great evening!

{These first 4 are from Elodie's Halloween Party at school and our Ward Trunk-R-Treat}