Long Overdue Update, Part Four: December 2010

December! We started out with the cutest Kindergarten Christmas concert....

Took a new pic of the four to hang up for Christmas and send to the grandparents:

And best of all, we got to spend Christmas with my brother Jared and his family!! We did lots of fun things like gingerbread houses and cookies for Santa:

(These kids had so much fun together. They were a loud crazy bunch, but it was great!)

Opened new PJ’s on Christmas Eve:

And ate lots of yummy food, played games, ate, cooked, played, talked, ate, and played some more...

Christmas morning we woke up to SNOW like crazy! It was the biggest snowstorm in a very long time here in Alabama. Unfortunately for Jared and Keli- they thought they were escaping the snow in Utah...

So needless to say, they didn’t join our excited frolicking outside, but their kids were game for a little while. Well, except for Lilly- she was all over playing outside. She didn’t care if it was snowy.

We were kind of snowed in the rest of the time. When the roads were better, we did spend a day at Sci-Quest to get out of the house. ...

We were sad to see them go!

And the little Miss... turned four months in December. Sweet as ever :) It was so crazy getting stuff ready for Christmas and just enjoying that week... I really didn’t get many pictures of her!

Long Overdue Update, Part Three: November 2010

As I look back at November, I realize it was pretty uneventful as far as photo-worthy events. I feel like the first few months with Allie were just getting through. It was tough having four and having a baby and one in school (so not used to that kind of structure! Me, not him). We have muddled through and it has gotten better, but here’s what we did in November.

We got a Kinect for our xBox 360. This was long awaited (and preordered). Boy howdy has that been fun. It’s like a Wii only way cooler because you use your body as the controller. You can also video call from your TV. But we haven’t done much of that because no one calls us (HINT to anyone reading this. You can video call with us using Windows Live Messenger, which is usually built in on your windows machine).

(trying out Video Kinect by talking between rooms)

Ben had another exciting Kindergarten experience of bringing home the traveling Teddy Bear and writing all about it in his journal.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, November was full of a whole lotta nothin’, so the weekend that Teddy spent with us was rather dull. I took lots of pictures to try and make it look like we were busy, but really, they were of... playing Kinect, Lego building, going to bed, church....

Dinner at Schlotzky’s....

On the way to Walmart. Haha, good times with the Izatts!

But I did take pictures of this little cute girl getting cuter and chunkier at three months!

In November, we also had our family pictures taken by my awesome friend, Kim of A Green Field Photography.  I love them. I wanted to post just “a few” favorites, but as you can see, I couldn’t pick just a few :)

Long Overdue Update, Part Two: October 2010

Since I caught up on three months last night (more posts to come!) I decided to also play around with the blog template and do something new and cute.

So now we’re up to October in this catch-up fest! 

My brother Jared was back in Nashville for work, so he we met him up there and spent the day at the zoo together.

At lunch that day, he mentioned how his wife Keli wanted them to come out to visit us for Christmas but they weren’t sure about making it work. We jumped on that idea and all got excited about the prospect and how we’d make it work! He called Keli after lunch and by the time we left the zoo she had their flights booked! More on that in my December post...

Jon became “Joody’s” buddy. They all loved him.

We spent the night at a hotel, which the boys always love.

(Unplug phones, check.)

Ben was the “Star Student” for the week in Kindergarten. This was very exciting.  He got to do all kinds of things like bring his favorite book and stuffed animal to school to share with his class. He also had a special lunch with Daddy on the last day. We made this poster for that (digitally, had it printed at Costco):

We were also able to attend a Primary temple trip for church. We visited the Birmingham. Alabama temple, and were able to hear from the temple president in the waiting room. It was cool to be able to take the boys there.

Chris and his cousin Kenzie were too cute. They were both very nervous about being there and having to stand with the other kids (they are both shy). They held hands and stood by each other to help the other one be brave.

After the temple, we spent the afternoon at the zoo in Birmingham:

(Chris said he was being a branch)

We had a fun Halloween this year. We carved pumpkins, went to the ward (church) party, Trick or Treated with all the cousins, and had a fun (and easy) Halloween dinner.

(My attempt at a pumpkin outing picture of the kids. Dave was a stinker about going to a pumpkin farm for some reason, so we didn’t go, but we got pumpkins at a local farm stand).

(The pumpkin in the front- with the ears- is based on my cartoon version of Dave that I’ve been drawing since Ben was little.  They always recognize him when I draw it, and thought it was pretty funny that we had a Daddy pumpkin).

As you can see, we decided on Star Wars. But rather than convincing them to be three different characters as we were at the party store—they ALL wanted to be Darth Vader. So there you have it. Three Darth Vaders... and a Princess Leia :)  I found out like the day before that Ben’s school doesn’t even celebrate Halloween, which I thought was totally weird. He didn’t even get to wear his costume to school.

Her cuteness was two months old in October. She was raved over as Princess Leia at the ward party. I was holding her during the trunk or treat and one of the kids asked “Is that a real baby?”

Cuter and cuter and more loved by all of us each day....