Santa Baby

It's a bit too large, but she loves this dress. Here, she is saying, "I can't hold still, Mommy! I gotta dance!"

Santa visit 2012

There was another one where they were all looking, but this one was too sweet to pass up. Santa and the Pixie are deep in discussion.

Niall's birthday

I think Niall had a pretty good birthday. We still haven't done his cake yet (he hasn't figured out what kind he wants!) so we're stretching it out a bit. His party was yesterday, but instead of a party, he decided he wanted to take some friends to the movies instead. So that's what he did. Unfortunately, Eleri was still napping when it was time to go, and movies don't really lend themselves well to pictures, so I don't have any of that.
I'll go to his class tomorrow and take his treat in. I'm thinking it will be brownies. or maybe cookies. He'll make that call in the morning.
He conned me into giving him one present a day early. It was a book about the body - one of his favorite subjects. He loves reading and looking at pictures of how we work.

 

Other than that, he only got one present, because it was a big one. If you give just one thing to an 8 year old boy...

 

It should come in a box that's too big to wrap

 

And should get the response, "WOW! Cool! ... What is it?"

John had a green machine when he was a kid, and he assured us that it was the ultimate in cool fun riding yah awesomeness. So after lunch, he had some help putting it together.

 

And after that...

 

 

 Oh yeah.

 

 

Awesome.

Niall is 8

Tonight, at 12:01, Niall will officially be 8 years old. What a ride it's been.

 

The 9lb bundle 

 

The Michelin Man (age 6months, wearing a 24months shirt)

agent of chaos

He's always had his own style

loves music

 

 can be sweet as pie

or not. :)

I'll have to get a good birthday picture of him in the morning. 

Christmas time is making time!

I finally took the time to put together and decorate the Advent calendar that Fran got for us last year. It was tedious, and time consuming, but I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I know I will be even happier when I only have to unpack it every year after this.

 

 

First, I had to sand and glue the pieces of the calendar and then use wood glue to put all of that together. The picture is just printed with our regular printer, and then I used mod podge to stick it on. Then black acrylic around the rest of the back, and eggplant purple for the rest. The little drawers are made of cardboard that I had to tape together, and the blue stars is embossed scrapbooking paper from Joann. I had to cut each of those out and glue them on, and then color the numbers with a sharpie and glue them on as well. I used a silver paint pen to write the verse. I'm really happy with how it came out. I still have to write out a verse for each drawer, but that will be easy after everything else.

Now I have to make Eleri's dolly. I've been collecting the materials for a while now, so now I'm hoping I can pull it off.

 

And of course, the rest of the Christmas knitting. You know... with all my free time. I shouldn't be sitting here typing this. I have work to do!