Anna's Christmas Program

Today was Anna's Christmas program at school.  Each year they have every class get up in front of all the parents and they each sing a different Christmas song.  This year Anna's class sang "Purple and Blue".  Maybe I'm weird, but I've never heard of this song until today!  It was kind of cute, but I'm still not sure of all of the words since I heard it sung by a bunch of toddlers.  "/

After the Halloween parade debacle, I wasn't about to make the same mistakes again.  Anna got decent sleep, and I made sure she didn't see me before their performance.  She did awesome!  I'm pretty sure she was the best in her class!  Waving her little leaves and stomping her feet!  She was cute!  

Look at her performing up a storm!  :)

Waiving her leaves!

Super happy, and not a tear in sight!

Until we had to separate for the walk back to the classroom....  "/  Good grief, all of a sudden this girl has gotten clingy...

Fortunately, the tears were short-lived. They played a very friendly game of musical chairs and under each chair was a gift-wrapped book.

Took the kids a minute to realize there was a present under their chairs.  :)

Anna was so super pumped about her book...

...until she saw the book the kid sitting next to her had.  "/ It was pretty awesome...had all these little doors you could open.  

She was so bummed we weren't taking it home...I'm going to have to go buy it for her now.

School Pictures

This evening the weather was just perfect for it, so I talked Josh into lighting a fire in the fire pit.  We hardly ever do it, but it was 60 degrees with no wind...seriously perfect!  So, he obliged, and while he was getting set up I grabbed some old mail from the recycle bin to throw in there too.  Well, as he was working on getting it lit, he grabbed some of the paper to move the fire around, and it just so happened to be Anna's school picture proofs.  And she was standing right there!  She totally watched him burn her proofs!  And what's worse, I'd decided to not bother ordering any because I just didn't think they were all that great...  She was devastated!  She cried and cried and just kept repeating "my school pictures..." to me and Josh.  :(  I'm a horrible parent.  So, to make it up to her, I offered to take some new "school pictures" for her.  I even dressed her up in the same exact outfit!  This seems to have made up for it because she's stopped moping around and crying.  Thank goodness!  

I'm so much pickier about pictures now a days, and I've always thought the guy that they hire to do their school pics has such a posh gig.  Just sit these kids down in front of the backdrop and snap a couple of shots.  That is until I tried sitting my own child down to get her to take a posed photo in nice clothes!  She was all over the place!  No wonder none of her school pics have turned out worth a crap this year!  She has one more chance when he comes back for the Spring pics, and this one includes the class picture as well, so I'll keep my fingers crossed she behaves better for him than she did me...  

I'll start out with the one decent replacement school pic that actually resembles the pose they put her in each time.  

And that's pretty much where it ended....the rest are just ridiculous...cute, but ridiculous.

Oh yes....please do this for the school photographer...I'd love to get this as a proof someday.  :)

She was intentionally closing her eyes for a while...

Now let's cover our face!

Oh look... a bird!

Wallace was totally pissed with us for going outside without him, so he joined us for a few pictures.

Ha!  I asked her to give him a hug.  "/

Anyway...I guess I've learned my lesson.  The school photog is doing the best he can, and I shouldn't be so picky about her school pics from now on!

Thanksgiving in Gilmer!

This year we all packed up and headed to the lovely town of Gilmer for Thanksgiving!  And by "all" I mean almost everyone in Josh's family made it, which is saying a lot since half the group was coming all the way from Virginia!  We packed up the kids and Granny and made the 6 hour drive (now more like 7.5 hours with kids) out there.  It was totally worth it.  We had such a nice and relaxing time, and all of the cousins got to play together.  There are sooooo many kids in this family right now.  It's kind of crazy.  In fact, Anna had so much fun she stayed in an almost constant state of exhaustion, which didn't make for too many great photos of her, but she had a blast and that's all that matters.  When she woke up here on Monday morning, literally the first thing she said to me was "I want to play with the kids..."  

So, I took my photography prof's advice and peeled my camera lens off of it's wide open aperture of f1.8 and explored with higher ISOs indoors to compensate for it.  Although I absolutely love a nice bokeh, I've been getting very frustrated with my camera not focusing on exactly what I want it to at the f1.8 aperture when I'm shooting moving targets (like children!).  By bringing down the aperture I was able to get a lot more photos into perfect focus, and managed to get a ton of great pics!  

Big Momma's house in town always makes me a little nervous because there's a couple of busy streets in the front yard and a pool in the back yard.  "/  Since they are among the youngest of the group, Wallace and Anna are likely to just follow the big kids right out the front door and just wander off.  Wallace spent a good amount of time mad at me for not getting to go outside (it was COLD) and beating his hands on the front door in retaliation

But he had plenty to do inside...like playing under the table with a football.  :)

And wailing on the piano with his cousins.  :)

And it just seems to be normal now a days for your kids to run off with your iPad.

Aunt Lynn bought the kids a bunch of hula hoops!  

They found all sorts of uses for them!

It's amazing how fast kids make friends.  :)  Sadie and Sienna had a blast together.

And as usual Tanner posed it up for me in a tree.  :)

I know this picture looks a little scary at first...

....but it's just monkey boy entrusting his bones to the smallest branch on the tree.  :)

Anna LOVES Tanner!  

And I managed to catch Dillon off guard!

While the turkey was cooking.....

....we took the kids to the park!

Who doesn't love swings!

The kids loved the boat dock, and I was so excited to get some nice profile shots of them looking out over the water...

...until they started doing this!

All of them!  Even the girls!

But I managed to catch a few of them without the spit.  :)

Back at the house the kids made the cutest place cards for Thanksgiving dinner!

And on Friday everyone got together for a group pic before the Virginia contingency headed out. 

Then we moved the party out to the farm house!

My daughter apparently has an interest in guns... "/  She kind of looks like she knows what she's doing!

I tried so hard to practice with flare again.  I was mildly successful...

The best part was getting to watch Joe-Joe's tractor get towed out of the mud!

Everyone kept saying it was good he wasn't there to see it, or else Joe-Joe would want a piece of track equipment.  :)

They got it out so fast!

Yay!  It's free again!

And the kids had to get some pics with the rescue brigade!

They don't come cheap!

Look at that amazing flare!  And no one was ready for the pic...  :(

I got some uber cute pics of Leah's kids with their puppies!

Haha!  He kind of looks like he's showing a lamb.  :)

Labs are so photogenic!

How cute are these two!  Oh...and Cy is finally letting me take pictures of him!  He's doing the same thing Anna does...posing and then coming around the back of the camera to look to see how the picture turned out!

So glad Mark managed to make the trip to Gilmer too...even though he felt the need to make fun of all of us after the Aggies lost.  "/ We're still having a better year than those t-sips!

Thanks for hosting this year Big Momma!  We had such a good a time!  :)

Tumbling

When Anna was a year and a half old we started her in a Mommy and Me tumbling class.  She has always loved it!  And it's been pretty eventful for us.  She used to misbehave fairly bad in class and would just run off all over the gym, which isn't too safe for a little one because there are people of all ages and abilities working out there when we go.  Fortunately, she never managed to get hurt, but I ended up breaking my foot one evening.  "/  Not long after that the discipline level in our house increased just a little, and once Anna understood that no one was going to chase her anymore, she quit running off at tumbling.  So, she got to graduate to the next class (non-parent assisted!!), which was a tremendous relief for me...the last thing I needed was to trip and break my foot again.

This week for my photography class I'm supposed to be turning in action/motion pictures, so I thought I might be able to get some decent ones at her class.  Fortunately her teacher was super open to me being in there and actually tried to get Anna to do all sorts of stuff so I could get different looks.  Because she moves so much so fast it was a challenge.  I finally put my camera on fast continuous fire, and ended up with 700 pictures to cull through!  I got a few good keepers though, so it was worth it. 

I don't know if it was because I was there with the camera, or because Maddie came over to help early, but Anna was on her best behavior!  

She even did all of the stretching, which is tremendous for her.  The warm up part of tumbling has always been something she struggles with....guess it's too boring.

Her table.

This is Maddie, her favorite person at the gym...by far.

After warm-up, they go through 2 series of obstacle courses.  There were lots of flips this time.

And very focused balance work.  

And tunnels to crawl through

The second series of obstacles includes the trampoline!  This is pretty much every kids' favorite thing.

Lots and lots of jumping.

And more flipping...

And jumping...  :)

They usually finish class off by letting the kids wind down and draw on the trampoline with chalk.

But Anna wasn't finished jumping!  :)

Thank goodness they've put up with her and her crazy ways, and we've managed to not get kicked out yet.   :)

One kid was missing this past week, but that actually worked out for the best since I had the camera there and it made it a one-on-one class.  

And she always get a stamp before we walk out the door.  

One thing is for sure....homegirl LOVES tumbling!  :)

Gusto and the Snake Farm

Well...technically we just had a full Saturday where we took Gusto to the park to work with him a little, and then took the kids to the Snake Farm!  We didn't take Gusto to the Snake Farm.  :)   

A couple of years ago my favorite dog in the world passed away, and I set out to find a replica of him without the annoying white hair.  Little did I know Gusto would take so strongly to Josh and be just a pain in the neck around the house.  "/  Not long after we got him Josh and I quickly realized that our plan of working together as a family to get him trained up to hunt was seriously not going to work.  The dog is just too head strong!  So we found a fabulous trainer and sent him away.  It was honestly nice not having him around while I was on bed rest with Wallace (I have to watch him more closely than I watch the kids), but people seemed a bit surprised when I told him how long he'd been away at the trainer's.   Seriously, it was like 7 or 8 months I think.  It's not like he was a bad student, just that the timing was kind of weird and we didn't want to mess him up before his first round of breed tests...

Anyway, now that he's home we feel kind of guilty after he's been cooped up in our little backyard for too long.  I don't think the treadmill is really an adequate replacement for chasing birds around in a field.  

He did pretty good, but he's always looking for a way to get away with not doing what he's supposed to be doing.  His trainer (Tammy) warned us about this.

He's a very handsome dog!  And although I was nervous the whole time we were at the park that he'd run away and be gone forever, he came back when he was called every time.

Anna really got into throwing the dummy...but she could only get it to go like 15 feet.  :)  How awesome are those socks, btw?!

After we wore Gusto out at the park we took the kids to the Snake Farm.  Anna had seen a billboard for it on the way home from Houston last week, so I told her we'd try to go this weekend.  So glad we got to go.  It's like a mini-zoo.  It only takes about an hour or two to get through and it's got all kinds of neat exotic animals to look at in addition to the snakes.  

Anna's started asking me to take her picture all of a sudden.  Sometimes she comes up with cute little poses like this one...  (fake snake)

and other times I get a mug shot....   "/

Anyway, it's a little eerie how close you can get to the snakes and they have all sorts.  Some of them are lazy and apparently never move, and others are super interactive!

Anna had to have a ninja turtle ice cream.  Oh yeah...that's my girlie girl.  ;)

I'm sure the kids would tell you that their favorite part of the entire Snake Farm is the petting zoo.  Wallace spent a lot of time pointing at animals and touching them with just one finger.   

Josh was the food protector.  Those goats are pretty pushy!  If one of the kids had been holding the bag of food they'd likely have gotten run over. 

Anna absolutely fell in love with this llama!  I remember him from last time.  He's probably worse than the goats when it comes to pushiness, but he must have known that I would have taken him out if he'd of knocked one of my kids over.   He was super respectful with Anna.  :)