Christmas Eve 2012

 Steven got the day off from work at the last minute, yay! So we could all go to my grandma's for lunch, desert, talent, and presents!

 My mom got there early and hid a hula hoop in the back yard. That was her talent!

But Olivia and Ella did extra cool hula hoop tricks. 

We loved the beautiful weather and green grass!

 We sang some songs. Some people played the piano. I cut snow flakes. (You can see in front of Isaac.)

 If people didn't have a talent, we could tell a joke. I liked Ashlyn's joke:
Q: "How does Lady Gaga like her steak?"
A: "Raw raw. RAW RAW RAAAW"

 Dylan's piano lessons paid off. He knew a lot of Christmas songs, but chose to only play Jingle Bells.

 When we got home, the boys were a little tired.

  Dylan helped me make sugar cookies for Santa.

 Tyler knows how to turn off light switches.

 We read The Night Before Christmas and the Luke 2 story.

My Grandma Rebeck gave me this nativity. 

 Then after the kids were all nestled all snug in their beds, I could get to work. It was a late night, so late that before I went to bed, Santa had come!

 As a part of my gift to Steven, I cleaned the whole downstairs. I bought a table cloth and everything b/c I know how he liked one I had gotten for Thanksgiving one year.

Then I slept a tiny bit.

Feger Side Christmas

Every Christmas Eve, we usually go to Steven's sister, Juliane's house. 

But Juliane and Steven had to work on Christmas eve, or so they thought. They got the day off at the last minute, but before knowing that, we decided to go on Christmas Eve Eve. 

 Also along the lines of planning ahead, we ate dinner at Cody's with Andre and Barbie since they would be with Barbie's family in NY for Christmas. They even gave our kids presents! (We waited 'til Christmas morning though to open them.)

 Crazy cousins!!

 Tyler gave himself kisses at Juliane's.

 Tyler opened his own presents. Chaos as usual.

Our Christmas card, from me to you

To see a huge blog post from my THREE WISE MEN, visit my fishy face photography blog. 
I should have written on this blog first, b/c there's a bit too much journaling there.

Merry Christmas!!
or copy this
http://www.blog.fishyfacephotography.com/2012/12/st-pete-photographer-33701-merry.html

Snow Angels

Last Monday I went outside to find all of the sand toys in the grass and Isaac in the sand box. He was serious about making a snow angel and wouldn't let Noah or the babies in. And that's how our hot July December day began. 

 We ate watermelon and the kids got gross.

 Because their sticky bodies grew layers of sand.

 and dirt.

 But man those kids were happy!

 Our of order, but earlier the babies had snack time. Tyler is signing "thank you." (But he's no saint. He crawled over the table in a blink to steal Ivy's Cheerio's.)

 They were so tired. Yes I still nurse my baby. I didn't nurse Tyler in public after he was 1 yr old b/c he was a huge toddler-looking kid. Tyler is possibly my last so I'm not afraid to keep him in the baby stage as long as possible.

 Once the babies were asleep, we made snow gloves. They're sad ("melting") snowmen made from pom poms, felt, and pillow filler inside of baby food jars. No it wasn't a pinterest idea, just a random one of mine that I probably got bits and pieces of from who-knows-where over the years. Speaking of which. I love Pinterest.com, but it sorta makes people ask me if I got my ideas off of there. Yes maybe I do sometimes, but I also pin things from other websites to my own pin boards there - like how it's supposed to be used. I went to a SEO course and the lady said that every business should have a Pinterest page and 80% of the content should be from your OWN website(s)! That seems wrong, but I guess that's the next social media outlet and is growing by tons of women and men are not ashamed to have pages any more either. So I'm going to make my page more SEO friendly and will be posting from my www.FishyFacePhotography.com site as well. (Like hypoctiticalness?)
And the kids got into the band-aids. They help themselves and I like that. Noah said that he hurt his eye the other day so he still needs a band-aid [stuck to his little hair].

I'll also be deleting random ugly Christmas sweater and kareoke videos from my youTube account to turn that into a ffp client generator too.

Speaking of which, here's a link to "how to make a Tiffany snowflake" video. Warning. It's horrible.Whatev!

Downtown St. Pete to see santa

The boys wrote letters to Santa. 

And they took them to his mailbox. 

 We walked around to see the sites before meeting up with our friends the Stevens.

 We love spotting nativities.

 Tyler was happy in the stroller so he didn't get out to mail his letter.

 But when he did get out, I decided he HAD to go mail his letter. Maybe he should have stayed put:) He had fun running around with the boys. This cry was short lived.

 In contrast, the line was really long, at least an hour. That's why we go with our friends. The kids can run around and we can catch up with them. It's a tradition since they moved south and we moved north. We both lived in St. Pete when our Dylans had their 2nd birthdays. And their 3rd birthdays I think.

 I have to tell you. My plan was to plop Tyler down and run. Luckily Steven had another camera b/c this Santa grabbed my hip and pulled me onto his lap! I was startled and tried to stand back up but he said "We want happy pictures." I was laughing, but Tyler still wasn't what I'd call happy.

Classic. Santa does know best, but I have to have my crying baby picture. I took Tyler and the other boys told Santa what they wanted. Dylan asked for more ornaments for our tree. So now we look bad! We did make some ornaments, like we do every year. This year's ornaments were the cinnamon kind.