thanksgiving and santa

My first Thanksgiving dinner turned out pretty good if I do say so myself, although I did have a ton of help. Kimberly came up for a few days and it was fun to have a shopping partner on Black Friday! Marshall and Tiffany were up too so Claire had lots of fun playing with her cousins, and Jake became good friends with uncle Marshall calling him "mama". After Thanksgiving we went down to Salt Lake for the weekend and spent some time with my family.
Today I took Claire to see the mall Santa and she actually sat on his lap and told him what she wanted. Then as we were walking away she said, "that man was wearing a santa suit". I guess there's no fooling her.

claire's drawing

Claire finished this picture today and it's probably one of the first real drawings she's done. Drawing is her new favorite hobby and she does it everyday. It's so funny how she's such a perfectionist and if she doesn't get something just right she gets so mad. This happens especially with letters now that she is trying to write words. It's so cute and I'm so proud of how well she is writing her name already. I'll have to post that too sometime. These pictures she said were of her Granny and Papa and Nana and Papa Ray.

thisnthat

i'm having a hard time making this house look lived in because i just don't have enough furniture so i thought i'd revamp this d.i. chair and then i could use it at my studio when i didn't need it anymore. here's the before and after.



oh and the pics of claire and jake i took at the gardens. i wanted to do a fall shoot, unfortunately everything was already dead, but I'm glad i did it before jake chipped his tooth!
oh did i mention i'm doing my first thanksgiving dinner this year? I'm so excited, this is something Ive wanted to do for a long time!

my name is chip

Jake chipped his tooth, chris said if you think about it it's kind of funny, now we can call him Chip. Then I started to cry.

portland temple

i took some pictures of the temple while we were there and just wanted to post

Halloween

We had a really great Halloween this year. Claire was Snow White and Jake was a pumpkin. He was pretty devastated about wearing his costume on Friday for our Halloween party but by Saturday he was okay with it. Our party went great and I'm so glad I made the effort to do it. You never know how things like that will turn out, but I just knew I'd be kicking myself if I didn't do something like that while we live in this ginormous house and actually have the space. We had a great turn out and I was too busy hostessing and forgot to take pictures! I do however have TONS of food left! Not to mention all the candy :)

Saturday night we took the kids to the boo at the zoo. We went last year and it is really fun. The kids just love to see the animals and they always seem to be more active in the evening anyways (the animals-not the kids, although..). Claire played the games and they had a cute craft for them to do and she got up on stage with the other kids to sing and dance. I got a bit teary-eyed thinking about how much she has grown since last year and how proud of her I am.




Jake had a good time, just chillin' as usual and enjoying the occasional piece of candy that one of us would give to him. He had so much fun that he got tuckered out and fell asleep with his sucker stuck to his lip. We had a great weekend. I just wish I had thought of making Jake a dwarf to go along with Claire because I saw the cutest lawn gnome costume at Wal-mart with a beard and all.