Christmas 2010 - AZ style

If anyone knows me...or my father-in-law...we take a lot of pictures. So I made a slideshow to help show what a great Christmas we had.

We spent Christmas this year with the entire Urbancic side of the family. Unfortunately Dan's dad had just undergone a pretty big surgery and wasn't able to travel anywhere and we all decided it was time to get together and spend our Christmas together in AZ. Steve and Amy (who had just moved to ID)were very excited to get out of the snow and come back to some warmer weather. It was wonderful to all be together and enjoy the family (as big and loud as we are getting!) There were 10 adults, 4 kids, 3 dogs, and two babies in bellies! It was quite a bunch.

We enjoyed our traditional (but less tradition this year) Christmas eve dinner and reading of the Christmas story. Things just don't seem quite as spiritual when you have three little boys running through Luke 2. We also enjoyed Christmas morning which seemed to go by in a flash...no longer did we do things in an orderly fashion. It all sort of went by in a blink of an eye and you opened something when it came your way.

I say all of this jokingly... Christmas is so much more enjoyable with the laughter and sounds of children in the house. There may be occasional arguments over certain toys and we might not all get along all of the time but the memories that are being made and the times that we spend together and starting to become very and far between and we cherish the times that we do have. We are so thankful that we were able to spend Christmas as a whole group and we love each other so much. It was a great time and the adults loved the evenings and naps when the kids were quiet and we could catch up on life too. Thanks mom and dad for hosting us all and letting us come and run through your house. We enjoyed it so much. Merry Christmas.

Bye-Bye Fro

We agreed the time had come to cut off some of those curls... Now everyone LOVES Blake's curls and can't seem to get enough of them but come on... look at this picture! The kid has a fro! It was definitely time. So this is the BEFORE shot.....

Here he is being such a good boy and sitting so nice for Jenny. Again we weren't sure what to expect from him but he was awesome and just sat there and let her do her thing.

Here he is... looking all grown-up with a little boy hair cut! It was amazing to see the actual amount of hair that Jenny cut off. There was hair all over the floor...crazy. The kid really did need the hair cut. He wanted to finish it off himself and comb his own hair (something he does daily with mommy's brush)

It was sad to see his curls go... but we are sure they will be back soon.

A day at Disney

We decided that since my dad has "connections" at Disneyland and we love Disneyland at Christmastime it would be fun to go for Blake's 1st birthday and my 30th. It was me, Dan, Blake and Auntie Laura. We weren't sure what to expect but Blake did a great job. He had a lot of fun, even though he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

We were able to get on a bunch of rides... Dumbo, the carousel, Alice in Wonderland, and a bunch of the rides at California Adventure. Since we were there on a Monday the lines weren't really too bad (for Disneyland) and California Adventure was nearly empty! The weather was great too. Blake started with a long-sleeve T-shirt and pants on but very quickly ended up in a brand new Disney T-shirt because it was warm.

We were even able to see some of the characters and Blake did okay. He loves stuffed animals so at this age I figure he still thinks they are big teddy bears and isn't too scared - YET!

We had a great day and it made our drive home nice and quiet because Blake was so exhausted from all the excitement that he slept the entire way!!! We hope to be able to take him back again soon. I grew up at Disneyland practically and have many good memories there and hope to be able to take Blake as often as we can... while we still have such great "connections"!

CA Christmas

For the past 9 years we have always gone to California and done a "California Christmas" party with our friends and family who are still there. This year we decided to keep it small and just had a small group of us get together for some dinner, presents and then we headed to see Santa! We found out about a great park out in Irvine and does a wonderful display and puts on a Christmas train that takes you to "the North Pole" to see Santa. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed it (I think all of the adults did too).

It is always so nice to go and visit our friends and family in California and enjoy the holidays with them. It was really nice this year and do something just for the kids and have Blake with us and have him be able to get in on the activities. I think next year he will REALLY enjoy Christmas (oh no!)

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

I decided I wanted a break this year and was not going to do handmade cards for Christmas...plus we had this cute little boy that we could show off...so we headed out to get some pictures done that we could put on a card. Deciding that was the easy part... having an active 1-year-old participate in the photos...not so easy.

Our good friend Jenny was great and worked well with Blake...even when we picked one of the coldest days yet to go out and get the pictures done. But we were quickly running out of time and really had no choice.

We think we got a ton of great shots and love how the card turned out... hope those who got one did too!!! Merry Christmas!