Success!

My cousin Angela took some great pictures of the kids at our little "photo shoot" after Thanksgiving. Angela has an awesome fancy camera and loves photography and she does a great job! Picture #1 here I got printed in size 11 x 14 and gave this framed to Marshall for Christmas. We will hang it somewhere in our house..it looks great! Picture #2 we used for Christmas cards. Oh this picture experience was 100 times better than trying to get a good picture of the 2 kids together at JCPenney's portrait studio..what a nightmare that was. Thank goodness for Angela!

Let it snow, let it snow....ok, ENOUGH!

I think we are officially having the snowiest December on record here in the Twin Cities....we've had some crazy snowstorms already, starting early in November actually. On December 11th, we woke up to a ton of snow already fallen...I was supposed to work that morning but couldn't even get the car to our street. The plow hadn't been through and another car was already stuck out there. I ended up staying home and my boss couldn't make it in either, so the bank lobby just closed for the day (it was a Saturday and we are open until noon). My cousin Kory and his wife Janice had a wedding reception planned for that night in Northeast Minneapolis..they married a few months ago in Hawaii. As it got closer to evening, everything started shutting down as we were in blizzard conditions. The reception ended up being canceled, since the restaurant closed where it was being held! I cannot ever remember things around here shutting down due to weather..all the restaurants, malls, even delivery places...it was just crazy! December 11th is also my sister's birthday, so since we were missing the reception, we tried to get together for her birthday. My brother came over in his truck to pick us up, since we probably wouldn't make it down our street in our small cars. We ended up having a makeshift birthday party for Laura at my parents' house...Laura and my dad made it to the grocery store to pick up some food (they were still open!). It was a fun night and certainly memorable. We ended up with over 20 inches of snow that weekend. And since then we've had several more snowfalls...we are definitely ready for a White Christmas around here!

'Tis the season

Here's a few pictures from our 'practice' Christmas card photo shoot. Obviously it went great...haha. It's hard to get Ella to cooperate with anything these days. My cousin Angela did end up getting some good pictures (I will post those later!). Our holiday season has been a whirlwind ever since Thanksgiving or so. Lots of bad weather around here, lots of family events...busy busy busy!

Ella is about 10 months old in these pictures. She is a pro at walking around now and she's just into everything. I can tell she is going to be our difficult child. She's independent and strong willed. Great qualities to have but it makes it hard on the parents!

Caleb has been ready for Christmas ever since Thanksgiving. We came home from Thanksgiving dinner at Marshall's mom's house and Caleb asked "Is it Christmas now?" He's been counting down the days!

Halloween 2010

We had a busy Halloween season this year, as you can tell from the pictures below. Caleb was a pirate this year and Ella was the most adorable ladybug for her first Halloween. The whole week was full of activities. Caleb made ghost cookies with Auntie Dua...they had a fun party at daycare..and we carved pumpkins at home. Caleb was insistent that we each have our own pumpkin (our pump-quin as he calls them) but he ended up settling for sharing one with Mommy, while Ella shared one with Daddy...less carving for us (not the biggest fans of carving pumpkins at our house!).

On Saturday, the day before Halloween, my work was participating in the Halloween parade. I work at First National Bank of Elk River's Anoka office and Anoka is the offical Halloween capital of the world (even Congress says so!). The Anoka Grand Day parade is a huge deal for this community. I had never been before but was excited to be involved in such an activity. The bank had a float with the theme, "enchanted forest" and we were all dressed up (I was a pirate, too). Caleb was so excited for this and had so much fun! We got to hang out in the staging area, which alone was fun...seeing all the floats and people dressed up. Once the parade got going I was in for a big surprise. It was a HUGE deal..people were lined up in the streets, more people than I've ever seen at a parade, including the big torchlight Aquatennial parade in downtown Minneapolis. Caleb rode on the float with the other little kids and I was walking with my co-workers...more like running, to keep up with the fast moving parade and the huge crowds of kids in costume asking for candy. Before we knew it the parade was over and we walked back to find my parents and Dua sitting towards the end of the route. We were able to watch the rest of the parade, which was so much fun! It was hilarious to see all the people in costume. We will look forward to next year's parade, too.

On Halloween, I took the kids to my parents' house and we went to visit my Aunt Louise, Uncle Ray and cousin Angela. My cousin Jenna came over too with her daughter, Kate, in a cute flower costume. Ella loved the baby and the costume, too. We also stopped at my brother's house and Caleb went trick or treating around there. He was confused when we kept going to different houses, he said 'but these people aren't Uncle Joey's neighbors!' He had a great time!