Roundup!

Hello Friends and Family! We kind of dropped off the face of the planet for a few weeks. But rest assured, we're alive and sassy (well, Ella and Gretchen are. Colby and I are mostly just alive...)

How was your Christmas? Ours was good. We enjoyed Uncle Aaron & Aunt B's hospitality in SoCal. But we did NOT enjoy the non-stop rain. Or that Adrianne and Mike and the Duffys got evacuated out of the house because the neighborhood was flooding. (Dude!) Ella really wanted to go to the Getty Museum again and I wanted to take the girls to play in the sand at the beach, but alas, neither happened. We were officially rained out. But at least it finally stopped. Just in time for us to pack up and leave.

It wasn't all a soggy mess, Aaron & B's house was super fun (as always) and we watched movies, played video games & played and played and played with cousins.

AND GRETCHEN TURNED THREE!!!!!

At Chuckee Cheeses. (As she'll tell you if you ask her age. "I'm three at Chuckee Cheese's.")

What I love about this picture is that Super Fun Uncle Mike is holding Gretchen upside-down, and Grandma Diana is trying so hard not to freak out! Look at her hand. "Uhhhhh...Mike???!?!?!" (Love you Mom!)


High Fives for blowing out the candles.



Awwww....



This is the Cinderella Wedding Dress (as seen on clearance at the Disney Store after Halloween). Gretchen's new nickname is "Bridezilla".


Nana Joy totally won the horse race.


Sisters doing sister-things together. (I couldn't tell you what they're doing, but they're entertained...)


Clifford!


And apparently we didn't get any Christmas Pictures. But rest assured, Santa came, the voice-changer toy he brought was a hit, we all laughed at Ella and Gretchen's Robot Voices, and then it was promptly hidden so that we didn't go crazy. They also got other stuff. I'm hoping we'll remember it all to do Thank Yous. If we don't and you're reading this, "Thank you for the present! That was so nice!" (So heartfelt, I know. Also, as my extended Christmas Gift to you, don't worry about sending me any Thank Yous. I gave you a gift because I love you. Lets just leave it at that...)

Poppa Randy brought the girls GIGANTIC GINGERBREAD MEN to decorate. There may or may not still be one on our kitchen counter.



Colby asked for and got a bunch of camera equipment for Christmas. Merry Christmas to both of us! He gets new toys, and I get lovely photos of our girls. Just messing around he got these two gems.




Happy 2nd week of January Friends! Love love love!

Grechen's Birthday Party...

...was awesome.

Chuck E Cheese with the family? Who could ask for anything more on one's third birthday?

I can let Apryl fill in with more details. I know Colby took some pictures (though he missed the really awesome one where Gretchen was eating cake with two forks in her mouth at once).
But here is a little video clip I took with my phone. It's awesome. Please enjoy. Sorry it's sideways.
It gets good about 3-4 seconds into it. Ride 'em, cowgirl!

Basketball

On his way to a scholarship! Go Christian go!!!

VOTE!

Hi everyone, Our school [ Ysabel Barnett Elementary] can vote for our school to win $ 25,000 for are library to get new computers and new books for our school library. Anyone can vote, so tell all you friends and family to vote for our school. Here are the ways you can vote, text 104392 to 73774, or regester your email on www.refresheverything.com/barnettlibrary. You can also vote on Facebook if any of you have facebook accounts. Those are the 3 ways you can vote. You can vote once a day so you can vote one time on facebook, one time on text and one time on the website. I just regestered email on the website because we don't have facebook and we don't text the number.

By Christian

BIG SIGH OF RELIEF

I'm so happy. We made it through last week with it's massive To-Do list and the four Christmas parties. Now I can sit back and relax (and course you know by "relax" I mean run around and finish everything I need to do before we leave for Uncle Aaron's on Friday, right? And figure out how to fit all of Christmas + four suitcases into our trunk.) Still, this week was pretty good.

-I got another freelance job from my favorite client, a Hidden Picture puzzle of kids in Singing Time. And it's a puzzle proposal that I sent to them November of last year. So it's totally an Apryl Stott Original, written and illustrated. Hooray for me!

-I've listened to the Christmas Mix cd so much this week that the girls know the words to the songs (now it's time to make a NEW mix cd!) And Colby got to listen to it every time he was in my car. In case anyone ever thought that we share the same taste in music, apparently we don't. And apparently all I like is, "Lame emo crap." Whatevs. He's the one who said "Our Song" was Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart". That's like the ORIGINAL emo.

-The First Graders at Ella's school had a "Winter Performance". We showed up 5 minutes late. It was over 5 minutes after that. It was only TEN MINUTES LONG!!! This should be the new standard for school performances. Except we should get there in time. (Poor Ella was so nervous about the performance. Did she have a speaking part? No. She was supposed to sing "Jingle Bells" with the rest of the first grade. That's it. And stand there. Apparently she does NOT have a stage career in her future.)

-Our new Family Performance Art Project (what, you don't have one of those?) is to put pictures of Colby into unsuspecting friends picture frames when they're not looking (you know, when they invite us over for dinner & are nice and naieve enough to leave us in a room unsupervised). Our friends had a frame hung up in their living room with the original model-family (the picture the frame came with). We replaced it with a nice 8x10 of Mr. Stott. It's been 24 hours. Apparently they haven't noticed yet. I'll give it a week.

But the best thing about this past week? It's DONE!!!

So what's YOUR Family Performance Art Project?

Putting up our Stockings

Here is my other thing I put on my Tradition report. My other tradition is that we always put up out stockings on for Christmas. Then we put what things we would like for Christmas. I put the Elmo stocking on for Teagan and Grechen.This Stocking is my favorite.

posted by: Christian

Baking cookies

here is a picture I found ofline. We always make colored chocolate chips and chocolate chips. It is very fun. Tasty cookies!