Christmas portraits

Funny how when I was a kid me and my brothers dreaded having family portraits. We didn't understand the point of getting all dressed up and wasting an hour just for a photo. Now that I have a daughter I understand what its all about. You want to have those memories of your family captured to look back on. You want to make sure to capture every year of your children. Now I feel bad for my mom, sorry mom. I know now that she just wanted to capture those moments cause now were all grown up. I'm glad she did because it's fun to go back and look at those pictures and see how little we all were. 

  Me and Devin have decided, like many I'm sure, that every christmas we will get a family photo. We also have started a picture frame ornament collection on our Christmas tree and we want to have a family photo in each one every year and when Elysa is older with kids of her own we will put grandchildren's photos in there until the entire tree is taken up with family photos.

  I am excited for Christmas and we wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

O Christmas Tree

I just LOVE turning on the Christmas music and decorating the tree. Elysa did too she watch so enthused the whole time I was putting decorations on the tree. She especially loved when the lights came on. She just stared and stared. She also helped mommy wrap some presents that she got for her.

Even tho I'm not fond of the cold I do love Christmas. I love when the 1st snow falls and its all powdery and white. I even love when the roads are covered, they remind me of the days me and my brothers would sit at the window with the radio on just waiting for them to say " no school today!". I love the most, wrapping up in a blanket cuddled up with someone you love sipping warm hot chocolate and watching a movie. *sigh* I just love getting excited for the holidays and its so hard to now a days when they decided to start Christmas before Halloween is even over, because by the time Christmas finally gets here you're so sick of the music and the rushes every where. But for me, as soon as I get the tree up the excitement begins!

Thanksgiving

Elysa and her cousin "Tof"
Thanksgiving is the best and worst time of the year haha. Best cause you get food and get to see family. Worst cause you get tons of food and your pants get all that much tighter ;).
It was so fun to have family over. We had fun with the cousins. As you can see they had fun getting Elysa ready for Thanksgiving by doing her hair. The night before we stayed up till 2 a.m. playing "stripoly" as my uncle calls it (tripoly) . We then had a Wii golf tournament till 2 a.m thanksgiving night. And of course there is always the 5 a.m. black friday shopping. We were supposed to go with Devin's family but everyone got really sick after thanksgiving dinner. Thank goodness we didn't! So instead we went at 8 am after Elysa refused to go back to sleep I think she was just so excited for us to go pick her out toys for Christmas haha. I ended up finding alot of really good deals!

It always amazes me, tho, how crazy people get on Black Friday. We were driving home at 2 am and passed Kohles and there were people already sitting out in the cold rain in front of the doors and the store didn't even open until 4 a.m. not to mention they were only giving out a $10 gift card PLUS inorder to use the $10 gift card you have to spend a certain amount. I've gotten $10 gift cards in the mail from kohles... so not worth waiting out in the cold just for 10 bucks. Plus I just couldn't believe hearing on the news how crazy people get on Black Friday tho. One man was squished after a crowd knocked down the entrance doors at a walmart ( which is why I don't go to walmart anymore on black friday especially after the one year I almost got punched in the face by some people and I was just sitting on the out skirts watching cause I didn't even want anything. I just went with my mother in law so she could get a good deal on a camera.) And another inccident happened when 2 guys shot eachother in a toy store! So sad on what the world is coming too!

Well besides all the chaos Thanksgiving is a fun time of the year!