Paige and Michael

I'm still trying to figure out what to do about this camera, so I've been taking pictures like crazy...Here are some of Paigie and Michael while Ashley was at a birthday party this morning.

Paige was reading a book to Michael :)

New Camera

On Black Friday, I found what I thought was a great deal on the Canon Digital Rebel, but then I did some research (after buying it...) and found out that I actually only saved around $30 on what I could buy it for on amazon. I'm trying to figure out if I should keep it or not. I've been wanting a dSLR camera for a few years, but I don't know if this is THE ONE or if I should keep waiting and find a better deal on a better camera-it's the XS, not the XSi. I really just want to be able to take great pictures of my kids. I would love advice from anyone with an opinion on dSLR cameras!

Since I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it or not, I haven't opened the instruction book. Here are the pics I took messing around with the buttons.

One of our family friends made these ornaments as the favors for our wedding. Coming up on 9 years!

When It's 11 Degrees Outside...

...it's WAY TOO COLD! We recommend staying inside!
Today, we opened an early Christmas present.
We pretended to sleep in our warm flannel winter bedding.Some of us are better at pretending to sleep than others!We made ice pops..and hot chocolate..and chocolate chip cookies. (And ate a lot of snow!)We ended the day with a nice, warm bath and a snuggle with Daddy.

Paige is Five!

Paige turned five on the 19th! She is such a sweet little girl. She's easygoing, loving, smart, agreeable, and gentle. We love having her in our family!
We celebrated all week long, starting with the princess dinner at Disney on Monday. They brought out a cake, sang to her, and she got a card signed by all of the princesses.

Next, on Thursday, her actual birthday, she had birthday cinnamon rolls and opened presents at my parent's house. She thought that all five of the rolls that had candles in them were hers. She ate one and licked the icing off of the others.

Finally, on Saturday, we had her cousins over for a party. It was really fun to get together and all the little girls (and Michael) had a blast.

Watching Katherine wack the pinata.

Now the tough part is going to be convincing her that she is no longer "the birthday girl." I asked her to clear her dishes tonight after dinner and she asked if I could please do it for her since she's "the birthday girl." hmmm....

Disney World!

We've spent the last two weeks in Florida! We went to Disney World a few days and had a great time! Since it was almost Paige's birthday, we had dinner with the princesses--they all showed up that night--it was really fun!
Snow White:
Ariel:Sleeping Beauty giving Michael a big kiss!

Michael with his kiss from Cinderella!

Ashley's favorite princess: We listened to Belle tell stories in the castle garden and then saw her at dinner in her ball gown later in the week.

Michael was happy! The girls and I are the three hot pink sets of arms in the last car:

Watching the parade:

He wasn't too sad that he couldn't ride the fun rides :)

Paige's favorite princess! Minnie Mouse!

Halloween 2009

We had a fun time on Halloween! We went up to Jeremy and Lauren's house and went trick-or-treating with cousins and cousins-of-cousins. I forgot to bring my camera, but here's a group shot from Shauna's sister, Lori. Michael's the little horse, Paige is the pink poodle, and Ashley is the witch in the back.

Snow!

Here are the pictures of the snow last week. The kids had a lot of fun playing in all the snow--and James and I got a good workout shoveling a path through the 3 feet of snow in the driveway.

This is when public school might be more fun for the girls than homeschool--they had 3 snow days...but we didn't!