Thankgiving day photos

We hosted Thanksgiving this year at our home, for all 19 of us! :) It was a Thanksgiving to remember, as we had most of our extended family to share it with. Brian had his parents and his brother, my parents and my sister (and my sister's boyfriend, Nick), and we had the Webers too! It was just fantastic! And I didn't even mind a bit being the hostess! I would definitely do it again next year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our dear friends and family...for the next couple weeks the blog postings will be hit and miss as we dive through the massive amount of holiday orders...but I promise to try and do a couple postings!

Another chance to wear Eden's Bouquet clothing!

Visit Eden's Bouquet to enter the contest to win $50 gift cert! http://edensbouquet.com/blog/

My firstborn turns 13!

Well, we survived the chaos! Actually, I have to be honest...Alex has a GREAT group of friends. They were all respectful and mannerly, I would have any one of them back at our house again. There were about 70 people here all together (about 60 13 year olds). We had an awesome DJ. We turned the garage into a big karaoke DJ dance floor and the kids sang and danced the night away. We had a large 20x30 tent attached to our heated garage. It looked just like a dance club with the DJ lights and fog machine! Sorry for the picture overload! But I know Alex wants to show some of his friends at school.

Panoramic Birthday gift

We don't give our kiddos birthday presents...but we give them a party, take them out for a birthday dinner, and then this year I started a new tradition...a panoramic birthday frame! I soooooo wish I would have thought of this earlier, but alas, my older kiddos got the short end of the stick! :( Anyway, I make a huge 36x14 print of 4 photos and then a "saying" and frame it. Then, every year on their birthday I plan on updating it with the new one. These will hang in the kids rooms. So far, I have only done TJ's, Kennedy's and now Alex's. It is great, because we spend a couple hours in a photo shoot and then I get to capture those looks, expressions and silly behavior that only they can create at that age in their lives. I just LOVE the way Alex's turned out. I am sure that I will have a photo of it once it is framed, but until then you can see the image above. It really shows his personality and how unique he is. He is a trendy dresser that likes to wear hats...that's my boy!

Fall photo shoot of kids

Every fall I try and update the big 11x14 portraits of each of the kids we have hanging in our living room. Usually I take them in the studio, but this year I decided to do them outside. Here are a few from the session - though I have kept the "best" to be displayed in our living room! So, if you want to see those, you will just have to visit! :) Oh- and if you are wondering about the pink streak in Mackenzie's hair - she put in a pink hair extension for breast cancer awareness...she is such a cool kid!

Kudos for Simply To Impress

Check out Jen's blog from Eden's Bouquet! She gave simplytoimpress.com kudos! :)

http://www.edensbouquet.com/blog

Fallen Timbers Bike Ride

Each year we do a fundraiser for Fallen Timbers Environmental Center. This year it was on October 3rd, but we just got the photo in the mail today. It is a bike ride, and this year we did the 14 mile one. What I thought was cool was looking at the difference between the kids in a year. Wow! What a difference! Both of them look older, and Alex looks like he has grown at least 6 inches! Last years photo is shown below:

Another Hasse party! :)

So exciting! Alex is turning 13 and we are going to have a big party! He is sending these out to 100+ guests tomorrow! Yikes! What am I in for???

Family photo attempt

On the final weekend of peak fall colors, I attempted to take some family shots, in hopes of getting that "perfect" Christmas card photo. It didn't really work. The weather was awful and it started to rain. Bad weather + three uncooperative children under the age of 4 = a pretty failed attempt. At any rate, I managed to tuck away a couple "desperation" photos, in the event I can't get any more between now and the holidays, but I thought I would share a few that didn't make the cut.

Girls Day Out

Last Thursday, Mema, Mackenzie and I all went to the "spa" (okay, it was the Wisconsin Cosmetology School - aka "spa for the poor"!)...we had so much fun! We got facials, maniures, scalp massages, and our hair done! Oh- and all for $11.75! Whoo Hoo!

5K race for St. Joseph's food panty

On Saturday we ran in a 5K race which collected donations and canned food for St. Joseph's Food Pantry in Menasha. It was freezing and windy, but worth the cause...

Brian, Alex, Mackenzie and me ran in the race...while the little kiddos stayed warm inside with MeMa.

Trick or Treating

We had a great time Halloween night...we went to Mema's house and trick-or-treated from there... :)

Pumpkin carving

The kids and daddy carved pumpkins and I made homemade pizza... :)

You know you are bored when...

So, here's the deal. Brian, Alex, Mackenzie and Natalie went to the movies tonight. Alex and Brian went to "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs"....Mema & Papa took the girls to "Where the Wild Things Are". Anyway, they all left at 6 pm (for Young Men/Young Women at church) and they aren't seeing the show until 9 pm. Well, by about 8 pm, I was pretty bored. I mean, I am used to the pitter patter of lots of feet in the house. And, well, you can only do so much cleaning and laundry before you decide enough is enough (and for me, that "enough" comes awfully quick!). So, when I got bored we defaulted to taking self-timer photos with the camera. They were blurry at first, but we got rid of one of the Barney books that was propping up the camera and decided to hit the floor. Fun times, fun times. I think now we are going to go make some self-made movies on the Mac.