catch up

December has come, & almost gone... & my blogging has suffered. So I'm going to do a fast forward catch up to get us to Christmas!
I had another birthday at the beginning of the month & had to work all day on my birthday & deal with some not so good news that made it kinda worse than just any other day. The next day everything was resolved, so it wasn't too bad- but definitely a birthday I'm already trying to forget!!

On the 10th of the month we finally got around to putting the tree up & my pictures are not the best, because I was spending a large majority of the time trying to clean up broken ornaments... hey- that sounds like most of this month!! Needless to say- I've been looking at Christmas clearance to replace alot of ornaments!!!
of course, we listened to Kenny & Dolly while we "trimmed" the tree. It was slight a bit more chaos than I had anticipated, but we made it through without me going completely crazy!


The next week we headed out to a favorite spot out in the desert to attempt a family picture. Holy cow! Why did I think a tri-pod & my timer would not take me to the brink of a psychotic episode?

Here was one decent picture we got.
but this picture show everyone's personalities pretty well: Joe is lala land- Sean semi-smiling- me happy go lucky- Sam goofing off.

after much cropping- a semi decent picture of Sammy boy
The very next day I took the boys & their cousin David out to get some pictures to give their grandparents for Christmas. Yet, another crazy feat- 150 pictures later & only 3 to chose from....





Sean & Sammy
Tiffy & David
The view from Bulldog canyon
Mommy & Joey

We stayed late & cooked out over the campfire. The weather was amazing!!! I didn't even need a sweatshirt that night!!
and through this all, we started potty training Sammy. It's been hard work, but well worth it! We finally just decided one day there would be no more diapers!!!! Sam threw a fit, but we stuck to our guns. After only 2 days he has been dry every night since!! He has occasional accidents, but is still trying to get the whole #2 thing down, but its a work in progress!!!
This was after a very successful day- gelato for a treat :)

Last week my sister came into town for the holidays & we took our boys to Bass Pro Shop for their Santa's workshop. Unfortunately we got there too late to get a ticket to see Santa, but lucky for Adam, we got there in plenty of time to play shooting games, which he did not want to leave. Me & Aunt Nancie, & the rest the boys checked out the fishy's & the quads.


This was 2 days before Christmas. We have found the boys sleep the best when they are near someone else... therefore- a trundle bed is in the near future!