Family Pictures

My wonderful, talented friend, Tamara Hancock, was kind enough to spend some time taking pictures of me and my family. They turned out great!

Me & my belly:




Me, my hunny, and the belly






My cute kiddos












The whole family

Happy Birthday Ainzlee!

It's hard to believe that my baby girl is TWO years old! She has grown so fast!


We decided to keep her birthday party fairly simple. We only invited family and a few close friends. For the theme, I asked her what she wanted. He response: TINKERBELL.
So, I did the best that I could to make a Tinkerbell themed party.

The Cake:

For the cake, I searched high and low for a cute little Tinkerbell doll to put on top. I didn't have much luck. Most of the ones that I found were either too big, or not at all cute. So I finally decided that I would have to improvise. I found a few little princess dolls. One was Cinderella, and one was Tiana. Since Cinderella has blond hair, and Tiana was wearing a green dress, I decided to get them both and make a Tinkerbell.
I had to paint Cinderella's headband green, since it was blue, and I made some wings for her out of vinyl and some glitter. I attached them with a little rubber band. I think it ended up pretty good. The cake wasn't quite what I had originally envisioned, but it worked, I guess.

LUNCH

For lunch, Ainzlee said she wanted chicken nuggets and french fries. So, we invited the family to meet us at our favorite place: Chick-Fil-A.

THE PARTY

After lunch, it was time to PARTY!
We had cake and ice cream



And opened gifts
She asked for a bracelet, and a ball... and got LOTS of each!




What a fun day!

Karate

Zander really enjoys his karate class. He has a goal of getting his black belt. I know it will take time, but I hope he sticks to it!

They have an awards ceremony at the end of every semester. The students get the chance to show of their moves and they get their new rankings.







Brandon wasn't able to come this time, so I tried to do the best I could with two not so patient girls with me.

Zander was a green belt with a black stripe, his new rank: green belt with blue stripe. Really, it doesn't mean a whole lot right now. He's still in the green belt class. Up until now, he's skipped a rank every time. This time, he didn't. I was glad that the teachers decided to keep him with the green belts. I think he could use a little bit more practice. But Zander was pretty disappointed. He was really hoping to move up to BLUE belt. They get to start learning to spar and their tournaments are held on Saturdays (instead of Sundays). But, next time, he'll be blue belt for sure!

Christmas 2010

Yes, I know it's almost March, but I'm pretty far behind. I made a goal for myself to get this thing updated before the baby comes. And I'm running out of time.

SO, here we go.

We flew home from Florida on Christmas Eve. I was worried that it would be a terrible day to fly, but it actually wasn't too bad. Everyone was in a holiday mood, and pretty nice. We had a fairly uneventful flight.


After we got unpacked (phew!) we had time to make some cookies for Santa. The kids had fun "helping".


Then we had our traditional reading / acting out of the Christmas story. Because of the flour mess, Ainzlee didn't have her clothes, so she was a naked angel.





Then we each got to open our Christmas Eve gift. New pajamas!



Then it was bed time... and while we slept... we had a special visitor! SANTA CAME!



We had lots of fun opening and playing with our gifts







And we had a yummy Christmas dinner


What a great day!