Who is this kid??

Zack got his first haircut today (see my blog for more details.) When I uploaded the pictures I couldn't believe how much he looked like one of you... (at least I think so, anyway.) I decided to see what the rest of you think...


P.S. Mom, my house is still clean (mostly anyway!)

Gingerbread Houses and Snowshoeing

It's been a while since we've posted, so I thought I'd share some of our recent activities with all of you. For family night a few weeks ago, we made a gingerbread house. I was skeptical at first when Brady brought it home (he did buy it in October, so maybe that's why), but we actually had a lot of fun. Here are some pics:




Brady has decided to take on another sport...snowshoeing. This is a good thing because snow is soft to fall on and I can't think of anything he'd cut himself on, so I think we're pretty safe (as long as we stay away from avalanches!). :) Actually, we've been saying we need a "winter sport" because I don't ski and so winter is cold and long and snowshoeing seems to be pretty fun so far. It was a beautiful (still cold) day on Saturday and we had planned to go "full-moon-shoeing" (where you hike at night under the light of a full moon) but plans changed and we went during the day instead. I was glad for that because it was cold in the day and I can only imagine what it was like at night. It was awesome because we were just walking around in the snow like we were the only people on earth. There was about 2-3 feet of freshly fallen snow which made it nice, not to mention the aerobic workout. We went with our friend Spencer (and his dog, Katie) and Brady's boss, Greg. The one bad thing was seeing how bad the valley air really is when you're up above it...we all really need to take care of our environment! (That's a soapbox for another day!) Here are more pics:




Oh, and just for fun, here's our Christmas tree!
Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas

So, I was just wondering what all of your plans are for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so that I could know when we are going to do our draw name gifts. I know that we talked about doing our draw name gifts on Christmas Day, but what do y'all think about it? Let me know what works well for all of you.
Tami

Happy Birthday Abby and Zack

Abby and Zack,

Yesterday I was going to call and tell you happy birthday, but Grandma Jannie told me that today is your birthday.... but really yesterday was your birthdays. We hope you had a good day. We love you both lots and can't wait to see you again!



Love, Casey, Natalie, and Benson


P.S. Emily, The pajamas Zack is wearing in these pictures are the same pajamas Benson wore to bed last night!!!! Thanks!

new blog

So Casey and I have a new blog. I hope it won't take away from this blog, but I just always want to post things and I usually refrain because I don't want to take up the entire blog. So we'll still post some stuff here, but you can check out our new blog at caseandnat.blogspot.com

It's snowing grandma

We woke up to snow this morning, Grandma Jannie. You know what that means... it's time for you to come visit us!! (We can't wait!!)

This is a picture Lila's first time out in the snow...
Don't worry, this isn't what we woke up to this morning!

Poinsettias Galore!

Since it 'tis the season, I thought I would share some memories I have from my mission.

These are fake poinsettias jabbed all over this persons grass!

Of course you have to have Black Santa. (Colored black with a magic marker)

I know this isn't really Christmas, but I saw this picture and thought it was cool. When you drive around the Beltway at night you go around a corner and there is the Temple. It looks like it is floating right over the road.

Kind of a random post, but at least it is a post. Happy Holidays!

Digi Scrappin'

It is 12:45 am... Benson should be waking up any minute to be fed, and I haven't even gone to sleep yet! I have been working on some scrapbooking and I love it!!!!!! It takes a little time and my pages aren't that cute yet, but I'm learning.
I wanted to post one of my creations. Thanks to Shawnee for the pictures, I think it turned out ok.

(I just tried to upload my page and it was too big... so I'll have to wait until Casey wakes up so he can help me post it... Sorry.)

I think we should all do this next year, it would be fun!

Creed Thoughts
They say the Friday after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. Not for the old Creedster. For me, Black Friday’s when I work out all my problems. I don’t need to waste my cash on fancy “therapists” or “court-appointed analysts.” Instead, I just suit up and get ready for battle. That’s how I celebrate the fourth Friday of every November.
This year, I didn’t even go to sleep after Thanksgiving. I was so jazzed up from the massive portion of cranberry sauce that I couldn’t stop pacing. At around 2:30am, I decided it was time to start getting ready. I wrapped my body in newspapers and Black Friday ads until I had a good enough base to know I’d be okay if anybody had a shiv. Then I started gathering my weapons. Instead of brass knuckles (which I always lose), I found these really sharp plastic spider rings that were leftover from Halloween. For poking and tripping, I grabbed a cane from one of the geezers at the soup kitchen. [SIDE NOTE: People underestimate the value of old man weapons. I’m allowed to walk around with a cane anywhere I damn well please and that cane comes in handy, let me tell you. It’s just one of those social conventions that works in favor of the elderly – same goes for early bird senior specials at restaurants.]
So after I got myself ready, I headed over to the mall. That place usually gets rocking at around five in the morning, so I made sure to be there by four to snag a good place in line. I find the toy stores to be the center of the mayhem most years, so I headed there first. All these parents were just foaming at the mouth to get their hands on the latest Cabbage Patch Elmo Pokey-Man Nintendos and I couldn’t wait to get in their way. As soon as the doors opened, I started a stampede. I’ve got old standbys that I yell out to really heat things up. “They’ve only got three left!” “Huge sale in Aisle Five!” “That jerk is taking all of them!” Nobody has any idea what I’m referring to, but they get all worked up nonetheless. Almost right away, people started shoving and pushing and where was I? Right in the middle of all the action.
I started out by poking people with my cane and scratching them with my rings and pretty soon, I didn’t care so much about sales tax or cold weather or paternity suits – all the things that stick in my craw, really. Nobody got seriously injured and all my bottled up feelings just disappeared, so it was a win-win for everyone, in my opinion.
Once I finished at the toy store, I moved on to the electronics stores where I started over from scratch and instigated a whole new riot. It felt great. I’ll tell you what -- this is shaping up to be one of the best holiday/therapy seasons of all time.

"Blessed Thanksgiving" (or should we say "The tin man escaped?")

Hi all! I thought I'd share the pics I took of our Thanksgiving dinner. Thanks to all who made it possible! It was yummy! But we did all miss our Boston crew! :) (And FYI for those who missed it, we played the telephone game...it started with "Blessed Thanksgiving" and ended with "The tin man escaped!" It was hilarious to play this with Grandma Marie and Ronola.)

Danny with Shanna's "saved" seat

Jan showing off her new Christmas Tree skirt that Tami made her!

Benson's first Thanksgiving dinner! (And check out the yummy mashed potatoes that Natalie made! They were so good, but we had a lot left over!)

Cory showing off his new "waist pack" he won in a clay pigeon shooting contest with his friends.

Danny's Gif

Here is a nice animated gif of Danny. Enough said.

(Click on the picture)

Danny Mission Call

Here is the opening of Danny's mission call for any of you that missed it. (even a sneak peak at the national anthem at the end!)

Click here to play the video

(it's quicktime)

Black Friday

Here's a link for all of you that just can't wait for the ads to come out on thanksgiving.
Enjoy!
http://bfads.net/

Christmas Drawing Results

Here are the results of our Christmas Drawing that we did:

Emily has Natalie
Johnny has Casey
Brady has Andy
Shawnee has Nick
Tami has Johnny
Nick has Brady
Natalie has Danny
Casey has Emily
Andy has Tami
Danny has Shawnee

We only included people who said they wanted to be in the drawing. If you were not included but you did want to be in the drawing, let one of us know and we will add you to our drawing... no big deal!
Love you all.

P.S. When we drew names we didn't really discuss a price limit for the drawing... Emily and I thought maybe a $20 limit would be good. Leave a comment for what you think about that. -Tami

Antelope

Nick, Casey, Andy, Danny, Nathan (Nick's brother) and some of Natalie and Casey's friends (Jake, Travis, Stuey, & Jon) have all started playing on an indoor soccer team. They played last night and did amazing! They didn't win but they did so good!

Just a little side note... Their team name is Antelope.

Kindergarten 101

I must say that I do feel pretty guilty not posting very often. I am quite a lurker lately.

I was taking some pictures of my kids today and thought I would blog some pictures so you can see what I do everyday. Yesterday we had our first "school lunch" and the kids wore pilgrim hats and pilgrim colars. We eat school lunch 6 times throughout the year but this was new for them. They loved their corndogs though! This was the whole Kindergarten. My class is the one on the middle row.

This is my morning class.
This is the afternoon class.

Their pilgrim attire was pretty funny but they were pretty proud to wear it.

I will post some new pictures of my classroom on my blog nickandtami.blogspot.com so you can see what my room is like, so check it out there.

natalie's scrapbooking

So I wanted to start a digital scrapbook (like Shawnee's) so I downloaded this program called Smilebox. It's really easy to use and I loved doing it. I made a ton of pages in not a lot of time, and then when I got done I was going to send them to be printed. Well, it turns out that with this program you can only print from home, email, or blog your scrapbooking. Since I didn't want to pay $700 for ink to print it, and I didn't want to take up all the space on here blogging it, I made my own scrapbook blog. It's nataliescrapbook.blogspot.com if any of you would like to go on and look at some of the things I've done.

Shawnee, I know you use Photoshop CS3 to do your scrapbooking, but where do you get your pages and embelishments from? I might have to have you give me a little tutorial on how to get going.

Benson's Blessing and Halloween

I just wanted to post pictures of Benson's Blessing and some pictures of the cake Casey and I made for Halloween.

Pumpkin Carving

Here are some pics of our Pumpkin Carving party!

Some of the gang
Tami & Nick

Andy's (He carved Benson's name into the back of the pumpkin, but I don't really think this looks like Benson.)

Tami's ghost

Nick's Frankenstein

Danny's "Happy Halloween Tree"

Shawnee's Bat

Brady's Pirate Ship

McKenzie's Elmo

All lit up

Thanks for all the fun...we'll have to do it again next year! :)