*I’m going to try and update with our Christmas pictures and then we will see if I can blog better in 2012! *

One of our favorite family Christmas traditions is to go to “Breakfast with Santa” at the Grand America with Grandma Wendy and Grandpa Russ. The kids get all spiffied up in their new Christmas outfits and we all feast on a YUMMY breakfast buffet.

When we’re sufficiently stuffed we get to have pictures taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus—they are the real deal, folks!!

Haylie was so excited that she ran up to Santa with a huge grin on her face–no tears this year!

Annie wanted a Jessie and Bullseye set (from Toy Story 2).

Brandon’s dream was to get an ipod touch.

Haylie asked for a Lala Loopsy doll.

Did Santa come through on their wishes?!?!? Stay tuned to find out!

The Grand America is all decked out this time of year, with gorgeous trees and displays all over. This was one of my favorite trees, I love those handblown glass ornaments! They looked just like balloons. This was such a fun (and delicious!) way to kick off December–we love Breakfast with Santa!!

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Each year we carve pumpkins and each year I wonder why we don’t just paint the pumpkins—nobody loves scooping out the “guts”! But in the end it’s worth it when we light the candles and see how cool they look on the front porch (and when we eat roasted pumpkin seeds later on).

Everyone designs their own pumpkin and it’s always fun to see what the kids come up with. Here is Haylie sketching out what she wanted her pumpkin to look like. She wanted it to be a flower, like this:

I think she approved.

Brandon requested a Harry Potter theme, and with Jaden’s help they created this:

Awesome!

Annie wanted her pumpkin to have a surprised face, so this is how hers turned out:

I love the eyelashes and we used the flower from Haylie’s pumpkin as an accessory!

We ran out of time to carve Jaden’s that afternoon (I hurried and carved his later). And for some odd reason, the pumpkin I chose at the patch was petrified or something, because it was hard as a rock and we couldn’t even make a dent in it with the knife. I had to drill off the top to scoop out the seeds, but after that I got sick of it and stopped! Oh well! Just my luck!

Ooooh, but here are the pumpkins all lit up at night:

After we were done with the pumpkins, Jaden went mountain biking so the kids and I made a simple Halloween treat: Spider Oreos.

Double Stuffed Oreos. Twizzler Pull ‘N Peels. M&M’s. (And a little bit of frosting to make it all stick together). Done!

Our favorite part was eating them when we were done. Yum!

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Lookie, I’m actually blogging!!!! I’m just going to jump right in to some Halloween memories while they are still fresh! First up–the traditional visit to the pumpkin patch.

{Ahhhh, October was beautiful here. I’m still dreaming about it as I look at the crusty snow out on the lawn.} We visited a local farmer’s patch the weekend before Halloween. As you can see, Haylie wasted no time and chose hers within the first minute of arriving there.

It was just her size! Aaaaaaaand this is about the last smile I got out of her while we were there.

Annie and Brandon took a little bit longer but soon found their perfect pumpkins. Brandon always tries to get the biggest one! {Last year his was the biggest one of the day according to the scale!}

Annie was pretty strong pulling our wagon of pumpkins!

These two were good sports and let their camera crazy sweet mom take their pics in the pumpkins. Where is Haylie,  you ask? Oh, she refused to join in the photo fun and decided to have a mini tantrum closeby. Just keepin’ it real, folks.

Good times at the pumpkin patch! If only the pumpkins could magically scoop out their own innards. . . .

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A few months ago I taught at a digital scrapbooking retreat and showed how to create silhouettes from your own photos in Photoshop. Silhouettes are a big trend right now everywhere, especially in home decor, so it was fun to come up with some personalized art projects and gifts using silhouettes of our kids.

There are lots of great silhouette tutorials online, my friend (and fellow Crafting Chick) Nikkala wrote a post about it awhile back if you want to check it out: Silhouettes.

So for Mother’s Day this year, I decided that I’d make some silhouette art for our moms, because we all know that their grandchildren are their favorites. I had some old frames laying around, so I got out my trusty spray paint (in glossy black and a satin white) and gave them each a little makeover.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We gave this one to my sweet Mother-in-law Judy featuring her six adorable grandchildren. I really love how it turned out and loved using classic black and white colors for this project.

This is the one we gave my mom, with her three grandchildren. I went a different route with hers, using a colorful patterned background with white silhouettes, knowing that it would match her kitchen.

Both projects use silhouettes but have totally different looks—and I love both styles! And they were both big hits with the grandmas, that’s for sure!

For our home I used the same profiles of our kids (that’s the beauty of digital photography/photoshop, baby!) but used different patterned backgrounds for each child, all in a turquoise and white. (I shared these on The Crafting Chicks a few months ago.)

I printed these at Costco as 16×20, and mounted them on white foam core. Then I hung them on the wall using those 3M Command Strips, no nails.

Here are the digital files, just to show you more up close (the colors are a bit off, but you get the idea).

It’s a fun thing to have hanging up our big staircase, makes an impact, plus it was not very expensive!

Lastly I made another piece with all of our kids together, printed it as an 8×8 and it is framed and sitting on a shelf in the living room.

(credits for paper and scalloped heart: Digital Scrapbook Memories)

Just some fun and simple ideas for using silhouettes as artwork in your home and as gifts! I like them.

Oh, I almost forgot!! For a ton more silhouette ideas, check out my Silhouette board on Pinterest! There are so many cool things you can do, it makes my brain spin.

(Haven’t heard of Pinterest? It’s my new-ish favorite thing! Remind me to tell you about it sometime!)

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A week or so ago the weather finally decided to be nice (after a record wet May) so we took the kids to Provo Canyon to “hike” Bridal Veil Falls. I use the term “hike” very loosely; someone riding on a jazzy could easily take on this trail! But we love it anyway because it’s easy for all of our kids and it’s just a lovely spot. The skies were perfect blue and the mountains were so gorgeous with their green trees and snowy peaks. Temps were in the mid to high 70′s and I think I said “this is the perfect weather” and “this is the prettiest day!” about 50 times to Jaden. I couldn’t help it.

Bridal Veil Falls!

The kids had a blast playing in the water at the bottom of the falls.

So pretty!

As usual Haylie had her fistful of rocks or “stones” as she likes to call them. Actually Annie and Brandon gathered quite a collection before the day was done and we had a stack of small (but heavy!) boulders as souvenirs (and some to use for my object lesson on repentance for Sharing Time in Primary the next day, hee hee!).

I love her sagging pants, little gangsta!

Why are these kids growing up so fast? Getting taller every day. . .

At the end of it Haylie was content to just sit in her daddy’s lap and throw rocks into the water while her feet dried off.

{Proof I was actually there!}

Our little fam at Bridal Veil Falls. Love it.

It was a great day.

I really do love where we live!

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Hi! Remember me?!? Okay, it’s been so long that I’ve almost forgotten how to post on this darn thing. As Haylie would say, “Holy Moly Spicy Guacamole!”

Life just has a way of being busy and fun and difficult and tender and joyful and stressy and inspiring and frustrating and full of love and sometimes feeling like we’re barely staying afloat and kids growing up way too darn quickly, all these feelings mixed together–that’s just life, huh! I haven’t had much time but I’d love to keep on blogging and sharing here (and organizing my thoughts and photos before I forget what even happens, lol!) so I’m going to attempt once again to get back into the habit, at least for my own sake and remembrance!

I doubt anybody even reads this anymore (maybe my mom, hi mom!) but here we go! Let’s dust the ol’ bloggie off, shall we? Pardon the mess as I will be tweaking the blog design here and there and will be adding more bits and pieces!

I don’t have a real post tonight but thought I’d just mention the fact that I am still alive and having some summer fun with these favorite crazy people!!

Will I post again soon? YES I WILL!!

xoxo

Brooke

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Earlier last week I went up to Huntsman with the girls to visit Grandpa Judd. Generally the kids liked going up there. They liked to see Grandma and Grandpa of course, but they also liked ordering shakes and smoothies from the yummy cafe/room service up there.

One day Annie and Haylie discovered that the chair was just like a ride! They’d recline the chair and scoot on the wheels. Grandma Judy’s so much fun!! (Haylie was not in the mood for a photoshoot, apparently.)

I took Haylie up again the next day, and much to my surprise, Judd’s hair was gone! He had shaved it right after we left the day before. I think his head looks great! Especially with that smile.

What was even MORE surprising was that the doctors were telling him that he might be able to go home earlier than planned. He had gotten an infection and had several rough days/nights over the past few weeks, but he was getting better and his blood levels were improving and the biopsy was clean . . .and the very next day he was discharged from the hospital!! A week early. He is amazing!!!

Amy and I grabbed balloons, made posters, and got some dinner and groceries to prepare for his homecoming. The sad thing is that Brandon’s bus was 20 minutes late because it broke down, so Judd and Judy beat me to their home by about 5 minutes!!! Oh well, we tried and we were excited anyway!

The girls helped decorate the “grandpa” poster. Annie even drew a picture of him, with his  cute new bald head.

Our kids were thrilled to see Grandpa home and kept rubbing his bare head.

Judd has been doing very well at home and everything seems to be looking good Leukemia-wise. We are so thankful for all of your thoughts and prayers and support! It’s crazy to think that it’s only been a month since the preliminary diagnosis—we are thrilled with the outcome and feel so very blessed by Heavenly Father.

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This morning we had pancakes. Just for fun, I dyed the batter blue to celebrate BYU’s awesome win last night over New Mexico in the MWC and Jimmer’s crazy 52 point record. Brandon is a big Jimmer fan so I made him a “Y” as well as a “32″ which is Jimmer’s jersey number. It’s okay, you can mock my terrible pancake-shape skillz. (I really am terrible at it.)

Then Annie wanted in on the picture action (who am I to say no when my kids actually ASK me to take a picture?!?). She calls this her “pancake moustache.” It goes really well with her morning ‘fro.

Then I hardly could believe it but Haylie ran over and wanted me to take a picture of her awesome tower that she made. And this is how she chose to pose.

Funny kids. Gotta love ‘em.

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The whole time we were in Orlando we had a variety of weather. Mid 70′s and humid, pleasant mid 60′s, and chilly torrential rain mixed in every so often. Which made for very poofy poodle-ish hair on me. Thank goodness for hats.

The day we went to Animal Kingdom was the torrential rain kind of weather. We didn’t mind though, we had our coats and jackets and umbrellas! And it didn’t last the whole time, just a few hours.

Riding the tram from the parking lot to the park. Doesn’t Haylie look just thrilled to be there? It was pretty chilly.

In the middle of Animal Kingdom there is this humongous tree called the Tree of Life I think. It has intricate carvings of animals and….other stuff. I don’t really know, lol! It was pretty impressive though and a huge landmark there.

Animal Kingdom felt like we were in a lush rainforest…complete with actual rain. And like I said in the Hollywood Studios post, it’s amazing how Disney pays attention to every single detail and it makes you feel like you are actually in Asia or Africa. The scenery was very cool.

Before we saw most of the animals of the kingdom, we started off by “traveling” to Mount Everest, home of one of my favorite rides.

See, we really went to Mount Everest!

Expedition Everest is the roller coaster there, sort of like the Matterhorn in Disneyland but way cooler because it surprises you and goes backwards part of the time. Brandon passed on this one but Annie went on it several times. Like mother, like daughter! I love roller coasters.

This is when Jaden and Annie were on it. It’s pretty blurry but hilarious to see their faces! Here’s a closeup:

So much fun.

We stopped and ate lunch and I took a bunch of pics of the kids. I loved these colorful blue doors and scenery. It was dreamy….

Sweet Annie-cakes…

As you can see, Haylie was being a crazy silly girlie.

Ahhh, there we go!

Look at those missing top front teeth on that cute boy!

YIKES!

Now we come to the actual animal part of Animal Kingdom. We went on this jeep safari ride and saw a bunch of animals, which was fun. And majorly bumpy.

I loved the elephants. There were mamas and babies….

My absolute favorite thing was this adorable baby elephant who suddenly took off running, with her giant ears flopping all over the place! It was hard to take a picture since the jeep was moving too, but here is a blurry one. It honestly was delightful to watch!

We also saw some pretty macaws (of course my kids knew what macaws were, probably due to watching Go Diego Go, lol!).

And some of us nearly got attacked by a rogue alligator! Oh wait, just a statue. Jaden did scream like a little girl though.

Here are some scenic photos. It was beautiful.

Good bye Animal Kingdom!! Next up: Epcot.

********

Other Florida 2011 posts:

Disney Hollywood Studios

Epcot

Magic Kingdom

Vero Beach

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In case you wondered….just keepin’ it real….

Various princess gowns left on the floor (as well as magic wands, glass slippers and fairy wings.)

Frightening Dora “stump” and bath toys in our master bathroom.

Lightening McQueen radio instead of a stereo system??

Littlest Pet Shops. And Silly Bandz. Need I say more?

Oh, and random Barbie shoes secretly hidden amongst my decor. (oops, and apparently it’s time to dust.)

Dolls in our bed. I guess she’s keeping it warm for Jaden. (He has been out of town all week and is coming back today! Sanity! And yes, I didn’t make the bed today. And I didn’t even stage the Book of Mormon laying there either. And yes, in the spirit of full disclosure, that is MY blankie, not the kids’.)

And these really need no explanation:

This is only part of the photographic evidence that kids live in our house. And it seems like the girls are the main culprits, although the boys are still suspicious.

But even in the crazy messiness of life with kids, it’s worth it. Especially when they give you love notes.

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