Christmas card pictures

This afternoon I finally took some pictures of my kids for our Christmas Cards. I know I'm way late as usual, but I really had good intentions. In October I talked to a photographer about doing family photos for us and that same night Jess came home and told me he was growing a beard starting that day (for the play). I wasn't about to pay someone to take picures of us with him in a beard. It's just not the look I like. (I promise, picutes to follow...) Anyway, here it is the 12th and I decided now or never so I quickly went through the girls closets and found some Christmasy looking dresses. It was quite the ordeal trying to get everyone to stay where I put them and look at me a smile at the same time. I feel bad because I wasn't feeling the Christmas Spirit through it all. I was way too stressed out. I took about 50 pictures, but really didn't have anything I was really happy with. I settled on one and off to Costco photo online for 150 prints to be made. My goal is to have everything done and sent by Saturday. I wish Tessa and Bridget would have been smiling in this picture because I like the position of the girls and Hannah and Emily's hair in this one.
This is the picture I ended up having printed.

An Update.......

Our stake celebrated it's 125 anniversary this year and as part of the celebration they had a play that was written by someone in the stake and based off of some of the early mormon mesa settlers lives. Jess, Emily, Hannah and Bridget were all in it. It was quite the production and they had 3 shows this past weekend. They all did a great job. Emily and Hannah especially love doing things like that. They were so cute. At the end there was a waltz dance with all the young kids and it was my favorite part. I couldn't believe they did such a good job! The lady who choreographed it used to be on the BYU ballroom dance team. I was impressed with what she got the kids to do. The last night of the show on the way home bridget said to me, "Mom, I don't want to be a pioneer anymore. It's too hard." I thought that was so funny because really it is too hard to be a pioneer and all they went through. She was just worn out from all the rehearsals. The rehearsal schedule has been pretty much tues-friday night and saturdays for the last 2 months. The past 2 weeks they have been at rehearsal until 10:15-11:30pm depending on the night. My girls have been so tired for school. They have just come home from school each day and taken a nap and then gone straight to rehearsal. Jess has been even busier because not only was he in the play, but he was in charge of all the Audio/Visual in the play. He set up 4 huge screens with projectors and made a power point presentation to go along with the play. (the above picture is of him starting to take down the stuff after the play. Anyway, it was quite impressive for a stake play. They set it up as a theater in the round (I think that's what it's called) where the stage was on the floor of the culteral hall and there were risers with chairs for the audience all around. Jess grew a beard for this and I was so happy (he was too) to be able to shave it on Sunday morning. (I'll post those pictures later- they are pretty funny)Dress rehearsal
dress rehearsal
Jess and his stage wife
Emily and Hannah with their stage mom and 2 stage sisters to the right.

Bridget and her stage mom.

Emily
Hannah and Emily

Hannah, Bridget, Jess, Emily

Tonight we 1/2 way put together a gingerbread house. I say half way because the icing wouldn't hold the roof, so I told the girls we'd have to decorate the rest tomorrow after it dries. I was wishing I had ordered a gingerwood house as my roof kept sliding down. We were going to do this as our FHE activity last night, but Jess got sick and went to bed right after work. He did the same tonight, and I felt too bad to make the girls wait another day so we just did it without him. Bridget likes eating the candy and licking the frosting the best.

Here is a picture of our tree. Last week I had the box of ornaments next to the tree and we had planned to decorate as a family, but with play practice it just didn't happen. I let the girls stay home from school one day because they were so worn out and since they were home I decided to make the best of it and they "babysat" bridget and tessa so I could take a nap. When I woke up they had completely decorated the tree themselves. I thought it was a great job for 2- 7 year olds and a 3 year old.

Tessa turned 7 months yestereday (12/10/07) What a sweet baby she is!

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care....

The stocking picture was supposed to come up first. Oh well, I don't know how to change it. We got a few of our Christmas decorations out tonight. We are planning on doing the tree tomorrow for FHE. Bridget is sooo excited about the tree, decorations, santa, Christmas in general. It is all she talked about tonight. The above picture of my nativity was set up all of 5 minutes before Jesus got decapitated. Bridget was in the living room by herself when we heard a crashing sound. I saw her run behind the couch and hannah asked her why she broke Jesus. She said, "I didn't do it, I don't know how it happened." She did feel bad because she wouldn't even look up at me. I think she was playing with one of the other figures and accidently knocked it off of the table. Poor Jesus. I'm going to have to try and salvage his head. It's in 3 bigger pieces and then about 4 smaller pieces. It will be a delicate surgery.

I also got the stockings and wreath out. I got them last year after Christmas at 75% off. So what would have cost me $120 only ended up costing $30. Talk about a deal! We didn't even have a Christmas tree last year because we were going to be at my moms for Christmas and I knew they would be so much cheaper after Christmas so I waited and bought all my decorations at Target super cheap. I'll post a picture of my tree after we get it up. I still need to add names to the stockings. I'm not sure what to do yet.

I'm up again with Tessa and her cough. It always gets worse at night and wakes her up. At least she's happy. I keep having to give her cough medicine. It makes me nervous because even though the Dr. prescibed it- Walgreens refused to fill it. They said it was too dangerous and so I had to Fry's to get it filled. If that hadn't happened I wouldn't even think twice about giving it to her. So for the past 6 nights I put her to sleep without it, then she wakes up coughing and then I give her the medicine and it takes about 30 minutes for it to kick in and then she goes back to sleep. No better time to blog than at 4:00am.