Family Photo's

To celebrate my mom's birthday today we went and took family pictures, so I thought I would share a few of them with you. The final versions turned out much better, but these are a little rough but you will get the drift of what they look like.
Here is the whole family including spouses, children and grand children, kinda scary this all started from those two "older" people in the middle, hu?
Then we get rid of the grand kids and here is what we look like...
Then all the siblings
Here are just the grand kids, look at Jakob, he is the most photogenic kid I know and always looks great!
The grand kids with Grandma and Grandpa
Now the family shots, here are the Cheatham's (do we cheat them and how)

The soon to be Gillmore's (no date yet, but I think we are looking at January of 2009). We are excited to add Brianna to the mix!

The Wattenbarger family, not to be confused with what a burger.
Our family, the Marshall's (with 2 l's)
The Gillmore's (the original)

After we were done with taking pictures a few brave souls took the kids for some dinner while everyone else choose the pictures. The place is called Portrait Innovations and they always do a great job, plus you get to take home the cd with all the photo's on it. We are doing our family, Tori's 1 year and Abby's 3 year next week at the one by us. If you have one near by I would recomend trying it out.

After all this we went to Aubree's house and celebrated Grandma's birthday ( I won't tell you how old, but I will tell you she gets the senior discount these days).

Christmas 2007

This was a wonder Christmas for us. Abby was so excited about the whole Christmas experience and Tori seemed to go along with the flow of things. We started the night before by having a wonderful turkey dinner and the kids each got to open one present. It was truly an accident that they each opened their new PJ's and so were able to wear them to bed.
It made me so happy when Abby just screamed with joy and wanted to put her new nightgown on right then and followed that by, "can I put the other pajama's in my room?". Then the next morning we slept in and when the kids got up, they were greeted with a care bear for Tori and power rangers for Abby. I think the highlight was looking in the stockings and pulling out the candy that Santa left.
There were lots of great toy's of which several will show up in the near future on blog pages here. But here are some of the highlights...
Abby - Power rangers, princess pajamas, candy, a aqua doddle, a glow in the dark care bear and a dog house.
Tori - Dogs that bark and wine, stacking circles on the stick, candy, and remote for the video game.
Chris - watch, and the new computer
Brittany - MP3 player and the new computer

We had so many pictures, that a slide show seemed the best way to share with everyone all the events of the day. We had fun at home and at my parents house.
Enjoy!

The Santa Card

Tonight I had to pull out the Santa Card. Otherwise know as if you don't stop (fill in the blank) I will need to call Santa and tell him you have not been good. Abby, trying the boundaries (again) tonight was in and out of bed several times. Then when Daddy got home she had to say goodnight to him. Then she wanted him to sit outside her door until she went to sleep. When I told her no that I would sit out there she started to cry. I told her that is she woke up her sister that she lost her sticker from staying in her bed last night. So she cried softer but still wouldn't stay in bed.

Then I pulled out the big guns and told her that if she didn't get in bed and stay in bed I was going to go and call Santa and tell him that she was not being obedient and that he didn't need to bring her as many toys. Well those were the magic words because she said, I will stay in my bed, please don't call Santa Clause. So there she stayed and there was no call made. Too bad I only can use that for 5 more days!

A lazy Sunday

We decided to get ready for Grandma, Grandpa and Theresa to come over by making some cookies. Abby is really good at helping (taste) the end product and any other time I turn my back. She gets to lick the beater when we are done, so she is getting better about waiting until everything is put in to start to eat at the dough.
When everyone got here, we had dinner and headed out for the fabulous Christmas lights...one problem, we never found them. Well as the story goes I had taken directions from our day care dad and well lets just say he got the street wrong. So anyway we had a nice drive and came back and had some cookies and watched the Shrek Christmas special (for the 20th) time. It is so funny, I recommend it if it comes on again.

Tori had some hair issues so I just couldn't resist throwing in this picture, and if you look real hard you can see the Rudolf the red nose reindeer clock behind her. The best thing about this clock is that every hour on the hour it plays the whole song, aren't you jealous you don't have one??

The Holiday Spirit

Every year I think oh I should do some of those cheesy things that people do at Christmas like put lights on my house, decorate a gingerbread house, walk though a Christmas store (just for example). So this year I decided that even if I do just a few of those things I will feel more into the whole spirit of Christmas. So today Abby and I decorated a gingerbread house. Now before you get really impressed at what a great job we did, I have to admit that I did buy the kit which had all of the necessary items in it, because with Chris working today I just didn't know how I would have time to bake all the pieces, and besides for the price, it had everything already in one place.
So I put it together with some help from my assistant, and Abby did all the decorating, minus those pieces that she just had to eat (which is half of the fun of doing a house to begin with). The first time we got it together she had half of the roof decorated when the whole thing feel apart, so more glue aka frosting was needed to secure it in place. I think she did pretty good for her first house.
So here are a few other pictures of decorating that I put up to get the house ready for Christmas. The stockings which my mother has bought each time we add a new member to the house. Abby chose who got which stocking holder.

The Christmas tree, not a great picture here, but it was day time, and they always look better at night. If you look really close you will see that there are no ornaments on the bottom 1/3 of the tree, a preventative measure with a one year old running around. I didn't put a lot of decorations on because it seems to entice the young children to the tree, maybe next year I can put some more stuff on. When people come over and say, oh what a pretty tree did you help your mom decorate, Abby's reply is "no, mommy did it all by herself". This sounds mean, but I am a firm believer in I get a tree for all my decorations and the kids should get their own tree with all their home made stuff on it. I can't get Chris to give on this, so until then I will decorate my own tree, just the way I like it.

I hope to have some presents under it soon, it does look so bare.
Some fun decorations that I have acquired over the years from family and friends.
Some more decorations, the snowmen were stocking holders, but they don't fit on the mantel, so I thought this was a good place for them.
I am really enjoying!! the holidays this year, I think something about having little ones really makes it fun. Abby keeps talking about Santa coming soon, I just can't wait!!

Ice cream

Tonight Abby got to go pick out her special ice cream for going to bed on her own for 5 nights. She chose a yummy strawberry with M&M's from cold stone. I think I am ready for the next step in Abby bed control.

Up, up and away

Tori's new favorite sport is climbing on everything. She is way too good at this and by doing so she makes her self even taller. She will open drawers and pull everything last thing out. I have to make sure that the breakables are put away.

Breakfast with Santa

I put together a breakfast with Santa today for the Primary Children (with help of course). We only expected to use 1/2 of the gym, but ended up using all of the gym, it was great. There were a lot of people and more kids. Here is a group shot! We guessed that there were about 140 people there in all, it was a lot of fun and went off very well, all the kids got to visit Santa and get pictures and the picture frames kept them ocupied while they waited.

Chris and Abby working photo frames for the picture with Santa.
Tori with Santa
Abby with Santa








Oh right, she wouldn't go near him, so there is no picture


Lavon joyfully cleaning up (our fearless primary president).

My favorit things

Some of my favorit things are pulling out clothes that Abby wore (not to long ago) and putting Tori in them.

Here is one of my favorit outfits we bought a couple of years ago. It is amazing to me how different the girls. Can you tell who is Abby and who is Tori??

That is right, the really happy one is Tori, she loves the outfit, can't you tell?

Day 3 of bed enforcement

Well the first night was awful and last night I still sat and waited for her to go to bed for an hour. Of course she had to get up several times for water, the bathroom, and just to get up. However when I threatened that she couldn't have soda with dinner tonight, she never moved again, I guess that is her hot spot! So we are on to day 3 and I am sure something is wrong, because once she was in bed she never moved again. I can only hope that this lasts beyond tonight, we shall see.

The power of 2

As I write this blog, I sit in the doorway of Abby's room, yes it is really late and yes I would love to go to bed, but we are currently having a battle of wills (her will against the rest of the family). So here I sit and hope that soon she will be off to sleep. One day I am sure I will look back and laugh at just how stubborn she was and how she was determined not to got to bed, but that day is a ways off.
It is amazing the amount of will that a 2 year old will have so as not to resort going to bed. She can think of 10 things to do once she is there and then to keep her in bed, of that is tough. I am not sure where we went wrong, she used to go to bed all on her own, but alas, no more.
Last night Chris finished with her, and tonight I did. Each night involved much crying and screaming, I can only hope that tomorrow night will go better.