Christmas Parties

Because I'll need to look back next year to remember what I gave teachers this year....

Auxiliary teacher or administration gifts. I had a harder time finding cute dish towels this year to monogram.

Hollon's teacher just had her first grandchild, so we made her a little grandmother's diaper bag and filled it with baby items to keep at her house.

Bag for Jake's teacher

The morning of Hollon's Tu-Th class party. She had a humongous meltdown because I had the audacity to put a bow in her hair.  

Snack time at the party

Hollon & her bestie 1 Christopher

In the Tu-Th class, there are 2 sets of twins. The teacher jokes that she feels like there are actually 3 sets because Hollon & Christopher act like a set of twins.

Decorating the cake for Jesus's birthday party

On Friday, she had her M-W-F class party

Decorating an ornament 

And this is bestie 2, Jack

I was not able to go to Jake's class party, but one of my friends is room mom, so she took pictures for me

On then, I had our girl's dinner with some girls from our neighborhood

Christmas Card Pictures aka Death To Me

Every year I say I'm going to have someone take the kids pictures for our Christmas card. And then I procrastinate and can never find one to do it in time. I actually ended up loving several of the pictures we took last year, so I hoped that maybe the kids had turned a corner and my photography skills had gotten better and we could save the money and just take ourselves.

Wrong.

The kids cooperating is half the problem, but then my skills are just as much of the problem. The kids faces have a horrible glare on them, I had them looking directly into the sun half the time, because I'm taking the picture, I can't fix an untucked shirt or slouchy bottoms. Out of 200 photos, most were unusable, several were meh and a few were just okay. But I wasn't about to try again, so we just went with it.

There is always someone looking in the wrong direction

Or closing their eyes or freezing people with their ice powers

I thought about using this one, but didn't

This is actually my favorite out of the bunch. I wished I had used it for the front of the card, but instead it was just one of the smaller pictures on back.

Andddddddd, back to hand gestures

I wish I was standing at a different angle. I love these of Hollon, but Jake looks like he has no neck

It always makes for a good picture when you have your children facing the sun and one is kicking the other

I mean, look at that awesome photography skill

I ended up using this one on the front of the card

And we have approximately 157 pictures that of Hollon doing the following....