The Check's Mix

Merry Christmas

Nothing says Christmas like hanging out at the beach in last year's (too small) Christmas jammies!

Or playing Christmas Eve baseball with friends

Or a tiny Christmas tree in a room with two-story ceilings (because 1. I think the little trees are so cute, 2. We like the cost of the tiny trees better than the cost of the big trees and 3. We like less drama anyway we can get it because our children come with enough drama for the season)

Or Christmas morning retelling of the nativity story with the porcelain nativity set that is missing Joseph and two wise men (because like I said, it is porcelain and it lives in a house with children)

Or like sitting on Santa's lap at the Ward Christmas party

Or like finally getting to open presents Christmas morning!!!

Merry Christmas to all!

Thanksgiving

And before we had Christmas, we had a fantastically fun Thanksgiving!

We had some friends over and everything seemed to work out to make it a perfect day. Don't we have lovely friends?

We always joke that the weather in Santa Barbara is included in your mortgage payment.

As such we tend to use our backyard like a living room, dining room or basement depending on our needs. It was a lovely dining room for Thanksgiving this year.

Andrew's favorite part about eating outside is the easy clean up. You dumped your plate? No problem, the birds will eat it. Spilled your water? Awesome, thanks for watering our grass for us! It is the perfect place for a kids table!

Everyone brought different parts of the meal so the meal prep was relaxing and fun. As Amelia would say, it was "easy peasy lemon squeezy." Not to mention that the food everyone brought was so delicious that I am still dreaming about it. Yum!

And then the day got really awesome when we turned movies on for the kids. At one point we had movies on 3 different screens going all at once. All the kids were happy...and most enjoyably QUIET! So the adults sat outside on the patio and played games into the night. It was so much fun. It made me wish that every day could be Thanksgiving day.

As usual, Ellie was a total trouble maker during the whole event.

And awesome Uncle Joe came too which always makes us so, so, so happy.

Birthday Party
And in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had my birthday complete with fresh pear and cardamom cake with cardamom buttercream frosting. Yum. I saw this recipe in a magazine a while back and knew that was the cake I wanted for my birthday. Happy 34th to me!

Family Pictures
Also this season, we took family pictures for Christmas cards, but I never got around to making Christmas cards out of them...maybe next year?

Love being a family of 5!

Taking family pictures stresses me out. It is so hard to figure out what everyone is going to wear so we don't look too crazy (which is how my kids usually dress themselves - mismatching all sorts of combinations of hand-me-downs). And maybe that is how I should let us dress for family photos because it would show reality, but it would make us cringe too much in the years to come. So, I prefer to fib to our future selves and pretend we look put-together, but that takes extreme effort.

Add to that the stress of having to coordinate with a photographer and plan for the time of day that will be good for lighting but also good for a baby's unpredictable nap schedule and a husband's demanding work schedule. Then you have to get everyone ready early enough to be on time, but not too early because they will smear peanut butter all over their clothes and get honey in their hair if given too much time.

And then, to top it all off, you know that when you tell the kids (and the husband, ahem) to smile for the camera they will act as if you just forced them take nasty cough medicine and sit on a tack!

BUT, I love having updated family photos and we needed to have one with sweet Ellie in it, so a couple of weeks ago I braved the drama. I also made some modifications that helped significantly. First, I did not schedule with a photographer and I just set up the tripod in our backyard. I love professional photos and these would have undoubtedly been better if we had a professional, but they are good enough for documenting our family at this stage of life and I am happy. Second, I bribed the kids (and the husband) with marshmallows. These pictures could have the caption: Will smile for marshmallows. Regardless, I'm so happy to have these faces documented.

These two are such good friends. I am so glad they have each other to play with all day every day.

And they are so glad they have a sweet baby sister to smother with love and adoration. I love these three kids!

Unfortunately the happiest baby in the world wasn't super happy during the photo session. Maybe she was just mad she wasn't old enough for marshmallows. But you can still see how cute she is even in her distress :)

Inhaling this sweet baby. I can't get enough.

I feel like these pictures should go under the pinterest "nailed it" category.

"Give each other a kiss"

"Okay, okay, stop smashing each others faces now!"

And this with Ellie looking mad about the kiss

And this one where she thought I said "Eat your brother" instead of "look sweetly up at the camera now baby girl."

Bonus Pictures

William loves to sit out front and watch the garbage trucks come and the yard maintenance guys with the mowers and blowers. I like to stand on the porch and watch him watch them. I think he's the cutest thing in the world.

I put Ellie in the stroller for the first time and she loved it. I usually just put her in the Ergo carrier, but thought I'd try the stroller out. I think she really loved the new perspective. She was so happy the whole time. She really is the best baby.

I love our Natural History Museum's backyard. The kids and I have spent many beautiful hours there. The kids love making a teepee out of bamboo and bringing pots and pans filled with mud pies and stone soups from the stream to eat inside. Nature makes us happy.