Edited to add: another picture :)

Since Chloe's birthday falls on Christmas, we've decided we will most likely celebrate her birthday in January each year. We will have a birthday cake for her on Christmas, but her parties will be held later. For this year's birthday party, because she is such a big fan of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, were gonna have a Mickey party for her. I tried taking some pictures of her today for her birthday invites, I put Taylor's mickey mouse ears on her and we took a few shots...

:)

It's been 2 years since Chloe blessed us with her presence on Christmas morning :) Happy Birthday baby girl!

So guess who went out and purchased a ton of greeting cards and still hasn't mailed them to family and friends? Well that would be me :) I don't know why, I'm just being lazy, I don't feel like addressing the envelopes! I'm thinking of mailing them out this week. I know it'll be after Christmas but the card does say "Happy Holidays" and I consider the 'holidays' to include New Year's, so technically they wouldn't really be late! But, just in case they never reach their destination....

Happy Holidays from the Westons :)

It's the final day of Christmas spirit week. It's Christmas tree day. Not really sure what the kids were suppose to do for this, but the closest we came to it were these socks :) Yes I took a picture of Tay's socks, I am dork!

Well today was "Reindeer Day". The kids didn't have anything reindeer related to wear, so I thought I'd share this picture of santa with his reindeer instead :) I took this picture last weekend when me and the family went to the "festival of lights" in downtown battle creek. We had a really nice walk; the weather was great. The lights were really pretty!

More of spirit week...

Here's Tay on red/green day; Not alot of green going on, but plenty of red (including the hair) :)

"Christmas Spirit Week" continues :)

Today was "Pajama Day" I bought these jammies for Tay at Kohl's. When I first saw them, I thought they would be a perfect Christmas gift for her since she is a major "High School Musical" fan :) They were suppose to be what she opened up on Christmas eve (we always open pj's the night before Christmas) anyway, with pajama day coming up at school, I went ahead and gave them to her early. She absolutely loves them!

This is "Christmas Spirit Week" at Taylor and Caleb's school. They have something fun for the kids to wear each day this week. I loved having spirit week when I was in school, it took the otherwise "boring just another school day" and livened it up and made school fun :)

Today is "Santa Hat Day"

Holiday Tag...

in other words, more than you ever wanted to know about me and Christmas!

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot Chocolate with tons of minature marshmallows :) I must admit though that I've never had egg nog, just sounds gross!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? We don't really do the santa thing!

3. Colored lights on tree or white? We actually have both on the tree. I would have never thought to have both before but we have a pre-lit tree that came with color and white lights and I really like it!

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No, we don't need mistletoe to play kissy-face :)

5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually Thanksgiving weekend. This year though we were a week late!

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? My mom's turkey dinner with all the trimmings. I love her homemade bread and stuffing... yummy!

7. Favorite Holiday Memory as a child? My mind immediately came to the year when we had a Charlie Brown tree :) We were kinda late in getting a tree so we ended up with a tiny tree, seriously I was as tall as this poor tree! That was the last year we had a real tree :) That is not necessarily my favorite memory but it's the one that came to mind first! That and the year I got a cabbage patch doll, mom had to fight for that you know! :)

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? you mean he's not real?

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yes, we do open one gift Christmas eve, it's always a pair of pajamas. Gotta look nice for Christmas morning pictures!

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? We let the kids decorate it, then later mom goes back and "fixes" it :) shh... don't tell them.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Before Christmas - love it, I love a white Christmas but after the new year? dread it!

12. Can you ice skate? never tried before. My dream though is to ice skate at the rockefeller center in NYC!

13. Do you remember your favorite Christmas gift? Chloe, 2 years ago this Christmas :)

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Celebrating it for the right reason.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Fruitcake :) no seriously, I look forward to Aunt Patty's pumpkin roll and all the yummy chocolate stuff my mom bakes.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Watching "It's a Wonderful Life".

17. What tops your tree? A snowman shaped like a star.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Well I have to say giving or I'll look like the grinch.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Mary did you know?!

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? I like the peppermint candy canes, yuck to the other flavored ones!

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E :)

The MICKEY MOUSE CLUBHOUSE is the new favorite in this house. Well it's Chloe's new favorite :) Here she is with her very own mickey movie. It's her first dvd. She wants it on all day long, if we aren't already watching it, she begs to watch "house". Apparently Chloe isn't the only one watching the clubhouse, the toys for it are very hard to come by this Christmas. It's like the new tickle-me elmo :) I'm hoping that after the holidays, the stores will get some new shipments and I can get her some stuff for her birthday!

P.S. this is her "cheese" face, isn't it the cutest?!

Robby and Katie :)

Happy Birthday Vic :)

Today is Victory's birthday, the big 2-1!

Here we are last weekend. We had a SURPRISE birthday dinner for Victory at Olive Garden. Kelly was the decoy, her and Vic were meeting for a girls night but when they arrived at the restaurant, Becca, Sue, Jennifer and I were there waiting. Vic was so surprised, it was fun being so sneaky :)

I hope you are having a lovely day Victory!

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree how lovely are thy branches...

We got our Christmas tree put up over the weekend. It is so easy putting up now that we have a pre-lit tree that comes in a total of 3 pieces. I don't miss the days of sorting all the branches by size and by that little color at the tip, the color that was mostly missing anyways. And Lenny certainly doesn't miss the days of putting the lights on. I always made him do that part, I hated it. Especially since most of the lights were all tangled together and just thrown in the box :) So now it takes us a total of about 15 minutes to put the tree together! We let the kids put all the ornaments on. They were mostly on the bottom of the tree and all clustered together :) I did move some around a little after the kids were done and when they weren't looking!

I love it when the house is all dark except for the glow of the Christmas tree, it's so purty :)

Christmas Pictures

Trying to take Christmas pictures of these kids is like trying to pull teeth. No fun :) Chloe was not interested in sitting down whatsoever, Caleb was busy giving me his FAKE smile and Taylor was whining the whole time about her sweater being too hot. After the shoot was over, I pretty much declared there will be no Christmas cards this year :) But after looking through the pictures and Jennifer working some of her "magic" I now have a pretty decent picture that I will be using. You will have to wait until you get your card in the mail though to see it :)

Happy Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving Traditions :)

• Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
• Eating tons of turkey and the trimmings
• Laying around moaning about said turkey and trimmings
• Watching the Lions lose again
• Pouring over the black friday sale papers figuring out what we are gonna buy the next morning at 5 a.m.
• Still moaning about how full we are
• Playing the 80's game with Tina and Bob
• Tina and I getting beat buy the guys again
• Being thankful :)
  

Anyone out there?

Anyone out there?? I've seriously been slacking on this blog! Sorry =) I don't have any new pictures to post but I got Chloe on video today. I finally figured out the whole you tube thing, so look out there will most likely be losts of videos posted!

A conversation with Chloe =)



Why is there so much white space around this video?! It's totally bugging me.

Snowfall

Got snow? We do! We woke up to several inches of snow on the ground. The kids were excited. Caleb had his first taste of it this season and Taylor wants more so she can make some good use of her snow pants. I took these pictures of Chloe this morning. She wasn't sure what to think of this white stuff, this will be the first year she'll get the chance to play in it. It's so weird to have snow on the ground with leaves still on the trees! Ahh, the joys of living in Michigan!

Third Day

This is the awesome view we had last night at the Third Day concert! Ok, we weren't really this close, I did have to use the zoom on my camera :) But we had super great seats, we were in the fifth row center. Plus, there was an empty seat in front of us which made for an even better view. Tina took me to the concert as a birthday gift, wasn't that nice?! It was our 4th year seeing them and they rock every time we go! I will never tire of seeing them in concert :) Thanks Tina for the great night!

P.S. What's up with this snow?!

Chloe

A recent picture of Chloe :)
She is quickly approaching 2 years old, how is that possible?! She's grown so much. Her hair is getting longer finally, I can almost get it in a pony :) It's still quite curly in the back, not sure if it'll stay that way or not. Taylor had the same curls when she was little and there's no sign of them now. Her vocabulary has just exploded the last couple of weeks. She is surprising us every day with new words. One of my favorite Chloe words is "pips" that's what she calls pigs :) She gets to see pips just about every day when papa takes her to the farm. She loves the animals out there.

You know before we had Chloe, Lenny and I weren't even planning on having another, we thought it would just be the four of us. Then one day we found out we were expecting a sweet surprise. I'm so glad that God had other plans for our life and that he gave her to us. We are so blessed :)

The crochet queen :)

Here's Taylor sporting her new scarf. She crocheted it herself! My mom taught her how about a month ago and she's been working that needle ever since. Didn't she do an awesome job?! She's already made her papa one, it's green and white (our school colors) and is currently making me one to match my winter coat. Lenny says we should run our own sweatshop and make some money :)

My little artist

How adorable is this? This is one of the first drawings Caleb has brought home this year from school. It's of him and his friends. I love little kid drawings, they look so great on the fridge. First grade is going well so far. He had his first real test last week. It was a spelling test. We practiced the words all week, but he just wouldn't focus! He knows the letters and the sounds if he pays attention (which he had a hard time doing) so I was pretty nervous about how he'd do on the actual test. I was very happy to find out that he only missed one, he got 9 out of 10 right! So maybe he was paying attention after all :)

Haircut

Tay got a haircut today. Not really a new style, just a shorter version of what she had. I've been trying to talk her into getting "bangs" or at least styling her hair with the part on the side but she refuses to do either one. She wants her hair her own way. Just another example of her growing independence!

Sing unto the Lord :)

Here's little miss Chloe in front of the tv. She is watching her bible songs dvd. She loves her songs :) We have this little ritual at church now that at the beginning of every service all the little kids come up and sing several songs, Chloe LOVES doing this! It's so cute because she'll do all the little actions that go with songs, adorable :) Sometimes she even cries when they are done and she has to go sit down, she always begs "More, More!" Her favorite song is a toss up between "Father Abraham" and "Lord's Army" When we drove down to St. Louis she was quite good in the car until we were just about an hour away from the hotel she wanted to get out of her car seat and she started to get cranky. So we started singing these songs from church and that cheered her up right away. When we would stop singing she would yell, so we'd start singing again. Well we ran out of bible songs, so we started singing other children's songs and she would cry "NO!" She only wanted to sing the bible songs :) There actually came a point that she only wanted to hear "Father Abraham" and wasn't happy otherwise! We were soooo ready to get to the hotel after singing that song over and over, so when we came home I decided to get her a bible songs cd for the van in case we needed it in the future :)

Singing in the rain...

Taylor and I went to see RAVEN in concert this past weekend at the Allegan fair. It was a rainy day but thankfully the heavy rain came before and after the concert, it only sprinkled during. Since the concert was at the fairgrounds we were able to enjoy elephant ears, french fries, and slushies while we were there :) The only thing we didn't enjoy was the view! We actually had good seats, we were track center row X, so it was only just over 20 rows back. Well most of the young kids starting standing on their chairs for a better view which was understandable, but then the ladies in front of me stood on theirs as well. Grown women standing on their chairs for a better view, c'mon! So for most of the concert instead of seeing RAVEN, we saw the backside of the lady in front of me. Seriously, her butt was perfectly even with my face, it was ridiculous! Toward the end of the concert, we moved up to the bleachers that were empty in the back, from there we were able to see the entire stage but it was FAR away. Taylor has been watching RAVEN on disney for a really long time, so it was great to be able to take her to this concert. I'm thankful she had a great time despite the view :)

Class is in session :)

Summer is officially over, it's the first day of school!

The Eberle's

Thursday I had the pleasure of shooting some photos for my work buddy Tammy. She wanted a picture of her 3 children on the beach together. Aren't they gorgeous?! It was lots of fun and these girls were crazy! By the way, the last 3 poses were their "ganster" poses :)

Take me out to the ball game...

Lenny and I went this week to see the Tigers and the White Sox. Here we are in our "fan gear" :) We went to tigers stadium in Detroit. I was one of about 10 people wearing a white sox shirt, the rest were tigers fans of course! (including my husband) It was kinda hard being one of the few sox fans there, we were definitely the minority. It would have helped if my team would have won! They did go on to beat the tigers the next two games, I just wish they would've won the game I was at :)

Go Sox!

Happy Birthday!

Birthday blessings going out to my good friend Jennifer! I hope you have a wonderful day!

Love ya girl :)

Shop til you drop

Back to school shopping. I love it. The paper, pencils, folders, crayons, lunch boxes, backpacks. I get all giddy when I see the rows and rows of school supplies at the store. I love it. I remember when I was younger, I would get excited buying all my school supplies, picking that favorite outfit for the first day of school, but about a month into the new school year that excitement would always fade away quickly :) Here's Taylor when we were back to school shopping this week. We had fun, we did have some battles though. Just about everything I picked out she didn't like and everything she picked out I didn't like :) So we made some compromises and she got some nice stuff.

Back to school shopping, you gotta love it!

Robby

This is my nephew Robby.

Don't ya love his curls? He's the only one that got our family's natural curl. And boy did he get it, way curlier than mine or his momma's.

He's growing up way too fast. He's 6ft tall, a sophomore in high school, he's getting his drivers license in a few months, ahhh.. where does the time go?

Warning: Picture overload ahead!

We took a trip to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village last weekend. What a cool place! I was really impressed, way better than I had anticipated :) We spent so much time at the museum that we missed out on alot at Greenfield Village; by the time we arrived there most of the exhibits were closed. We'd like to go back soon so we can visit it all!