Christmas for me isn't just a holiday, it's a SEASON! I LOVE just about everything about Christmas and sometimes it seems like there's not enough time to do everything!

A few more fun things we did this Christmas was ...

Going to a Christmas Parade with a friend of mine. I took Lil Miss and Sk8er Boy & met up with her and her 4 kids. She's one of a handful of people that I know who can sympathize with having 4 kids to take care of. I miss her ...

Lil Miss had the BEST time! They loved the lights and all the cars, the sights and sounds of Christmas :D

My oldest Tween joined the Choir this year in school! She is LOVING it! I love that she loves being involved in school stuff. We got to attend a Christmas concert to hear her and a *few* other kids sing a bunch of songs I've never heard before :D She's the one in the white shirt ... LOL

Another fun thing we found this year was Christmas Tree Lane! It'sa bit of a drive from home, but was MORE than worth it!

It's a square of 4 streets, 4 blocks, with EVERY.SINGLE.HOUSE lit up to the HILT! It was just amazing! There were some houses with those musical lights and the most elaborate light shows set to the music!

We went and got coffee & some cute little gingerbread cookies first, parked the car, and got the kids all bundled up. We took a nice long stroll and really enjoyed it! It was so much fun, I'm sure this will be a yearly tradition :D

Have I ever mentioned that I hate Blogger and its Nazi photo crap? Well I do. It keeps screwin up when I try to add more than 5 photos ... and I'm a picture WHORE ... so that poses a problem for me.

Thus ... my HELLA posts ...

So you might remember my mockery of the Bass Pro Shops ... well I hate to admit it, but we've been back at LEAST 4 times LOL.

Mostly because of this ...

Santa's Wonderland! It was SOOOO freakin cute! This place is ALL about detail!

Even their Santa looked REAL!

The pics came out SO cute. There was no line and as soon as Lil Miss saw Santa she RAN up to him, HUGGED HIM, jumped up on his lap and smiled like a champ! It was SO cute!

And did I mention ... FREE?! You get one {or 2 ;-p} 4x6 photos printed out out right there within 30 seconds!

The place was so cute and the kids had SUCH an awesome time! As did Dad ;-)

Then there were RC trucks to play with ...

A place to color a picture and write a letter to Santa ... "Hmmmm should I ask for world domination ... or a barbie?" LOL

They a place to shoot dart guns and another spot to shoot laser tag gun things ...

They even had a little spot set up in front of a TV with tiny bear skin rugs, tiny camping chairs, and a tiny tent, set up to watch A Christmas Story!

It was SO much fun, the place was just super cute and yeah ... we went back a few more times ;-)

The week before Thanksgiving we had an appointment to get our family pictures taken. This was a MOMENTOUS (sp?) occassion, let me tell you, because this was the first time I had stepped foot in a professional photo studio in SEVEN YEARS.

I know, I know ... BAD MOMMA! I admit it's aweful. Princess has not had professional pictures taken of her until her preschool pictures. Lil Miss hasn't EVER! I KNOW! BAD! Things were just not in a good place when Princess was born/little, same with Lil Miss and at that point there were 4 kids including a VERY tempermental baby, so it just didn't happen.

Well, DH actually brought it up and said he wanted us to get family pictures done this year. I decided it was time to just bite the bullet and DO IT. So we did ... the outcome was AWESOME ...

I.LOVE.THIS.PICTURE ... each kids looks awesome in this picture. The color is good, background is cute, I just LOVE it!

This one came out ... ok ;-) I wasn't in LOVE with it, but most of us looked good so I sent it out with our Christmas cards :D

We decided to get some alone shots of Lil Miss since she's never had any done and OMG she looked so CUTE that day! This picture is just ADORABLE! I just couldn't believe how great it came out!

We also got some more traditional photos with a neutral background. This one is cute, not AS cute, but cute. I didn't really care much for the family shot, I think a brown background would be better, next time!

Now this picture ... well it's just ... HER. THIS IS SO HER! They have captured her attitude COMPLETELY LOL

The session was long and DRAINING and EXPENSIVE, but we made it through and I think the next time we get pics taken will be 10x better ... I'm actually looking forward to it! :D

As a reward for a safety patrol job well done, Tween received two free tickets to a local hockey game! So I told her it was MY turn to take her since her dad has had the chance several times.

I've always liked hockey, and I usually like my kids, so I figured this would be a GREAT time all around! So I picked them up from him early Sunday the 18th and we headed to the game!

We got settled into our seats ... pretty good seats for free! ... and got ready for the game. It was so fun to be with my girls, just the 3 of us. I miss that sometimes when it's hard to pay real attention to them with the little one around.

We ordered up a few snacks and shared of course :)

And of course! took pics with moms!

And the viking ... lol

It was fun, we had a great time together :)

So I was thinking I would run though a few posts today and get some pics up and stories out. I'm HOPING to get caught up QUICK while I have the time so I don't get frustrated and just give up all together.

So the weekend after Thanksgiving is usually when Christmas offically begins for us :D We set out in search of fun and a nice fresh wreath, but ended up finding an AWESOME fruit market and park!

We had a few snacks inside and then found this cute little pond and playground out back! The kids had a GREAT time...

And we took a few SUPER cute pictures, taking advantage of the beautiful DECEMBER weather!

It was such a cute place...

REALLY pretty place for pics...

They're closed now for the winter ... UNTIL APRIL! I can't WAIT til they open up again, it was so much fun!

So the last time I posted was about my lovely Black Friday experience, but as I just noticed ... I didn't even talk about Thanksgiving! And since I am a SLIGHT bit OCD lol ... I will probably just end up going back and posting stories and pictures from WAAAAY back when. Lucky you guys ;-)

Ok, so I just went back and realized I haven't REALLY posted since like Nov. 17th! There has been SOOOO much going ON! I blogged about how I had so much coming up like my anniversary, going out of town, professional pics, Thanksgiving & Black friday. And all THAT was beFORE December! Wow, were do I even begin...

I guess I will begin back on Nov. 20th - our 3rd anniversary!

My friend watched Lil Miss and we got outta this house and celebrated the day we 'sealed the deal' by going out for dinner :D It was a lovely little italian restaurant and we requested a table in the back so we could be alone. We got a GREAT bottle of wine and sat for a couple of WONDERFUL kid-FREE hours

It was LOVELY :D

Then a few days later, the week of Thanksgiving actually, we got the chance to get away for 24 WHOLE KID-LESS HOURS!

Now, on the way out of town ... we ran into this ... and for those you who DON'T know ... I am a HUGE LOST fanatic :D

HUGE ... lol - this is a sign in a little town that usually has the town's events ... but today it had ... THE NUMBERS ... DUH DUH DUUUUUUUH! I know ... it freaked me out too ;-)

But then it was on to Murphys! It's this great little town up the mountains that is basically just a main street with shops, restaurants & WINERIES = me :DDDDD lol

Our hotel room was at this little inn RIGHT on the main street, it was SO pretty and relatively inexpensive! There was a down comforter so warm that we could leave the door to the porch open all night and listen to the rain ... it was SOOOO romantical :D

We got there pretty early, so after checking in we went out for lunch at a cute little pizza place.

Then it was time for wine tasting! This cute little place is underground and sooo cute, has great wine too.

OMG we just had the best time, so relaxing.

We wandered around and shopped and found all kinds of cool stuff.

We went into a cute little tea shoppe where I found a tea set and DH found an old tool ... or something ... I guess I missed the intriguing part but he was very excited ;-)

We ... ahem ... continued wine tasting ... and got a little tipsy ;-) so we took a break {since the wineries close at 5} and went back to our hotel.

Later, we went out and had a great dinner with a table by the fire place listening to some live music.

Our Inn looked so pretty in the fog :D

The next morning we got up early and found another beautiful morning :D To me, this was pretty. The air was crisp and just a little misty ... I don't know what it is about this time of year, but I just LOVE this weather

We enjoyed a lovely breakfast a cute little 'local' type place since we were up before the Inn's breakfast lol. Then we headed home and started getting ready for Thanksgiving the next day. It was SO NICE to get away, even if it was only for a day. We enjoy each other so much, and it can be easy to loose sight of that in the day to day hustle and bustle. That's why it's so important to make time for COUPLE time, IMO.

So there's my first 2009 post ... a fraction of what I still have left to post about from 2008! LOL