Christmas 2009 - a layout

Photos - finally!

These first few pics are not Christmas ones, but they are soo cute! Brendan enjoys his bubbles!

Now for some Christmas photos:

Declan - excited about going to his Grammy's house on Christmas Eve:

The whole fam:

(Brian is a little bitter that he doesn't own a green or red sweater - must remedy that before next year)

Just the boys in front of our tree: (wearing the hats, of course)

A quite moment...

At Grammy's house - cuteness!

Gabby and Zack with the boyz:

Declan and I checking out a book:

Gabby holds Brendan - he walked up to her and said: "Lap"

Grammy's friend made the boys some adorable scarves and we tried to get a picture of them together wearing them:

Our effort to get a family shot in front of Grammy's tree:

Kathy and Marc: (his first Christmas with us!)

On Christmas morning, we tried our best to get a nice family shot before church, but we were pretty rushed!

And here is a happy happy Declan:

Christmas! (bits)

Just some Christmas tidbits before I forget them.

We spent a fabulous evening at Brian's mom's house last night. Christmas Eve with the traditional Tulley quiches, stuffed mushrooms and coffee cake. Every dish was made with either sour cream or bacon or BOTH! (Except for the fruit salad which I brought - instead of bacon, I made a nutty, crunchy topping for it with loads of butter and brown sugar - yum!)

Declan and Brendan had a great time opening presents reveling in the spotlight.

This morning, we opened presents, had OUR traditional Christmas breakfast of pancakes (blueberry) and sausages then hustled to get ready for mass. We go to the Cathedral downtown. It is a beautiful church and the ceremony is always lovely, but Brian likes it the most because it is soooo not-crowded. It's so uncrowded, that it's kind of sad. There were maybe a dozen cars in the parking lot. This is the CATHEDRAL of the archdiocese of Detroit. But it is in downtown Detroit, in a very bad neighborhood and the majority of parishioners go to the midnight mass, so 11am mass on Christmas day is very empty. We sat in the front row, despite being only two minutes early. (that is late for us!) Mass was lovely. Declan cried because they didn't take the children away for "Sunday School" like they did last year. But other than that, he was good. Brendan liked the echoing of the church so we spent a lot of time shushing him. And he in turn, spent a great deal of time telling everyone around us to "SIT!". He does not like when everyone is standing.

I got a new lens for my camera - hooray! And some camera books. Which leads me to my mistake of the day - I was fooling around with my camera and decided to "format" my CF card (not knowing what it did) and I discovered that what it does is delete all the photos on your card! AAUGH! All the pics from last night, this morning, GONE! So, my PC is trying to recover the photos with the help of a free download from CNET. Could take hours. I have to use my backup CF card at my grandma's house, which is a tiny card so I'm restricted to taking like 50 pictures - oh, the horror! :)

Oh, and a resolution in the making for 2010 - it involves exercise! I am finding that most of my clothes are too snug all of a sudden, so I need to start exercising again! Yikes!

Ok, now I need to wake up Brendan and get the gang over to my grandma's house for the Carlock celebration. Merry Christmas! Pictures to come!

A layout for Jenni!

My friend, Beth, has 6 daughters, that's right six! And her oldest, Jenni, just turned 29! This layout is for Jenni. According to her mother, she likes puzzles, Chuck Norris and the color purple (among other things). I hope you like this Jenni!!

I met Beth in the digital scrapping world and she is sincerely inspiring to me. We are currently doing The Artist's Way together, which is kind of miraculous for me. I think one of Beth's gifts is to help other people bloom and shine. She is a precious example of "leading by example". She is most certainly one of the people in my life that I try to emulate: her faith, her craftiness, her industriousness, her artistry, and of course, her parenting. Love you Bethy!

Attempt #3 to upload photos "easily" via new laptop

Scrap that idea. This is a post from Flickr and it took about 45 minutes, all told, what with first uploading to Flickr from Elements (that was the longest bit and I had hoped that that would replace my emailing directly to the blog since that is what my new laptop is struggling with and since emailing to the blog has also become impossible on my desktop for NO apparent reason). Back to the drawing board!
(oh and this is one of the papier mache heads from the Detroit Parade company warehouse. They have an "open house/fair" each year the weekend after Thanksgiving. Very cool)

November 1 - 12 th

Brendan in Brian's hat on the first day of November. I like this one b/c Brian took it (with the Elph, which I am not fond of) in the morning before I woke up. It was a fun little glimpse of their morning together.

This is what Brendan looks like when he is asked to say CHEESE:

It was an action figure day and Brendan had the pink Power Ranger:

Declan had GI Joe, although here he looks as though he is holding something quite foreign and unpleasant...

Brendan likes to get in boxes....

Down and UP:

This is not a great shot, but a great memory of Brendan's first time with PAINT! No finger paints for this guy, he jumped in with a brush with Declan and his watercolors!

Perhaps the mess is less distracting in Black and White?

Declan had his tongue out while painting, the concentration was immense:

More: (the room they were in is our NOOK - it is also my scrapbooking room)

Paint, paint, paint

Brian being sportsy with Brendan in the backyard - check out the tee - it went flying through the air:

Brendan retrieves the ball (which is more than our dogs will do)

This is great pic of the autumn trees/skyline as reflected in my neighbor's garden ball - I just love it!

Here are the photos that I want to share with you.

I sent these photos using Adobe(R) Photoshop(R) Elements 5.0. Find out more: http://www.adobe.com/photoshopelementswin

A month of pictures...

I'm that far behind. I will post...soon. Be careful what you wish for. A month of pictures is on the way...

Nothing but costumes...

Halloween is so much fun, and Brian and I have decided to embrace the children in our heart who love to dress up. We get in the spirit of things around here! And so do our boys! This was the year of costumes. Declan wore three different costumes to his various Halloween "events" and Brendan wore two different costumes this year. I also wore two different costumes.


Here we are on Halloween in our Star Wars finery. Declan as Little Anakin Skywalker from the Phantom Menace. I am dressed as Queen Amidala from Star Wars. Brian was Obi-Wan-Kenobi (the young one!) and Brendan was our sweet Yoda. This is what we wore trick -or- treating and to pass out candy. Declan was FAR more interested in coming home to pass out candy so we only went up and down one block - which was more than enough for everyone involved (except Brian, who also embraces his inner child when it comes to collecting and eating candy).

For Declan's pre-school party, he decided to wear his Buzz Lightyear costume. He looked so cute.

These outdoor pics were taken on the way to school. Brendan LOVES costumes and thought that Declan looked pretty cool.

Here are my two boys on the steps to Declan's school - waiting. We were sooo early that day!

And here is the whole class - man, pre-school kids are so cute in costumes!

And Brendan wore this cute frog costume to Kindermusik and then outside to play in the mud. Thankfully, the thing is machine washable and all the mud came right out!

Declan wore his Anakin costume again when he went trick-or-treating with Brian to our little downtown event on the Sunday before Halloween. All the retail stores pass out candy and treats and it was CRAZY crowded!

Brian dressed up for that event too (sort of):

And on the Saturday before Halloween, we went to my father-in-law's condo party and won "first prize" for our Family Costume. We were all fairy-tale figures (sort-of). Declan was Peter Pan. Brendan was a frog (he needs to be kissed to turn back to a prince) and I was a witch (with green face paint, no less). Brian wore his Obi Wan Kenobi costume again, but everyone thought he was Robin Hood.

Brendan LOVED his frog costume, especially the FEET...

And here are the boys, just playing dress-up the week before Halloween: