Stupid Faces at Thanksgiving

We were invited to Thanksgiving Lunch, and uh, apparently Mater was too. 

We had delicious food, beautiful people, and a backdrop ready for a photo-shoot!

This is my beautiful mom.

And below are my grandmother & aunts!

The goofiness came out in all of them once they chose their props!

My husband, who seldom makes it on the blog--but there he is!

He wasn't mad, I promise :D

My sister Caren with her nephews--she luvs them!

And my other beautiful sister, Dawna.

Yeah, we had a fun-filled Thanksgiving lunch. 

Now ONTO Christmas!

PS. The rest of the pictures (because there are many more) can be found here: 

It's Christmas tree time!

I don't know about you all, but I'm pretty happy when it comes to putting up our Christmas tree.

My mother always seemed to hate it, but mostly because it meant digging through her closet to find all the tubs filled with Christmas crap. Unpacking. Repacking.

I love it though. I love the lights, the sparkle, the Christmas music, the non-existent {snow}, the cold, the hot chocolate, the eggnog, the family, I love the whole nine yards of Christmas!

Our little skinny tree. It's a fake, we don't do real. :) We are still happy.  

The boys tried to help me decorate the tree, but us moms know how that goes. 

Now I get why mom would always rearrange the tree after we 'helped' when we were little. 

This year however, Jonah is big enough to move, and grab, and destroy as he pleases.

I read somewhere spray bottles were good for keeping babies away from Christmas trees, or was that cats?

Regardless, he's already done his fair share of damage to the ornaments and I don't expect it to stop. 

This year we had beautiful cupcakes, spray-painted red pine cones from my MIL's yard, and beautiful handmade mailed owls from my bestie!

Aren't they freaking cute?! I'm planning on keeping these guys hanging around all year long, too! 

 Andrew decided that his cupcakes were most awesome at the bottom of the tree and just didn't care too much afterwards for anything 'tree'.

 So he took constant breaks...hmm, almost sounds like a Witty whose name is Gary...

 Jonah just couldn't contain himself. He didn't know what these prickly branches were or why their green stuff kept getting stuck to his sticky fingers. He didn't know what the ornaments were except that they were in the shape of a ball, but what was all that glittery sh*t all over his hands?!

No one could explain it to him, so he just did his own research. 

Oh and forget trying to get your boys to hold still while they're hungry and are literally crying at my feet because they're half-starved...

 So I pacified the situation with some corndogs--instantly.

 And now my ornaments have smudges on them.

Remember how I have a little photographer? Yeah, you remember from this post?

Yeah! Andrew, no, not Gary...he doesn't do cameras.

Anyways, below are the pictures my budding photographer took. 

 And he managed to get proof that I WAS doing all the work!

My little hams. 

...oh, and this year, I totes made this....

Not bad for a $10 DIY wreath, huh? 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS~MERRY CHRISTMAS~FELIZ NAVIDAD

cheap, crappy Christmas books

This entire 2011 year has been nothing short of interesting. Nobody told me how fun kids were, specially when they're your own and they come up with all sorts of pendejaditas....

It's entertaining most of all. You ask yourself where on earth your child got that from or compare which side of the family he inherited it from. This series of 'Andrew's Favorites' is really so that you all can get a glimpse at what a nut my child is. 

So, this is what I bring to you all this week: these horrible, atrocious & cheap books that are specially for Christmas. Only he doesn't just like them at Christmas time. He likes them during Easter, Summer break, and Halloween. 

I guess there's something about Christmas, huh?

Christmas Tree Are Special!, Santa's Workshop, & It's Christmas Morning make the set.

Luckily, it takes about 1 minute to read each one, so we go through them quite quickly. The thing that pains us while reading them are the images. The images of the people with misshapen heads, the horrible shadowing & photoshopping, and well, it's just plain horrible.

But Andrew seems to love them. I don't know why.

And as you can see, they've been loved. A lot.
Here are the things that make me cringe every time we open them up...

Maybe I'm being super critical, I guess it's the artist in me. But holy gee, if this guy can draw this and get published, what's stopping me from illustrating a book!?

ps. Books writte by Nancy Parent and illustrated by Adam Devaney. 

Links to other books by the author: 

Santa's Worshop

It's Christmas Morning!

Christmas Trees are Special

Day at the Zoo

Abilene Downtown Parade 2011

I apologize for not blogging more. I have a million pictures to share but with these holidays around the corner, I've put the blog on the back burner for a while. 

But I wanted to share these pictures of the City Lights Parade here in town. 

We went last year when Jonah was a little one, if you want to check out how much he's grown, click here

 First up was Santa!!! We were lucky that it wasn't as cold as last year, but even so, I made sure we were all bundled up.

My three guys---all so handsome!!! 

 And just like last year, we saw pretty much the same floats and same businesses :)

 While we were watching the parade, Andrew would not sit still. He's usually a wiggle worm but he just didn't seem interested in the whole light show. I didn't realize he was just tired from not taking a nap during the day.

We saw high school marching bands

 And boats & outdoor sculptures

 Candy canes & segways & balloons

 Andrew fights me with taking his picture these days. I'm not sure what brought that on, but he does not cooperate on his own. He says, "no picture!" and turns away. On top of being sleepy, he was just being a toot that evening. I decided Jonah was cooler so I hung out with him instead. 

You guys won't believe this, but guess who had the best show of the entire parade??

THE MEXICANS!!!

With their "Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano y Felicidad" song, their amazing sound system, donkeys with Santa beards, mules who walk sideways, gorgeous horses, and the traditional vaqueros--I loved them the best!!!

The parade finished and we made our way back to our car. The boys had fun playing by the T&P Depot railings that run next to the train tracks...

Jonah kept throwing himself off onto Daddy! He's a total daredevil!

 We had seen a Chik-fil-A float and we realized we needed to eat there tonight. Now that's good advertising. We went there even when he was like this:

I've got tons more pictures to put up! Hope you all bear with me!!!