Saturday, February 9, 2013

Photo Shoot

So I took some pictures of my kiddos for our annual Valentine I send out. If you are reading this (does anyone?), you most likely get one in the mail and will be seeing three of my favorites soon. Yes, I know the image on the card (of the two of them together) is stretched. I was just too lazy to fix it. Oh well. It looks great here (see directly below) and will hopefully print great for my wall.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the way these all turned out. Some are blurrier than others and, as always, I've posted waaaaaayyy too many... but the kids were having fun and their little faces are priceless in some of these. 
I swear, when I'm not being a terrible mother, I have awesome kids.
Here's the proof:



















































Thursday, February 7, 2013

Preschool weeks P & Q

I had two weeks of preschool thanks to my awesome friends I do this with... so that I wouldn't have to worry about March when baby boy comes along. 
But, thanks to a couple rounds of sickness, I had to cancel. Twice. I still feel terrible about it, but there it is. What do you do?
Anyway, We had one day of P and one of  Q. My friend, Angi hosted a pizza party and did hte penguin craft I had planned and this week I got to go the "questionnaires" with the kids at Becky's to finish up what I had started. 
These same friends also came through for me and brought me dinner when I was sick. How lucky am I??? I know.

Cute kids... Sarah, Ashleigh, Molly, Hartley, Lily, Jake, and Ty.
All holding their "quills".

Molly.

Ashleigh.

Hartley.

Jake.

Lily.

Sarah.
Ty.




Wednesday, February 6, 2013

"Funny Santa" 2013

This year's "Funny Santa" gift exchange was, as always, awesome.
We had it a little late this year, as we are not all together for Christmas... good thing baby Luke came around :) Nothing brings families together like a newborn.

Sadly, Blaine got stuck at work and couldn't make it. Too bad... because his present might have been my favorite.
My little girl kills me. Check out her bling.
I had to confiscate her cousin, Isabel's pageant tiara. :)


Love these little cousin friends.

My dad opening his present...

...A "What Would Gibbs Do?" plaque--complete with all of Gibbs' rules.
as well as a how-to-give-a-head-slap "Gibbs' style". (NCIS)

My mom's present was probably the most impressive and elaborate of them all.
Scott and Megan had been finding and collecting random shoes on the side of the road for about a year! My mom has always been fascinated my the weird single shoes you always see on sides of roads. Every single shoe was labeled with a description of where it was found. 

Each and every one of them was hilarious.

Matt's present was both "nice" and "naughty"...
 A "holy toast" stamp. It stamps the Virgin Mary into toast. For real.

Matt also got his most favorite "Leprechaun" movie, Lep in Da Hood.

With the Richardsons' increasing family... and an upcoming mini-van, it's only fitting that Laurel got some family stickers for her new ride.

As well as some much needed maternity clothes that may or may not have been worn by my mother when she was pregnant with Laurel herself.

My present was a box full of old *NSync memorabilia. Awesome, right? I know... so great. I got pictures from a concert (thanks to Michelle), a Justin marionette doll (thanks to Laurel), a butt load of movies and TV performance recordings (thanks to all three of us and my mom--who has saved them), and a letter of apology Laurel and I wrote to the boys when we snuck into their concert in our not-so-long-ago-youth. Soooooooooo embarrassing. :)



Michelle received Brett's old Holiday Oil work t-shirt. It is so bad and even showcases imporoper use of "your". 

It should be "you're", by the way... Michelle has wanted this shirt forever.

As the working English teacher in the family... she SHOULD have it.
(And maybe I'll just steal it on the weekends.)

My Dad's been saving his Coke bottle-caps for about eighty dollars now.
Worth it.
Coke points--galore.

Scott got this Darth Vader helmet that we found at D.I. (same trip as the holy toast find!). It totally works.

We also found his this bitchin' Star Wars pop-up book. That he was genunily stoked about it.
Well, he was genuinly stoked about both items, actually.


Megan's present came in the mail JUST in time. It was perfect. A "Murder She Wrote" four-movie DVD collection. She was overjoyed and couldn't wait for her next day off to veg out with Angela Lansbury.


I am loving Jason's face here... This guy has been stuck in Beaver, UT too many times to count. So much so that he has a fear of traveling South on I-15 now. (He also got the snow shovel to help dig his way out of Beaver the next time.)
Personally, I love the double-meaning of the shirt. I may have been the only one though.

Brett's was another two-parter-present...

"Juwanna Mann", the movie.
(The worst movie ever made, by the way.)

And an old jock strap. Brett's face makes me laugh out loud every time I look at it.
Apparently, Brett was the only kid showing up to gym class with a jock strap. Our dad's "old school". :)

Jason's face is awesome.

Robyn got a hand-made bullet casing necklace. My dad drilled into all of these to make this beauty for our country girl.

See? Beautiful.


This last one is odd, but I had to include it. I think it was actally taken by one of my kids, but I just love that Brett is demonstrating how a younger Matt thought a jock strap should be worn.

And our very last one... DeeDee with her first Richardson grandson. Sweet.