::festive & not festive too::

Kris has been practicing his trombone and baritone--mostly playing fun Christmas tunes. His dad used to really enjoy getting the kids together to play Christmas tunes on their instruments.

Anyway, today he got out the baritones to play a few tunes for Sandy. It was quite cute and festive. Well, it was until Sandy heard it.


He wasn't too sure at first.
Then he was sure.


Poor Sandy!



Yes, I picked him up and hugged him after this. No babies were harmed in the making of this blog post.
Poor guy just hasn't been himself since he got sick. He's tired and cranky and the steroids, though making him breathe (thank heavens) seem to be making him unhappy. Poor guy.
So not too festive of an attitude, but I do love his little outfit.

.:.:Happy Birthday to Me:.:.

Since it's my birthday I figured I could get away with a slightly self-indugent post. (hah, like they're not all that already, right?)
So to start with, here's one of my all-time favorite pictures.
This is Max sometime in the summer of 2006. He was really mad at me, I can't remember why, and he made this ridiculous face. I laughed so hard. He just held the face. He held it long enough for me to run and get the camera.

And to take two pictures.

Hah! It still cracks me up. You can see he needed a haircut in this picture too. Seems to be a constant problem at our house....
And for a quick trip back in time, here's a picture of my birthday back in 1985. I was turning 5. Fabulous cake, isn't it?

Please note a very young, very cute Megan peeking into the picture from the right.
The tradition for my birthday was to have a pinata. It was often homemade. Our best friends the Williams would come over in the evening and we'd beat that thing long and hard until it broke. Sometimes the homemade ones would never break and dad would have to take the thing out somewhere and smash it for us.

Here's the one from when I was 5. I love the rainbowness of it. I also love that I'm wearing some sort of long pearl necklace. Awesome.

Here we are in 1988, when I was turning 8. Joel and Megan Williams on the left, and Charlotte's best friend Brittany on the right. I love the high noon effect of the big photographic light we had.

And this is 1992. What do you think we were all saying in this picture? Something loud I'm guessing. We didn't even bother to decorate this pinata, it's just the organic newspaper. Completely functional. I bet it was hard to break too. Joel did a pretty good job breaking them as we got older though, so he always had to go last so he didn't just break it first and bum everybody out.
Oh yeah, please note Murphy's hair in this picture. Does it look familiar?
There's much much more, but that's all we're going to see for now. You'll have to wait for my next birthday for more!!
But I'll leave you with this picture.

Remember the clarinet we saw on the sideboard in the tea party picture? Well here it is in action. Why am I kneeling on the floor to play? Who knows, but I played whenever and wherever I could. Doesn't Charlotte look adorable in this picture? What a cute smile.
Happy January! Aren't we glad that it's February now? And that's all the questions for tonight. Later! We're off to watch Lost. It's a good birthday present.

- How to make cute kids cry -

Ever wondered how to make some cute kids cry? We know how....
What you do is you take them bowling. Then you only let them play one game.
Ouch, aren't we the meanest ever? When they're hastily prevented from starting a whole new game, they realize their game is over and they all start to cry. All at once.
I don't know if I'd suggest trying it--it's a little traumatic!


We went bowling with our good friends from church--they have a 6 yr old boy and a 4 yr old girl who Max likes to play with. They had a blast bowling. I can't blame them for having so much fun, bumpers make a big difference! There's a chance I might've gotten higher that a 50 (ouch) with bumpers...
Anyway, we just bowled one game, but we had the kids and adults on separate lanes. The kids finished much faster than we did, and were devastated when their game was over. It was a good thing we were paying attention or else they would've started up a new game without anybody even knowing. It's too bad we couldn't play longer, but bowling sure is expensive these days. It doesn't seem like it used to be, does it?
Some of the kid's balls went soooo slow, one of the balls the four year old threw was so slow that the sweeper thing came down before her ball got to the pins. It was pretty funny. I can't figure out how their throws were that slow but they still finished before we did!
Imagine the below pictures playing out over a duration of about five minutes. (click to enlarge, as always)

It was fun. Hopefully we get to do it again soon. We're saving up our pennies.