Christmas Blvd. at our church, EV Free Fullerton

 Every year our church puts on an amazing Christmas extravaganza!  It truly becomes something out of a movie!  They have sledding, bounce houses, climbing wall, ornament and cookie decorating, puppy petting zoo, Santa, food trucks, snow in the village they build, smores, and so much more.  It is such a great time for fellowship and family!  We got to enjoy this with a ton of our family this year and it really blessed us.  I even have a few friends show up and their kids had a blast as well.  I just love making Christmas memories like this with my kiddos.

How cute is this picture of my parents!  They will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in July!  I'm so proud of them!

The Blythes, 2012

My girls adore their Papa and Nana

L-R Addison, Abby, Hannah, Josiah, and Brynn

We tried SO hard to get a cousin picture...this was the best we could do.  It's like wrangling cats into a bathtub!

The McCullochs, 2012

The Blairs, 2012

Life long friendships in the making

GiGi came along for the fun. 

Roasting Smores was a big, yet sticky hit

More Smores please

Kristen and Bryan joined in!  They brought their nieces Madison and Taylor. My girls LOVE these girls! It's a family tradition to be life long friends!  (No pressure ;)

Uncle Bill was in town and came along. So fun for my girls to get to see him.

Getting to the end of the night...this kinda says it all...poor Mama and Baby

Trying to get a picture without getting her stickiness all over me!

LOVE

LAUGHTER

Hi Mr. Bear

Brynn went sledding on her own!

Such a big girl!

Both girls going down the hill

The Kinard girls getting in on the action

Serioulsy, does anyone have a Sr. Pastor as cool as this?!

Love it!

Hannah and Bubby

Such a fun night!!!!  Snow and all!

So other than waiting and hour and a half (including line wait time and food wait time) for our food, we had a really magical time.  I'm so thankful to our church for offering such a speical event for my family to be a part of.  Can't wait for next year!

Christmas Card Pics

Merry Christmas from The Blythes 

The "pretty" picture

The "this is what our life is really like" picture

God Bless you all!  Jesus is the Reason for the Season!

Halloween 2012

I am back tracking a bit here, but I'd be sad if I didn't post the adorable Halloween pics from this year. This year we were fortunate to have Josiah and Hannah, my cousin Shannon's twins, with us. We made a delicious fall dinner of pot roast before we got the kids all dolled up in their costumes. Now, you'll notice that Brynn is wearing Addie's apple costume from her fall preschool performance...not my first costume pick of the night.  See, we tried to get Brynn into a Glinda costume we'd found online.  You know, go with the whole Wizard of Oz theme....well the waist of that thing would barley fit Brynn's neck, let alone her waist.  So...we moved onto plan B.  Yes, here she IS smiling...don't get excited, it didn't last long.  She was NOT having that apple costume.  So we did our best to bribe the kids so we could get the token "standing in front of the fireplace" shot.  I was actually impressed by this picture!

Now this picture impressed me even more because I actually got the two of them smiling!  Literally RIGHT after this, Brynn threw the apple hat across the room and yanked and pulled to get the thing off!  Hmmm...so plan C...even though at the time, I had no plan C....

So we paused for a photo op moment of the Blocks while I sort of freaked out and searched in the playroom for plan C...

Don't the twins look cute!  My mom made those costumes for their 4th birthdays!

Block Family Picture

Okay, so here is plan C...a fairy!  Hey, she's still in pink (like she would have been in she was Glinda) and as you can tell, she was WAY happier with this choice!  Thank God Addison still loves dress ups and has a bajillion (yes that's a word!) of them.

So next, I made to go mugs of hot apple cider for the adults, and the kids hit the streets!  Justin raced home from work and met up with us out on the town.  They got a TON of candy!  It was so nice to live in a neighborhood this year where we could take them trick or treating.

In the end, cousin Abby stopped by so we could get a picture.  She was sort of a chic scarecrow, which would have TOTALLY gone with my theme!  UGH, oh well, I gotta let it go...there's always next year!

Happy Halloween!!

Thanksgiving 2012

We spent Thanksgiving this year with my family and my mom and dad's house. We were fortunate enough to have family from Texas join us too! Papa Mac, Auntie Donna, And Uncle Doug. The Blocks were with us too along with Chris, Sara, and Abby who stopped by for a few hours and appetizers which was great. My Nana came and joined in the fun too! The women spent the day before cooking almost every thing for the meal. The men smoked turkey that day too. Then the day of, we ended up with three types of turkey. Justin fried one, Uncle Doug smoked one, and my mom baked one. We also had all the fixings: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cooked carrots, peas in butter sauce, cornbread stuffing, gravy, rolls, orange jello, cranberries, and green olives. This is MY meal. My favorite meal. I just love all of it and it just screams comfort food! I so wish I didn't have to wait a whole 'nuther year for it! We had three kinds if pie too. Apple, pumpkin, and pecan...not that any of us had room for it. At then end of the night we played a game as a family and were blessed by the time we had!

Fresh Beat Band!

I took Addison to her first live concert...Nick Jr.'s Fresh Beat Band. She was stoked! We had great seats right on the isle so she could dance her little heart out. We sat near our friends The Ibarras which was really fun. Since we have seen I think EVERY episode of this show, we knew all the songs. They actually put on a great show and every kid there LOVED IT so it was really money well spent!