A Preview of Your Christmas Card!

Several weeks ago, we asked my good friend, Rich Kalonick, to come out to Fairview to take some pictures of us and our good friends, The Coleman's. I have not had professional pictures taken of Claire since her 1 year old pictures and she was now turning two.

I am a planner by nature and by trade, but Picture Day will not go down in my Hall of Fame of expertly planned events. We planned the pictures for the Sunday afternoon after the Saturday that we moved into the house and the Friday of Halloween...aka...Claire's busiest and most tiring weekend of her life! This did not dawn on me until after....we went to church and rushed home for Claire's nap, woke her up after an hour (that's plenty on any normal day), threw her into the car (still rubbing her eyes) with only a diaper on (didn't want to wrinkle the outfits), threw her a couple pieces of Halloween candy to tie her over until we had a late lunch (do not criticize me!), patted down her hair that got mashed during the nap and rushed to the Morrison's, the backdrop for the pictures.

As you can imagine and probably would have warned me if you had been there, it all back-fired on me. See for yourself!



Claire throwing a tantrum, Bill seemingly giving me a look like "what were you thinking"!

The full-fledged trantrum and the two referee's to restrain a two-year old.

Me, trying to smile in the midst of it all and be ready for the snap of the camera, in the extreme case that Claire suddenly sat down and complied!

You'll have to wait for your Christmas card to see if the day turned around!

"Funny's" on Claire

By this point of not updating our blog in several weeks, I am not sure if anyone will ever check in again. Our home computer is still on the outs (we just haven't taken it to be looked at) so I have no way of updating except at work and I try not to do that. However, this is the week of Thanksgiving and all of my co-workers are on vacation, so I thought little harm would come from updating our family blog.

Claire is doing so many funny things. I am sure I have already forgotten many of them. It seems as though we are rolling in the floor every night over something new and hilarious she has done.

Several stories come from her musical preference these days. When she was born, one of my co-workers gave me a set of books from B&H that are "My First Steps of Prayer", My First Steps of Faith", etc. There are four books in the series and each book has a cd with them. They have been sitting on the book shelf for 2 years now and we have yet to get them down. But I noticed that her new school uses those books in their curriculum, so I got one down and we started listening to the cd's in the car. They are catchy little tunes that you may remember from childhood, so they didn't get on my nerves. However, one morning on the way to work I was just needing some non-thinking country music. As we pulled out of the drive-way to Alan Jackson, Claire yelled, "No, don't like...no, don't like." I went through my list of things that she may not like...the temperature, the volume, the sun in her eyes, etc. Then she said, "No, don't like! JESUS!!!!!" (She wanted her "Jesus" cd on). So, now, when she wants to listen to her cd, she just yells "JESUS!"

Then, a few days later, we were on our way home. The car was silent. No music. We were both just being quiet. And I hear her singing, "Jesus, no, no...Jesus, no, no" She sang this about a dozen times and I asked her what she was singing. I went through my list of Jesus songs and sang, "Jesus loves me this I know" and she smiled and sang, "Jesus, no, no". We learned a new verse this weekend coming home from Gatlinburg. Now she sings, "Jesus, no, no. Bible says so."

She had a big birthday party about 2 weeks ago with all of her family and now we are gearing up for the holidays. More consistent updates will hopefully come soon.