Christmas with my boys

What a wonderful holiday we had!!!! The boys had a great Christmas! I was fairly well behaved in the shopping department. I kept my total spending down and tried not to overload the kids with every new gadget on the market. I stuck to things I'd really taken notice of them liking.

This year Brenden was REALLY into opening presents. The past 2 years he really was bored with it but this year he opened all of his presents and all of Logans presents too!! Of course Logan didn't care. He was too busy playing with all of his toys. It was perfect teamwork.

Speaking of (what's gonna work? ) Teamwork! Here is Brenden loving on the Wonder Pets blanket my mom got for him. He LOVES the Wonder Pets. He did not like Logan crawling on HIS blanket - which he now sleeps with every night!

The boys each got their own tricycle. Logan is a little short still but can scoot with his feet. Both boys loved their bikes and I can't wait until spring when they can take them outside. Until then, laps in the kitchen will have to suffice! 

Here is Brenden with his Mickey Mouse puzzle (his other favorite character). And in the background is Logan's toy kitchen. Lesson learned by Amy : if you buy cheap, you get cheap. Thats all I will say about that! 

Here is one of my bargain buys that didn't turn out so bad. Big Lots had these generic Pillow Pets (Snuggle Pals or something like that). These are a hit in our house. Logan uses his in the living room when he is overtired and just needs to relax. Brenden sleeps with his every night! 

After Christmas I drove up to WV to visit my friend Erin and let our kids play together and exchange our holiday gifts. It was a great time and the kids loved hanging around each other as you can see. Notice the pacifier on Logan's mouth. This kid has REFUSED the pacifier since like his 3wk of life. He realized it was not a bottle or mama and would spit it out every time I BEGGED him to take it. Well last week he was having a teething moment and Brenden found this in the toy box and shoved it in his mouth, and its been there ever since! Lol. He calls it Sassy. And if he doesn't have it he just does this pitiful 'Saaasssseeeeeey??!!" until you give it to him. Then he giggles with delight and says "SAS-eeeeey!" and pops it in his mouth. He sleeps much better now that he has it so I am not fighting him too hard on it. I just find it funny that it took him 15 months to decide he likes it... no.. LOVES it! 

Bailey had her 2nd birthday party while we were there. Brenden was at the party and figured out if you put a balloon on the intake register for the heating/cooling system, it sticks (as long as the heat pump is running). He kills me how clever he is sometimes.

They had some yummy Mickey Mouse cake and lots of fun and games!

It was a great visit and thanks to Sassy, both boys did great on the drive up and back. It was GREAT!

For Christmas this year I wanted to keep my wish list small. It was really all about the kids for me. When my computer crashed ages ago I lost my copy of photoshop elements (never buy software from HP with your new computer, they do not give you a backup disk and will charge you a service fee to 'repair' the loss!) I found a copy of elements 8 on Ebay for a good price so I got that for myself (yes, I am my own Santa!) and asked Sean to buy me a book 'Photoshop Elements for the digital photographer' as we agreed to keep it down to one small gift each for us. I have to say that I am almost ashamed at how little I used my prior copy of Elements 6. I don't mean I didn't use it frequesntly, but did I use it for the full potential in photo editing it gave me? NO! I used mostly the canned features and basic fixing. This book teaches you how to use different techniques to turn your ok looking photos into something great. I LOVE this book. I can't put it down. Its in a textbook sort of layout and I find myself jumping all around and reading things over and over again. I really wanted a copy of CS5 or something fancy like that but just couldn't justify spending that kind of money right now. I decided that I wanted to learn how to walk before learning to run a marathon. I realized I hadn't really ever mastered PSE so why upgrade to PS CS5 just to do nothing with it like I did with PSE 6?

So in addition to my blog about my family I'd like to share my journey through photoshop. Obviously to anybody who is a photo editing wiz, this will be boring :) but I am just finding myself amazed at all the new cool knowledge that I am filling in my head. See I am a programmer and an artist, so this really feeds both the creative and the nerdy parts of my brain all at once. Stay tuned for my photoshop journey....