It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Our friend Sam brought this Gingerbread Kit for the kids on Thanksgiving. The plan was to have them do this on Thanksgiving, but it takes 3 hours to get the house to set with the frosting so they worked on later this week. They love it. We don't love all the sugar that comes with it! ;)

I had some left over candy corn from Halloween that we let them use.

I love matching Xmas PJ's!

I was actually practicing taking pictures because I have 5 sessions this weekend and since it's been really cold I'm assuming we are going to have to go indoors for the pictures.  I'm better at taking outdoor pics b/c the lighting is better.   Hopefully one day I will have a studio with real lighting so I can do better indoor pictures.

A lot of them came out blurry b/c of the settings I was using to try to get the "glow" of the Xmas lights.  I need to practice some more to get it just right.

Luca is so cute.  That night I noticed his underwear and sock drawer were very organized and he said to me "I couldn't fall asleep last night, so I turned on the light and I organized my sock and underwear drawer."  He's too funny.

Luca loves it when we give him a job. His job lately is to turn on all the Christmas lights - he loves his job.

Olivia always does a good job of putting her milk back in the fridge when she's not finished with it and she also loves to put her dishes in the sink.  I have such good little elves.

It was jammy day in Luca's class and he was so excited to wear these new jammies.  But as we were walking to school he said "Is my teacher going to be mad that I'm wearing my jammies?"  They are talking about nocturnal animals this week.

This is my favorite picture but it took many shots to get this some turned out like this and some didn't so I still need to figure out how I did this!

Pre-School Crushes....

Olivia always talks about a little boy in her class, Emmett.  Whenever she talks about him her face just lights up.  She told me that Emmett protects her.  We saw Emmett at library storytime the other day and I said "Olivia look, Emmett is here!"  She got all shy but had a huge smile on her face.  She wouldn't say hi to him even though she talks about him ALL the time. 

There is another boy, Leo, in her class.  She talks about him, too. Yesterday, she told me that he gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek and said "I missed you!"  So cute!

Luca on the other hand does not play with girls because they don't play Super Heroes with him. LOL Such a boy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! This pic was taken yesterday. Every year we take the kids to see Santa a little early to avoid the lines and also so we can take the kids Xmas pics for Christmas cards.

I like this pic but it looks a little hazy from the sun flare.

This was at the mall and it would have been nice to get a family pic, I should've asked someone to take a pic for us.

Here's a pic of Thanksgiving.  We invited our friends Sophia and Ethan and their parents to come over for dinner with us.

They liked the rolls the best and they ate all their turkey but they didn't like all the sides.

I made mini apple pies and they were DELISH!  Sam also brought Jeni's Ice Cream to go with it.  Jenni's Ice Cream is seriously the BEST ice cream ever. So good!

Since we didn't have a lot of people to feed I didn't want to buy an entire turkey so we just bought turkey breasts. Which is my favorite part of the turkey anyway. There was also another tray of it that we didn't even eat.  It was also delish!  I brined the turkey which made it really moist and juicy.

Yummy! So very Thankful for a warm meal, a roof over our heads and especially my two favorite kids on this entire planet! Thankful for my husband who is now out for some Black Friday or should it now be called Black Thanksgiving Shopping?

Baking with Mommy!

I have been so busy that I don't want to neglect taking pictures of my own kids, Corey asked me to bake some cupcakes for a Bake Sale at his school and I had the kids help which means even more work for me (having the kids help me ie they would crack the egg and get all the shells in it), but they had fun. Don't worry, I unplugged the Kitchen Aid before she put her finger there to lick it!

Olivia LOVES cupcakes! "Mommy, cupcakes are yummy!"

Multi-tasking!  As I was baking, and letting the kids help me.  I also was playing around with my NEW camera lens that I LOVE!  It's a prime lens which is a great starter lens for photographers it has a Bokeh effect which means it's sharp on the focus point and blurry on the background.  See how Olivia is blurry?

Another example of bokeh. 

The kids working on writing.  Thanks Pinterest!

Olivia is getting so good at writing her own name!  She has even been drawing pictures that actually look like people.  I need to take a pic the next time she draws "her baby."

I'm super excited that I have been busy with this photography stuff.  What makes me happy is that people I have taken pictures for already are asking me to take pictures for them again!  My goal was to start taking pictures for friends this year to start my portfolio but I think I have enough pictures to get started plus people are PAYING me for what I enjoy doing! :)  I saved enough money to buy a new lens, photoshop which I should be getting soon (right now I have Lightroom) and soon to be new computer!  So, now I have to think of a business name,  logo, website and business cards.  I am so excited but I am so uncreative when it comes to names! :) Plus the name I really wanted "Bella (which means beautiful in Italian) Photography" is taken in Ohio.  Everyone uses their name and I wanted to be different but I also have read that picking a name (other than your full name) can be or sound cheesy.  It will probably end up being Joanna Andres Photography.  

No pics but stories...

I haven't been good about taking pictures this past week because I have been so busy taking pictures of other kids...which is good!  But I don't want to neglect blogging so I will write about some things the kids have said to me.

The kids are getting really excited about Christmas and even though I want to try to focus on the next holiday, Thanksgiving, they keep seeing things in the store and will tell me that they want that for Xmas.  I told the kids they can ask for 3 things from Santa because I really don't want them to ask for too much but to learn that it's also about giving.  Olivia told me today that she wanted to ask Santa for a new stroller for her baby, a present for her baby and a car for her baby.  Nothing for her...just for her baby.  Isn't that sweet? She also told me she wants to chew bubble gum but she has to wait until she turns 17.  I think one time I was chewing gum and she asked me if she could have some and I told her she had to wait til' she was 17.  I didn't realize she thought I was serious! :)  Also, in school the teachers will ask kids questions each week to each kid and I love that they post their answers outside the wall where we wait for the kids.  They asked "What's your favorite food for Thanksgiving?"  Olivia said "snacks."  Then when we were home eating dinner I asked Olivia what we ate for Thanksgiving and she said Pizza!  Corey and I realized she's only had a Thanksgiving dinner 3 times and probably doesn't remember any of those!

Luca really LOVES pre-school.  He told me that he didn't want to go to Kindergarten and that he wants to stay in pre-school.  He is soo good at telling me what he does during school and will always tell me about the books they read which I think is great b/c it tells me that he's paying attention.  I also love that sometimes they will play "library" together and Olivia is Ms. Kate (the librarian at our library who does storytime -which they love her!) and Luca is Mr. Brian (who does the singing storytime once a month at the library).  I will have to tell Ms. Kate and Mr. Brian that tomorrow when we go to the library.  Luca is working on his site words and is doing great.  He can also put sentences together on Corey's I-pad. 

Trick Or Treat!!

The kids were pumped that it was finally Halloween!

Corey brought a pair of these glasses home that he got from work.

For the past three years that we have lived here we have never trick or treated in our own neighborhood b/c there was only Luca and Olivia and one other child, Luna, that lived in our neighborhood .  We had one other family move here this year that have four kids.  We got a mass email from a neighbor saying they would like to give out candy, then several other neighbors also said they would, too!  So we decided to go trick or treating in our own neighborhood.  We have maybe 20 houses in this community and most of them had candy for the kids (even though we were the ONLY trick or treaters) I think our neighbor Luna went to a couple of houses but we went to ALL the houses with their lights on.  Two neighbors even dressed up which I thought was so cute! They were so excited and said "In the 10 years we lived here we have NEVER had trick or treaters!" They were so happy they gave the kids a ton of candy.  Some neighbors weren't home and left candy in a bowl on their porch.  The kids loved it, although Luca said "Are we the only ones trick or treating?"

The houses are pretty far apart because there are still many lots available for sale.  Luca got tired and said "Can you just go trick or treating for me?"

The kids got to pick out their pumpkins (at the grocery store b/c they are half the price than at the pumpkin patch).  We also let them pick out which design they wanted carved.  This one is Luca's.

Olivia picked the witch design.  Corey is very good at carving pumpkins!

Yay!  They are done and they got LOTS of candy.  They also look like fat pirates because I had them wear 2 pairs of pants, a shirt, sweatshirt and their winter coats all under their costume because it was so COLD out!  They looked more like overweight pirates but they still were cute!  Happy Halloween!