more photoshoots...

It was a beautiful weekend here this past weekend, so I finally got 2 photo shoots done that I'd had to cancel earlier because of bad weather. Here are some of my favorites from each of them... 
The Johnson family...

The Villas...

 

Poor neglected blog...

Wow...I've gotten behind again. Time to catch up on my poor blog.

I guess November has been busy...how is it Thanksgiving in 2 days?

Crazy! I'm excited to head to Wyoming to celebrate this year. It's been a few years since we've had Thanksgiving there. I think actually this was the last time...

This was 2009 Mom! Longer ago than I was thinking...Gunnar wasn't even 2 yet! (the past couple Thanksgivings when it's been my family's year, we've hosted it at our house)...

Anyway I love my Mom's Thanksgiving dinner and it's always just nice to go home :)

We're heading out tomorrow and I should be packing, but haven't even started. Oh and there is hardly any food in the house so who knows what we'll scrounge up for dinner. Maybe pizza ;)

I can't even remember what I need to catch up on...

Let's see...

Oh we have another reader in this house!!

Gunnar has picked up reading so easily just like Ashton did and is now trying to read everything!

A few weeks ago he brought this book home from the library and read the whole thing to me.

 He is loving his new skill and it is so fun to see!
I have to add this...His cute teacher Mrs. Coburn said this about him as a comment to something I put on Facebook about him reading...His reading skills are tremendous! He "knocks my socks off" every single day. Best of all -- he is so casual, subtle, and modest about being our resident reading expert! He is raising the bar for a bunch of others who are noticing! Thanks for sharing him. That made my day :)

I so love spending my mornings with him...

One day he bet me his mouth was bigger than mine. Unfortunately no one's is Gunnar...but nice try, haha :)

What else...oh we've had a couple of small snow storms. Always fun to wake up those first few times and see snow! And even more fun when it doesn't melt by the time school is out and they can actually play in it.

They love it...

We got our family pictures taken a couple weeks ago. I had put off scheduling it forever. I just couldn't get motivated to try to coordinate clothes and get everyone to have a good attitude about it. But in the end I just made myself do it and threw some stuff together one day and we got them taken a few days later. A couple days before it snowed. So I was really glad we got it done. I had won a free mini session with Brittany at a fundraiser we went to last year, so that was nice! In our rush to get done before it started to rain harder, we forgot to do any singles of the boys so I made them dress up again the next day and go back out with me so I could snap some of them.

They cooperated pretty well for being not very happy to have to get dressed up again!

Can't wait to get the family ones back. Ashton especially looks SO different than he did last year.

Anyway I guess that's about all that's happened this month. Hard to believe Christmas is already less than a month away. Time is flying by faster than ever...



Halloween!

I think everyone knows how much we love Halloween at our house...but I will just say it again. We love Halloween!

Ashton and Gunnar love everything about it and so do I. We were counting down the days till it finally got here.

They both had school that day and got to dress up...except they couldn't wear their masks. So Ashton was kind of sad about that, but still excited to finally get to wear his costume.

They had parties in their classes and I helped out with both of them. I was in charge of the treat for both, so I had them make these...

 They turned out great and the kids loved them! I just sliced up the apples and put peanut butter on them, then brought the marshmallows and some candy corn to let them put the mouths together at school.

I even dressed up this year!

I always want to, but then never come up with anything in time. So this year I asked a friend if I could borrow one of her many costumes and she brought me over a witch hat/dress/wig etc...

I'm not much of a dress girl, and the wig drove me crazy, so I changed it up a bit and came up with this...

This picture makes me laugh...I had Gunnar take it right before we left to take him to school, we were in a hurry. And when I looked back at it, it looks like the pumpkins behind me are looking at me like "What are you wearing?!"

Kind of a funny story actually...I had gotten these leggings the week before just because I thought they were cute and wanted to just have them to wear on a normal day with a sweater and boots. Well when I tried them on for the boys and Kelli, Ashton actually said "Cool Mom, is that your Halloween costume?"...haha.

So that kind of gave me my idea after I got the witch hat a couple days before Halloween.

Anyway I got a lot of compliments and it was really fun to be dressed up. I know the boys loved that I finally did!

A few pictures from their parties...

I told him he could put his mask on while we walked out at the end of the day :)

Then after school, we got homework done, then after a few pictures...

 ...it was time to head over to the Smith's for our annual chili dinner...such a fun tradition!

Then Ashton and Gunnar were ready to head out and start knocking on doors.

They ran from house to house and I followed them while Lars went home and handed out candy. They lasted longer than they ever have and got a ton of candy...

 We came in about 7:30...Gunnar really wanted to go to Mrs. Coburn's house because she had invited all of her students to come trick or treat at her house. She is so cute! So we went up there, then to another friend's house while Ashton went back out with a friend and her mom for awhile longer.

Then we all watched the Charlie Brown Halloween show, then finally went to bed.

 I love how they think it is so funny!

I was exhausted! And ended up with a cold. But as usual it was such a fun night :) Can't wait till next year!

Costume photoshoot...

Last week I made all of my Halloween cards...(way too many, but they were so fun I couldn't stop!)

 ...then had the boys put on their costumes that they chose from the Halloween store and we went out and took a few pictures. I wasn't so sure about the covered faces at first when they picked them out, but when it came time to take pictures and they started fighting and crying right when we got there, those masks came in pretty handy!

Anyway some of the pictures we got in our short little photoshoot...

Gunnar the "Cool Ghoul"... 

And Ashton the "Unknown Phantom"...

They loved having their faces covered up this year...

I'm glad I got a few pictures of their cute faces though!