Aaron's Video Message from Santa!!!

Aaron had a wonderful surprise arrive this evening!!  As it turns out, Santa took some time out of his busy Christmas schedule to send Aaron a personal message straight from the North Pole! Aaron was so happy and pretty amazed that Santa knew him so well! And luckily Santa had some good news to share with him:

Click here to watch Aaron's message from Santa!  
http://www.portablenorthpole.com/watch/muZtQO3AbWqjOcuZXpISLSA


(If you would like to request a video from Santa for your loved one click here. (And he is so nice that he has decided to spread his Christmas cheer for free this year). :-)  Once you are on the page, just click on the "Get Started" button on the right and see what message Santa waiting for you! ;-)     Merry Christmas!

Family Pictures

In the whole history of our small Davis family, we have never officially taken family pictures. But with the addition of Sunny, we felt like it was finally time we did....and the coupon to Kiddie Kandids didn't hurt either....  =) 

Since we only got one photo on a CD to make copies, we just scanned the rest, so the quality isn't as good as they are in person. But having said that, I photoshopped the color in almost all of them. I thought some of them would be nicer in black and white and with special effects and such. And yes, that was a necessity since the original photos didn't come out all that great. The poses were cute, but very generic, and the same could be said about the backgrounds. But hey, for $40 I'm not complaining. We got lots of various-sized prints, a CD with one image, and 10 photo holiday cards with envelopes.

And although Sunny was all smiles, we are lucky Aaron even smiled as much as he did...one of the pictures below clearly illustrates his dislike for having strangers flash a huge light in front of his face every 10 seconds...and that was the face that made up a large portion of the original batch of photos.

I spy with my little eye...someone a little unsure about this picture business...

Same picture, but in color:

Aaron, when you are older these are going to be the photos we show to your future girlfriends...  :-)

But, in all fairness, here is one of all of us smiling:

 

And Aaron showing us his age:

Same picture photoshopped by mommy:

And here is our Sunny bunny:

 

And again photoshopped by mommy:

 

And finally one of brother and sister:

And there you have it!

All Things "Fall"

We have done so much during this wonderful Fall season that pictures have been accumulating like crazy...

It all started when my mom came to visit during mid-October. Aside from plenty of thrift store shopping and yard sale scavenging, we took some time out to make some caramel apples! Yum! It was my mom's first time making them so she had a great time!

Even after my mom left back to California, we still wanted to keep the Fall fun going so we took the kids to a community Halloween party...one that we wouldn't soon forget...

It was held on someone's huge chunk of property next to their large, and very lovely home:

Now this wasn't your average Halloween party for 2 reasons: 1)Skydivers and 2) Candy being dumped out of airplanes! FUN!!

We were instructed to be there promptly at 6:00pm if not a bit earlier since the skydivers would be jumping at about that time. It was even more fun to see that the skydivers were Spiderman and Captain America!

I love this pose of Captain America! So heroic!

 

And after these amazing skydivers did their part, everyone quickly gathered in the center of the field to wait for the planes that were about to dump barrel-fulls of candy on the crowd!  The anticipation was so exciting!

Even Spiderman likes candy....

Here it comes.....all the candy being dumped out of the plane:

(Click the photo to enlarge)

The plane made several passes and all the kids had a great time. We have never gotten to experience anything like this, so we were very fortunate to be able to attend such a neat Halloween event.

Aaron and Sunny had a blast...well, mainly Aaron...I think Sunny was just trying to figure out why she was dressed like this:

My little Angry Birds!

Later on that evening we went home to finish out our Family Home Evening and did some good ol' fashioned pumpkin carving. And this was another first for us since Aaron had never carved a pumpkin before. So with a little help from mom, he slowly turned this pumpkin into a Jack-O-lantern. While me and Aaron carved pumpkins, Matt went off to the kitchen to go make us some brownies!

And yes, we baked up all those seeds!

So proud of his pumpkin, and even more proud after it was lit inside with a candle....

After pumpkin carving we got to sit down as a family with our bowl of freshly baked pumpkin seeds and bowls of brownies with ice cream and watch Hocus Pocus! Aside from the caramel apples, everything else was all done in the same evening! It was a great ending to a great day! We love fall!

Sunny's First Haircut

Now, at first glance, this little girl doesn't really look like she is in dire need of a haircut:

And still not too bad....just a quick hair brushing should fix it, right?.....

Yep, it's all fine until the side view reveals that.....

.....Sunny represents the Lollipop Guild....:

Why it only grows in that one spot, we'll never know...but one thing's for sure - the comb-over look wasn't working for her, so it had to go!

A quick snip or two.....

....and all done!!

A Milestone Birthday!

I'm getting around to organizing a billion different pictures from lots of different events the past few months. One cool thing to take note of....Matt had his 30th birthday!!

In his eyes he is officially "old." I currently disagree, but when I turn 30 I just may change my mind.

Since it was Matt's birthday I asked him what he wanted to do for the day - and naturally he wanted to take me to a shooting range. Haha!  It was my first time ever shooting a gun so I was a bit nervous, but Matt was great at explaining how to safely handle it. So after the initial shock of the first recoil, it was actually pretty fun!

Loading up:

After working up quite the appetite, we decided to mosey on over to Cheerleaders Sports Bar and Grill where I happened to have a free voucher for an appetizer, two meals, and a dessert. The food was AWESOME....great burgers with the buns made from scratch, and our first taste of a deep-fried Snickers with a huge dollop of their homemade ice cream!..And they had THE BEST french fries and onion rings. It was seriously good!....But we will probably not go back anytime soon (haha - bet you didn't see that coming)....but it is only because it is a bit too expensive for our budget.

And as if we weren't stuffed enough from dinner, we went home to partake in homemade ice cream cake!

This is what happens when you take a picture with a camera phone in already bad lighting...your cake looks like it's on fire....

Matt has his work cut out for him...making a wish isn't as easy as it used to be...

All blown out!

Happy 30th Birthday Matt! We love you!!!

Apple Pickin'!

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law Melissa invited me and the kids to go with them to Candy Apple Farms for Bailey's preschool apple-picking field trip. I am so glad she did because it really was a lot of fun.

They started off with teaching everyone about the different varieties of apples, how you can tell them apart, and what they were good for (pies, cider, eating plain, etc).

Then they showed everyone how they made apple cider - Aaron LOVED this part:

The Apple Press

Loading it up

Aaron watching the action

The juice being pressed from the apples...

Aaron decided he wanted a front-row seat

Now Aaron either just really likes apples, or he is destined to be an apple farmer because even after they were all done and wrapping it up, Aaron was still there....I don't think I have ever seen him stand in one spot for that long ever!

Unwinding the press

Then the owners kindly gave everyone a nice sample of true apple cider, and it was definitely delicious! Aaron wanted seconds:

Then the time came that we were all waiting for....Apple Picking!!! They gave us an apple picker lined with a soft sponge (so the apple wouldn't get bruised while falling into the cradle) and a large bag to carry our apples in. Here is Aaron all ready to pick some apples:

"Look Ma'! I'm a country boy!"

The cradle had a rake-like claw on the end of it making it easy to snag an apple on the tree. One you snagged it, you'd give it a light pull and the apple would gently fall into the cradle and onto the spongy bed. Then you would take the apple out of the cradle and gently put it into your bucket (Aaron had trouble with the "gently" part...)

Gettin' some apples

After about 20 minutes and about 15lbs of apples, I decided to call it a day....(and mind you, I was carrying around 15lb baby Sunny on my hip, in a sling of course, at the same time!) We would have stayed longer to pick more apples since we were having so much fun, but I'll admit, I was already wondering what I was going to do with all of these when we got home:

Aaron was proud of his apples

See, I promised Sunny was there with us! Here she is all buckled up and ready to go after apple pickin'. There's the bin of pumpkins in the background!

After a long day of apple picking me, Melissa, our friend Ashley, and all of our kids all went out for pizza. The kids did surprisingly well at their own table:

And after we got home....the moment Aaron had been waiting for all day:

And the moment mommy has been waiting for....homemade apple pie! To be continued.....