Happy Thanksgiving to all! (aka the whole fam damily)

We took a family pic, all nine of us while visiting Neb for Turkey Day. It was rather interesting getting the little remote for Colleen's camera to work and getting Linds and Lyd to smile or at least look interested in the pics! We did get a spectacular one of everyone looking fab, but Lydia had her finger in her nose. Oh the joy of toddlers!

We finally got a decent one, which will be heading out in the senior Marion Family Christmas Cards.

Lots of posts!

I am going to go on a posting frenzy, I have to do this or my friend Sara might hunt me down!

I am dividing them in several posts so that they are easier to follow :D

Christmas Pics and b-day Pics

While visiting nebraska I planned on getting the girls pics taken at Portrait Innovations. I planned it this way because the PI closest to home ticked me off with their crappy photographer Miss Lack of Personality Erin.

I also planned it this way so that I would have grandma's extra set of hands!

here are the results!

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This is Lyd posing for her b-day pics, the first thing you should know is she HATES with the fiery passion of 10 burning suns, getting her picture taken professionally. Lord knows I take it at home all the time, but professional pics are her arch enemy.

We did get a few little mini smiles, but the pout and boa pic stole my heart!





Here are a few of our little model in training, Lindsay. She basks in the glory of flash bulbs so she was right at home in the studio. And I learned again that there is such a thing as a stupid question. People at the studio were dingy enough to ask "Is there hair naturally curly and blond" "No you ding a ling, I am a glutton for punishment and I curl it everyday"

Here are some of them together. Lydia never did smile, but she wasnt screaming and running away from the tree like last year, so it was a big improvement!

Forgive the fact that 2 of these are sideways, I am on my FIL's computer and dont know how to edit them on there or in blogger, so just turn your head sideways :D



And last but not least little Lydia just trying to survive the inhumane treatment of a photo shoot with some dignity intact.

Lyd's 2nd b-day invites

Now i must say I have never been thrilled with Lyd being born near Chirstmas, I feel like a Christmas baby is in the unfortunate predicament of having their b-day over shadowed by Christmas.

Anyway, Grandma J says that it is okay because she and Lyd share the same b-day and she turned out a-okay.

I go a bit above and beyond for Miss Lyd's b-day because of this situation. This is a long winded attempt to explain why I made invites that had around 30 pieces/steps. Yep, 30. They took a long time, but turned out super dooper cute!

Here is the invite, and just in case you dont get it (as if) she is having a 50's sock hop party! Just wait til you see pics of the party and pics of the very special thing my friend Sara is making for us ( you are going to be so jealous)!

This is my proto type, the new ones have a bow in the girls hair and a scarf on her neck, becasue I know you care to know that!

Lyds wants to say HI.
nm cvjbvjchkxck j ,cvhjkcf88n nhjghub hi

10 lbs..............

I weighed the box of candy that we ended up with after all our Halloween exploits were said and done. We ended up with 10 lbs of candy and various other goodies, wow! I let the girls pick a piece of two a day and in a few weeks I am going to go through the box and pulling out their favs and sending the rest to the homeless shelter that my mom started volunteering at.

Eric said I was weighing it to see how much weight I would gain if I ate the whole box, big dork.

Trunk or Treat

The day after Halloween our church had a Trunk or Treat for all the kids, basically parishoners brought candy and opened up the back of their cars and trick or treaters from church came to each car! It was a lot of fun.

After the trick or treating we went into church and awaited the winners of the age group costume contests and the pumpkin carving contests and had a yummy snack of cookies and cocoa. After our snack we headed back outside for 1 more go around to the trunks, this time the girls (with candy bowls already entirely too full) decided to pass out the candy.

Lindsay was convinced all day that her updated costume of Tinkerbell riding a unicorn was going to win hands down, I tried to tell her that she might and she might not, but she was totally convinced. Well she did win, this is her 2nd win, she won as Cookie in 2005 and Lydia won last year as the tortoise to Lindsay's hare. The prize is always a half-pound Hershey bar, just what we needed, more chocolate :D

We (I) also won for carved pumpkins, you can see the winning pumpkin in my previous post, the cat in the window pumpkin. We won a pumpkin pie and a bag of hershey kisses. I froze the pie to share with my family in a few weeks since Eric and the girls don't enjoy it and I really dont need a whole pie plastered to my butt.

Here they are going to some of the cars, one had a fun spider ball toss.

Here is Linds and during the costume contest (Lyd wouldnt stand still for a pic during her age group), and Tigger isnt in Linds' age group, he ran into stand with the big kids. Her competition was 2 batmen, a storm tropper and Winnie the Pooh.

Cookie enjoying a cookie, some lady at church said she heard that Sesame St. is turning Cookie Monster into Carrot monster, well if that's true that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

Here they are passing out their treats to lots of kids!

Happy Halloween!

For the last 2 years on Halloween Lindsay requests that we get a Jack-o-Lantern pizza from Papa Murphy's take and bake. She thinks they are hilarious and declicious. So we started our evening with a yummy (and super easy) dinner and headed out to trick or treat with our neighbor girls, Natalie (American Idol singer) and Gabby (ER doc).

We trick or treated lots of houses and the girls did a good job, Lindsay's unicorn costume did get a little heavy toward the end of the evening but she was a real trooper. The best part was that when we were done trick or treating we got home in plenty of time to hand out candy to a few kids ourselves!

We also lit up our nifty pumkins, you can't tell in the pic but the small one is on it's side with a stem for a nose!