we celebrate eli’s birthday by going out to breakfast on christmas eve  morning so eli gets his moment apart from the holiday festivities.  this year we met eric’s family at elmers.  the food was yummy, and eli was perfectly happy with his chocolate chip pancakes:)

dylan giving his gift to eli.  don’t you love his little handwriting on the bag?

these are taken at eric’s parents house after breakfast.  we got eli a microscope for his birthday.  he is SO incredibly excited about it!  he came out of the dining room announcing that he was a “mad scientist”, so i had to take that picture of him and his aunt jamie:)

i love you mister eli!

how is it possible that tomorrow is christmas eve?  and my baby will be 6?  i haven’t even gotten through thanksgiving pictures…i was just sitting here looking at our tree, and thought it might be good to post about our tree hunting trip.  it was a beautiful morning.  but SUPER cold!  we packed up donuts and hot chocolate and headed up the mountain in search of a perfect tree.  now, i always have a perfect idea of what these outings should be like, and let’s just say that it’s full of a little more complaining and crying than i planned for.  but memories were made, and that’s what it’s all about, right?

the ice mixed with the morning sun made for some pretty little masterpieces for us to marvel at:

here are the boys digging in.  and of course spilling their hot chocolate all over the back of the truck ;)

eric caught this of my eli and i.  love it.  even if i do look extra tired, and my face is make-upless:)

i used the hood of our truck to get this family picture.  everyone always complains when i ask to take a picture of all of us, but i’m glad i insisted this time.  i LOVE this picture of us!

after our stop for refreshments, we strapped back in to the truck and continued up the mountain.  this here is one of dylan’s happier moments.  he found a piece of snow (ice) that was shaped like a heart.  he was pretty excited:)

and then we found it.  the tree of our 2009 dreams.  and well to be honest, i was tired of dylan crying, eli kicking ice on dylan, and a caravan of people had just gotten stuck about 200 feet in front of us.  we couldn’t go much further:)  my handsome strong man proceeded to cut it down when the saw broke mid cut.  but he prevailed, and here he is single handedly cutting, dragging and lifting our 12 foot christmas tree.  (much better than the 16 footer that we came home with last year:)

here you can see some pics 2008 and 2007 tree hunting.

i had the opportunity to photograph these handsome brothers yesterday afternoon.  other than the extremely cold weather, we had a great time, and i’m excited about the final result.  so here’s a peek for mom and dad…there will be more to see soon…

today i got to hang out with these two beauties for the second time this month.  we had met up a couple of weeks ago, but things didn’t go as planned, and it happened to be one of the darkest days of the year.   i have to say, i’m SO glad that it all worked out.  we got some beautiful pictures of these precious girls, and we had a great time:)  thanks trent and kari for being available today!  i hope you love the pictures:)

and one of each of their big brothers from our last meeting.  such a gorgeous family!