Jacob and Santa

This is Jacob's first Christmas and I wasn't going to take him to see Santa but when I saw how cute our Santa was and how there was hardly ever a line I had to take him! We probably could have gotten a smile from him eventually but this is a classic Jacob face. When there is so many things happening and he doesn't know what to do this is what we get. 

Thanksgiving

It seems like my blog posts are always out of order. Jared and I did get to be with family on thanksgiving. It was a short trip and I didn't bring my camera but it was so much fun. We drove to Idaho Wednesday morning. I was left with the girls to make pies and Jared ran off to hang out with his brothers. That night we had a wonderful dinner a Tucano's and Thursday morning was full of crazy-ness getting dishes prepared and kids ready. The schedule was. Thanksgiving dinner at the church at noon to 4. Then off to take a family photo at 4. So we all had to be dressed and ready for pictures before dinner. The kids all got dressed for the picture after dinner. Jared and I planned to head home right after the pictures but everyone decided they were too full for pie at the church so we did it at Mark's house after pictures and I could not miss pie. Also on our drive up my car was doing very suspicious things and Jared was working on it with his brothers throughout the two days. They decided it needed a new fuel filter so they also had to replace that before we left. Dinner was delicious. Pies were amazing. My car made it home (the fuel filter didn't fix the problem) and we had so much fun seeing the WHOLE family. Anna the resident photographer had her friend take these group shots and just emailed them to us. 

This is everyone

And here is all of Jared's siblings. 

Apparently this rarely happens. When there are nine of you spread out through the country its hard to get together. In my 3 years of McLaughlin experience it has happened twice and I'd say that's pretty good. Although i hadn't met Mona's husband until this trip.

Christmas time is here

I love Christmas time.

 Its so fun to shop for gifts and decorate your house. I am not a huge fan of decorating for all holidays and I especially don't like to go all out for any other holiday but Christmas.

 I always loved my mom's beautiful elegant tree. Jared has memories of a tree with colored lights and homemade ornaments and I suppose we had one of those too when Kristen and Jen were little. I remember looking at the old ornaments a few Christmas's ago but my memories always have the big gorgeous pink and silver themed tree. I loved it. So when it came to decorating my tree it had to go to the elegant side and guess what? I love it! 

The Kissell's were making paper snowflakes when I was oovooing with them one day and Kate taught me how to do some. That one in the window that you can see looks like a spiderweb but its not...it's a snowflake.

Mom got us this ornament for our first Christmas together and I love it. It goes perfectly with my tree and its gorgeous! Thanks mom

Jacob is in our lives this Christmas so I had to baby proof my tree and put my hope chest in front of it. He likes to look at it when I first turn on the lights but gets bored with it soon after. We would like to go look at lights with him this year but I'm not sure if he will be that interested in them. I guess we will find out.

This is our kids nativity. Its playmobile and I love it but its not ideal for toddlers. It has lots of small pieces that are very much choking hazards. So I only put the big pieces out... Baby Jesus was too small to put out... so we have a nativity with no baby Jesus. This is what it looked like. Notice all the crowns and gifts on the kings and other such things.

I would like to find or make something Christmasy to put up instead of that bird painting. I think it would really tie it all in.

Well happy Christmas decorating to you all!

PS We find out what we are having on the 19th. I would like to think of a fun way to tell my family at least but I should post what we are having soon after that.

Surprise!

I guess it is time to tell all of you who don't know that...

 I have another bun in the oven.

I am 14 weeks along 

Due May 8th

We were not expecting to have one so soon after Jacob but we are both excited to meet this new addition to our family and see how Jacob takes to being a big brother. He will only be about 17 months older then this one. Crazy I know. I feel like I was just pregnant and wasn't ready to do this again but the sickness should end soon and maybe I can start to enjoy things a bit more. Kristen's cutie makes me a little more excited too. Her stories of feeding her every two hours does not though lol. 

Anyway there will definitely be updates along the way I will be 20 weeks on our anniversary so I'm hoping to find out what we are having that day or close to that day. 

Halloween 2011

Well we were pretty lame this Halloween. I bought Jacob a cow costume from Costco to go the easy way out on the costume department but saw a really cute idea to make Angry Bird costumes. So I decided to make us all one of those. I was the green king pig, Jared was the red bird and Jacob was the blue bird. It was going to be very cute. Well it turns out Jared had to work the two nights that we could wear our costumes and they were kind of a pain in the butt to make so i probably should have stuck with the cow. 

We missed our ward party because it was on the 14th and i was not expecting that so Jacob and i went to Jen and Michael's ward party. We didn't do pumpkins and we don't really decorate for Halloween. I planned on going trick or treating Monday with the fongs so we could get a picture of us all together but Jared is now working. I was supposed to finish his costume today but i'm not even going to bother lol. Oh well. i got Jacob dressed up and at least he'll have a picture. I couldn't not do anything for Halloween.

There was soup and trunk or treating at the party.

It got chilly while trunk or treating. good thing I brought a blanket. He's not sleeping It's the flash.

We jumped in the bath with the boys and he had a blast. It was all worth it just to get down to SF and hangout with everyone. This video I got off my phone and it doesn't have sound.

Flavor Flaaaav!

Flavor Flav is in Orem Utah and apparently he likes to go to Applebee's. Jared said he thinks they got ribs and apple pie for dessert. He wasn't paying attention. For some reason that was my first question I asked... actually the second. My first question was why on earth is he in Orem Utah. They were making a webisode or something... Pretty random!

For those of you who don't know Flavor Flav he's a rapper... Here's a video of what he's like...

Family photos

We took a trip to Idaho awhile back and Anna took some photos for us. Well right when we got them from her we flew off to Colorado so now i'm finally getting around to posting them. Enjoy!

Thanks Anna! they turned out amazing and we love them almost as much as we love you!