Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve at Pat's parent's house along with his siblings. It was so great to be together as a family. The kids did the nativity, we ate yummy food and had a fun time together!

Addi & Mara

Noah & Alex were running amok in the basement with the kids and decided that they wanted to become a 2 headed monster!! It's a good thing that grandma has fun clothing in the dress-up box.Some of the kids waiting for the prayer.

And of course a funny face picture!

I have to get pictures of me & Pat whenever I can, because we just don't have that many together!

The kids got all dressed up and acted out the nativity. Mara was the angel.

Here we have Joseph (Xander), Mary (Addi) & the Angel (Mara).

A Shepherd (Carter) & Joseph (Xander)

Jacob was great and read the story from Luke while the kids acted it out. Cody, Alex, & Noah were the wise men!! I just love their crowns!

Grandpa Tolman doesn't like to get his picture taken, so I snap one whenever I can :) At least he will smile on occasion.

A really sweet pic of Carter & MaraAll of Pat's siblings (including us) got Roger & Tammy an 8x10 digital photo frame for Christmas. We were able to load it with over 300 pictures too! Tammy's mother Ethel has been visiting from Tennessee and staying with them for the month. It's been so great to have her here, especially for Christmas. We love Grandma Ethel!!!!

In a bunch of my pictures I noticed that there was a weird smudge that was showing up. So I looked at my lens and noticed a fingerprint. I sat there wondering where it had come from then I remembered taking this picture of my nephew Maddox!!! He is such a curious kid!!

We got an All Girls picture and even Addi & Mara got in on the fun!

I got these cute pics of Mara talking to Grandma Ethel!

When we got home the kids opened up their Pj's and we got ready for bed :)

I will post more pictures tomorrow.

Christmas Sunday

I was able to get some cute pictures of the kids before church last week. I just love Mara's Christmas dress. She wore it all day long and told everyone that her dress was pretty!!

Family Christmas Party

Saturday night we had our Annual Hillam Family Christmas Party! It was nice to see my extended family. Here are the highlights:

Xander & Karri

Mara & Conli (The Rockin' Angel)
Me & My Sweetheart

Max & Xander

Me & Mara

We always have Santa come and each child gets a present. This is a picture of a very nervous Mara! When Santa came she got so nervous that she had to go 'potty'. So while we were in the bathroom I talked with her about sitting on Santa's lap. She said that she didn't want to, of course. So I relented and told her that if she sat on his lap that maybe she would get a princess!! That made her happy for a moment, but by the time we went back in the room, she was nervous again!

Us trying to distract her from watching Santa!

The Best Santa Around!!!!!

We have had the same Santa for over 20 years! He's awesome, and it wouldn't be Christmas without him :)

Xander & the Big Guy He got a Lego set. As I took this picture he said to me:

"I just love it so much"
By the time it was Mara's turn, she had gone in front to be with Conli. When her name was called she just ran right up to Santa!! Needless to say, I was in complete shock!! She did a great job and even talked to him :) By the end she was starting to get nervous again but then was able to get down, so there was no crying. I am just so proud of my little girl. I thought for sure it would be another year of a crying child. I think my niece Sawyer was the worst, and the funniest! Lisa has pics here.

Mara wasn't disappointed. She got her princess :)

Mara & Conli playing with their new dolls.

"Hi, I'm Belle" "Hi, I'm Gabriella"

One last picture before we left.

Chris, Sawyer, Me & Lisa.It was a really fun party and next year's is going to Rock The House!!!! (My generation is going to be planning it)

I just can't believe that Christmas is almost here!!

Request

This is a request from all those people that were in High School Choir with me at MVHS. I have the songs on CD that I recorded from home video, but I don't have the titles to most of the songs. So if any of you out there happen to still have copies of the programs from our concerts and could email (bregirl81 at gmail dot com) the titles to me that would be awesome or type them in the comments!!!

I am looking for all concerts in the 96-97 year (Ladies A Cappella), all concerts in the 97-98 year (A Cappella), and the Christmas concert for the 98-99 year (Chamber & A Cappella)!
Thanks!

Snowing & Singing

It finally snowed for real on Tuesday and Pat had his last final of the semester, so to celebrate we all went outside and built a snowman!! (I just took pictures, I don't like the snow too much)

Here are the highlights:

Daddy with the base of the snowman! The snow was more powder, so it was hard to get the snow to stick together. But they did a great job nonetheless!

Mara had to play on the swings, even though they were covered in snow!!

The finished product!

The kids were being so cute with the snow. I had to post some videos!

Listen closely to Xander, he made me laugh :)

Last night Xander had his School Program!

He did such a great job on all his songs and he was singing loudly too :)

They were singing 'Frosty the Snowman' in this one!

This is Xander with his teacher Koni Youd! She is a wonderful teacher and he has improved so much these past few months. He is learning all the sounds of the letters and even sounding out words! She says that we can get him reading by the end of the school year!!

I am so proud of my little boy! He is getting so big and smart :)

Be a Hero. Save a Blog (You could win an iPod or a Cricut!)

So, my awesome brother started this company, called Bloggled, to help all us bloggers in the world!! You can back up your blog for free!!! So if you delete something, they can retrieve it for you. If you accidently delete your whole blog (after you have backed it up) they can bring it back to life. You can even turn your blog into a book, without all the extra uploading :)

Anywho, they are having a great contest on Monday December 15th to celebrate the launch of their website! You could win a Cricut or an 16 GB iPod Touch!!! So keep on reading to find out how to enter to win!!! Good luck!!

Have you ever had this experience? You are posting to your blog, click the publish button, and the very next thing you know the screen is blank. So, you click back to your drafts and nothing is there, then you click your published posts and nothing is there. At this point you are starting to think to yourself…oh no, what just happened? As you continue searching your blog admin for information you see that all your uploaded images, videos, files, and everything is gone.

Living through this situation would be enough to devastate any blogger. Knowing that years of data about your person, family, or business is gone can be difficult to overcome emotionally, but even more difficult of a problem to solve. If you haven’t backed up your blog recently, or ever, chances are your posts and everything else are gone for good.

This is the kind of situation that led Brent Ramey to the idea of creating Bloggled.com, “and to honestly save anyone in that situation the act of going insane.” Bloggled.com is a blog backup company that is allowing bloggers to backup their blog for free as an introductory product to celebrate their official launch out of beta and as a holiday gift this season. Bloggled is also offering multiple prizes to those who participate in their “Be a Hero, Save a Blog Contest” that is running through the day on Monday, December 15, 2008. Winners can choose from either a 16GB iPod Touch, or a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter Machine and it’s quite simple to enter. All you have to do is one of the items below, but if you do more you get entered more times into the drawing…but you have to enter by Monday 12/15 to qualify so act fast, or should I say slow so I have a better chance of winning. :)

1. Join Bloggled. Register and sign up for a Bloggled account (http://www.bloggled.com/).
2. Friend or follow Bloggled on one of the following social network profiles:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bloggled
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Brent-Ramey/1002883214
3. Subscribe to Bloggled’s RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bloggled.
4. Blog about the Blogger Contest on another blog then notify Bloggled about the new blog post by commenting on their blog.

Anyway, as you can tell from my post here, I have met the criteria and will be hoping I’m drawn as a winner on Monday. You can find the full contest details by visiting www.bloggled.com.