christmas 2013

we had a quiet christmas at home with just our family this year. it was a nice, laid back day.

jonathan was making a growling noise in this picture to show me what sound the tigers make.

this was actually a christmas eve shot. randy reading the girls the christmas story. i really love this book because it has beautiful paintings illustrating the scriptures and it draws from john, as well as the classic luke scripture story. both randy and i choke up every time we read it.

christmas morning first moments:

fruit snacks in the stocking were a huge hit. my poor, deprived children don't get them from me for the rest of the year.

jonathan loved opening presents this year. it was a fun stage for our kids to be at.

i'm not sure what caused this meltdown but i took pictures instead of solving the problem, of course.

a lot of duplos this year. the girls got jake and the neverland pirate sets and jonathan got an animals set.

i also made the kids dinosaur tails. these are bad pictures, but you get the idea. i thought that i would improve on the design and do buttons instead of velcro for the waistband (not sure what i was thinking at the time), but that didn't really work, so the next day i bought velcro and did a quick fix and the kids have been running around in them a lot since. they sit on their waists better with the velcro.

jonathan got the blender out all by himself. looks like he was ready for some christmas cocktails.

my kids always play pretty well together, but it's been fun to have them hang out and play with their new toys together so much over the last few days.

can you tell this is right next to my sewing table?

merry christmas from the pecks, we hope you had a great one.

madeleine turns six!

i know it's cliche, but i can't believe i have a six-year-old. but seriously, when did this happen? here she is with her balloons from santa on christmas morning, looking way too big to be my little girl.

as randy said, our girls quickly latch on to traditions, so we have to be careful which ones we introduce. apparently these birthday crowns have become a tradition because madeleine asked about it on christmas eve. fortunately, they are easy to whip up. 

so far, we've gotten away with doing christmas stuff in the morning (although she gets the balloons from santa and her birthday crown) and then in the afternoon i blow up balloons and we open presents, she gets to pick what's for dinner, and we do cake. i think it's a good arrangement and madeleine hasn't complained yet.

opening presents:

 wearing a cute new headband from grammy:

my girls are big jake and the neverland pirates fans right now, so the main gift we got madeleine for her birthday was a treasure chest with some plastic gold doubloons. my creative husband drew up a treasure map and she found gold doubloons along the way before finding her present at the end. she loved it and she and diane have been making their own treasure maps/hunts since then.

madeleine requested a funfetti cake with no frosting on it for her birthday. done and done. i love that my kids make things easy for me with low expectations.

happy birthday, madeleine!

christmas eve pictures

last year, i took a family picture of us in front of the tree on christmas eve. it wasn't awesome, but i thought it might be fun to attempt it again, with the kids in their christmas jammies.

unfortunately, i didn't write down the settings i used on the camera last year (not that they were amazing or anything) and i didn't get a chance to sit down and play with it before i was trying to pose the family in front of the tree after the kids already should have been in bed (big mistake), so randy ended up comandeering the camera and trying to figure stuff out. we were all kind of frustrated by the time we actually took any pictures, so when they didn't really turn out the way i had hoped (at all), i didn't press the issue and try to take any more. so, they are what they are, bad exposure and all. maybe next year i'll figure it out before the eleventh hour and maybe i'll pay attention to the background a little more. maybe. 

you want to see what the photo shoot looked like anyway? the director's cut? the blooper reel? of course you do.