Improptu photoshoot

We went to Virginia for Christmas and it was awesome! I'll write more about that later, but for now I wanted to put up some pictures I took of Afton at my parents' home. The lighting was great.

December thus far

Our community had its annual winter festival a few weekends ago. We rode a train.

And a camel. Poor camel.

We also took a "sleigh" ride.

 The kids got balloon objects made - Afton a dog and Sam a sword. Afton's dog quickly got messed up (see above) and we called it a giraffe. Then the giraffe morphed even more so Dan fashioned a hat for her.

Dan had his 31st birthday.

 He requested tacos for dinner and a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. As you, my faithful readers, know I like to decorate the cake in some way so his request made it a little tricky. I decided to make a rock wall on the cake with Dan climbing up. Ghetto, I know. But I think he liked it anyway.

We also started the advent calendar.

And we took a preschool fieldtrip to a "Festival of Trees" at a senior center.

 We finally took all 150 blankets that we collected with our blanket drive out of our bedroom.

 And into the van. We fit them all! We took them down and dropped them off. It was really quick, but nice to see how a little thing can help others. Houston has a lot of homeless people.

It was a little sunny.

Yesterday was our church Christmas "Breakfast with Santa." Sam was excited to tell Santa that he wants a transformer. Santa better get on that...

 When I asked Afton if she was excited to see Santa, this is the face she made:

 But I told Dan to put her on his lap anyway. I feel bad about it now. Poor girl. Her crying weirded out Sam, too, who up until that point had been just fine.

Another installment of: Pictures from the kids' camera

Once again Sam's camera's memory card was full so I downloaded all 800 pictures, deleted 600 pictures of blackness, whiteness, the floor and blurred randomness, and here are a few of what's left.

First, we've got a lot of close-ups of the picture takers.

Afton:

 Sam:

But Sam doesn't take too many self-portraits anymore. He's discovered the funny faces you can make and tends to use those a lot more:

The camera also has built-in frames you can use.

Here are some from a trip to the Houston Temple.

 That's a cricket below.

Afton took some of her doll.

Sam captured our Christmas lights perfectly.

Other randoms:

 Ghost in the kitchen.