Christmas

Another fun Christmas for the Clingman's! We kicked it off with a super cold photoshoot for our xmas cards. This guy wasn't having any of it. But I did get him to crack a little smile. 

When I uploaded the pictures to my computer, my computer was having none of that and promptly shut itself down causing me to freak out, cry a little and panic on the phone with Apple support. Luckily they were able retrieve all my photos except this last batch since it didn't have a chance to save itself to the memory before it crashed. But the good new is I finally figured out how to use my external hard drive! yay. I grabbed these blurry out takes from the christmas card site I ordered from, luckily they had a few saved although not great quality. Oh well!

Nolan has figured out if he smiles and holds still these photoshoots go a lot faster. He hasn't shared this bit of info with Miles as he made me work for the shot we ended up using.

 On to Christmas day. We did lots of merriment between these two events which I will have to pry out of my iPhone at some point soon. Not a lot of photos of christmas morning, although I did get this one of Miles' epic bed head.

And a bunch of blurry excited kid pics.

Of course we finally got to share this big news with the boys. They didn't have an immediate excited reaction that we thought they would.  They have built excitement as we countdown to the big day though for sure. 12 days to go!

Christmas dinner has moved to Yaya's house! We're mixing things up and now that Yaya is settled into her house we decided to meet there. A big plus for us since she is a 5 minute drive. These two little boys finally figured out they have a built in playmate cousin. It only took 4 years!! They were pretty much inseparable and played really well together. So worth the 4 years of side eyes and toy grabs.

Someone is a big Dutchy fan!!

Meanwhile the big kids practices their kick boxing outside? Whatever they were doing they had fun.

We bribed the kids with opening presents to get one good photo of all of them. This will just have to do!

Emmie insisted on matching PJs for all this year. I think they pulled it off well.

You can't see it here but Emmie has matching pjs too. I phoned it in with a matching bow. After dinner, presents, and desserts this was the best we could get everyone to cooperate. Not too bad for my squirmy guys. Nolan is obviously feeling it.

Grumpy about Christmas being over. Until next year!

Truck or treat

Once again the boys went to the Renton Community Center's Truck or Treat event. I didn't get a ton of pictures as it was rainy and I was juggling umbrellas, coats, my camera, etc. But I'll add more when I finally offload my iPhone. Nolan really wanted to be a german shepherd this year and convinced Miles to be the police officer so they can be the K-9 unit. The Renton K-9 unit happened to be there as well so that just pretty much made their day. 

Pumpkins

We learned a valuable lesson this year on our annual trek out to find pumpkins. The very best day to go to a pumpkin patch is Sunday while the Seahawks are playing. We had the place to ourselves on a sunny afternoon and it was fantastic. This year we went to Oxbow Farms since our usual place decided not to do pumpkins this year.

Can you guess what Nolan asked to have painted on his face? A German Shepherd of course!

We all found our pumpkins and Nolan kept his tradition of chatting up the tractor driver.

It was a great day all around. Pat even offered to record the game and come with so it was fun for all of us! Another successful pumpkin patch trip complete.

Miles goes to school too!

Miles started school last month too. And in true 2nd kid fashion his questionnaire got postponed. Well, it's finally done and here it is!

I had a whole outfit picked out that was so adorable: collared shirt, khakis and coordinating shoes. Nope, he wasn't having any of that. He chose is Canucks shirt, jeans, and converse. Whatever you want bud!

Plus the outakes:

I need you to smile Miles.

Like this?

A little bigger.

Did you get it?

 

Can we be done yet?

How about now?

 

That's it! We're getting closer.  

Did you get my back pack though?

 

Good enough, let's go!

Nolan Goes to School

Nolan started school today, second grade already! He got the teacher he wanted, his friend Madi's mom and was so excited although rather sleepy this morning. 

He came home with a nurses note saying he bonked his head on a friend and received ice, which must make it some kind of record! Last year he came home with at least 10 of these but on the first day is impressive. 

We of course did our questionnaire today and documented the occasion with lots of front yard pictures. 

And of course the out takes. This was a close second though.