Personal Christmas Trees

Tonight, while doing some investigative work for the Nativity display, the boys and I found these adorable kid-sized Christmas trees and ornaments. Since my tree won't get put up until after the nativity display, I figured they could each get a small tree to decorate. Plus, all of Hobby Lobby's Christmas stuff is 50% off, so it didn't cost me an arm and a leg!

 This is Jensen's. He chose some cute Christmas clay-figures and lollipops.

 And here is Carson's. He chose candy canes and some winter sea creatures.

Hopefully they have gotten their fill of tree decorating. Because I'm the only one allowed to decorate my tree. :)

Halloween 2011

Happy Halloween! Carson got to dress up in two different costumes for Halloween this year. At school he got to dress up as a "Storybook Character," so he chose to be the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I made the little caterpillar suit and he colored all the pictures of the food he eats in the book.

 Then we dressed up the boys in their Ninja costumes to go Trick-or-Treating.

 This year we talked a lot about making sure to look people in the eye while they said "thank you." They did pretty well with this. We still need to work on them saying "Trick-or-Treat" instead of "Trunk-or-Treat!"

 And we were lucky enough to find our friend, Lusia, while we were out roaming the neighborhood, because we've taken pictures with her on Halloween for so many years, I stopped counting. And this year we actually got all the kids looking at the camera and smiling! :)

The kids had fun, Mason did really well riding in the stroller, and Dustin and I spent a quiet evening eating all their good candy while watching Dancing with the Stars. Happy Halloween, indeed.

Trunk or Treat

We had our ward Trunk-or-Treat / Chili Cook off last night. It was, as usual, a large & wonderful event! The boys wanted to be Ninjas this year, so we made Mason a baby Ninja! They had fun.

 And thank goodness our Bishop likes to take pictures at ward events, otherwise I wouldn't have a single picture of my whole family! I dressed up in a very old princess costume of mine and Dustin was my "half-hearted" knight (you can see his sword and shield that he didn't carry around on the table).

 We also had our Annual YW Camp Cake Auction Fundraiser. I made the gigantic Fruit Pizza on the left, and the other two cakes were done by a couple of our YW. They came over to my house and I helped them with their beautiful creations. All of the entries did really well, and we put a nice dent in the YW camp fund.

 And our favorite neighbor was "nice" enough to give Mason a KitKat during the Trunk-or-Treat and he eventually broke through the packaging and got to enjoy his chocolately mess.

This is one of our favorite ward activities, and for good reason! We had a great time.

Family Home Evening

Last night for Family Home Evening we carved our first ever Brudnicki Family pumpkin. Yeah, I know, it's kinda sad that we've never done it before. Dustin doesn't really tolerate this type of activity with children, so he played with Mason while the big boys carved. :)  We had fun. The boys picked out the design- a spin off of a classic jack. (He's sticking his tongue out.) They also helped clean out all his guts. Carson had fun doing that, but Jensen told me it was the "not so fun part." Carson even got to help a little with the carving. All in all, a fun family activity, and hopefully something we'll get to do every year from now on.

He Speaks

Finally! Blogger decided to let me upload this. Love this sweet big baby!

Dear Blog

Dearest Blog,

I know I haven't been very good at keeping up with you as of late. Without a camera, I've lost motivation to post new entries. After all, showing off my beautiful children is one of the main reasons you exist. But it's not just that. I've got a lot going on right now. Sometimes I get a little overwhelmed (read: stressed!). Truth is, it's going to be a busy semester for me and my little family. I can't say that I'm going to be any better at keeping up with posts during the next 2 months, but don't worry. I'm thinking about you. I'll be back to post some cute pictures of the boys for Halloween, I promise. But other than that, well, I'm making no guarantees. And just to show we're still friends, I tried for 20 minutes to post a cute video of Mason talking, but you wouldn't let me. So, when I do stop back in, could you work on being a little more cooperative? That would be great. Hope to be back real soon!

Love, Me

Lunch and Oranges

Today we went to have lunch with Carson at school. First time for me. And first time Carson bought his lunch. Jensen had lots of fun eating with Carson and playing on the playground with him. They acted like long lost buddies.Then, when we got home, Mason was looking for something to munch on while I ate my lunch, so I gave him an orange slice to try. He sat and licked the thing for the first couple of minutes until he figured out he could bite it.And then he went to town!Can you tell he liked it? I was thoroughly entertained watching him eat this!