Happy 9 Months Addie!

I know I have been slacking big time lately, but life is crazy in the Elwood Household.

Today Addie turned 9 months old. It made me wonder where all the time has gone... but I took some great pictures of her. With, and without clothes since she isn't a huge fan of getting dressed these days.

She also thought the owl sticker for her shirt was something to eat.

It seems like whenever I sit down to do photos with her, she always starts out with a picture looking up, and I know when she does this she is saying I love you to her Auntie Dawn.

I love baby feet!

Example of Addie trying to eat her owl sticker.

Celebrating Christmas

I know I posted a hand full of pictures that I took with my cell phone on Christmas day, but I wanted to share all the pictures I took of our family, while celebrating with our extended family on Christmas Day.

It was a quiet day overall, which was nice. The weeks leading up to Christmas were just way too crazy for us!

This was the best picture I could get of the kids first thing in the morning. Camden wasn't too happy to be awake, even though Santa came. It also didn't help that Will and I were like little kids and woke them all up. Well... Ben and Camden at least.

Ben was showing Grandpa Mo Mo his InnoTab and new Dora the Explorer book. I think my Dad was completely fascinated by it. Maybe he will get an InnoTab next Christmas? LOL!

We were all extremely thankful Will didn't have to work on Christmas day. He was originally put into a "lottery" and was 9th on the list to work that day. Oh the joys of being a Supervisor now right?

I love these pictures... it really shows what a character Camden is. Can you tell where he gets it from?

Daddy and Addie... I wish you could see her big glittery bow on the front of her dress!

I love this picture too... My mom looks so happy, and so do the kids. Well, this is Camden's "shy" face that he has when you put him on the spot.

On Mom's Christmas tree... The Angel with Dawn's name on it I found for her, and my baby ornament. Sisters together... forever.

It was extremely hard to get through Christmas without Dawn. The day included a lot of tears all the way around, mainly my mother and I.

Ben loves Grandma, but hates taking pictures... I think this is the best picture we got of him all day besides the one with Grandpa when he wasn't paying attention! They all go through that stage right?

Addie and "Auntie" Courtney, she is really my cousin making her their second cousin, but we call her Auntie... and she loves it!

I tried to get the boys to take a picture with me... lost cause. So I got Addison since she is the only one who can't say no...yet!

For once I got in front of the camera for the holidays.

Here is to a beautiful, successful, and happy 2012 from our family to yours!

Christmas 2011

2011 has been a really hard year for everyone in our family, and if it wasn't for the birth of our daughter, I could probably say not much good has come from the year. BUT! She is here, and we are heading into 2012 and hoping for a great year!

We celebrated Christmas with my parents, aunt, cousin, and friends of our family like we do every year. I got some really great pictures of the kids I wanted to share. I still have to upload my full stash from my camera though!

Addie and Grandma

Ben and Grandpa reading Dora on his InnoTab.

I think Grandpa was most interested in the book!

Finally a holiday I got a good picture with my husband!

I will update with more pictures once the craziness settles down a little bit and I am able to actually sit down with my camera and upload some of the pictures I took.

I am also going to really try and go out of my way to keep our family blog current for 2012. I really fell off the family blog bandwagon when Dawn got sick, and I still want to be able to share with our family who isn't local to us.

Grandma and the Playground

I have been going to visit my mother a lot since we lost my sister. I know it is hard for her, and I know the kids are a nice momentary distraction, of course until they start trying to kill each other. LOL!

We went to visit grandma today and head to the playground they just put in by her house. It is actually the playground I used to play on as a child, but they put up a whole new playground. New equipment that is. It is amazing, and the boys can do almost everything on it all by

themselves.

It was beautiful out, and probably one of the last park days we are going to have before the weather starts to get harsh. Another reason I hate New England... Long winters INSIDE!

Anyway! We had a blast, and so did Grandma! I am sure she is going to kill me for sharing these pictures, but it was great to see her let down her hair a bit and have fun with the kids!

I got stuck on top of one of the playscapes you can climb to the top of... LOL

Halloween

I love Halloween! It is my second favorite holiday of the year, so of course I got all into it with the kids this year. We made a Mr. Frankenstein Head Pumpkin, decorated the front, and of course come Halloween morning, I made Halloween Baskets... no joke!

Despite a giant snow storm where we ended up with 8... yes EIGHT inches of snow in our yard, Halloween went on without a delay on Monday night. Camden decided to be a clown this year, after he first decided to be a cow, then a fireman, and changed his mind in the Halloween store itself.

Ben was a little bit different, he was undecided all along. He wanted to be Buzz Lightyear, then Scooby Doo, then he wanted to be a Piggy when Camden decided to be a cow. Well in the end, Elmo it was. He wanted to be Elmo somewhere along the line, and I just picked it and went with it. It was a warm costume too!

Addie was an Owl, and I am sure no one was surprised by that. LOL!

I got a couple pictures of the boys first. They were anxious to get going, and Addie was snoozing in her swing. She fell asleep right after I got her into her costume. My luck right?

See! How cute is she there?

Thankfully I finally got him to let go of his collar and convinced him the sweat shirt under his costume was not going to wipe his face paint off. I was actually intimidated by the whole face paint thing. I have never done it before and I was planning on pawning the task off on Will, but he got stuck at work.

Yes, I was solo with these three...

But I survived... I was stressed but we survived, and went to our local Trick-Or-Trunk instead of going door to door. It worked out well, and both of the boys were content with it.

Pumpkin Picking

Every year we take a day and go up to Pumpkin Seed Hill for pumpkin picking right here in our town. Well this year Daddy couldn't come with us because of his new work schedule, so I enlisted my best friend Hilary, who also has an ass ton of kids. Four boys to be exact... and off we went.

Lets do the math on this one... 6 boys, and one girl, which all 6 boys doted on the whole trip. It was adorable!

I got a couple really great pictures, although I wasn't able to get many on the hayride since Addie decided on the bumpy hayride she needed to breastfeed right at that moment!

The theme of the pumpkin patch this year is Nautical Connecticut, which I absolutely love since I grew up on an Oyster boat, and went to the Aquaculture school for High School! I also love that my nephew is following in my foot steps and going to the same high school!

I love how most of the boys want nothing to do with the picture. Can you tell they were forced to pose together? This was one of the only pictures we got them ALL in. HA!

This is the picture where I realize Camden's cowlick is completely out of control and I am glad we brought him and Ben for haircuts a couple days after this!

These are our pumpkins we took home. A total of 5!

One for each member of the family!

The one picture I was able to get of Camden on the hayride before Addie demanded to eat.

We had an awesome time. I am still kind of bummed out we didn't make it to the Apple Orchard this year. Typically we always take a Sunday and go to Lyman Orchards, but the Sunday we would have used for that this year was occupied with a trip to the Clinton Fire Department for their open house. We were going to head to an orchard local to them, but they unfortunately closed because of the crop damage done by Hurricane Irene.

Maybe next year right?

Now to just convince Will to get a real Christmas tree this year so we can go and cut it down. Not likely but I am going to try!

They Are Growing!

I got some great pictures of the kids out in the yard about two weeks ago. It is incredibly hard to get them all in one place, or in one picture, but isn't that life?

I wanted to share since I have been horrible keeping up with our blog in the past two months!

He loves her, and she tolerates him. I think once she is a little older she will like him a tad bit

more. For now most of her expressions are "Get out of my face kid"

Ben had no interest in taking any posed pictures at all. He just wanted to hang out with Nana

and play with his new Thomas the Train and Friends set.

I caught this one, and it was priceless. It is moments like this I am so glad I invested in a DSLR

camera when I did. This is a moment of Addison tolerating Camden.

PROOF! Finally I have proof that my three year old has a tongue like Gene Simmons! His

newest trick is touching his tongue to his nose. I think he learned it at school.

Look at these two. Don't they just look like they are ready to get into trouble? Ha! Oh, and see the number the kids pool did to my grass this summer? I hate that thing!

I am hoping to get our photos from the Farm up in the next couple days as well. In the next couple weeks we are going to the Apple Orchard, Pumpkin Picking, and our annual trip to the circus.

Camden has been waiting since we went last year to go again, and then he saw the commercial on TV! I almost wish he wasn't old enough to realize what commercials mean sometimes! LOL