Family Pictures

If you're anxiously awaiting your Christmas card from the Jenks Family, then you'll just have to keep on waiting...til next year - or maybe later. Yes, it's true, I didn't do Christmas cards. I have a million excuses, but basically I didn't want to take the time to do them. That's what it all boils down to. I have, however, really enjoyed getting many of your cards. As the holiday season approached, I planned on doing them and had our family pictures taken, but alas I never followed through. So, here's some of our pictures. My friend, Shaila, took them and I think she did a great job. She's a self-taught photographer and she's really got a talent for it. She has this fancy shmancy camera that I can't even dream of operating. We took them outside in the freezing cold and she did it really fast and still had lots of cute shots. She was such a pro- thanks, Shaila! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We had a great time in Wyoming with my parents and all six of my siblings and their spouses and kids. It was a crew! I'll post about our fun trip later. This is a picture Shayla took of Iris while we were inside chatting. I love it because Iree always has her hands in he mouth like that. And she always lifts her eyebrows like that, so it looks like she has a unabrow. Isn't she too cute?

My handsome Romie in his festive sweater.

Roman and Jason are goofing off and I'm just checkin out Jason's bulging biceps. He does have nice arms, don't you think?

If I had sent out a card, thi would have been the picture I would have sent. Iris's eyes are closed, but oh well. It was still my favorite shot. Oh...by the way, I have cut my hair since this picture was taken. Don't worry, I got rid of that stringy mess. Now I just wish I would have chopped it before we got the pics taken. I just don't look good in long hair...oh well!

The Perfect Christmas Gift

Christmas is quickly approaching and I am once again procrastinating. Every year I tell myself that I'm going to get my shopping done early and guess what, I never do. So, why should this year be any different? We do a drawing on my side of the family with my sibs and the neices and nephews. Luckily I do have those presents bought and my parents' gift is taken care of, but I have yet to buy one thing for my poor husband and kids. This week I've been online shopping for things and nothing is really jumping out at me. Granted, my kids should be really easy to shop for. Iris doesn't know what's what and Roman pretty much loves everything, but I don't want to buy a bunch of crap toys that Roman will play with once and then they'll spend the rest of their days collecting dust in our basement. I've got enough of those already. I have put a lot of thought into this. It's become somewhat of an obsession. I want to get something that he'll really enjoy AND that isn't too noisy, big, or expensive. So, I was trying to think about what he's really into these days and it's definitely sports...mostly football. It's football season right now and of course Jason watches all the Seahawks games (although I don't think he wants to claim them this year.) Anyway, Roman likes to watch football with Jason (for a few mins), but what he really loves to do is "toss the ball" as he says. As soon as Jason gets home from work they go downstairs and play football. And I don't mean to be one of those moms that thinks their kid is extraordinary, but Roman does have a pretty dang good arm. You can ask any of my friends that have seen him throw. He's a natural...I think :) OK, this post is getting long so I'm going to try to wrap it up. So, I've finally decided what I want to get Roman for Christmas...a football helmet! It would be perfect. As you can see in the picture below, he's got Vivian's pink bucket on his head. She left it at our house when they were here for halloween and he was running around with it on his head. I thought it was kind of weird and then he said, "Mom, it's my football heh-met." That was about a month ago. Then yesterday he found his hat that I knitted and pulled it all the way down. He came running into the kitchen. I said, "Rome, what are you doing?" He was like, "It's my football heh-met. I wanna toss the ball." The only problem is that now I know what I want to get him, but apparently it's not so easy to find a toddler sized football helmet. I've been searching the internet and I've had no luck. Ugghhh....I hope I don't have to go back to square one. The boy needs a helmet. He can't keep parading around with his nifty-knitted hat pulled over his face! :) Anyway, we'll see what I come up with.

This last picture is of my two babies this morning at 5:30. Yep, that's when they like to wake up. I was so tired that I put them both in bed with me, but they were both really awake. Iree was laughing so hard and making the biggest smiles. Roman was being so cute with her too. He kept being all snuggly and lovey dovey. I just had to take a picture of them. I hate waking up so early, but it's hard to resist those two...even at 5:30.