I think this year has been the most Christmassy year of all time for me, even though (confession) I haven’t had time to buy a single gift yet (ack!) For the first year ever, I’ve had to photograph a lot of corporate holiday parties, and so everything has been Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!!! It’s been nothing short of amazing. 🙂 I’ll post a few pics here so you can get the idea….but first-

We took a quick trip to the Discovery Center because Little T has been on a train kick lately and they’re having a Thomas display. It was a little too crowded for us though, so we made a family introverted break for the insects and gingerbread houses instead. 😉

We had lunch at Mead’s Green Door Cafe before heading home. The whole family gave Mead’s a thumbs up. Little T loved the quinoa chili, and I had a great salad.

I think during one exciting bachelorette party, I may have signed up for a wine club. I forgot I did this until more wine than I’ll ever drink in my life showed up at my doorstep…whoops?

On days when we don’t go out, Little T and I like to take little walks and search for sticks! The ultimate activity. 🙂

I had a few lovely Holiday engagement sessions during the week. So much fun!

And we had the trendsetters holiday party! I told Tara from Fairytale Hair and Makeup to do my hair like this:

Just kidding, I got Elsa hair! Tara did my hair and Cole did my makeup, which was fun because I always watch Cole do bride’s makeup, so it was nice to have a turn. She looked at me with excitement and said……”can I do whatever I want?” So I gave Cole permission to do whatever she wanted to my face, lol. The end result:

It was fun getting ready with everyone!

Michelle got ready first, and then looked super glamorous while she answered emails.

Trendsetters had a beautiful champagne bar, my favorite was the lavender/pear champagne. 🙂

Louise was a little overwhelmed by the choices. :p

I got to see Alan’s shoes! He won trendsetter of the year, so proud of him!

A few more pics, what a lovely night. The Disney crew won best new idea for their cake mapping, so we had to celebrate! 🙂

Dancing the night away!

At the end of the night, Louise surprised me with a vegan Sprinkles cupcake. That’s why I keep you around, Louise! 😉

Pheo the elf was feeling inspired the next morning. He was up to all sorts of trouble.

And I can’t show most of the holiday parties I’ve had to photograph, but here is a pic that I can show from one of my favorites. A beautiful holiday party at Kellogg House. So lovely, and there was an amazing choir that sang Christmas songs that put everyone in the holiday spirit.

This is me taking an iphone video while I was taking photos, haha.

The next day we drove to Apple Valley with Papa G (!!!) to see a Christmas Carol! When we picked Little T up from daycare, he was ecstatic to see my dad. 🙂 We were hoping for snow, but it only snowed a little. We sang Christmas carols all night, interacted with Tiny Tim and Scrooge, and learned some fun new dances! What a wonderful experience.

We stayed at Serendipity Bed and Breakfast, and as always, we had a lovely time exploring, and Nina made the best breakfast.

Little T has been coming to see Nina since he was a little baby! 🙂

During the trip, my step sister confessed to me that if our family got the rest of the family sick for the third year in a row, we just might be shunned from Christmas for the rest of our lives. The pressure is on. 0_0 :p

When we got home, we had a last minute game night, because our house looked so pretty and Christmassy. 🙂

Miss Piggy was even in the holiday spirit with some new duds!

Big T said that unfortunately, the new duds did nothing for Miss Piggy’s breath.

We love you anyway, Miss Piggy!

We played our favorite new/old game: Funny Bones!

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The winners!

And then I had one more holiday party to attend. These were my two favorite Christmas sweaters…perhaps of all time.

When I got home, Little T heard me come in and asked me to come to his room, so I showed him the new trick I learned at the holiday party with the dubsmash app. 😉

And that’s been our week! So much, I can’t believe we’ve made it through. And now it’s time for some serious holiday prep. 🙂

I hope you’ve all had a great week, and that you’re more ready for Christmas than I am!

It’s been a busy/tiring/but fun kind of week.

Happenings:

We had to take Little T to the doctor (he had a cough, poor Boo). He was actually pretty excited about going because I picked him up early from Day Care, which always makes for a great day. After the doctor, we made the 45 minute drive to the Canon repair store to turn in our broken flash. I feel like Little T will have so many photos of himself lying on the ground and bored in this store. :p Thank goodness Nana was here visiting, it made everything about ten times easier.

We were close to the Mitsuwa Market, so we stopped by to pick up some favorite things. I wish this place was closer! I could spend so much time here! When I was younger and lived close by, we’d stop here frequently for lunch. We were in a hurry though, so instead it was a quick 15 minute dash to our favorite things before jumping back in the car and heading home.

More exciting news, Little T’s Elf on the Shelf arrived! We’ve had one every year, but this was the first year that an elf arrived that looked like Little T. Little T was thrilled! 🙂

My work had been busy because it’s holiday party season, and I haven’t been home much and when I have been home, I’ve been editing. Busy is good though! The only thing is it’s hard on Little T. I had to work on the weekend and through the week (and this weekend too), and Little T was grumpy about it. To get some time in, I dedicated an entire undistracted day with him. We met my sister and the crew and spent the day at Disneyland. He was so happy, it’s not very often that we get so much Mommy and Little T time together.

His face in this picture, it cracks me up. He was pretending to be scared for the Haunted Mansion.

It was really wet, which made it fun. We walked back to the car at the end of the day and Little T jumped in every big puddle he could find. It doesn’t rain here very often so it’s always exciting when it does. Little T loved the drive home, because he said it was dark and rainy and spooky, like his favorite book, “The Monster of the Woods”. He’s funny, he likes to be scared, but not too much. 😉

The next day, after a really fun shoot at Disneyland in the morning, I had to run back home to take Little T to the dentist. He loves the dentist, which makes me smile. Our dentist office is so much fun for kids, and the staff and doctor (Dr. shuffer) are great. Little T didn’t want to leave, and I had to resort to parental bribery to get him into the car. You can kind of see the waiting room here, it looks like a playground. It even has a bowling alley.

The next day, I had a beautiful wedding to photograph and some meetings to attend, but first I had to run a few errands at Disneyland with Little T’s elf. 😉

Mischief managed!

I got home pretty late that night, and fell asleep going through the pictures on my computer. I couldn’t wait until the next morning to see them! I was amused to discover that I had actually started going through and highlighting my favorite photos in my sleep. Now that is dedication: sleep working. The photos I chose didn’t make much sense, but I gave myself an A for effort!!!!

The next morning after the wedding, I was pretty sore and tired, but still managed to make it to bday party of Little T’s best friend at daycare. I was really torn about it. I was exhausted and had another event to photograph later, but Little T had been talking about this party for two weeks. In the end, I decided to go. When I woke Little T up in the morning, he sleepily asked if there was daycare. When I told him there wasn’t and that it was his best friends birthday party, he shot up as quick as he could with a huge excited gasp. On the way there, he was asking every few minutes how long it would be until we got there. The theme was rocket ships, and everyone loved the games and the jet packs that his bff’s mom made!

Can you believe that Little T is the youngest kid in this photo?

After the bday party, it was holiday party time! I said goodbye to my two T’s and went to photograph another great party.

The next morning, I finally got to watch Peter Pan Live with Little T (well… I worked and watched). He loved it, and I thought he would! He liked to dance along with the pirates and the lost boys while the show was going. It made for an entertaining editing session. 😉 It would be fun to see the show live, I think he’d really enjoy it. When Peter Pan was finished, Big T took over so I could get some more work done for the day.

It’s busy and tiring trying to fit it all in, but worth it! 🙂 I have another crazy busy week over here and then things slow down a little for Christmas. I’m looking forward to seeing family in the Central Valley, wish I could get up there more often.

Hope you all had a great week!

The other day, we took Little T to build a bear. He had a really hard time deciding on making a Star Wars Bear or a Basketball Bear, but after a while compromised and decided he would be a basketball bear with a light saber. My mom got him an extra basketball in case he lost one.

At lunch, Little T decided to be creative and make the ultimate toy with his light saber and basketballs…..and he called it his “basketball stick”. He started holding it high in the air and it made the people in the booth next to us laugh. I told him maybe he shouldn’t be playing with this particular creation, and he was really irritated with me for ruining his fun.

After lunch, we went out into downtown Disney. Little T liked the music and decided to dance. I started talking to the person next to me for a minute, and when I turned around, Little T was once again rocking out with his basketball stick. He held it high over his head and danced to the amusement of the people walking by. I took his basketball stick apart and said it may not be the best toy for him to play with.

Anyway, here’s a picture of his basketball stick.

He was pretty mad at me, but I have a feeling that when he’s older, he’ll understand….lol

My mom was in town last week! It’s always so nice when the grandmas are here. She really wanted to go shopping, so we took a trip to Downtown Disney.

Ice Skaters and the Lego Store:

I took Little T’s school photos, which was insane, but awesome! 🙂

On Thanksgiving, we watched the parade, played with Legos, cooked, and had dinner with family. 🙂

Louise and I had a wedding, we were so happy to see the Christmas tree in the lobby! The wedding was gorgeous, and it was just a beautiful and fun day!

We did accidentally break a flash, but thankfully we have spares!

The next day, we did Christmas Tree shopping and spent the day decorating. One of the things we’ve discovered since we’ve become a multi cultural family, is how difficult it is to find toys, books, and movies that have kids that are the same race as Little T. We have to order a lot of things online, like an elf on the shelf with black hair and brown skin, but finding these things is few and far between. I just wish I could find one African American cowboy, or pirate, or a figure for our Christmas Village set, or a Christmas book that he can relate to. It’s crazy that in this day and age, toys and figures aren’t more diverse. What’s even sadder, is that I would never have even thought about it until we had Little T.

I bring it up, because we spent a lot of that day searching for those things. Didn’t find them, but we’re going to look some more online and see if we can find anything.

But all in all, we had a great time decorating. Little T was more into the ornaments this year and had lots of questions about them. He also loved the train set that a friend had given to us, and we watched the train go around the tree for the longest time. 🙂

And here is Little T cuddling with nana in the morning, she came to stay with us for the week. One of Little T’s favorite things to do is cuddle with both of his grandma’s. 🙂

And today, we spent the morning cleaning and working. Somewhere along the line while we were cleaning, Little T and Big T found these outfits. Can you see how hard they were working? I can. :p

So that was the week! Our house is so nice now that it’s decorated! 🙂 🙂 🙂