Santa Photos 2013

When I say that we KNOW Santa, I’m not joking in the slightest. Santa happens to be my Grandpa and has been for over the past 20 years. Last night we went and got our pictures taken and here’s what we got. All the grandkids got together and we all wore our Devils Lake sweatshirts, from Devils Lake, North Dakota, where my grandparents are from. Maggie did great talkiing with him and my Grandpa tried to change his voice, but mostly sounded like a robot, which was really funny. Audrey tried to pull of his beard a few times, which Maggie said later she didn’t like, makes me wonder if she saw something  (as in my Grandpa’s face!). There were Christmas carolers, Frango Mints and lots of people wanting to sit on Santa’s lap. We took over during our turn like a snow storm….
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Thanksgiving 2013

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We went to A-Town for Thanksgiving this year and had a fantastic weekend with our extended family at my parent’s house. We didn’t count-off at dinner, but I suspect there were about 30 people there. I also didn’t take many pictures of the actual Thanksgiving feast (thanks, Mom!!), but it was an enjoyable time. We arrived shortly before everybody else and I got my brothers, sister-in-law and parents to step outside for a quick family picture. For whatever reason, we didn’t have our group taken a few weeks ago during the Elvrum family pictures. I think we’re a hodge-podge group, but I love it. It’d be weird if we were all matchy-matchy. 

The day after Thanksgiving, Barry and I took the girls to the beach and we spent some time outside before it started to rain. Aside from that, I feel like I hardly saw Little Miss Maggie Mae. She spent most of the weekend, it seemed, playing with one of my brothers or with my dad’s cousin’s wife. Izak and Mags have a sweet routine worked out where Izak plays the piano and Maggie dances around. If Izak stops playing, Maggie kindly convinces him to keep it up…she’ll dance forever and is very dramatic about it. Maggie also helped Phil carve the turkey and I happened to only catch the tail end of it, Maggie watching, and eating hunks of turkey, while Phil carved and talked at length about it. Gross. (There’s probably a reason that job has never been offered to me…) Audrey has discovered the wonders of climbing and putting things into her mouth. She was pretty content to eat tons of different foods and ‘work’ on climbing the stairs. She’s such a happy baby and content to observe everybody from the comfort of a familiar person’s embrace. 

Barry and I were lucky enough to go on a proper date in town….dinner and a movie. We decided that we probably hadn’t been to a movie in over a year, and it might be another year before we decided to do it again. Time to talk uninterrupted is way nicer than a movie, but I’m glad we went. (Umm, Team Gale over here, people!) Saturday morning, before we headed back home, our friends, Adam and Alyssa, came to visit us. We hadn’t seen them in nearly a year and decided that, unlike the movie, we’ll make more of an effort to see them. They live next to Barry’s parents, which makes it an easy place to miss. It seems like some of our A-Town people and Alger friends get lost when we visit our folks, so we appreciate it when the effort is made to make a connection. Thanks, guys! 

Tomorrow we’re back to reality, we’re in charge of snack this week at school, our windshield on our car needs to be replaced and I’d like to finish Christmas presents…..so much for our epic visiting sessions that we had this weekend. Back to business…..

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The Sister Outtakes

This is the very last post I’ll do related to Audrey’s 6 mont portrait project, but I couldn’t resist throwing together a series of pictures of both Mags and Audrey together. I think it gives a taste of what life with these two little girls is like….lots of hugs, squeezes, laughter and a little bit of tears, yelling and screaming. I’m fighting the urge to do a series of “What Maggie Did While I Took Pictures” type of post because there really are some funny ones, but I think I’m ready to move on from this and get onto capturing our day-to-day life again. I’ll sprinkle some of those images from ‘behind the scenes’ a bit more. But for now, take a peek at some of these pictures. My favorite? Not sure…they’re all slightly sweet and funny to me. 

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