All I want for Christmas is my....

....ONE front tooth! For the past week Kaden's front tooth had been getting very loose, we were all hoping it would make it until today so the Tooth Fairy AND Santa would come on the same night. Kaden was very interested if they knew each other??? But the tooth just could not hold out any longer, it completely just fell out on it's own last night. It is so weird to see Kaden smile, and it makes him look so much older!

Last week Kaden had a Winter Performance and Pajama day at school! They sang a bunch of cute Christmas songs, a few with sign language and some with bells, it was very cute!
Kaden was a little shy up on stage, but I know he totally loved it!

Kaden and Miss Long
My shy performer

Christmas at the WAP

No I am not showing the "bird", I'm picking the monkey's nose

This past year we were lucky enough to have season passes to the WAP and were able to go the LAST year of their festival of lights. It has been freezing cold out at night, so we bundled everyone up and headed out for some fun in the "snow" and to check out all the light displays.
(I know Laura and Beckie are probably laughing at me saying it's "freezing cold", since I know it's only maybe 1 degrees over their way~! lol, but for here in SD,34 degrees outside is freezin'! :)
Some of our cousins came out with us, it was great hanging out with everyone.
Krishele and Kohlie

Nathan, Kallie, Landyn, Bradyn

I love how my kids are all very different and definitely have their own likes and dislikes. Well Kaden is an arts and crafts freak! He always makes the cutest things at school although they do not have as much free time in Kindergarten he still tries to get in as much art time as he can. Kohl on the other hand, not so much. He'll come home from school sometimes and just say, "well I really didn't feel like making any projects today...I was busy riding bikes"...so Kohl.
When Kaden realized there were different craft stations ALL over the park, he was in heaven and Kohl, very annoyed lol
We came upon one and we heard Kohl say under his breath
" oh great, here we go again" OMG, it was too funny!
He did end up getting into it a little though, only after Landyn started doing them too.



After we got away from all the craft stations we headed over to the snow!!! Sadly my kids had never even seen the stuff before, but they were so excited. I really think they have a super heavy duty crushed ice maker somewhere and just dump it all out on a hill every day, but hey, the kids were loving it! Even Brady was digging around in it.
The little guys having fun

Go Kohl, Go!

Kaden crashing


Cousins: Brady and Bradyn


My lovers

Man-bag

Ever since Brady was old enough to walk, anytime we get ready to leave he grabs his shoes and ours and will bring them to us. The past few days he's changed things up a bit. I have this Christmas decoration that hangs over a door handle/knob which Brady has discovered fits very well over his shoulder. Instead of his shoes, he now grabs the decoration off the sliding glass door and puts it on to leave. To make Jason feel better ;) we'll call it his "man-bag"!

Christmas Cheer...and all that jazz

(Just a side note: You should check out the Predator Hummer link on my sidebar. The Hummer you'll see on there, Jason spent the past month completely rebuilding it, I''m talking about from nothing but a metal frame! It's beautiful!)

We are very excited it's the Holiday Season again. I think every years as the kids get older it gets more fun for us. This year I decided to do something a little different and try and add some adventure into our routine, because we live in a much smaller place than we have the past Christmases, we couldn't get our usual big, gorgeous Noble Fur tree, so I figure lets at least make getting the tree fun, right! We went to a tree farm with Gammie (Jason's mom) and Grandpa Scott to (as Kohl and Jason were singing) "Chop it down, chop it down, chop it down...." (the Matisyahu song)
The place was a maze and of course the kids loved running around, playing hide and seek...or is it more like just get lost from mom and dad? We found our 2 fave trees and Kaden made the executive decision. The Hustead men slowly but surely sawed down the tree. It was fun and different, very sticky, poky, and hard to find trees. We'd find one we liked and then tried to go back to compare and could not find it again! lol

Hustead boys were hard at work!

Mission Completed!

Not a bad shot by Kaden

The men in my life :)

Then today I took the rug rats to go see Santa. I was NOT planning on being in the picture or even buying one, I wanted to just take my own, but Brady had a death grip on me so there I am...yay! Kaden told Santa he wants a dirt bike (haha, ya right!) and Kohl said a remote control monster truck. He has said this for the past 3 years and has owned about 5 so I have no idea where that comes from? So on with the season and much more Christmas cheer to come!

shout out

Just wanted to give a some recognition to Vista Print on the excellent customer service. Usually when you need to return or have damaged product you get the run around, but they were so awesome. I got my Christmas cards in the mail yesterday and about 1/4 of them have a light black smudge line on the inside. I called this morning and no questions asked, 5 minutes on the phone, they offered to reprint and mail them out in 7 days or a full refund credit. I decided not to wait which would have been 10 days because of the weekend and just take the credit. Basically I got my Christmas cards for free...nothing is ever that easy for me lol. Sorry to those that may have a mark on their card ;)

Thoughts & Prayers

Please, if you could have my grandma in your thoughts and prayers. She went back to Missouri to visit my uncle and family for Thanksgiving and has gotten pneumonia and is in the hospital getting antibiotics through IVs. She had a heartattack about a year ago so her health is not as strong as we wish it to be. She'll need all the strength she can get to overcome this. I hope she comes home soon so we can see her and give her a big hug!

Update...
Grandma is doing better. She is starting to eat and not as lethargic. Plans are to be discharged Friday and be home early next week!!!!

My Poor Lovers!

My kids love to ride their bikes. Last Christmas we got them a ramp that they love to do jumps off of and surprisingly they made it ALMOST a whole year with out any injuries...until Friday. Poor Kohlie ate it on his landing coming off a jump from the ramp. From what I heard he just got a got a little wobbly and then face planted hard on the cement. He has a perfect circle bruise on his stomach from landing on the handle bars and his face smacked the concrete. He is taking it like a champ! He can't say his "b" sounds very well and his lip hurts to smile, but he is healing fairly quickly. I know, it's only the beginning of all my crazy boy crashes....yikes!

Abducted by Alien Doctors

Today I was abducted by alien doctors!
It started as a nice innocent game of doctor. My boys doing surgery on my arms, giving me shots, blood pressure...then it became all too BOY! lol
They were sucking all my blood out, cutting of limbs, they had a plastic butter knife and cut my head open then sucked my brain out, cooked it in the candle I had lit in the kitchen and then ate it, I asked how it was and Kohl said..."Yummy, it tasted like grape juice, my favorite!" It all started almost relaxing, as they pretended to do surgery their touch was soft, they nicely moved my hair as they fixed my brain...it ended with me in pain lol They were pulling my hair, stabbing me with tooth brushes and it ended when they wanted to suck out my pee and roll over for me poop...Oh My!!!
What a great day with my boys LOL

Girl Time

Every once and awhile, I'm talking maybe a few times a year when schedules permit, kids aren't sick, husband is home...I get to have GIRL TIME! :)
I guess the fact that it rarely happens makes me appreciate it even more. I love my girlfriends as they were my sisters, thick and thin, good and bad. I have found through growing up and all the things life can throw at you, your girlfriends are your rock. It is amazing to me that my besties (you know who you are!), some I've known since middle school, some since high school, and some in the past few years, can call each other whenever, even after a month or more has gone by and pick up like it was yesterday. There is just something about those relationships that feed the soul, you need those strong women in your life! They are the ones that know you inside and out, accept you and let you be you without judgment, they have your back no matter what the situation or who the issue is with, they'll take your side to make you stronger but are not afraid to tell you how they really feel when no one else is around to hear. I can not wait for my next girl time! LOVE YOU!

Boy Crazy!

The next generation in my family is starting to blossom. Between myself and 2 cousins we now have 7 little boys! It is so crazy because our generation is very girl dominant, Emily (who has Wesley on the far left, and baby Noah in kaden's arms) is the oldest of her 6 sisters with only one brother in there and I come from 3 girls and 1 boy...(Nathan doesn't count cause he comes from 3 boys lol ) Wesley (far left) and Brady are only a day a part, Emily and I were in labor for about an hour together.
It was so awesome to get all the little guys together, and pretty entertaining getting them all to look and smile, but it turned out perfect! I can't wait for all the holidays and birthdays as they grow, it is going to be a fun bunch of crazy little boys!

Wesley - Bradyn - Kohl - Landyn - Kaden - Noah - Brady

San Elijo View

When you crest over Twin Oaks and it turns into San Elijo Road this is what you see. The pictures give it no justice cause there is no real place to pull over unless you were on a walking trail. One of these days I will get out and get some full view shots. Even though I see it everyday there is just something magical about seeing the entire coastline from La Jolla to Oceanside, nothing but blue ocean and the suns reflection...I love it. I want to catch a sunset too, it's breath taking! It was so clear yesterday we could see Catalina Island and last night I could see lights on the Island, it was so cool!

cool science

Tonight Kaden's school had "science night" They had 6 NASA telescopes set up with special scientist helping operate them. They were giving out hot chocolate, cider, glow necklaces and popcorn. It was very cool! We got to see the dark side of the moon, the whole moon, Jupiter and 4 of it's moons!, the galaxy Nebula and there were others but it was getting late and the lines didn't exactly move very fast. But it was a great experience for the boys who LOVE their telescope but these ones were amazing!

Beautiful Cali

One of my good friends asked me to take some pictures of her kids in their Christmas outfits at the beach, so tonight we went out to Carlsbad at sunset and got some amazing pictures of the kiddos and the scenery! Here are just some of my faves of the 20+ we ended up with. I'll put up a link to the rest as soon as I get them all finished

Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere!

We had a fun week of pumpkin gettin' and pumpkin carvin'. We went over to Stu Millers to pick out our pumpkins and let the kids play some games and pet the farm animals. Kohl was ripping it up on the baseball game til he tripped on the burlap rug they put on the ground, right where the kids stand! He was turning to get another ball and his foot got caught and he fell right into the basket of balls and his mouth hit the lip on the basket. Blood, tears and a free water bottle later we were ready to get some pumpkins lol.
Then after Bobby's 2nd bday party we had the Hustead-Hartman carving adventure!

Here are a few more...

Hustead Posse

We did our Grape Day pictures, and overall I think it turned out great. Kaden and Kohl were awesome, total little models! Watch out Abercrombie!!! lol Brady, well he was just Brady, a two year old who doesn't like to sit still! :) Now the tough part, picking just one to use for our cards....it's gonna be hard for me to do!

They LOVED this old tractor....spider webs in all..ewww!

I swear, you will notice a trend...there is always one of them either making a weird face or looking the other way!


little stinker was hiding behind them!


haha, Kaden looks Asian! (that means its a total fake smile!) Jason was trying to get Brady to smile so he told him to show his teeth....well he DID! haha!




This one's a fave!


They were actually watching some skateboarders, who, very quickly, got kicked off this historic building by the security guy...they thought is was entertaining ;)





Being Silly


I love this one! Too bad Brandy wanted nothing to do with it!





Work it Kohlie!


I asked to them to scoot in once Brady got up and ran off, and they immediately linked up together, I LOVE my boys!!! (weird shadows from the tree, bummer!)




This one is great too, another fave cause it's just a classic moment

(same one with a different finish)

I love both of these pictures.

Yee-Haww, cute...except Brady looks like he's gettin' ready to fertilize lol