The Holidays 2015 and Plane Cancellations that Stink

November started to get a bit chillier here.  Of course I never take pictures of the major holidays, like Thanksgiving or Christmas morning or anything.  Maybe I should get better at that.  I just always like being involved.  I've thought of maybe setting up a camera sometime, and set it to take pictures every 30 seconds or something.  That could really be entertaining.

Anyways, we got family pictures taken!  The photographer did an awesome job, in spite of a cranky girl that absolutely HATED getting her picture taken.  The boys did great though (including Rick).  It was really cold and windy out, and towards the end they were all over it.

Logan with a funny face.  See that leaf?  That's his friend.  He's my collector.

The whole family.  If only Sadie would look up at the camera.

Angry toddler.

Evan cracks me up with this pose.

All three kids together.  I need to get this framed. 

Another of Evan.  I love the color he's wearing and the colors in the background.

Sadie is a daddy's girl a lot of the time.

Da boyz

Another one that I need to frame.  This is just such a great shot of Logan with his little leaf friend. 

This might be my favorite family pic.  Evan is trying to comfort Sadie and instead, she's pushing his hand away.  That is so typical of their relationship. 

The whole family. 

Rick and I with our babies.  They were so cold, they were trying to huddle into us for warmth.

Evan with another pose.  He did such a great job listening to directions.

Sadie is so sad. 

Logan and the leaf.  It should be a picture book or something.

That bottom lip.

Mona Lisa smile.

Another family pic.  The kids and Rick were super freezing. 

So the rest of November went by fine.  My sister Sarah came out to visit, and I don't have any pictures because we were all puking and sick to our stomachs at one time or another.  Honestly, it was so bad that we had to switch our dinner for Thanksgiving to Friday instead.  Oh well, we were still grateful and we ate, but it was definitely low-key.  I don't know when Sarah is going to visit us again for Thanksgiving.  I don't blame her if it's never.  

The end of October, we found out that I was pregnant.  We were, of course, excited and managed to stay quiet about it until 10 weeks.  We had already seen the heart beat on the ultrasound and told the kids.  So we decided to do what the cool kids do and announce it creatively.  This is what we did. 

Coming sometime in July.  I don't have my hopes up that he/she will actually come on their due date.  That hardly happens.  Poor Sadie will either hate the kid or think it's her baby.  I'm not sure which is worse.

 For Christmas, I really didn't do too many pictures.  Our ward Christmas party was nice.  The kids all got to see Santa.  They were, of course, thrilled. (sarcasm)

Sadie.  And yes, those are Christmas Cat leggings.  Neither of us are stylish, so the poor girl is going to be stuck wearing clothes like that during the holidays that we just think are hilarious.

Logan with Santa.  He told him that he wanted Legos.

Evan wanted Legos too.  He also loved that candy cane.

We flew out to Utah for Christmas with my family.  We were pretty happy and excited, and then it got cold.  And then I got really tired and super cranky (blaming the pregnancy) and wanted to go home.  Of course, that was a funny story.

My kids with their cousins Casey and Oliver at Temple Square.  I just have to laugh at how puffy Sadie is.

Evan contemplating life and his puzzle at my parent's house before church. 

Sadie in one of her Christmas dresses.

The one picture I took before we went to Temple Square to see the lights.  It was so cold.

Logan and Daddy.  So cute.  Logan is such a little cuddle bug.  He can be a total sweetheart when he's not acting like a threenager.

My brother Aaron took some great pictures in Utah while we were visiting.  

All of my parent's grandchildren by the tree. 

Poor Logan cut off.  Why does that always happen to my middle child.

All of outside in the freezing cold for a picture.  Thankfully we just did a couple of shots. 

In my parent's living room.

Our trip home was super long and exhausting.  Our flight to Denver was fine.  However, as soon as we landed in Denver, we found out the flight had been cancelled.  After waiting close to four hours in the customer service line for United, we finally got a flight.  What a crazy four hours.  I mostly stayed with the kids and Rick stayed in line.  I don't know who had it easier, to be honest!  The kids did such a great job, we mostly walked a lot and at lots of snacks to stay occupied. 

We got a flight that night to Dallas, and then we found out as we were boarding that our connecting flights to Dayton the next morning were all correct, except for Logan, whose boarding pass said "Indianapolis" instead.  So instead of going to a hotel like we wanted when we arrived in Dallas, we took another 45 minutes and they figured it out.  They still couldn't print out a new boarding pass though.  

We were exhausted but by the time we would get to a hotel, we would only sleep for about 3-4 hours until we had to be back at the airport, going through security.  It was rough, but we saw the cots and blankets provided and Rick and I made the executive decision to just stay overnight in the airport.  Of course, I'm pregnant and burst into tears but I managed to get  it under control.  The boys were so excited to be "camping" and fell asleep as soon as they put their little heads on the cots.  Sadie took a little more persuasion.  The poor girl was so sleep deprived.  I felt so bad for her.  

I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep.  We flew from Dallas to Dayton, and arrived close to 11:30 in the morning.  And then we found out that our luggage was lost.  We had to borrow car seats so we could go home.  Thankfully we got our luggage the next night, so it wasn't too long that we didn't have stuff (including temple clothes!).  I'm so glad that we planned on flying home relatively early, just so that we could get back to our regular schedules and sleep.  

And we did sleep.  Quite a bit.  I'm thankful that my kids are such amazing travelers.  I'm pretty sure that they handled the situation far better than I did.