Amy ROCKS!

So, my wonderful friend Amy figured out how to fix my header! Yay! She's a genius! She showed me how to fix the html code, so if anybody else ever has problems let me know and I can help you. So, as promised, this post is about Amy and the things I think make her so awesome. Here's my list:

1. She is a GREAT visiting teaching companion. She always remembers to schedule the appointments on time and she always remembers to bring cute treats and stuff. More than that, though, she really thinks about those whom we teach. She calls one lady just to make sure she's ok or to see if she needs her walk shoveled after it snows or to see how her holiday was. She's a great inspiration to me about what it means to be a good visiting teacher.

2. She was a great nursery leader for our ward. She really organized things well and thought up such cute things for the kids (which included Cole) and really tried to teach them.

3. She is a great photographer and I have such a fun time talking about photography with her.

4. She is a Josh Groban fan and sold me the tickets to the concert where he held my hand!

5. She has good taste.

6. She's very reliable.

7. She almost graduated in Math just like me! I don't have many friends (actually she's probably the only one) who like Math like I do.

8. She is from the south.

9. She likes to scrapbook, make cards, etc.

10. SHE FIXED MY HEADER!!!!!

Kerstin, my sister-in-law, and Shannon also helped me when I called them out of desperation and asked them questions about their headers. So, they won't get a whole post dedicated to them, but I still thought I'd list a few things about why they're awesome.

Kerstin:

1. Is the only one in Grant's family who likes fashion, decorating, and just buying cute things in general as much as me.

2. Is always fun to talk to.

3. Has great taste.

Shannon:

1. Is an awesome friend to me.

2. Is the one that made me believe I could be a photographer - without her I would never be doing what I do now.

3. Loves to be silly with me!

Thanks to all of you guys! You're the best!

HELP ME - Update

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me figure this out. Unfortunately, I had already tried everything suggested: I had selected the option to use my image “instead of title and description” and I had changed the resolution a million different ways. Amy was kind enough to mess around with it, but she too couldn't figure it out. I don't know if Blogger changed something or what. I'm going to see if I can get help from Blogger - is that even possible? Anyway, I decided that Amy "won" since she invested the most time in trying to solve my problem. So, watch in the next couple of days for a special post on Amy!

Travelers from the West

My fam came into town for Christmas - well a week early, but we still did lots of fun Christmas stuff. Right before we picked them up, Claire had her Christmas concert at school (actually, the school calls it the "Holiday Sing" - very PC of them). I was trying so hard to take videos and pictures and at the same time keep Ava quiet and Cole from playing the huge xylophones right next to us that I hardly got to enjoy Claire's class's performance. Such is life, I guess.

Then, after my family got here Cole had his preschool Christmas program. We all got to go, which was great. I was really glad my parents got to see it. Although Cole was not the most cooperative with me there (much to the surprise of his teacher since according to her he usually is "absolutely perfect" in class), it made for a funny performance which is always good for home movies!

We also went to go see Santa at the Bayshore mall and afterwards went on a sleigh ride (it's an outdoor mall - Santa, luckily, was indoors though).

Cole asked me to take this picture. He told me he was trying to look cool:

The kids right before us were so cute with their "Santa letters" in hand that I had to take a picture. They had been looking over their letters the whole time they were in line - it was really adorable.

So here's our official Santa shot. I also made a collage of the other shots I took. Lucky Maddy was there to hold Ava - I don't know if she ever would have put up with being on Santa's lap alone!

I, of course, had to take pictures while we were eating dinner afterwards.

We then had to kill time before our sleigh ride, so we hung out at Barnes and Noble.


(Cole doing another "cool" pose)



Another fun Christmas thing we did was Maddy, Cole and I made gingerbread houses at home (ok, I mostly made it - Cole and Maddy ate the frosting and the candy) while Grandma and Grandpa went to Claire's school to make gingerbread houses with her class. I realized I never really took a picture of the gingerbread house we made, but I did get a picture of Maddy with her frosting goatee and Cole doing...I don't really know what he's doing in this picture, actually, or why for that matter.

The last day they were here we went sledding, which was actually really fun. Believe it or not, we've actually never gone sledding since we've lived here, so the kids were ecstatic about the idea. None of the grown-ups were nearly as excited as the kids were to go, but we all ended up enjoying ourselves. I was proud of Claire - she was the first one to go down the hill and she didn't even want anyone to go with her. Cole loved it, too, and even Ava thought it was a blast! She kept wanting to crawl down the hill in the snow - it was really cute to watch her try.

We ended the sledding trip with a snowball fight - ok, by 'we' I basically mean the kids and Grant and my dad. My mom and I mostly just watched safely out of the way! We had so much fun with them here. I wish we could live closer!

Packer-mania!

It was bound to happen. After living here for almost 5 years, Packer-mania finally penetrated the walls of the Lundgren home. At the beginning of December, Claire's school (actually, all the public schools in the state of Wisconsin, I think) had "Packers Day" on the day the Packers played the Cowboys. I was not aware of this and as I was walking Claire and Matthew (the boy with whom we carpool) down the hall to their class (because we were late AGAIN - all the snow has completely thrown off our schedule in the morning - as if getting all three kid's coats and snow boots and hats and gloves on isn't enough, inevitably one of the kids slips and falls in the snow, or loses a glove, or their hood is blown off, or they can't roll their backpacks through the snow, and on and on and on - I WISH I STILL LIVED IN TEXAS! Ok, enough parentheses talk...on with my story) I heard Matthew ask Claire if she had a Packers shirt on under her coat. She said no, she didn't have one and then Matthew said he didn't either (his family is also not from Wisconsin). I asked them if they were supposed to wear Packers shirts today and they both said yes. Sure enough, as I peeked into the classes we were passing in the hall, my eyes were flooded with green and gold. After I dropped the kids off, Grant called and I mentioned that it had been Packers day at school and Grant responded, "Oh, yeah. It's Packers Day here at work, too." WHAT?!?!?!?? In all of my years growing up in Houston, which had three professional sports teams, I have never heard of such a thing! So, anyway, when Claire got home from school she said she wanted to watch the Packers game that night and wanted to wear a Packers shirt while watching it. I asked her if she knew who or what the Packers were to which she responded "no." That didn't seem to matter, though. Since we had to go to Kohl's for something I said we'd look for a Packers jersey when we were there. By this time Cole had gotten all excited about getting a Packers jersey, too, even though he had no clue what the Packers were either. We looked at both girls (they make pink Packers jerseys) and boys jerseys, but they didn't have the right sizes, so I said that we could tape a 'G' onto a shirt for them to wear during the game. Cole said he didn't want a 'G' but a '4' on his shirt, because he'd seen a '4' (Brett Favre's number) on the jersey at Kohl's. When we got home, Grant taped their shirts up and they watched almost the whole game. Then, they each slept in their shirts and the next day both of them wanted to wear their shirts to school. I tried desperately to fight this, but finally gave in. So, below is the picture of them in their "Packers shirts" before school.

How could anyone see those excited faces and not let them wear those horriffic shirts (which were also both on backwards and neither of which were even green - I have no idea what their teachers thought) to school? I would have felt better if I could have taped a sign on them that explained some things about the shirts, but oh well. That day, when Claire got home from school she informed me that "The reason the Packers lost the game was because Brett Favre got injured." Did that sentence really just come out of my daughter's mouth? Apparently the game was all the kids talked about at school that day. She then told me she wanted to watch the Packers game again, to which Cole echoed, "Yeah! Let's watch the Packers basketball game again!" :)

HELP ME!!!

I've tried everything I can think of to make the picture on our banner up top fit within the border. I will feature a special post with lots of fun things about you to anyone who can tell me how to do it!

Lots o' Leaves (and lots o' pictures)!

Every November the tree in our front yard DUMPS leaves in our yard and every year we have a leaf party, which consists of Grant trying to rake the leaves while the kids play in them and I take pictures. I look forward to it every year! So here's the pics from this year's annual leaf party. And yes, all of these leaves are just in our front yard.











Ready, set...jump!

Cole loves to help Daddy rake the leaves (Claire, not so much):




Daddy likes to rake leaves on top of the kids:


This is Ava Lou's first year joining us in our leaf party. She wasn't quite used to maneuvering through the leaves and had a few tumbles.

She finally decided it was easier just to lay in them...

...which was actually quite fun!


All in all it was a great party this year. See you again next year!

Crib moments

Wisconsin Dells

We went to the Wisconsin Dells with our friends the Pothiers and the Chaplins in early November. We had a blast. We spent the two days playing in the indoor water parks, going out to eat, decorating cookies and playing at the arcade. Cole ended up getting croup the second day, which put a damper on things, but we all still had a good time. Kara and I also went shopping at the outlets there when we were supposed to be buying groceries. The hubbies wouldn't have even had any idea except I spilled the beans when I mentioned that the Kix cereal I'd bought as our cover had cost $5 since we'd bought it at a gas station on our way home from the outlets. What a trip!