Kartchner Family December 2011

The Holidays

Here's what Sam and I have been up to this past month:

11/24/11  Thanksgiving

We are blessed to have both our parents living so close to us!  Therefore, we had two wonderful and filling dinners for Thanksgiving.

First stop was Sam's parents.  SO GOOD.  That pretty much sums it up.  I love my family!

Mama and Papa Hobbs

Little Milo.  Is he really going to be one next month??

Baby Tyler :)

We then decided to go and visit my family and mooch off of them!  (Kidding but seriously).

Rambunctious toddler Tyler 

12/2/11  "A Child is Born"

Our Stake puts together lots of Nativity Scenes around the world gathered from many of the members.  They also had concerts about Christ's birth, which Sam and I got to play in.  Sam and I took a good amount of photos, probably more to try out the camera than have the photos to keep.  There were a few good ones:

Scene from Alaska

Scene from Peru

My Mom has one of these herself and says it's 

her favorite decoration at Christmas time

Scene from Japan

And ours for the fun of it (at our Duplex)

12/16/11  Caroling with Jess and Seb

Jess and Seb invited us to go caroling with them!  Despite Sam and I being the only ones that could come, we had fun with our quartet!  We made cream cheese filled cookies and Jess made yummy pumpkin and sugar cookies we could take house to house.  Afterward we played Rummikub and had hot chocolate.  Good times!

Love these cookies!

Jess seemed to like them too!

Now I know why he's called "Hudson the Hurricane"

Yeah.

12/21/11  Japanese dinner at Grandma Pitcher's

I confessed to Sam that I never had traditional Japanese food.  He then wanted us to try Grandma Pitcher's cooking and see the amazingness.  We were invited and had fun eating the expensive and delicious meal.  I think Sam went back for fifths or sixths.  We got to see Sam's parents and Aunt Jackie's family as well.  It was a treat.

Picture a little dark; sorry!

 Jackie's boys.  I don't know where they get their energy!

12/24/11  Christmas Eve

We got to spend Christmas Eve with the Hobbs' side of the family.  We had a great lunch/dinner, a Christmas program, presents, and even more caroling!  It also happened to be our half a year mark in marriage :)

Mario!  I loved his song and dance for us

 (Santa Claus is Coming to Town)

Mama Hobbs asked us to sing with her.  

Someone got into it.

Cutest family ever singing "Jesus en pesebre"

Best shot of the evening

I'm glad at least one of my nephews takes a liking to me :)

Aww.

They both are so cute!

Since we didn't put lights up this year, 

we're showing you Mama and Papa Hobbs' lights

Caroling caroling through the snow

Our little Christmas tree

12/25/11  Christmas!!

We decided to stay up until midnight to open one of our presents for each other.  We think alike: I got Sam a tripod for the camera and he gave me a camera remote!  So we took pictures before going to bed.    In the morning we had ourselves a merry little Christmas and enjoyed our gifts to each other.  The day also included going to visit my side of the family and to church to help us remember our Savior on the day we celebrate his birth.  It was a wonderful Christmas and I'm so grateful this day to have such a loving Savior willing to come down to Earth and give us the best example ever!

 Tripod and remote=a picture with BOTH of us!

The hot chocolate...and the office apparently.

The awesome books Sam gave me.  Excited for C.S. Lewis!

Yes.  I did get him a spatula for Christmas.

Might not be able to see it well, but I'll take this over 

Deseret Book's version any day!  Thank you Sammy!

What did you do?  :)

Catching the Kids

Maybe Sam has some of the camera mastered, but I sure don't! But it's so fun messing around with that I don't care. I was going to test my skills as a photographer by trying to capture awesome shots of my niece and nephews, and most of them were so blurry! I did manage to get some of these shots. Hopefully I'll hone this skill before I have a crazy kid myself!

(My personal favorite) 

(Someone sat in some nasty water)

November 2011 - Family Photo

Pumpkin

Okay, here's the last picture I'm going to post of our cute pumpkin! Isn't the little owl adorable??? I thought this photo was neat because it is the first time that I've used the RAW image capacity on our camera. RAW images are kind of like the negatives of digital photography. They take ALL of the information sensed by the lens of the camera and save it in an un-embedded format. These files can then be used in Photoshop or another program to edit them exactly how you want them to look (like all of the details seen in the one below) with tons of details and everything, and then they can be converted into a .jpg or other usable format. Isn't it awesome? These images really remind me of HDRI photography. :)

Happy Halloween!

Kiley and I want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween! We hope that you are enjoying the costumes and staying warm!

For Family Home Evening tonight, Kiley and I decided to carve this pumpkin. Look at how cute it turned out!

We stayed indoors and enjoyed having all the little kids come to our home. I loved dishing out candy and seeing how happy they were!

This is an HDRI photo I did in photoshop. I like how these photos turn out; it's something new that Kiley and I are experimenting with!

Lunch and Baby Tyler

Okay, this is the last post for today, I promise!

After Kiley and I took a bunch of photos at the temple today, we needed to do our laundry, so we stopped by my parents' house. My mom cooked us an AMAZING steak lunch, and guess who else came? Jacob, Shauna, and the marvelous baby Tyler! So, I put our new camera back to work. Here are some Halloween decorations at my parents' house:

Isn't he the cutest thing???? I was so tempted to steal my new little nephew! He gets cuter every time I see him: