A little note from little Tom

I find myself thinking about my family this Christmas and hope that despite recent news about my Dad's Cancer diagnoses, that my Mom, Dad and Sisters can manage to find Peace, Calm, Humor and Love for each other this Christmas and always...but most especially in the year ahead. I love you and am always thinking of you.....Tommy

Merry Christmas from The Archibalds

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family, both near and far. We are so blessed to have you in our lives. We love you all and pray for God's presence with you this Christmas season, and all throughout the year. May you feel His comfort and peace and joy, and know how much He loves you. When we are stumbling through life's daily struggles or coping with immense pain and tragedy, He is there to comfort you and wrap His arms around you ... and when you are enjoying happiness and success, He is celebrating with you!

We were finally able to get our family Christmas portrait done this year. It was a struggle to try to do this using only the timer on the camera - no assistants to get Lily's attention or help take the picture. Thanks to Tom's photography and Photoshop skills, we have a family photo to treasure for generations to come! We will hopefully be getting these out to you in Christmas Cards this week, but they will likely arrive after Christmas. It's an improvement, though - last year we didn't get cards out at all!

I just couldn't resist posting a picture of our little beauty queen in her curlers as we were getting ready to take the picture. She looked so grown up ... time is going by too fast! This is a sign of years to come, I am sure - clothes, makeup, curlers, shoes. She already loves shoes...uh oh!



And the final product ... Christmas 2009 with Tom, Joy and Lillianna Mae...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

And remember, Jesus is the Reason for the Season, but YOU are the reason He came!

Christmas Angel

We took Lily to the studio at Hennepin Tech (Tom's school) for some Christmas picture fun. It was MOSTLY fun ... mixed in with some frustration, tears and tantrums (and that was just Tom - ha,ha!). All in all we had fun and learned even more about the difficult task of taking pictures of 2-year-old. Basically, Mom had to make a complete fool of herself jumping around and making silly noises to get Lily to look at the camera and smile. I'm just glad we had the studio to ourselves so no one witnessed the crazy lady jumping around and screeching.

We still have more Christmas photos to tackle, including the family photo - which we're hoping to take tonight around the Christmas tree. We'll see how THAT goes. It could be interesting considering we have to put the camera on a timer and we don't have a crazy lady to jump around behind the camera this time. I have a feeling we will be taking A LOT of shots before we get a good one (IF we get a good one). It's all fun, though, and creates great memories.

We pray you are all having a wonderful Christmas season. We love you and wish everyone could be together - but we're all together in our hearts. God Bless You!

Here's our little Christmas angel...

And of course, what Lily photo shoot would be complete without the tantrum shot. Poor Lily, we will torture her with her tantrum pictures someday. At this point, we were getting the feeling our photo session was coming to a close...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Busy Bumble Bee

We took Lily to the Mall of America on Halloween. She was a busy little bumble bee running through the Mall and the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park. At first she wasn't too thrilled about her costume, but eventually she got used to it - the merry-go-round always works to put a smile on her face!

Oops, lost a shoe!

Worker Bee

Lily loved the dog statue at Old Navy. She wanted to stay and pet the doggie all day - this doggie wouldn't run away from her! Unfortunately, she also fell in love with a teddy bear in Old Navy and had a little bit of a tantrum when she had to leave it at the store - Mommy and Daddy are so mean and wouldn't buy it for her.

Okay, let's get this ride in motion!

Hooray, the merry-go-round at last!! This is ALWAYS my favorite part of being at the Mall. Even when I'm tired, cranky, wearing a silly costume and didn't get the bear I wanted, I will still smile when I get to ride the horsies.