Checking things off the list

I sent Christmas cards out today.  Although I think the idea was cute, I’m disappointed with the final product.  Simply put my printer sucks and by the time I realized it was ruining my great idea, I just ran out of time to get the photos printed elsewhere.  That and my monitor isn’t calibrated, so I’m not sure the color would have been right even if I would have taken them to be printed.  So sorry for the funky color and smudged looking photos.  Next year I will try to get it together sooner!

Now I need to finish Christmas shopping and make the calendars again.  First I need to edit some pictures and choose which ones will go in the calendar.  Those will likely go out late, so sorry!

Charlotte’s birthday party was absolutely wonderful.  She LOVED all the Handy Manny stuff and it was great to have room to have so many people over.  We got to catch up with friends and even hold a couple little babies since our friend Michele had twins (boy/girl) a couple months ago.  I was surprised because all I felt was relief that my children weren’t that age anymore.  I guess that means I’m not ready for more right now!

We decorated everything in Handy Manny and put up caution tape instead of streamers.  We had a local bakery put a Handy Manny picture on her cake and I made cookies from Mrs. Portillo and candy from Mr. Lopart for favors.  Chris and I made a ‘Put the tools in the toolbox game’ (in lieu of Pin the tail on the donkey game). 

We gave Charlotte a basketball hoop and a play house for her birthday, both of which she LOVED (and so did Cooper)!  We had to put both of them inside the house because it’s been raining and was all wet outside, but we wanted her to be able to play with it.  The garage has too many things they can get hurt with, so for now our house is taken over with kid stuff.  We also bought her some little people stuff and puzzles to help her learn animal sounds.  She got lots of kitchen related items which is great since they’re getting a play kitchen for Christmas.

I’ve uploaded her birthday pictures to her Shutterfly site.  I am so thankful to Caren who took AMAZING photos of the party and Charlotte.  Tomorrow I will try to post Charlotte’s birthday letter and photo collage of her last year of life.  This one is my favorite:

I know I am way behind on uploading pictures to their Shutterfly sites.  I hate doing it because it’s so time consuming so I just keep putting it off.  I think starting in January I’m going to revamp the Shutterfly sites to make it simple and quick to upload pictures.  I’m probably going to move everything to one site so that I don’t have to do multiple uploads.  I also plan to delete multiple and blurred pictures to help me save space on my hard drive.