December Already!?!

I can't believe it is December!  I know I say this all the time, but seriously, where does the time go?  I hope you all had a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.  We were supposed to go to Utah to spend time with my family and see my Grandparents who just returned home from serving in the Nashville Tennessee Temple, but as last week started we wondered about the weather.  We were going to try to beat the storm and leave as soon as we could on Tuesday, but then Kaylee ended up getting sick with a fever and sore throat.  She started complaining that her chest hurt to breathe, so I took her to the doctor that day and she ended up testing positive for Influenza B.  Brailee was also sick but hadn't been nearly as bad as Kaylee, but since we were there we ended up testing her as well - another positive.  Then the next day Trysten woke up sounding yucky as well, so our Thanksgiving feast consisted of 3 kids on Tamiflu :-(  It was actually nice to get to stay home and relax - this was the first time we have EVER done Thanksgiving on our own, and we enjoyed it despite the sick kids.  So at the last minute I got to plan my menu and hope the store still had turkeys ;-)  This was the first time I've cooked an entire turkey all by myself, and the first time I've ever made pumpkin pie, and it turned out delicious! 

This is Trysten and our Christmas train - he currently LOVES trains.  We spent Thanksgiving Day cooking and putting up all of our (inside) Christmas decorations - still not sure how we're going to do the outside, we're not quite sure what the wind is going to do to it here!  We got a lot of other things done around the house - FINALLY hung up some pictures on the wall, but only because they've been sitting on my piano for the last couple of months and I needed to clear that space for my Nativity collection ;-)  Now I just need to find the *right* mirror for the space above my piano between my two wall fixtures - I'm thinking either small square mirrors like THIS or one big 3-4 foot circle mirror, or if I can find a big rectangle mirror in the right price range then that might be nice - thoughts?  I'm looking forward to family pictures this month with an AWESOME photographer so I can have some more things to hang on the wall! 

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The kids and I made pinecones out of egg cartons:

Plus, I got a lot more hats made while snuggling with sick kiddos and David got the sheetrock up in Kaylee's room, so it was a productive holiday!  Brianna and Trysten are David's biggest helpers ;-)

He loves power tools!

I'm so disappointed with my pictures lately - our camera is acting up and our old Kodak is still packed somewhere so I don't even have a back-up, so most of our pictures aren't turning out.  If I try to use the flash the pics turn out really dark, but then if I close the flash they turn out bright, but blurry.  If the subject is perfectly still, my pictures turn out just fine without the flash, but we all know with kids that just doesn't happen!  We're trying to work it out and get a new one for Christmas - any suggestions?  I have my eye on the Canon Rebel and tried to order one with a nice telephoto lense on a bundle that I found online but I accidentally transposed the numbers in my address, so they couldn't verify my info to place the order, and by the time they notified me more than a day later, the lense was out of stock.  So, now we're just trying to decide what to do.  Any suggestions?  Here's an example of what the camera is doing - here is a pic WITH the flash:

 and here it is with NO flash -

As I push the button to take the pic I get the notice 'Raise the Flash!' on my screen so I end up yelling at my camera a lot lately ;-P  Not really, but it's just so frustrating to have no pictures, especially around the holidays, since I love to take pics, and I take a LOT of them!