I have been meaning to post this photo of the kids. I took it with my phone when we went to visit Santa. The lady was trying to talk me into buying photos and at the same time telling me that unless I did, I couldn't take pictures of the kids myself. So, this is the one good photo I took and by then the kids we no longer on Santa's lap!! At least I got one photo!!

A little Christmas fun!! The Gallagher's got Elfed!!!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Jim and I celebrated our 7th wedding Anniversary yesterday. Jim was soo sweet! He called Nicole and asked her if her and Brian could watch the kids for us while he took me out to dinner. Jim knew I have been craving sushi, and wouldn't you know it? That is where we ended up having for dinner! It was fantascic!!
Note to Jim: Thank you!! Thank you for being my companion and my best friend. I love sharing my life with you!



Thanks again Brian and Nicole!!! :)

What a nice day to end our Thanksgiving weekend! We got our first snowfall of the season. It started yesterday and we had some more snow today. So, what do you do when it snows? You build a snowman! Jim is so good about playing with the kids every chance he gets! I guess it really pays off to grow up in the snowbelt too, because he can build one good looking snowman!!
Here are the kids dressed and ready to go out to play in the snow with daddy!


Jim and the kids rolling up the snow to make the body of the snowman and their final product!!

Ahhh.... Thanksgiving weekend.. Is there anyone who doesn't love it?? We began our celebrating last night (Wednesday) with our friends Bill and Sonia, and her son Alex and his girlfriend Lannette. We met up at Harrah's and had a wonderful dinner at The Range Steakhouse and quite a few bottles of wine! Bill and Sonia live in Springfield, MO, and are really good about letting us know when they are in town so we can get together. Sonia is from Bolivia and I love having that latin connection with her. Its almost like we are family!! The kids really liked spending time with Lannette who I must say is a sweetheart! Here are some pictures!

Couldn't Bill and Jim be brothers??


Here are the kids loving on Lannette!


Today, Jim and I worked on getting our turkey in the oven, made some delicious side dishes and baked a very yummy pecan pie. As usual, we are going to enjoy lots of food, rest and family time.. oh ya.. and some football too!!

Here is some of what happens a lot during our Thanksgivings at our house!

We had a really fun weekend! Friday night, after Jim got home from work, we took the kids to Pizza Street, and with Shane and Kayla it is always a big hit!! All the pizza (and ice cream!) they can eat and they get to play some of the arcade games they have in there.. well, Shane plays, Kayla pretends!
On Saturday we decided to start decorating for Christmas. We don't normally start until the day after Thanksgiving, but thought that it would be fun to take our time this year and just do a little at a time. The kids were very excited. I love setting it up because we get lots of questions about "baby Jesus"! Its a wonderful reminder. Kayla is having a really hard time keeping her little fingers off the nativity scene! She wants to hold and caress all the animals! In the evening we were invited over to Mark and Jamie's for the fight. Needless to say, a good time had by all!!
This morning we went to church and then joined the Todds and the Cates' for lunch at Subway and then we all made our way to the Shrine Circus. We went together last year and had a really good time and this year I think it was even more fun. With the kids being a whole year older, they were so much more attentive this year. Kayla made it through till about 3:30pm with no nap, then she crashed! It worked out great because all she missed was the last act.

Here are pictures of out families! The Gallaghers, the Todds and the Cates'!


I took a few pictures of the kids with Jim to show how interested they were in everything that was going on!


And here are a couple of the kids favorite acts. They really enjoyed the animals!!

Lately, we really have just been home bodies! The weather has been too cool for the kids to play outside, and they have been playing indoors, for the most part, nicely... well, sometimes they bounce of the walls! I have been downloading my photos of xdrive.com back into my computer and I came across some of the cutest pictures of Shane that I haven't seen in a long time. I can't believe how much he has grown!! I miss my little boy...



I LOVE this photo. I can look at this picture and really see the Shane I see now. Look at that hair!!!

We have been having some wonderfully warm days this week. I am afraid that this will be the last week, before the cold side of Fall shows up. The beginning of Fall is my favorite time of year, the weather cools down, there are lots pumpkins and Halloween and most of all, the trees just look absolutly beautiful! We have even heard talk about snow in the news.. now who wants to hear about that yet?? Most of all, I would hate to disappoint the kids by having to keep them indoors most of the time when it starts getting really cold. :( They have been having so much fun outside. When the girls next door get home, the party starts! Its usually around 3:30-4pm! They all stay out until it gets dark.. its was until past 8:00pm before the time change, but that has now changed since it gets darker earlier. They still make the most of it though!

Here is a picture of our crazy bunch of kids in our neighbourhood! They have all become really good friends even though they are all different ages. It is wonderful to watch them all grow up together!


And here is a video I took of them playing football in the front yard.. well, it was more like get the ball if you can!


Kids playing outside! from Juliana Gallagher on Vimeo.

I took these two pictures last night. Shane and Ryan really enjoy pretending like they are Rockstars.. Here they are posing.. and you can imagine who it rubs off on right?? Here is MY little princess, playing her air guitar! The picture doesn't do her air guitar justice, I really need to get a video!!

WHAT A GREAT HALLOWEEN!

Last night was Halloween night! Jamie invited us and the Barnes' over for a yummy Chili dinner, hot dogs, apple cake and some delicious wines! Shane and Kayla looked sooo cute in their costumes! I have to say that it is a lot of fun having a boy and a girl to dress up. They are SO different! Even Jim got dressed up for work this year and then kept his costume on for the evening! He was a Wild West "bad guy"! We had to piece together his costume, and thank goodness for friends with friends who own things! He shaved his goatee into a fumanchu (sp!) and then darkened it with some mascara. I have to say that Jim looked very nice with dark hair and his blue eyes!!

Here is a close up photo of Jim before he shaved.


The moms took the kids trick or treating first and then we went back to Jamie's and asked the guys to take the second shift! The kids got SOO much candy! Its amazing how generous our neighbours are! Our kids are set for quite a while!! I didn't take as many photos as I wanted, but here are a few!

Here is my White Ninja and my Princess!


This photo of the three of them came out so good!
Here are Shane, David and Ryan! David joined the boys when it came time for trick or treating. I thought for sure Daniel was in this photo as well, but I was wrong. He looked really cute as well as Darth Vader.

I took this pic when we first got to Jamie's. They took a "serious" pic and then a silly one! I think the silly one is great!!

Shane, Kayla and Ryan got to carve their pumpkins today. They did a really good job. The boys didn't want to touch the "guts" so the moms got stuck cleaning up the pumpkins so they could do the carving. Here are some photos of the kids carving the pumpkins. I also took a picture of the kids in the front of the house with them after it got dark. I LOVE that photo! They both look sooo cute!



Tonight we had Shane soccer dinner and he got awarded his trophey. This is his third one and he was just as excited for this one as he was for the last two. Here are some photos!

We had a fantastic fall weekend. On Friday, Jamie and I did some running around with Ryan and Kayla. I needed to buy Shane's Halloween costume, so we went to Party America to see what I could find. While I was looking for a costume, Kayla and Jamie kept themselves entertained by looking at this ridiculously funny glasses! I was successful in finding Shane's costume over there. He wanted to be Ninja this year and match Ryan. Ryan's Ninja costume is black, and Shane's is white. They both look very cute dressed up! We then ran over to Price Chopper, which on Fridays have the $1.01 meals.. its a brat or a huge hot dog, chips and a water! We couldn't pass it up! I am thinking we are going to be eating there on Fridays for lunch more often!! We grabbed our food and ran home to meet the bus and grab Shane to go see if we could find and garage sales and then run to Deals to find some odds and ends.
Here is a picture of Jamie and Kayla. They had soo much fun trying on the glasses!



Saturday ended up being just the most beautiful fall day and we took complete advantage of it. The day started with us heading out to downtown Blue Springs to go trick or treating. The kids had a fun time getting lots of candy from the businesses downtown. We were a little pressed for time since we needed to be at Ryan's football game at noon, but it worked out just perfectly and we had time to go all the way around to all the businesses and still make it to his game a few minutes early. It was a beautiful afternoon and Shane and Jim played a little football themselves and Kayla, Lacy and Sarah played in the playground while Jamie, Mark, Karen and myself watched Ryan play a some defense!



After the game we ran home to grab some lunch and then quickly set out again to hit the River Market in downtown KC. I was in heaven! It is amazing to me that we have lived here for almost 3 years and have never made it to the fresh market downtown! We spent a whopping $10.50 and I bought the most wonderful fresh produce! Enough to have fresh fruits and veggies for every meal for at least a week! We will have to definitely make trips over there more often! We even hit the Chinese market. This place was huge! As soon as we walked in through the door, you could smell fish.. not yummy, delicious, fresh fish.. just nasty smelly fish. Jim quickly made his way to the back since he was in search of clams, and we just followed. Hmmm... yea... not going in there again! We looked around for a bit, checked out all the thousands of condiments and drinks and other packaged foods which really even though were written in both English and Chinese, we had NO clue what they were!

We also went to this look out bridge that overlooks the Missouri River. The kids had a fun time out there. It really was very interesting and very pretty even though the water was brown and looked so dirty.



We came back home for dinner and then Shane and I ran out with Jamie, Ryan, Lacy and Sarah to go to the Enchanted Forest in Independence. We waited in line for over 2 1/2hours in the cold. It really was very interesting. Shane was a little spooked by the fact that it was so dark, but it really was in good taste and not scary at all.

Sunday was Jim's birthday!! We didn't really have anything special planned. Jim, Kayla and I went to church and Shane got to go to Ryan's church. He was very excited and enjoyed it very much. Jamie invited us over to Momo's (her mom's!) for a Halloween party in the afternoon. It was SO much fun! The kids got their faces painted, they painted pumpkins, ate lots of delicious Halloween decorated food and drank lots of witch's brew, hot apple cider and the most delicious white hot chocolate! Shane got in the car on the way home and said "This was the best Halloween party ever!!" It was a wonderful weekend to be outside. I don't think we will have many left, so I am very happy we got to spend as much time as we did outside!


Jamie's brother Josh has a Guinea Pig named Susie Q. Guess who fell in love with it??

I wanted to post this picture I took of the kids yesterday before we went to church. I LOVE it!

We had such a beautiful weekend. The weather was just perfect. Makes me wonder if this is the last one before the weather really cools down. Needless to say that when the weather is nice, we let the kids spend as much time outside as they can. They love every minute of it! This is a blog made up mostly of pictures I took of the kids enjoying being outside.

Here is Kayla helping daddy pick up and mulch the leaves falling from our trees in the backyard.


We have a few gords growing in the backyard tree line. Here is Shane with them!


Kayla blew bubbles with Kayla and Shane played basketball with daddy.

And here is Shane getting rolled up like a bugger! Haha