As usual, the place was elegantly decorated for the occasion and there was a variety of delicious appetizers for us to snack on while we opened presents.

After presents we had a delicious dinner, which I guess I didn’t take any photos of. And that was Christmas!

Christmas morning Eleanor woke us up excited to find that Santa had indeed come just like we said he would, and had even eaten the cookies and drank the milk we left out for him! Eleanor very impatiently waited for Josh and I to clean ourselves up a bit, and get my camera ready, before ripping into her gifts.

We didn’t go crazy this year. She barely plays with most of the toys she already has, preferring instead to build castles out of pillows and blankets and couch cushions. So we just got her a few things we thought she would like. Including a box of legos, which I’ve seen her have fun with at school. Unfortunately, she has barely played with them at all at home.

We also got her talking Ferb & Perry dolls (from her current favorite Disney show Phineas & Ferb). We had bought her a Phineas doll at Disneyland as her one souvenir she was allowed, and since then she had complained that she did not have a Ferb or Perry to go with it.

She got some cute pink kids headphones, because she sometimes wants to sit and watch a show on one of our iphones instead of on the tv, and we thought it would be nice if we didn’t have to listen to what she was watching.

She was pretty amazed by them.

And lastly, Santa brought her, the thing she had been telling us Santa was going to bring her,  a DINOSAUR! That is almost as big as she is. It’s pretty cool. Or at least Josh and I think so. Unfortunately, she explained to us, Santa got it wrong! He was supposed to bring her a REAL dinosaur that would crush our house!

Since we’re poor, Josh and I limited our gifts to each other to $30.

I got him this super nifty little wooden earbud holder from the etsy shop Acoustic Design so that his cords don’t get all tangled in his bag while he’s not using them. He got me a 2 year subscription to Vanity Fair! Sorry no photos of me. The ones Josh took were a little too blurry to use.

After present opening we had a special Christmas breakfast of cinnamon buns and chai tea! Delicious!

Christmas dinner with the family up later today!

Christmas Eve was about the same as usual. We went to my Dad’s place where he had all the extended family over. Baby Jack, as Eleanor always calls him, not just Jack, always Baby Jack, seemed a little overwhelmed by all the people and things to look at.

In the middle of dinner we were surprised by the choir from a local high school. My aunt had hired them to come and sing some carols for us. They were actually pretty good. It was kinda cool!

The extended family took off after dinner and our white elephant gift exchange. Once everyone had gone we opened our gifts. My brothers got their usual matching shirts, which is always pretty funny when we get to the third brother opening the same thing. I wonder what it will be!

Maria and I also got some matching t-shirts too.

Even Baby Jack opened some gifts. He was pretty excited about the wrapping paper.

It had gotten pretty late by the time we were done, and Eleanor passed out before we left. We got her home and straight into bed. And even though she was asleep I still managed to remember to put out some milk and cookies for Santa!

Christmas morning will be up tomorrow (probably)!

Head over to MKGP to get all the details on my brand new photography workshop being held in L.A. on January 28th! I hope to see some Cranky fans there!

After dinner we exchanged gifts.

Josh and I along with his sister and sister-in-law Jenny got Josh’s dad an album of photos from their childhood, from their parent’s wedding through Josh and Beth’s graduations from high school. It was a project that I had been working on for literally years. I’ll dedicate a post to the album and the enormous project that it was later.

For now, I’ll say that Josh’s dad loved it.

We also made an album for Josh’s dad and step-mom of their wedding that I shot last year. They hadn’t gotten around to ordering an album from me and the day after Christmas was their one year anniversary, so I decided that I’d just choose their images and album design for them! Luckily they were very happy with it!

Eleanor also got some gifts that she was very happy with.

Christmas Eve with my family is up next!

Here are some of my favorites lights this year:

More holiday fun coming soon!

So this week, 27 weeks pregnant and the first week of my third trimester, I finally took a couple self-portraits. Because finding time when Josh and I both have a minute and aren’t exhausted is next to impossible. Please excuse my pantslessness, but it’s hard to show how truly enormous my belly now is with pants covering it up. Also, I’m kinda cute without any pants!

So lets catch-up! I haven’t updated you all since the last week of my first trimester. Where I last left off I was tired, having migraines, finally getting over morning sickness, and just starting to feel little flutters of baby movements!

Well, the second trimester was much better than the first although still not totally awesome. The migraines have gone away which is so, so nice! I got some energy back, but am still pretty exhausted all the time. I guess that’s to be expected with a four year old to take care, a house to keep up, and a business to run and I also haven’t been sleeping very well.  It’s a pretty big change from my last pregnancy though. Last time I had a lot of energy in the second trimester, I was in school full time, working part-time, shopping for baby stuff, and hanging out with friends. Oh well, new baby, new kind of pregnancy.

The baby is also kicking up a storm these days. It seems like he is constantly moving, stretching, punching and kicking my insides. I feel him all day long. It’s really kinda fun and amazing. And always a little weird to know that there is a tiny person swimming around inside of me.

More new fun has also showed up in trimester two! I started gaining weight finally. And I started having a lot of hip, back and more sporadic sciatic pain.  I didn’t get any of this until late in my last pregnancy. But they do say that everything happens earlier in your second pregnancy. It’s not miserable, but it makes it hard to sleep comfortably. My hips hurt every time I shift in my sleep, which wakes me up. It’s also hard for me to sleep on my side. I’m a stomach sleeper, and not being able to sleep normally is tough.

Okay, I’m making pregnancy sound kinda miserable right? I don’t want to be a complainer or discourage anyone from getting pregnant, BUT I do want to be honest about it. It is physically difficult. Probably much more so for me because I’m just a tiny 4′11″ and carrying the same size load as women who are much taller than me. My insides get smooshed, my belly sticks super far out causing back pain, and there is a lot of pressure on my poor hips. I’m sure that my disability makes things harder too (for those of you who haven’t been reading Cranky forever, I was born with a disability which causes lower muscle tone, some joint pain and other little issues, you can read more about it in this post). I think that average height women without disabilities have a much easier time physically with their pregnancies.

But, of course, there are a lot of other little physical ailments that every pregnant woman has to deal with from morning sickness to heartburn to labor pain.  It may all sound terrible, but honestly what’s nine or so months of discomfort, and a few hours or a day of pretty bad pain to put up with when you get a baby in the end. An amazing little person to love and take care of that will change your life forever in so many amazing ways. It’s completely worth it! I swear!

Okay, now I’m rambling so I’ll leave it at that and I’ll try to update you all every couple of weeks through the rest of the pregnancy. And I might even include some photos with my head in them!

Some Stats – We’re not the most popular site, but we’re not too shabby either!

• 20,000+ different people visited the site in 2011
• There were a total of 65,000+ visits
• The monthly average was about 5,500 visits
• The sites bringing in the most traffic were Pinterest, Wild Olive (thanks Mollie) , Lemon & Raspberry (thanks Amy), Those Crazy Schuberts (thanks again Amy!) & The Ramirez Family Blog (thanks Christina).

Best Search Phrases (how some people found the site this year):

1. sexy kisses
2. weaknesses of a cheerleader
3. famous people who failed the bar exam
4. irish people
5. cow hug
6. where tattoos hurt the most
7. are vegetarians cranky
8. boys with balloons
9. stupid baby
10. beautiful baby crying

Most Popular Posts of the Year (most viewed):

1. Cranky Photography: How to Set Up a Photobooth
2. Pinterest LA Meetup
3. Cranky Parenting: Talking about Private Parts
4. Fabulous Friday: How to Shoot Your Kids! An ebook
5. Fabulous Friday: The Summer to Fall Dress
6. Scenes from a July Header Photo Shoot
7. Weekly Pregnancy Update: Week 12 Big News!
8. Cranky Photography: Using Window Lighting for Great Portraits
9. On Being 29 & My 30 by 30 List
10. Sharing My Crazy

My 10 Favorite Photos of Eleanor this Year

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all an incredible 2012!

Afterwards we went to see the Muppet Movie. I tried to grab a few nice shots of her in her purplicious birthday outfit, these are the best I could do. She does not want to hold still for me lately.

And then just spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out at home together. We ended the evening with some cupcakes.

It was a very simple, relaxing end to her marathon birthday celebrations.

We got there earlier than we did last year so we had more time to see more of the park.

Despite this face, she did such a good job waiting in lines this year! At this age, a year makes such a difference, we were so proud! Last year she was whining, and climbing all over the place. It was sooooo hard to get her to just stay with us while we waited. This year she did so much better. Very little complaining, very little trying to escape! But still plenty of chatting with everyone around us. I don’t know where this kid came from, neither Josh or I are a quarter as social as she is!

We visited Pixie Hollow again this year. It was her favorite part of the day last time so we were sure to visit again. It did not disappoint. She had a great time chatting with Silvermist.

And we happened to come right at the Fairy shift change so we got to visit with Terrence (Tinkerbell’s best friend) as well.

And of course we got to see Tinkerbell too!

Eleanor didn’t want to let her go. All the Fairies thought she was pretty hilarious, talking a mile a minute and asking if she could have some Pixie dust too, and asking if Tink would come and visit her at home.

We also got to visit my favorite, It’s a Small World, decorated holiday-style!

This year we visited with the Princesses too! We skipped this last year, but she loves meeting the Fairies so much that we were sure to let her meet the Princesses this year. But, the lines were so long (we waited a little over an hour) that she was kind of rushed from Princess to Princess. Instead of having time to chat with the Princesses, she just got a quick photo opp.  It wasn’t nearly as fun!

We headed to New Orleans Square for the evening, where we rode Pirates of the Caribbean and got some Vegetarian Gumbo for dinner!

It was dark (and freezing) by the time we had dinner, so we just caught two more rides and got some night shots of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and Main Street.

Luckily, I also found a nice Mom to take our photo after I offered to grab one of her with her family. That’s the key to getting someone to take your photo for you. I always stop when I see a mom taking a photo of Dad and the kids and offer to take a photo of the whole family. I definitely know what it’s like to have photos of everyone but me!

And that was our long exhausting day! We actually left much earlier than last year, 8:30 rather than 11:30, which was fine because we were all exhausted! Especially pregnant me! I am surprised that I made it the whole day. I was soooo tired and my feet and back were killing me!

But we had a fantastic time and can’t wait to go back, after I get this baby out of me!

One more birthday celebration to go!