Christmas Pictures

We went and had our annual family Christmas pictures taken yesterday, with my friend Amanda's family. I will post some of the pictures when I get them back next week. We all went and had haircuts done together on Friday. She has 2 boys, Sam is the same age as Monty. The are 7 months apart and her other son, Ben is 5. To say the least it was interesting. Trying to get all 4 kids to do what we wanted at the same time was interesting, but we did end up with some cute pictures. And this year for the first time all 8 of us took a group picture. Our families do, do everything together, but we never had a group picture done before. I am actually closer to her than to anyone in my dysfunctional family. I cant wait to get the pictures back and display them around the house and try and figure out how to upload them here.

Why it is the Bear Cave....

Well here is my first post....I thought I might explain why we call our home the bear cave. When I married my hubby 15 years ago, I decided to keep my maiden name. I thought my own identity was important, and still do, so I told him before the big day I was keeping my name. I was engaged for 2 1/2 years, and told him frequently that I was not changing my name, so it would not come as a surprise. Even with all the advanced warning it came as a surprise....but he got used to it, my family got used to it ( that took a while ), his family never did. So when we decided to have our first child, of course I thought it would be a "no brainer" and he or she would have a hyphenated last name. Well once again I prepared hubby for this, he excepted it, no major complaints or fights over this. ( except with my family, once again! ) His family once again never got used to it, or excepted it. So since none of our last names match, except for our kids, we decided to use the last name Bear when ever we would get anything personalized with our "Family" name. That is how we became the Bear family and live in a bear cave. ( Hubby and I actually talked at one time about officially changing our last name to Bear, but never did. )