My parents were in France, my sister went to Colorado and the Bowers went to Breckenridge, so we had a small Thanksgiving. This meant we got to host David, Sam and Pops. When I set the table, I sometimes imagine myself putting stuffed animals in the chairs like a little girl's tea party. Setting a table for a party or the holidays definitely brings out the giddy school girl in me.
I've coveted these tiny turkeys for a few years when we were at Post Oak, and ever since (maybe 4 - 5 years?). We bought them at the last minute and got 2 for $7 from ZGallerie. I was pumped and excited, to say the least.
Even though the Bowers weren't here to join in, we continued the tradition of decorating a ginger bread house. The kids really enjoyed it, as did I. This picture makes Anna Belle look a lot like Brianna.
Getting these 2 to smile is always interesting.
Each child did one side of the roof, and I did the front of the house. Anna Belle picked all the candies off the front the next day, which made Brady The Enforcer upset. I put the house on the shelf by the front door, but it creeps me out when I hear random candy pieces clunking on to the plate.
Brady's chicken nugget and cheese squares, Thanksgiving feast at school, just like the pilgrims.
Anna Belle and I spend a lot of time in the car together. We had about 15 minutes to kill after errands and before picking up Brady, so we sat in our driveway awhile. She's tickled to sit in the front seat, and I like having the company.
Can I just say we have been the rain boot girls this year? We've both worn our rain boots more than any other shoe we own this season.
This is Daddy's busiest time of the year for insurance renewals. We're fortunate that he's able to come home early (by about 4:00 most days and sometimes 2:00), but when he's late, I feel like I need to amp up the fun to make it through the evening. On this particular day, I took the kids to Menchies for frozen yogurt. Oh, the sugar high smiles...
Brady LOVES school so much! I always think it's a treat to get picked up early and take him to lunch or on some sort of outing, but he's always mad at me (even when we talk about it in advance and he seems cool with it). Well, I picked him up 10 minutes early one day so we could catch the 2:00 PM showing of Frozen. He was mad because he didn't get to finish reading his book (grrr), but we were one of 3 families in the theater which was awesome! The kids had one whole staircase to themselves, and I didn't have to worry about anyone tripping over them. This weekend, we saw Frozen at the drive in movie theater, and almost Froze our...selves.
P.S. I love that Disney now has a Princess Anna and a Princess Belle : )
The Sequoia passed 100,000 miles. I want to make it to 200,000 - 250,000 miles. If Brady ends up driving the Accord for his first car, it should have about 140,000 miles on it and I enjoy the idea of convincing him that "his" car's still young compared to Mommy's car. I'm a big believer that the cheapest car is the one you drive the longest.
As the youngest in the family and the junior high teacher, Aunt Megan lets us know when we're not dressing cool enough. I'm always grateful for this direction, because I'm a creature of habit and forget that times are changing. Brady is now the proud owner of 2 pairs of straight leg pants, instead of boot cut. I've been afraid to put him in skinnies, because I don't think they're sufficiently masculine. With that said, I love that the straight leg pants (though still too long) don't slide under his shoes. We're between toddler and boys sizes, which has been a challenge. This has made the transition easier. I should really take a picture of his underwear sizes. The difference in one size is ENORMOUS at this age.
This is the first "era" where I've had to make Brady try things on at the store, to make sure they fit correctly. I like that he's more excited about and grateful for receiving new clothes, because he got to be part of the purchase process.
For our Second Baptist Christmas playdate, we had a birthday party for Jesus at Chuck-E-Cheese. We brought a giant cookie cake and a craft, and for the first hour we were the only ones there. Fortunately, one of the pastor's wives came with 3 of her youngest, so we had someone to share the cake with.
Anna Belle didn't mind being by herself. Honestly, Chuck-E-Cheese is a lot of fun at a good price, if you can go when they're not crowded.
Thanks to
Pinterest Told Me To, I've become addicted to Nordstrom, their great customer service, easy returns and free shipping. I keep an online shopping cart full of things I'm interested in, and I wait for those specific items to go on sale. About half my cart went on sale one day, so I went to Nordstrom to try things on. The items I liked were not on sale, so I continue to wait. I kind of love shopping with this little dancing cutie.
I felt like her hair was starting to get a little stringy, so I cut it the next morning. I have a lot of anxiety about haircuts, but she always seems to enjoy them. Here she is, as soon as I finished.
Grammy and Pappaw got us this Wii 3 years ago, and we still love playing with it regularly. I like that Anna Belle's eager to learn.
Many moons ago, Mommy worked with a man named Richard Dahl. I went to high school with his boys and Richard was one of our vendors at the building. He plays Santa for his neighborhood each year, and it's the only Santa experience that the kids seem to do well with. Maybe it's because it's the cold, the small crowd, the fire truck or being first thing in the morning. Whatever it is, we're happy to have no tears at this Santa gig. Santa handed out Sheriff badges from the Harris County Sheriff's Department, which Brady has proudly worn every day since.
Buddy came to visit for the first time this year. It's been fun, but the kids aren't overly excited about him yet. The nice thing is, they don't mind if Buddy doesn't move for a few days.
One day, I made the mistake of setting Buddy on Daddy's placemat. The kids were really worried when Daddy touched Buddy (because allegedly touching Buddy makes his magic go away). This particular set up, by Taylor, worried Anna Belle because she desperately wanted to clean up the Sorry game, so she could put her puzzles back on the table.
My friend Sarah came over one day while she was waiting to pick her oldest up from preschool. Grammy let me have one of her old strands of garland, which matches mine. This made it so I finally had enough to decorate the stairs. The dark section on the top right lit up later. Soon thereafter, and section of lights on the bottom side went dark.
On Saturday, we went to Emma's birthday party. We were blessed to teach Emma's Sunday School class last year. They had 3 ponies, and the kids LOVED riding again and again.
Here's the birthday girl.
Brady kept picking up his hat and waving it at everyone. He's ready to be a rodeo star.
James and Ada are in Brady's Sunday School class too.
We went to Celebration at Houston's First Baptist on Friday night. We were invited by the Hamm family, who had a few extra tickets. Daniel Hamm is in Brady's class at St. John's, and it turns out we know a lot of the same people from First Baptist, and we live down the street from one another (we ran into each other while trick-or-treating).
Brady had a field trip to HEB. I was probably more excited about it than he was. He was okay to go into the milk fridge, but he refused to step into the giant freezer.
I generally feel like Brady is quite fearless around animals, but he had no interest in touching the lobster. Maybe it's because he used to call them monsters.
It's not easy to get good smiles from 10 boys at the same time, but here are a few attempts.
I spent quite a bit of time this weekend cleaning the photos and videos off my phone, updating software, and syncing up my iTunes account (I've been synced to my sisters for awhile). I already have more I want to share, but I think 36 pics is enough for now.
