Let the Festivities Begin!

All the holiday festivities have begun and our schedule can prove it!!! Last week we started the fun with our Sunday School class Christmas party and my Mom 2 Mom group party.

Yesterday evening we took the girls to Christmas in the Square in downtown Frisco. They had a blast watching the 1000's of strands of lights blinking in a choreographed rhythm to Christmas carols, as well as bounce away in the gigantic bounce houses and slides. Afterwards, we enjoyed our yearly tradition of driving around and looking at Christmas lights. A nearby neighborhood really gets in to the spirit of Christmas and does an amazing job creating a "Winter Wonderland" that brings a nonstop stream of cars to see the spectacular scenes in every front yard. The girls were wide-eyed and in complete awe of the sights.

Saturday morning we all went to Breakfast with Santa at church. We had yummy pancakes and sausage while waiting for our turn to see Santa. Then we went to visit the elves and they helped the girls write a Christmas list to give Santa. Ashlyn couldn't wait to jump up in Santa's lap and give him her long wish list. Avery wasn't quite as thrilled about getting up in Santa's lap, but she tolerated it. After seeing Santa, the girls played fun, carnival games and played with their friends.

The fun did not stop there. After Santa, Ashlyn and I raced over to her friend's birthday party at Paint 'n Party. Then I dropped her off and headed back up to church to volunteer with the special needs children for the afternoon while their parents had the day to themselves to shop or just relax.

This morning Ashlyn sang during the service at church with the children's choir. The children were so precious dressed in their Christmas clothes, with their sweet little voices singing beautiful music! Later in the afternoon Ashlyn and I went to her GLOW Kids meeting. This evening it was my turn! I met my closest group of friends at a great Italian restaurant for our annual Girls' Christmas dinner where we exchanged gifts and treated ourselves to a fun evening.

Ashlyn's school Christmas program

Ashlyn's class put on a Christmas program Thursday. The children were so cute all dress up in their Christmas clothes. The girls wore an angel halo headband and the boys a Santa hat. They sang great Christmas carols and were quite entertaining. Ashlyn was so beautiful in her red and black dress. She seemed so confident and full of life up there on the stage and I could tell she was truly enjoying the evening. We are so proud of her!

Avery Big Girl Panties

Avery wore her 1st big girl panties today. As you can see in the picture, she is very proud! This pair is not the only pair she had on today, as they did not stay dry all day...

Happy Birthday Grandma

We want to wish a very happy birthday to Chris' mom, aka "Grandma"! We hope you have a wonderful day and we wish we were there to celebrate your special day with you!

Deck the Halls

We started decorating for Christmas today! My favorite time of the year. Everyone always seems to be a bit more cheerful, loving, friendly, excited... in the Christmas spirit. We unloaded all the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations from the attic, put our Christmas tree up and then hung all the ornaments. The ornaments are the most exciting part of decorating! I love unwrapping each one and reminiscing about where the ornament came from, who gave it to us, the memories that they bring back. And my most favorite ornaments are those that the girls have hand made. Also special are the ones Chris and I have bought each year since we have been together, each having the year on it. The first of these was from 1995!

Thanksgiving 2008

We had a nice, fairly low-key Thanksgiving. Most of my side of the family was able to be there (except for Ross who is still at Army boot camp, and Steph and Payton who went to see her family in OK). All the cousins had fun being together which was obvious with all the laughing, playing, running around and frequent squeals and yells. We enjoyed a huge feast of all our favorites: turkey (one baked, one fried), Honey-Baked ham, Martha's delicious dressing, my broccoli rice casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry salad, fruit salad, yeast rolls, a variety of dips and appetizers, my buttermilk pie, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and chocolate cake. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it! We took the time to talk with the girls about Thanksgiving being a time to really think about everything in our lives that we are thankful for and all the blessing that we had received over the past year.

Wordless Wednesday

Cousins: Can you tell they are related?




Funny Faces!

Decorating gingerbread men cookies and Poppy and Grammy's house

Happy 4th birthday to Holden! We celebrated at his party last weekend at PowerKids.

Favorite TV Shows

I will be honest and say that we like to watch TV in our house, the girls more so than Chris and me. I try to limit the amount they watch, but quite frankly it's hard for me to get anything done around the house (cleaning, laundry, cooking dinner, paying bills...) without letting the girls watch TV. Right now our favorite TV shows are:

Avery: Barney was her favorite for the past 2 months, but now she has moved on to Little Bear and Calliou. I Tivo these and she can watch the same episode 100 times and not care. She even laughs out loud, I mean belly laugh, while watching Little Bear especially when "Duck" is being so silly.

Ashlyn: She likes iCarly; SpongeBob-which I don't let her watch but her dad does at times and I also find her watching it even though she knows she isn't suppose to. Since she knows how to use the remote, she tries to be sneaky at times when I leave the room; Hannah Montana; The Suite Life of Zack and Cody; Drake & Josh-another one I don't allow her to watch but somehow appears on the screen at times; Super-Why; WordWorld; WordGirl. I like the last three since they are educational, but the rest already cause little "disagreements" between us. This is probably a sneak-peek at what is to come later!


Me: I like Brothers & Sisters, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives. That is about all I watch or at least care about watching. I have to Tivo it and at some point I can sneak 30 minutes or so and watch them in segments.


Chris: Well, his list consists of what I would call "old man" favorites. He won't appreciate me for saying it, but he always has on the news, CNBC, history channel, or weather channel. He sometimes watches TXCN, a news station that reports on news in cities all over Texas. Cities I've never even heard of are reported on.

So, each person in our house likes to watch different shows. Since we only have 2 TV's (which is a good thing) you can often find in the late afternoon Avery watching a show in the family room and Ashlyn watching a show in our bedroom. Chris is most likely in the office and I'm probably cooking dinner, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen or wasting time on the computer. Earlier in the afternoon, I'm probably shuttling the girls around to their activities and Chris will still be in the office. I refer to it as the 'cave'.

Wordless Wednesday

Baking a buttermilk pie for our Sunday School class Thanksgiving dinner

Fun at Mimi's 11/13/08

Avery's self-started potty training and first pull-ups

I believe Avery is potty training herself. I find her multiple times throughout the day in the bathroom on the potty, or washing her hands after taking herself to the bathroom, or running around bottomless after she has been in the bathroom and taken her diaper off. Avery even pooped in the potty all on her own without even telling me. Luckily I noticed while she was still in the bathroom. So I introduced her to pull-ups this week which she was very proud of wearing and thought she was such a big girl. Now she insists on wearing a pull-up and has decided she is too "big" girl for diapers.

1st Pull-Ups 11/14/08

Here Comes Santa+Soccer Girl+Family Pics+Singing Star=One Busy Weekend

Friday afternoon the girls and I got that first taste of excitement when you realize Christmas is approaching! We welcomed Santa at the "Santa's Arrival Parade" at the mall. It was a Polar Express theme, complete with popcorn and hot chocolate, dancers recreating scenes from the Polar Express movie, carolers, toy soldiers on stilts and of course Santa arriving to greet the children and find out what they want for Christmas. We enjoyed the fun with our friends Merry, McKenna and Mason. Ashlyn shimmied her way up for a front row seat and did her best to get as close to Santa as possible as he arrived. She was not shy to help herself to the free popcorn and hot chocolate or to ask the girls dressed up like presents for a giant lollipop that were only being handed out to a few. Thankfully Avery was happy hanging out by my side. Otherwise it would not have been easy to keep up with each of them running in opposite directions.









Ashlyn played in the last soccer game of the season on Saturday. They may not be the winningest team but they sure are the team that has the most fun. After the game each player received a trophy. Ashlyn was so proud of her FIRST trophy and let everyone know all about it. The Blasters ended the season with a pizza party at Cici's Pizza.




Ashlyn sang during the church service this morning. As you can see in the picture, she was really in to the hand motions and feeling the words. She attends Sunday school each Sunday at 9:45 am and then goes to choir practice at 11:00 am. Avery spends 2 hours in Sunday school. She will be able to join choir next year.




This afternoon we went to a nearby park for family photos. As quickly as the girls grow and change, I want a permanent reminder of them at each age. Just looking through pictures brings back so many memories that I might have forgotten had I not captured it with the camera. I can't wait to get the proofs back so I can compare them to our family portrait taken at this time last year. It's amazing and exciting to think about all the ways they have grown and developed over the past year. At the same time, it pulls at my heart just a bit to realize that the time doesn't slow down.

We played around afterwards and I took a few pictures myself. If only I had that awesome camera the photographer had! I forgot to mention that Ashlyn wore her "picture dress" to church this morning as well. I told her to be extra careful not to get anything on it. I should have known better... she somehow managed to sit on a pen in her booster seat in the car and it leaked all over the back of her dress. Chris and I took turns scrubbing the dress all afternoon and washed it in the washer twice. Luckily the pictures weren't until early evening and we managed to get most of the ink out of her brand new dress. New rule now- no pens in the car! She likes to take a pen and note pad in the car and write letters or draw pictures to give to people.

Mr. President

Tonight is a huge historical moment in American history. Barack Obama was just elected as the 44th President of the United States: the first African-American leader of our country. Ashlyn will be thrilled when she hears the news in the morning.

Smart Cookies

Our girls are smart cookies! They amaze me so often with their vast array of knowledge. They are like sponges at this age. They soak up so much of what they see and hear, learning when I don't even realize it.

I'm not sure how Ashlyn formed her opinion, but she "voted" for Obama today at school in a mock election. She completely made this decision on her own without any influence from either Chris or me. We each have stayed very neutral and undecided about who to vote for until the last moment. We have discussed the election with her in general but nothing specific about either candidate. She came home from school yesterday knowing many details about the election... each of the candidates first and last names, how many children each of them have, she mentioned the donkey and elephant and she recognized both Barack Obama and John McCain when shown on the news. Then for the first time she proudly let us know who she wants as our President. I guess we'll find out later this evening if her choice for President wins the election. I video taped her tonight as I asked her questions about the election and she spontaneously "reported" on the events.

Avery equally impresses me with her intelligence. As I was making dinner I got out a can of peas from the pantry and set it on the counter. On her own, without anything being said to her, she went over to the drawer and took out the can opener. Just from observing me as I cook, she had learned what the next step was.

Trick-or-Treat

Last night was Halloween! The girls have been bursting at the seams waiting for it. Ashlyn loves Halloween and really gets in to it by wanting to decorate the house, picking out the perfect costume, and of course thinking about all that candy. And boy did she get a lot of it.

We started the evening early at the neighborhood block party with plenty of food, drinks and also games for the kids. Then we trick-or-treated around the entire neighborhood with another family. They have a boy Ashlyn's age and an older daughter that took Avery under her wing all evening. Ashlyn and Chris were 2 or 3 houses ahead of Avery and me the entire evening... Ashlyn couldn't wait to get to the next house. Avery is a bit slower paced, trying to get up and down stairs, checking out other kiddos and even was a bit frightened a time or two. A few houses went all out. One converted the inside of their home in to a haunted house, another house had a lot of scary decorations in the front yard along with spooky music and at a few houses the adults answered the door with scary masks on. By the time we got back home, Ashlyn's candy bag (which was made of felt from the dollar store) was sagging from the weight of the candy and was ready to rip.

Both girls had a blast. Now that Avery is old enough to understand and participate, I really enjoyed watching both of them get so excited to put their costumes on and trick-or-treating together.

Heading to the neighborhood block party

On to the next house!

Partner in crime (fighting)!

Sucker in one hand, digging for more with the other!

Handing out candy with daddy after trick-or-treating

Posing with our pumpkins and spider webs