Christmas Cookies

I have always wanted to make cookies for our neighbors and this year we finally did it.  It was actually a lot more fun then I thought that it would be and a lot less wok then I thought that it was going to be.  I think that the secret is, I made the dough and then I let the kids do what they wanted, no micro managing and no impatience.  Ryan and Julia did the rolling of the dough and the cutting of the shapes, while Sawyer napped.

When the cookies were all cooled and Sawyer was rested, he joined in on the fun and helped put the frosting and sprinkles on.  This was really hard, but I totally let them decorate how they wanted!  They had a lot of fun and then we put them on plates and delivered them to all of our neighbors. 

While we baked cookies and decorated them, Dennis was busy making elk jerky!

Although we did not share any of this, we aren't that nice! haha!!!   It was so yummy!!!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, the annual Christmas card photo.

This is one of the pictures that will be included with our Christmas card, and you all will get to see it when I get them sent out, hopefully tomorrow!  I love Christmas trees, I think that we should leave our up all year this year.  What do you think?

Ward Christmas Party

Our new ward in Texas seems to have a lot of people that have lived in Hawaii and one time in their life.  I was not surprised when the theme for our ward Christmas party was a luau.  One ward member taught a different dance to different groups within the ward.  Julia learned one with the primary and Ryan learned one with the scouts.  The night of the party all the kids looked so cute on stage.  Sawyer is in nursery and because they are so young, they were not taught a dance, but of course when kids were invited on stage, Sawyer was front and center.  (This is the kid that asked santa for a stage for Christmas).  All my kids are performers, each in their own element, but still they all love an audience.

This is Ryan being "cool"

And this is Ryan being real!

Choir Concert

Ryan had his first choir concert of the year the beginning of December.  This is a choir that he had to try out for and he goes to school early twice a week to practice.  He is really enjoying it and if you have ever heard Ryan sing, you would agree that this a a wise path for him to follow.  He has an amazing voice, I love listening to him sing, which he does do all the time!  The choir did an amazing job.  They are split up in to parts, I am so impressed that third and fourth graders could sing different parts altogether.  It was a very enjoyable concert, I think Julia loved it the most since she spent the whole concert participating in her new favorite passtime, texting!

friends and our pretty fall tree

This tree is on our backyard and at one time it was so beautiful.  It had every color that a leaf can turn in it.  There was green, yellow, orange, red, purple and brown.  Everyday I said I need to get out there and take a picture of it.  Of course, as always, I was a day late!  The previous night it froze and all the beautiful leaves looked like their color had been mixed with black.  So imagine this tree brighter and more pretty.  And yes, I did say that it froze.  It only snows every 10-15 years here in Houston, but of course the first winter we are here is snows.  I did not get any pictures of it, because I kept thinking that it was going to start snowing and then I would take a picture, but I soon realized that the almost invisible flurries, was what texans refer to as "it is really coming down".  There were other places in Houston that got more snow, snow that actually made it to the ground, but where we live, we only saw in barely floating toward the ground. 

This is Ryan with his good friend Caden.

And this is Julia with Caden's sisters, Grace and Maddie.

All these kids have a lot of fun together. 

Welcome Christmas Season

Nothing welcomes the Christmas season better then putting your Christmas tree up.  I love this activity.  I love pulling out the ornaments and remembering all the ornaments that the kids have picked out in previous years.  I love how much the kids love putting their own ornaments on the tree and the place on the tree that they put them. Ryan's are high this year, but only on the left side of the tree.                
                                      

Julia's are in the middle of the tree-right in front and all together.

Sawyers are all hanging on the bottom of the tree almost touching the ground. I have had to move his ornaments up to put the presents under the tree!

And of course I had to get the picture of them in front of the finished tree.  They were all in a very silly mood, so instead of the beautiful Christmas card picture , we get a silly one!

Wish bone

I always remember loving to break the wish bone.  The excitement of being a child, making a wish, believing 100% that it will come true.  I sure do miss being a child.  Ryan was super nice and said that Julia and Sawyer could be the ones to brake it.  It was still a little moist to was not easy to break.  Dennis got a little impatient and just grabbed it and broke it and handed the sides to the kids.  Oh well maybe next year we will do it better!

Here comes Santa

Well as tradition, we were able to visit with Santa during Thanksgiving weekend.  Thiss year we caught him at old town Spring!

Sawyer asked Santa for a stage for Christmas.  I am not sure how Santa is going to make that one happen!!

Sawyer loves to sing, act and preform in front of people, but seriously what 3 year old asks for a stage for Christmas!

Julia's asked Santa for a doll she had just seen at the doll hospital.  She had, however, already given me a list of what she wanted for Christmas,

a doll, and bird in a cage, a beach in her backyard and something that will make boys stay out of her bedroom forever. 

What creative kids I have!!  Or impossible ones to shop for!

Ryan is actually in the in-between stage.  Toys don't really excite him, but some are real cool.  Although the big kids stuff does not excite him either, even though that is where he wants to be.  It has been the hardest shopping for him this year.  He asked Santa for sports stuff and music stuff. 

Is is just me, or do my kids take the cutest pictures!!

Mountasia

One of the places we went over Thanksgiving with our company, was Mountasia.  It is an arcade with go-karts, batting cages, mini golf and bumper boats.  Here is Ryan having a try at mini golf.  He was very good.

Julia loved playing mini golf as well.  She did get a hole in one this day. 
In fact all the girls did!!

Sawyer was hillarious playing mini golf.  He could not figure out how to hit the ball with the club and was getting frustrated.  Sometime he hit it like he was playing pool and sometimes he would just run and drop it in the hole.

This is Dennis's sister Lacy and her fiance, Andrew. 

I

I had been up since 5am and did not sleep very well the night before since Sawyer was sick.  I sure look gorgeous, no shower and all!  ha ha  Julia is so much fun to pose with though, she loves the camera.

Dennis and his mom, having fun playing mini golf.

Dennis's mom and dad sitting on the "love bench"  Don't they look so in love!!!

We also had a blast in the batting cages.  We did all agree that it hurts to hit the ball!

We also went on the bumper boats.  The only drawback was you could squirt water at people with a trigger on your boat.  No one liked that as much as Ryan and he was a little too trigger happy.  It made us all mad at him, but it was still fun and he figured out if he did not want to get yelled at he could only squirt dad and grandpa. 

Sawyer loved playing deal or no deal with Andrew.  Andrew was so good with him, he let Sawyer make all the decisions on which case to open.  I believe Sawyer even won like 200 tickets. 

Our, or at least, my favorite activity, the go-carts. All of us that went, went at the same time and it was a lot of fun.  The most fun part, my car was a fast car!

Thanksgiving

Last year I made a list of the things that I was thankful for.  I wanted to do that this year, but as you can see, it is almost Christmas and I am just now getting to Thanksgiving!  I will say that I love my little family and I am so thankful for them  This year for Thanksgiving, Dennis's mom, dad, sister Lacy and Lacy's fiance, Andrew came out to celebrate with us.  It was a great weekend.  We did some shopping, went to a arcade place, ate too much food, went to a comedy show, ate too much food, went to old town spring(a cute vintage style shopping center), saw the new moon and ate too much food.  All in all it was a great weekend and we sure miss them already!

Thanksgiving Eve

Dennis has a really awesome schedule at work, he gets every other Friday off. If that Friday falls on a holiday he gets the last working day of that week off. Luckily he has the scedule that has almost all the holidays so he gets the day before holidays off. So the day before Thanksgiving we headed to the zoo. The kids and I had been there, but Dennis had not, so we were glad he coud come. The weather was perfect. We spent all morning and early afternoon there.

After the zoo we visited Hermann park, it is right by the zoo and very beaustiful.  We decided to take a train ride around the park.

There was a little gift shop and Ryan had money that was burning a hole in his pocket, so he bought some cricket snacks.

And then he actually ate them!!!  GROSS!!!

He even said that they did not taste that bad.  I think being a boy is messing up his intelligence!

Sawyer then decided to try one.  He thought it was way to gross to eat.  At least one of the boys in this family has some sort of brain!!  ha ha

9 new posts

I just added nine new posts and I am almost into December with my blogging!!  So enjoy, also if it has been over a week since you have viewed the blog, you might want to go back about 20 posts!!  Merry Christmas

Space Derby

For scouts, Ryan was able to make a space shuttle thingy, and enter into the space derby.  He and Dennis designed and created a very "engineered" rocket.  This is right up Dennis's alley, since he was a design engineer for CESSNA and AIRBUS.  I was a little hesitant, becasue everything Ryan does all by himslef he usually finished right near the top, but everything we help him with, he gets dead last!  Funny how that works.  Thankfully this time it was different.  Te "kodiak express" did fairly well, not first but closer to the top then the bottom, and defiantely not last.  It was a fun evening!

Turkey craft

This year in third grade, Ryan has a lot of projects that are completely only at home. Getting him ready for higher education, I guess. One of the more fun activites, was he had to dress a turkey. The assignment said that it was suppose to be a family activity, but it was a small turkey, so I just made copies of it and each of the kids deocrated thier own turkeys. I am always so amazed at how much they enjoy crafts and wonder why we do not do crafts more often. Even writing this I am making a mental note to organize more craft time!

Ryan's   Julia's  and Sawyer's

in case you could not tell

Dora

I am sure that I have mentioned it before, but Sawyer loves people dressed up as characters.  Right now Sawyer is also way into Dora and Diego.  So when I noticed that Dora was going to be at chik-fil-a, and Dennis was out of town the same night, I took the kids.  Of course, Sawyer loved it, so much in fact the I had to pry him away form Dora so that other kids could have a turn to take a picture with her, without Sawyer in the picture.  He kept getting back in line, having his turn and then me having to pull him off of her, then getting back in line again.  It was a long process, but he was happy!