Merry Christmas: These are a few of my favorite things

What a wonderfully blessed Christmas we had this
year.

The Christmas Story with Grandpa

'Twas the Night Before Christmas with Papa











Thank you Chadly and Lizabee! This was awesome. You should have seen Toad's semi-automatic action!














Thank you to Santa's helpers this year. This is a beautiful quilt made for Lily. It has pink and green furry spots. Too cool!

Mathlete

Alicia got 4th place at her UIL competition in Math last week. Woo Hoo! She tells me there were about 20 something kids competing.

I'm glad to have passed on the math loving gene. I think she's going to be better at math than I am!

I was gonna post a picture, but it has other kids in it. So, if you wanna see it, you'll have to email me and I'll send you a link.

Merry Christmas

This is kinda loud, so you might want to turn down your volume a little at first. I just wanted to post the kids singing, but since I don't know how to post music, I had to put it in a video. I might do something like this again that takes a bit more thought, but for now, this is it.

By the way, a couple of comments on the pictures in it. I tatted one of the snowflake ornaments you'll see. I also made like 15 or sixteen of them for an ornament exchange. Alicia made the candy cane, and Put the frog and whale toys in the tree this morning. It was funny finding them there!

Fashion Show

A nice family in our ward passed on a box of clothes to the girls. So, we decided to put on a fashion show! The girls had lots of fun... until they started squabbling!














Aren't they beautiful!

Randomly pulling up the slack.

Hello, my loyal blog readers. No, we haven't dropped off the planet. Here are some picture nuggets for your viewing pleasure. ;)

This one is of the kiddos playing in some leaves in East Texas. It was a sweet moment.

Look at that handsome little boy. We wanted to get a shot of him with sunglasses on and his tux, so he could have a "spy" picture. Might have to photoshop that up for him. (Lizzie... we'll send you one on the Wii message board!) Little Lily just wanted to run around everywhere and get to the water in the fountains.

This is probably the best shot I got of the bride and groom. Hope these folks don't mind me posting this!

Sweet little Lily sleeping. She must have been tired this day, because she slept until 11:30. Infantia Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.

Lily Geetles

I'm not sure if I remember this right, but if memory serves, this sounds a lot like how Geetle got her nickname. :D I think it's so cute!

Happy Halloween 2

Eli and Daddy's creation.
Design by Mahala.
Daredevil Hermione.







I hope Grammer got some good pics of the kiddos, 'cause these are all I got.

Happy Halloween1

What a sweet little bee!
Dragon Roar!
Homage to Dobby. By Alicia and Mommy

So cute I had to post it twice.

Eli's glasses

Well, I think Mahala took this picture (originally upsidedown) with my phone. I have some good ones with our other camera, but seeing as I keep forgetting to pull them off the camera, I figured I'd better go with this one for now. We were at the glasses place picking out glasses for Alicia. So now we've got two little ones with glasses. I'll have to remember to get a picture of Alicia too.

I took Eli to the eye doctor about a week before school started. Turns out, that he is extremely far sighted, and so I'm not surprised to find that he loves his glasses. Alicia on the other hand finds them rather bothersome. Her enthusiasm for getting them died down about 3 or 4 hours after she got them. I think we might need to get the frames adjusted, but then again, maybe she needs to adjust.

In other news, well not much is new. Paul is subbing again. The kids seem to be enjoying being back at school, and mom is enjoying that too. I'm almost caught up on the laundry! lol

some pictures for grandma

Ok... not much to say... these are our cute babies

Happy Anniversary to Us.

So, it's eleven years now! Paul was sweet and got me a gift card for a hair salon. So I went and got an awesome cut, my very first highlights (red and auburn) and she even styled it for me. (Paul said, so you mean that's not the way it's going to look when you fix it every day?) It was really fun and someday, I might do it again. I'm so cheap though... it was my first hair cut that cost more than 15 bucks including the tip. I'm saving so much money cutting Paul and the boys hair myself though... I might actually treat myself again... I really like the cut.

We tried to do dinner and a movie at the Movie Tavern. Uh, I think next time I have to take a baby on a date with me, I'm going to go to a sporting event where it's ok to scream. :D It was nice to have some time together with my honey.

Batter Up!

These are all pictures from our visit to LaGrave Field for our first Cats game. We had a blast. Mahala got picked to get an autographed ball during the 3rd inning. There are some pics of that below. We are so thankful to Granny Alfie for getting us tickets. The Norlems and my brother Andrew and is fiancee Heather all got to come. We wish the Cats had won, but it was a great night. Most of us really enjoyed an awesome fireworks show at the end. We are all hoping to get a chance to go again soon.

Oh, the Pain!

After having waited many moons... fearing spoilers and reviews... I am sad to say that on this "Harry Potter Day", I still await my book. Suddenly having the library binding doesn't seem nearly so important. Alas, perhaps by the end of the week I will emerge a more patient and satisfied Harry Potter fan.

EDIT:

I finally got my hands on a copy on Monday. Thank you to my wonderful husband for putting up with my withdrawl from society to consume the book. I loved it. Couldn't believe I was right about some things, and was totally surprised by other things. I'm so sad it's over. On the prowl for new books to read... maybe I'll try Discworld.

Awards Ceremony and Walking

Sounds like graduation, huh?

Sunday, in Honor of Alicia, and Eli helping Mommy to get their messy room clean without whining, we held a quick awards ceremony. I made up a certificate to hang on their wall to remind them of what a great job they did. I should have posted this sooner though, because it is messy yet again. Mahala was being "camera shy".



Also, on Monday, Lily decided to walk for us. She was fresh out of the bathtub, wrapped in a towel, and wanted a yellow beaded bracelet I was holding, and then took off. It took a few times, but she managed to get pretty good controlled steps for about 5 at a time. She was so excited and cute.

I can't remember which day it was, but she's also got 2 teeth popping in on the top with two more close behind. Looks like she might actually have a mouthful in time for her birthday!

Now, you'd think that after having all this rain...

and whining about hating water, that I wouldn't be interested in something like this...

BUT! we got one... it's only like 2 feet deep, but I'm telling you, it is refreshing! I just hope it doesn't collapse!

And now for some random photos:

Water

So you probably already know that I have a thing about water. The crazy person inside me can hardly drink it from a cup with out a straw. I hold my breath without thinking about it if I see an underwater shot on TV. I have to drive as far away from the side of a bridge over water as possible (i.e. left lane) in order to lower the chances of driving off the edge. I have strange/scary dreams about too much water and flooding, and I am paranoid about taking my kids swimming.

AHHHHHH! Wed. night we went with Alicia to an activity where she was swimming. To make a long story short, she didn't get out when everyone else did. I turned back to check if she was getting out and saw Mahala trying to help her out. Alicia was getting tired and beginning to bob up and down and gasp for air. I did the nano second calculation of how far away the floaty thing was, how long it would take for me to get it, and factor in that Alicia couldn't even grab it if I had it now, which equals, mom jumped in the pool. Fortunately I did not have Lily in the sling. Unfortunately, I had all my clothes on and my cell phone in my pocket. But most fortunately, Alicia was ok. It was really scary for her because she didn't know if she would be alright or not.

She was really sweet and said the closing prayer and asked for my phone to be ok. I really didn't think it would work again, because it got really hot, and I took out the battery. When we got home an hour or two later, I was shaking water out of it. I took the hair dryer to it, and within a few minutes, it was working again. I'm grateful for the way we are blessed even when it is something small compared to someones life. Heavenly Father blesses us in so many ways, big and small.

The Drive Home

Ok... So this is dull and boring, but somehow I was compelled to post pictures of the drive home from Walmart.