Christmas eve...

Christmas eve we have a tradition of spending it at the Call's home. Ashlee was super excited to see Austin, Talan and her 'new cousin' Malia. We had a nice quiet dinner, then watched a video about the Baby Jesus, the kids opened up their Christmas pajamas, and by then it was time to go home. The roads weren't bad this year, I remember last year it was super icy and took up twice as long to drive home. Danielle was pretty spent so she went to bed early while Ashlee put out the reindeer food and set out cookies and milk for Santa. We read "Twas the night before Christmas", said "Goodbye" to Krickett (our shelf elf) then went to bed.

Christmas on Main Street.

Every year we go to Main street to celebrate the coming holiday. Santa is always there and they have an incredible light show set up with music. It was pretty chilly so we only stayed long enough to see Santa. Ashlee had already told Santa what she wanted for Christmas so when she sat on his lap, she made sure that he knew what Danielle wanted. It was super sweet!

The Gingerbread Baby!

All of us mom's on our street got together and planned a Christmas party for our kids. It was so much fun! I don't know how we are going to beat this one! It was perfect! We had chosen a Gingerbread man theme. So it went like this...

We started making the men at the first home and while they were baking we went upstairs to read the story called "The Gingerbread Baby". Someone, "Aaron", must have peeked too soon and all the gingerbread men went running out the door. the kids found a clue on the oven door to go across the street. There they found musical chairs and off to the next house where they made reindeer food, followed by another clue for a snowball fight, another clue to make Christmas ornaments, and lastly, yummy gingerbread houses.

All the kids had so much fun! Ashlee kept asking how the Gingerbread men got out of the oven. It was a lot of fun and all the husbands were proud of us! It ended with sleepy kids and all the husbands at our house for Poker night. "Couldn't be better" Aaron would say. Ashlee still asks if we can make gingerbread cookies and peek early.

Merry Christmas!

...from our house to yours!

Happy Halloween!

We had such a fun Halloween! I think it involved a pumpkin patch, a ward halloween party, play group party, two friend parties and our street party. Ashlee and Danielle had a blast! It will be hard to beat for next year.

The Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch twice this year, but was only able to enjoy it once. On a Saturday afternoon, Ashlee, Danielle, Aaron and I all got in the car and headed north to the Pumpkin patch. We noticed the clouds when we were about 10 min away from our destination, it was a long drive. Aaron had an experience with a wall cloud while he was golfing a while back, I had never seen one before. He commented that the clouds did not look good. Right as we arrived it started to pour rain. We didn't even get out of the car, we just turned around in the parking lot. That's when we heard the sirens go off. It was pretty exciting and scary at the same time. If we didn't have the girls with us, we may have driven to find the tornado. But with precious cargo we decided to get home asap. It was raining so hard that you could only see about 5 feet in front of us. Exciting things living in Texas! We were all okay and enjoyed some hot cocoa when we got home.

The next attempt Ashlee was able to bring her best friend Madison with us. There were goats and Texas Long horns to feed and pet, a huge pumpkin patch, and a fun hay ride with Farmer Rick still stuck in the hay. It was a lot of fun.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow.