A White Merry Christmas in Texas

We spent Christmas at home in Texas again this year.

Here are the kids before church on Sunday

and this is at the Christmas Eve service at church on Monday

 We ate our traditional finger foods dinner that evening, then the kids opened their three gifts from us. We always talk about how this represents the three gift to baby Jesus from the Wise men and that the greatest gift ever given was God's gift to us- His Son. 

 They all got matching Sock Monkey pajamas and slippers.

 Hollace got some boots she had been wanting and was SOOO excited. She was carrying on and on and said a little later that she felt like she was "going to faint" when she opened them.

 We made some treats for Santa then Brent read the Christmas story of Our Saviors birth.

Christmas Morning.........Santa came!!!

 Their last gift was a note telling them to check in the guest bedroom for one last gift.

 The boys got this clubhouse tent and Hollace got an American Girl Doll loft bed.

We were debating whether to go on to Oklahoma as planned that day. They were getting some snow and we weren't sure about the roads. We decided to wait until the next day to leave then it started snowing in McKinney!

 We weren't expecting a white Christmas in Texas, but it sure was fun!!!.....

 .....and SO pretty!

 The kids slept in their tent that night.

( I'm not even sure where these glasses came from, but Thad was wearing them at one point when I went to check on them.)

 We had a very Merry Christmas!!

Festive Fun

We had our neighborhood (sort of) family Christmas party a couple of weekends ago at some friends' house. The kids and adults both have so much fun.

Here are (most of) the kiddos.

 At one point it seemed like the boys were being awfully quiet. I went to the play room to check on them and I found them playing the game "Headbandz". I thought this was a cute scene. Evidently they ran out of "headbandz" so Thad was resourceful and used this Batman mask instead. Ha!

 Like last year, Santa made an appearance and brought one gift for each of the kids. The older kids are sure this is definitely not the "real" Santa, but it's fun anyway.

" Who's been good this year????"

 Each child had to go sit on Santa's lap to get their present. Thad complied, but he could not get off his lap fasts enough once he had the gift in his hands.

 We did take a picture of all the adults together, but I didn't get one with my camera. Here's Brent and I.

Here are some other random Christmas-y things

These are the teachers gifts I made this year. 

It's can hold photos, notes, etc. I didn't include this picture of Brent and I- just trying it out. We clipped a gift card on it.

This past Thursday night we went to "A Real Bookstore" to see Santa. This is where we went last year too.  They don't let you take your own pictures. We did buy one print, but I haven't scanned it in yet.

Here they are outside the bookstore.

 This is a cute mailbox where you can mail your letters to Santa. The kids didn't have letters, but thought it was fun to see how far down Santa's throat they could reach their hands. 

I wanted a picture with my girl, but we were photo-bombed by Thad.

One more try.

I've mentioned our Elf before. Well this year the kids decided his name is probably Rodey rather than Elfie. We went with it. Rodey has sill not given into the "Elf on the Shelf" peer pressure of trying to come up with some creative prank to pull on the kids each night. He just feels his job is to keep an eye on the kids for Santa rather than to stay up all hours of the night creating messes for me to clean up in the morning and trying to think of yet ANOTHER silly elf-antic to entertain the kids. Rodey and I are on the same wave-lenght:)

He does move (almost) every night and has one or two surprises for the kids each year.

The other night he left "Magic Christmas Sprinkles" for them with instructions on how to "plant" them in flour and sugar to see what "grew".

They were excited to see what the seeds had produced the next morning.

They kept calling the seeds, magic "potion". Hollace wrote this thank-you note to Rodey the next night. So funny.

I do have some more Christmas fun to post, but I guess it will end up being in a Christmas memories post. I can't believe it's already here again!

Our S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G STUD!

I mentioned on a previous post that my little Rhett had qualified with the top 10% of Kindergarteners to be in the school spelling bee. It took place after school last Thursday.

We studied a little, but he would lose interest in studying pretty quickly. We had to review his study list in VERY short increments. He seemed to know most of the words pretty well even before we started studying and I didn't want him to have a bad attitude or feelings toward the spelling bee so I didn't really force him to study.

 He was SOOO cute sitting up there and didn't really seem nervous until other kids got up to spell their work then he would look nervous for them. 

 He did such a good job! and looked so grown up on the stage.

He spelled all his words quickly and with confidence. He didn't seem like he was having to think about them much.

 We were so proud of how well he did and so excited for him when he won 2nd place!!!

 AWESOME job RHETT!! We are SOOOO proud of you!!!

 Brent told him to bite his medal like they do in the Olympics.

Ok, now a funny little random story. 

As we were leaving and walking across the parking lot, this lady was getting into her car and made a comment about how we should take a family picture because we looked so nice. (Not sure about this to start with. Brent looked nice as he had just come from work, but the rest of us were just ok, and Thad actually had sweat pants on). Anyway, I had my camera in my hand and so I said, "actually you could take a quick picture of us if you don't mind". It seems we don't get pictures of all of us together very often because there's never anyone to take one.  The lady said "Sure. I'm actually a photographer!" We started to just back up to a grassy area that was near by and she suggested that we go put our stuff up in our car first. Uhhh,....ok. Then she lead us across the parking lot to an area with some trees and began looking for the ideal place for a photo. It was quickly becoming much more than a quick family snap shot at the spelling bee like I intended.  She began positioning us and moving us to better light, etc. When she finally started taking pictures she just kept shooting and shooting. I was really trying not to laugh. I felt like it was an all out photo session, like I should pay her or something!  She came us close to us and started taking individual close ups!  She was a really nice lady, but it was all pretty funny!

Here's one from the little photo session.

 A close up of our little Spelling Champ.

 They asked the winners of the younger grades to come back later in the evening to the older grades portion, to be introduced.  Here is Rhett with the 1st place winner, his buddy, Andrew.  

They did such a great job!