Dylan Class Party

Yesterday Dylan had his class Christmas party. I went to the party, but failed to take pictures. They each brought a little gift for each person and then they got to put those gifts in everyone's stalkings. They also had a special treat. It was fun to talk with the other parents and his teachers. They are such awesome teachers. Ms. Shannon is going to CO for Christmas too. We went home and opened all the goodies up. His teachers gave him candy, but labeled them as reindeer noses.

Blake's teacher gave the class the week off of homework. That made Blake's day because they got home and jumped on the trampoline because it was so nice outside. Yes, we try to take advantage of all the days we have wonderful weather!!

Ward Christmas Party

Saturday night we had our ward Christmas party. It was over the top. It was fantastic and I was so glad that the only thing I helped with was clean up and bringing food. They spent so much time. This was the very end of the program...I forgot about getting pictures. It was a Dr. Seuss theme and followed the Grinch Who Stole Christmas--Jim Carrey version. The wall was covered with a drawing of the You-village---everything was about "You". Every family in the ward had a home somewhere on the walls...so the kids had fun finding their names. We ate for about an hour--dinner and dessert. Then we had our program. One person, dressed in Youville apparel (not who-ville)  narrated it. The message was basically how the world is trying to take Christ out of Christmas and how we need to be unified and not let that happen. One of our 9 year olds was Cindy Lou-Who and sang Where are you Christmas? The Bishopric did a musical number with big candy canes as their canes--it was funny. We had a couple other musical numbers. The last thing was members of the ward came around the tree and sang--just like in the movie. And then there was a snow machine at the end that blasted some snow.

The Bishop's wife was the person who put this all together. Plenty of people helped her, but she was the brains behind it all. We also had an ugly sweater contest.


It was amazing and fun. We are sure grateful for our ward. We have lots of talented people.

Gingerbread House

Last Friday our high was almost 80 degrees, so we went to the park with some friends. I was telling them about how we needed snow shoes for Dylan for our trip to CO. Well, one of them had his size, so we went over to their house and are borrowing them for a couple weeks. Friends are great for so many reasons.

Saturday we were supposed to get a huge storm. It rained, but nothing crazy. Enough  though to stay inside and make our gingerbread house.




The kids had fun putting it all together, but they loved eating the candy while making it.

After our gingerbread house making project, we went to the store so the boys could pick out a toy for each other. This is the first year that we have done this. They used their own money and picked something small out. They were really excited.

Park with Kelsey

Last Thursday Cambria asked me if I could pick up Kelsey from school because she needed to go to the doctors. It was a beautiful day so we decided to stay at school and play and then drop off Kelsey at her house on our way home. They played hide n seek.

And got dizzy.


Our leaves have been falling like crazy and it has created a lot of fun for the kids. It does make our walk from home take longer because they get distracted, but how could you blame them? We take our neighbor home one day a week, and the day before they had a leaf throwing fight the whole way home. They had fun, but had leaf debris on them. We've actually had beautiful leaves. We've had lots of rain, then freezing weather, then warm days and then some more rain. It has created beautiful leaves...and a big mess. Aaron is happy we live some place that does have 4 seasons...even if they still aren't as dramatic as other places.

Park and Work

We have been enjoying some nice weather recently. We have a couple days of awesome weather before we get a storm that comes. Last week, we went to the park.

That night the kids made a mess with some crafts they were working on. Sunday night we had gone to a friends' house for a Christmas party and gift exchange. Well, Dylan got that huge Art Jar from Costco, which is fabulous, but they managed to make a mess so I made them clean it up. They decided to vacuum the rest of the upstairs.

Kaden's Birthday Party

Blake, Dylan and I went to a birthday party for their friend  Kaden, who turned 7. It was lego themed.


Dylan didn't want to take a picture.


The gift they sent home with everyone was lego pieces to make this.

Later that night, Blake's primary teacher had a class party. I brought Dylan with me to drop off Blake, but we got there and we were the only ones who showed up. She had actually invited 2 classes because a previous years class party was cancelled due to inclement weather so this was a remake. We all hung out for awhile, made cookies and drank some hot chocolate. She is such a good teacher.

Fun and Christmas Party

A couple weeks ago, we took Beckett with us to the park so his mom could have a break.

 That night Aaron had a work Christmas party for his group. Since I hadn't met any of them, we decided to go. The boys had fun with their babysitter and we went downtown for the party. It was on the roof so it had a pretty fun view.

Home Depot

Saturday morning we helped clean the church at 7am (yicks) then we went to the Home depot project. Later in the afternoon we had the baptism.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break, but I was glad when they were both back in school so I could catch up on things. Just a couple weeks and it will be Christmas Break...yicks! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving

We started our Thanksgiving with watching Aaron play in the ward Turkey Bowl.

It was a good turn out. They played at the field at the high school, and it was muddy because it was raining earlier in the morning.


Some of the guys who played. So, Saturday the guy on the right in all black baptized his daughter. His brother-in-law..the guy on the very end in white shirt, black shorts was the QB. Found out that he went to Woodbridge High School, which is right by the high school I went to. He graduated the same year as I did and he dated a friend. He now lives in Highlands Ranch, CO. Small world. After the baptism, we were invited to their house for dinner. It was our family and about 40 members of their family who all traveled for the baptism...Salt Lake, San Antonio and Highlands Ranch. One of the cool things is the dad is a convert and his parents are pretty against the church so they don't do religious things with them. Well, they were at the baptism. We had a terrible storm that started Thursday night and basically stopped Monday. We have had a record year...most rain in a year. Funny that we started the year in a drought.



From the turkey bowl, we went over to the stake center to play volleyball with Aaron's cousin, Amy and her family. His aunt and uncle--Becky and Kent and also cousin Jeremy were in town too. We also played with a family that lives by Amy..her name is Michele Johnson. She is in our stake, but she attends the Spanish branch because her and her husband both speak Spanish. That assignment will be over soon and will be in Amy's ward.

Didn't get great pictures, but it was fun.

And I didn't get a single picture of our Thanksgiving dinner. We went over to our friends' house. Jessica, Adam and kids are Reese and Jaleigh (Schwarz). They are a lot of fun. They are huge U fans and Adam and Aaron have very similar personalities. The kids love playing together. We are grateful that they invited us over for dinner. We love our friends.

Legoland

We were planning on going to the Gaylord for the Ice show, but the reservations for the half off were all gone, and I wasn't going to pay full price, so we used our half off coupons to go to LEGOLAND instead. So, this isn't like the one in CA or FL, but it is also 45 minutes away from us and a lot less expensive. We made sure to arrive when it opened.


They have 3 rides. One is a shooting one. We did that one a couple times.

They had a ninjago training camp. This was perfect for the boys because you are suppose to avoid the lasers. We have lights on our stairs at home and the boys turn those on and pretend they are lasers and try to go over them....so, this was a fun training camp for them.

This ride was only for kids. Like go carts, but police cars. They did great and had fun.

I have more pictures on my other camera that I will post sometime.

The other ride was like dumbo, but you had to peddle to go up.


They had miniland. Dallas and Ft. Worth popular spots were put together. I loved this. Anyone been to DFW?

If you have been to downtown or know the Dallas skyline you will know that they did a great job.


Jerry's World.

The Gray Wolf Lodge--a popular hotel that has a water park inside.

You can build your own race car.


And then race them.



And see how much air they can get.




Aaron also enjoyed this one.

They had a play area. Part of it had rubbery, big legos.


On the ride again.

They have a 4D movie--Clutch Powers. Our second time watching the movie, we saw our friends, Sadie and Max. They were there with their grandma and cousins. I took this picture and texted it to their mom. Small world.

They had another area for building with those rubbery big blocks.


They created a fort.




There is also a lego store and they were very excited to see this Batman. We ended up spending 4 1/2 hours there. It was a lot of fun and I don't think the boys were sad at all that we didn't get to see the ice sculptures.