Christmas Time

Here is some of what we've been up to in the busy month of December:

The Big Tree at Sugar Land Town Center

Making Christmas Cookies with Mimi


Building and Decorating a Gingerbread House at Nana and PawPaw's House

Decorating is serious business

Beautifully done boys!

First Baptist's Candy Cane Lane

Sweet Brothers!

Live Nativity Scene at Candy Cane Lane, the boys loved all the animals.

And of course a Camel!

Cookie Decorating Party with friends, which I wish I had taken more pictures of :(

Crazy Kids Christmas Show - we went last year, and the boys have been looking forward to it for a full year now.

Crazy Kid's Christmas Show, they were mesmerized!

They each wrapped a gift for Daddy. They picked out the wrapping and the bows and taped up their packages. That day as soon Jared got home from work Luke took him over to the tree show him the gifts, it was really sweet.


And of course a trip to see Santa.

Christmas Day pictures are coming soon too.

Snow Day

I'm a little late on posting about the day it snowed earlier in December, better late than never. The boys had a great time playing in the snow, their hands were freezing cold and their clothes got all wet. They were ready for Hot Chocolate when they came inside. These pictures are all at my In-laws house, they got quite a lot of snow. The first is our version of a snowman, raisin eyes, a cheetos nose and nerf shooter for arms, that's a first class snowman.

Tae Kwon Do

Will's friend Hudson invited him to "Buddy Day" at his Tae Kwon Do class. This was great, because we were planning on signing will up after the new year. Buddy Day let Will see what the classes will be like and now he is super excited to start in January. I really liked what I saw, they talk about focus, self control, self discipline and all sorts of great life skills along with learning the moves.

After the class Will said: "Tae Kwon Do means punching"

Will and Hudson

Bye, Bye White Tile

We've had a nasty battle with our white flooring since we moved into this house. And it seems that the boys messes are winning that battle. So, we decided to put in new darker "doesn't show dirt" kind of floors. Jared spent the week of Thanksgiving tearing out our old tile and laying new tile. He's quite the stud if I can say so!

Here's the before shot and Luke, he loves the camera, so he assumed we wanted a picture of him and it appears that the floor was really dirty that day, I guess we stopped caring when we knew it was coming out.

Before:

Poor white tile, I don't miss you a bit.

Drumroll please..... my new tile, I love you!

The white with nice shades of gray stains added by my boys carpet comes out next week. So stay tuned...

Brian the Marine

My little brother Brian, left for boot camp for the Marines this week. It's so hard for me to call him my little brother since he's now a whole head taller than me. He has grown into a wonderful young man, he is very excited about his new adventure. We are all so proud of him. He is at boot camp in the beautiful San Diego, but I don't think he will be seeing much of it till after boot camp. And of course we're excited to go visit him.

When we were telling Will about Brian leaving to be a solider, he was trying to figure out exactly what a solider does. He kept saying "Brian is going to fight the bad guys". But, I guess he picked up on the fact that there is some danger involved in being a solider. Because after a few minutes he had his head down and I could tell that he was deep in thought. I asked him what was going on and he looked up at me and said: "We need to pray for Brian." So, of course we stopped and prayed for Brian.


Then Will said "I want to take him my verse, we can get it from my bed and take it to him." We wrote out Joshua 1:9 for Will to read to him at night when he is scared. He has learned the verse by now and can say it back to us. So, when we went to Brian's going away reception Will took the verse to Brian and recited it to him. It was such a tender moment, so touching to my heart to see Will make the connections.

Joshua 1:9 - "Be strong and courageous, do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

Brian with Will and Luke

Brian and me, see he's just not so little anymore...

At Brian's swearing in

Brian, we are praying for your safety!

Give Thanks

What are you thankful for?

Will: "Everyone I love"

Luke: "My bruder" (Luke's word for brother)

We had a lovely Thanksgiving Dinner with all our family at my parents house. The quotes above are from when we went around the table and said what we were each thankful. It was so precious!

Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the boys at Thanksgiving Dinner.

But, we all donned our A&M gear in anticipation of the game that evening:

(Luke is in the middle of saying "Gig 'em")

Happy Birthday and Hullabaloo

We surprised Jared when he got home from work on his birthday with a cake and some handmade decorations and of course a very sweet birthday song sung by his boys. The boys and I made him a cake and then I let them ice it, they were very proud of it:

Here's how it turned out:

I got Jared tickets to the Aggie/Baylor game for his birthday. We had a great time going just the two of us. It brought back so many great memories of our time at A&M.

This is from the top of the zone, looking down at the MSC. The MSC is shut down right now for re-modeling. We walked around campus for a little while, it's amazing how much has changed.