New Year's Eve

On New Year's Eve we went on a gorgeous hike through Lost Maples National Park with our friends the Ferguson's.  It was a beautiful day, and extremely warm for the 31st of December.  Even for Texas!  We actually got a little hot, and had to squeeze into a little patch of shade for our picnic lunch.  It was a really fun day!  That night we went to the Ferguson's house for lots of great food and games, and we all had a good time.  Ella was excited to have a chance to dress up with her new doll, Kit, in their matching outfits.  :)

Our family gift...Masen!!

 
Santa is one smart guy.  For our family Christmas present this year he brought us our beloved uncle Masen!! What could be more fun during a week off school than to have a fun 16 year old uncle fly to Texas to play!  With the arrival of Masen on Christmas night, our week was transformed to one filled with favorite restaurants, SeaWorld, Six Flags, and late night movies.  And Masen was such a champ.  He played Hot Wheels with Tyler, Air Soft gun wars with the boys, and still made time to tickle and play with the girls.  Uncle Masen even convinced Ella and Ruby to try the Journey to Atlantis ride at SeaWorld.  And as you can see from the pictures (the crazy screaming lady in front of Ruby!) grown adults are afraid of this ride!  But the girls were so brave, and they loved it.  You can see the giant smile on Ruby's face, and Ella buried her face into Masen's arm during the entire ride.  Spencer and Tyler took good care of Ruby, too, as is evidenced by their protective arms during the hill and splash.  Cute.  Spencer also conquered his fear of the big rides at Six Flags, due to some bribing by myself and Masen.  At the end of the night, he walked away with a giant Tweety Bird (which he won with Masen's bribe) and I took all three boys out for Root Beer and Pizzookies at BJ's.  We had a really fun week, which went by way too fast.  I also think that Masen enjoyed himself, too.  Being a kid is fun stuff!

Christmas Day!!!

Another wonderful Christmas Day has come and gone.  Sigh!  It was a great day.  This year Christmas fell on a Sunday, and we meet at 9:00am.  I'd been fretting about this for months, hoping that the kids wouldn't complain too much, and hoping that we'd be able to make it even more special by getting to go to church on Christmas Day.  We brought the situation up to the kids and asked them how they wanted Christmas morning to go down.  After some discussion we all agreed that we would begin the Christmas morning festivities at 7:00, and would just open stockings and the family gift before breakfast and church.  They did NOT want to be rushed - opening presents or eating!  This plan worked wonderfully, and I even made an entire extra batch of sticky buns so that we could eat one before church and we could piece on the other one during the rest of the morning's festivities.  The other stipulation that the kids had was that they wanted to be able to come home from church and change back into their pajamas to open presents.  No problem!  I even joined them!  :)  So the pictures here are in chronological order, even though the pajamas appear before and after the church clothes.  All said and done...I loved having Christmas on Sunday!!!  It was so nice.  Spencer decided to bust out the tuxedo, and the kids all looked darling for church.  And of course the program was really nice.  We had a fun day of present opening, a little cooking, and we had a great feast with our friends the Fergusons that evening.  I wish I would have taken a group picture!  At least I got a picture of the spread (and the Jello!), and even Tyler's cars which earned a prime spot in front of his plate at dinner.  Funny.  It was a perfect Christmas!