4 Years

Happy Anniversary to us!

and a very happy birthday to Nate too!

Merry Christmas!!

We had a great Christmas this year! We began our day by opening presents at our house with my parents and grandma. What you can't see under our tree is a trip to Disney!

That bottom string of lights on the tree went out a week before Christmas and magically started working again yesterday... go figure. Lizzie surprised us by starting to walk behind her push car a few days before Christmas. We kept quiet about it and she put on quite the travelling show for her grandparents as a Christmas surprise!

Lizzie's favorite stocking stuffer~

Micah got some great gear to get him ready for Disney World!

He also got an awesome foam rocket launcher from his Memaw and Pa..... here are some fun action shots~

Elizabeth got her first baby doll from GG and was instantly in love~

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We did a very limited Christmas card distribution this year (budget cuts :), so if we couldn't hand it to you in person and you aren't an immediate family member then you probably never saw this~

Merry Christmas Y'all!!

Micah's Christmas Party

Have you ever seen a group of 2 yr olds sing Feliz Navidad? Yeah, me neither, but they did do a great job with the maracas....to be fair, I do believe Avelynn was singing. :)

I can't believe we are doing school parties already... Micah has gotten so old!

Making Cookies

I'm embarrassed by how long it took me to bake with Micah, but I FINALLY got to in last week. He loved it and it stressed me out... go figure. He helped with stirring~


Quality control~

Cookie cutter placement~

Being adorable~

and of course he had to add a little something special to make sure the cookies were exceptional~

Do you think I should have shown that picture to Nate BEFORE he ate several cookies? To those concerned, I grabbed him 2 seconds after this picture was taken and washed his hands. No cookies were violated in the 2 seconds it took me to whisk him to the sink :)

Thought Process

You know how they say that opposites attract? Well, I wish that were true about one particular aspect of mine and Nate's marriage... We could really benefit from one of us being a neat freak :P Housekeeping is not a natural skill for either of us and it can end up getting messy around here from time to time.

I was thinking about it today and decided that, even though I'm not pro polygamy, it might be nice to add a second wife who likes to clean... Or loves to clean :) But then I thought about the less desirable aspects of two wives (besides just morality) and decided that's not what I would want. I guess what I want is a live in housekeeper.... But I don't want to have to pay them. Hmmm, so that's describing a slave then..... Yeah, that was the end if THAT thought process :P

Church is not about having everything your way, and even knowing this, Christmas time is difficult for me. If I had it my way, the only songs we would sing in December would be carols and the vast majority would be with piano or acoustic guitar ONLY. No crazy music, no adding your own flair to the songs... Just as they are. Ahhhh, bliss :)

10 Months

Baby girl is 10 months old today! We are really starting to see a lot of Lizzie's personality coming out. For example, every time we tell her "no, no!" or use a stern tone or an evil eye, she laughs... hysterically. This worries me slightly for how she is going to be as a two year old, but mostly it's just really cute right now. Elizabeth has become super chatty and has a sing song quality to the sounds that she makes... so fun! She is waving, clapping and even saying bye-bye occasionally. We can't wait to celebrate her first Christmas in two weeks!

Moments with Micah

*We had just gotten to the grocery store this week when the lights went out....

Micah- "Night night! Night night fruit!" (we were in the produce section)

*Every night, our family does the Jesse tree together. We sit down to read the story for that night's character and we let Micah hold the ornament for that day....

Micah- "Broken! It's broken! Daddy, broken!" Yeah, he thinks any ornament not on the tree is "broken" :)

*Micah now puts himself in timeout...

Me- "Micah?"
Micah- "My, timeout.... my timeout... mine." Very calmly too and pretty much never when he actually deserves it.

It'll be better when it's over....

Sooooooo, the Ags got the bid to the Cotton Bowl... Gig 'em Ags!!! I would be pumped, BUT they are playing LSU.... Crud nuggets. For those of you unaware, my Dad is an LSU grad and as such the whole family has always supported the Bayou Bengals as well as the whole fam supporting the Ags. Anyhoo, this could be a very interesting game for our family :P

The best part? The lovely people behind moving the Cotton Bowl out of the Cotton Bowl and into JerryWorld (don't even get me started on that) decided to move the bowl from it's traditional spot as a daytime game on New Years to a night game on Jan 7th... Crud nuggets AGAIN!!!! Guess who is running a half marathon on the 8th that requires you to get up at 3 am in order to make it to the 5:30 start on time? That's right, my WHOLE family :P Oh yeah, and that's 3am eastern time.... The game starts at 8pm the night before. So anyway, I have several bones to pick with the head honchos at the Bowl de Cotton, but the bottom line is that I am going to be one TIRED runner at the end of 13.1 miles:P

Mater is from Galena, Kansas....

...Nate's home town. No lie. He was discovered when the originators of "Cars" were driving Route 66 to get inspiration for the movie. The owners have the documentation to prove it too :) Also, the guys who found him borrowed several buildings from Galena to make up part of Radiator Springs... cool, right?!