Marlie's Christmas Recital

Yesterday was Marlie's Christmas recital.  I love these performances...the girls get so excited and they are so very cute! Cousin Mallory, Duy and Uncle Jay came too!

Part of the fun is getting ready.  I decided to curl Marlie's hair since it is so long and beautiful and then put it in a side ponytail.  It looked great!  Now she wants me to curl it every day because she said it looks like Taylor Swift!  She also loves that I let her wear a little bit of make-up and sparkly lotion!

You are probably wondering what happened to Matt and I should probably do a separate post for that story.  Good news is he's fine...just missing a few teeth! Here are Marlie and Emilie all ready to go!

The performance was wonderful! Marlie did a great job and I was so very proud of her.  I am linking in a video although it's a bit difficult to see.

Afterwards the girls enjoyed their cookies! Sweet Lauren wasn't feeling good but I managed to get her cute smile in this picture...

Congratulations girls you did great!  We can't wait to see the big performance in the spring.  

Star of Hope

We had a VERY special night last Sunday...the girls in my bible study and all our families took a trip to the Star of Hope to serve cookies and milk to the folks staying at the shelter. 

We have been planning this for about a month and all of us were very excited.  The kids collected blankets and toiletries in their classes to take with us.  Matt's teacher, Mrs. Hathorn got all of first grade involved so we had lots of goodies!  When I went to pick up the donations from the school, every kid in Matt's class came out to my car with something in hand.  It was precious!  So M&M helped sort through everything to get it into boxes.

Then Matt and Dad loaded everything in the car.  We had so much that we had to ask Mrs. Aseena to come over and load all the blankets in her car.  Our trunks were packed!

We all met to say our prayer and set our plan for the evening.  We had 20 kids total and they were ready to go!

The older kids did a great job serving cookies and the younger kids did great handing out milk, crayons, coloring sheets and bible verses.  I didn't get the best pictures because I could not take pictures of the SOH guests.  But I got a few good ones... 

Thank you to all of the families that joined us and for Star of Hope for making this volunteer opportunity available for small children to participate. 

I wasn't sure if my kids would "get it" but they definitely did.  Matt was very touched, sad and concerned about all of the people that were sitting outside of SOH. He asked me what they were doing waiting on the front steps. I explained that the rooms at SOH were full, so those people were waiting until they cleaned up from our event because they were going to sleep on the floor in that large room. I explained that the blankets that we collected were going to be very helpful to those people. I could tell this really bothered him and a minute later he asked how come SOH doesn't build a bigger shelter so everyone could sleep in a room. I explained that they are working on that but it's
going to be expensive and they are raising money. He asked if we were going to give money to help build the new shelter and I said yes! At bedtime his first prayer was "please bless all the people that have to sleep on the floor at SOH and please help SOH get money to build a bigger shelter". 

Please keep Star of Hope in your prayers too.  It is am amazing organization that doesn't receive a lot of funding from the government because it is faith-based.  So many people that were staying at SOH thanked us for coming and that's what made it all special. 

Happy Thanksgiving

What a fun and crazy Thanksgiving we had! The kids had off all week so we decided to head back to Grapevine but this time stay at The Great Wolf Lodge.  This place is a kid's dream...indoor water park with several really good slides, a kid's spa, a glitter tattoo shop, a build-a-wolf creation center, an arcade, a quest and on and on.  Our room had a little Kid Kamp with bunk beds and they thought that was awesome!

What was even better was that we got to hang out with friends too.  The Gordon's were there the first day so the kids played in the water park and then we enjoyed a great dinner on Main Street.  We saw the tree lighting and took some funny pictures along the way...Marlie insisted on wearing her wolf ears and tail too!

The next day the Kade's came up and Marlie and Ashdin had a blast going down some of the slides together.  We went to the aquarium which was small, but great.  We took the kids to LegoLand while Doug and Damon golfed at the Cowboys course (although neither like the Cowboys...I should not share the silly things they did on the course!).  Aseena and I took a visit to the spa, which was much needed and loved!

We had our Thanksgiving feast at the hotel which was wonderful!  They had shrimp and crab legs so Matt chose that instead of turkey! We even watched the Redskins and our favorite RGIII whip up on the Cowgirls!

Unfortunately we all came home very sick!  So it's not likely that we'll go back for more than one night but...hey...we had a blast while we were there! Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Feast & Coach for a Day

Marlie had a Thanksgiving Feast at school.  I wasn't able to go so Nene joined her.  I got this picture via text at work and thought it was SO very cute! Look at my little pilgrim!

The same day Matt got to be "Coach for the Day".  He won this at the school County Fair. The day finally came and to say Matt had a blast is an understatement.  He took it very seriously.  Coach James is an Aggie so Matt proudly wore his Aggie gear that he got at ATM baseball camp and scored huge points with Coach James!  I got several texts from Coach James throughout the day, including this picture... 

I mean he looks like he fits the part.  Too cute!  My Mom had lunch with Matt also and she said all the kids knew who he was.  He was like a celebrity.  Matt got Coach James to sign his hat.  Thank you for making this day so special for Matt!