Christmas is Here!

We really enjoyed Christmas this year.  Marlie started asking questions about Santa "really fitting down the chimney" and "delivering toys to all the kids in the world" and Matt reminded her that he is "magical" just like God! 

The festivities started on Snow Day in Fall Creek.  We got to see Santa, play in the snow, go on a carriage ride and eat donuts and drink hot chocolate!

Papa and Nona Lisa came up to visit and we went to the Zoo for Zoolights!  We didn't see too many animals but we enjoyed all the lights, the Christmas music and our hot chocolate!

We enjoyed the program at the children's mass at church and then came home to celebrate Christmas with the family.  Christmas started with a few performances from Matt playing his guitar and a few songs sung by Marlie.  Then we had our 2nd annual gift card exchange which is lots of fun with people stealing cards, forming teams, etc.  It was time to open gifts and the kids didn't even ask to start opening.  They were so excited about the things they bought for us at their little "boutique" at school! It was so cute.  Marlie got me a little hook that says #1 Mom, Matt was SO excited to give me a diamond bow ring and a Texans shirt.  Matt asked if I could wear the ring every day so I've been wearing it as much as I can. 

Marlie was so excited to give Matt this football flag and a Rubik's cube which he had on his Christmas list. 

Matt was excited to give Marlie her softball helmet, glove and softballs! Marlie was SO excited because she really wants to play softball...sigh!

The kids were happy to share the holidays with Nene and Papa & Nona Lisa.  Somehow everyone knew this year what was on the kid's Christmas lists so they were happy when they opened each gift!

I made my favorite cupcakes and we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus!

It was time for bed so we could get ready for the big morning.  Christmas morning Doug woke up abruptly and said "I think I heard something".  I was hoping it was a false alarm because it was 6:00am and I was so tired.  But sure enough...Matt was up and pretty much had already gone through his gifts from Santa.  He was really excited about his new bike and the beyblades he got.  Marlie however slept until 8 or 9 and then slowly came downstairs.  She just looked at everything in amazement.  She was excited to get a Jake ship with the characters and also to get a...

GUITAR! That Santa brings us neat things even though it's not on our list! Matt had already taught Marlie the names and numbers of the strings and the letters of her fingers on her right hand. I hope she can start lessons this summer, she can't wait! Santa also brought the kids a 4-wheeler and they had fun riding that like crazy up and down the street.

Christmas day is always relaxing.  Nene came over and made really good breakfast tacos and we all sat in our pj's and played with all our new things.  It's my favorite day of the year hands down. 

A few days later we met the Wellmann's for ice skating!  It was lots of fun.  Matt went around twice with the "walker" and then went solo.  As with roller skating he didn't know how to stop so he just plows right into the wall.  He and Caden probably fell 100 times but Matt really liked it.  Marlie just stood still with the walker for the first 30 minutes and we had to push her.  She finally started moving her feet but didn't want us to take the walker away.  By the end she loved it too.  And we also loved the hot chocolate here too!

The festivities weren't over yet...for New Year's weekend we headed to San Antonio to see the rest of the family! The kids had so much fun playing with their cousins and Doug and I sure enjoyed spending some time with them too. 

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!  May God continue to bless us all! 

Matt's Christmas Guitar Recital

Matt had his 3rd guitar recital a few weeks ago.  Although he missed a few notes here and there, he still did a great job.  2 of the songs were pretty new so he didn't have much time to practice.  And well...with the concrete incident, that took some practice time away too! 

He started the show with Good King Wenceslas which was one of my favorites!

Then he played a duo with Mrs. Kristi that I also liked...this was one that he hadn't practiced a lot before the big show. 

Next was Blue Bird which I thought was too easy for him, but he wanted to play it because...well it was easy!

And at the end, the kids picked names and had to surprise their friend with a song.  Matt picked Gabriel and played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

Matt won 1st place for practicing the most this fall and he sure was proud of that. The kids all did well and presented Mrs. Kristi with lots of fun gifts including this awesome shirt I found while we were in Grapevine.  Thank you Mrs. Kristi for being such a great and patient teacher.  We are loving having someone in our house to play live music!

 

Matt Meets the Concrete

You may have noticed some pictures where Matt looks like he's been in a serious fight...well he fell at PE and went face first into the concrete. 

When the school nurse called she sounded a bit frantic that one tooth had been knocked out but I assured her that it was hanging on by a thread anyway.  I assumed all was ok so thankfully Nene was home and could go pick Matt up.  Well when we she got to school and saw Matt it took her a bit to compose herself.  Marlie saw Matt and immediately said she felt sick.  It was pretty bad. 

Nene took him straight to the dentist and thankfully Dr. G could see him right away.  She had to pull the other front tooth but thankfully these were his baby teeth and the xrays showed no permanent gum damage. 

 

Matt teared up when he finally saw himself in the mirror.  Poor Doug was out of town getting pictures that looked horrible over text.  He was beside himself too! 

 

I finally got home and watched Matt take a long nap.  When he woke up he said he was okay and ready to get on the computer to play first in math!

 

Thank you to Nene for taking good care of Matt.  A week later and his lip was back to normal and the scabs had already fallen off.  And the tooth fairy gave him a bonus for losing 2 teeth at once in a traumatic fashion!!  I'm sure this is not the only scary phone call we'll get.  Matt plays hard and is not always the most coordinated little person.  We are so thankful he ended up being okay!

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!