Wednesday, November 30, 2016

The Back Yard

We had a patio/outdoor kitchen built on to our house this summer. 
 Our builder featured us as the "project of the month" on his website.  The after pictures are so good I didn't even recognize my own house at first! 

Before


 After



Monday, November 28, 2016

Prettiest Birthday Girl Ever

While Jason was celebrating his birthday, guess who turned one?

That's right,
Chloe!

Chloe's birthday just happens to be the same day as Jason's (so was Hunter's if you can believe it).

We all love our little one-year old baby so much!








Sunday, November 27, 2016

Camo for the Big Day

Jason celebrated his birthday by going hunting with the boys.  They saw a bobcat, but missed it. And 2 doe, but didn't shoot at them. 



 JR chose to sleep in and watch the UT game instead of hunting. 



Saturday, November 26, 2016

Thanksgiving

We had a very nice Thanksgiving here at our house with my family and Jason's family.
Jason did most of the cooking (thank goodness!) and even made the turkey.



The kids said they were "most excited to eat rolls", though Reed got pretty excited about the "kid wine" I got for them (caramel apple sparkling apple cider).

We have lots to be thankful for this year, including a new president, which Paw-Paw thanked God for in the blessing before the meal. 

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Birthday Week

Poor Jason.
I always say Kyle and Reed have a terrible birthday of January 7th, but I still say a Thanksgiving birthday might be worse.

Jason's birthday falls the day after Thanksgiving this year, so we celebrated with Granny Sherry last night.


 He. requested an "ice cream pizza" from Baskin Robbins for his cake, it looks like a pizza, but it's really ice cream. They were sold out of his favorite, Oreo Cookies and Cream, so he had to settle for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. 


Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Lots of Singing

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but JR and I are getting ready to be in Houston's 1st Baptist's Christmas show.  The 1st Baptist Christmas show is a really big deal here. People have been going to it forever.  My parents used to go before I was born.

 I decided I'd audition with JR (way back in August), and we both got cast as dancers.  
(We are also other non speaking/non solo, but singing parts.)

I will be dancing in the opening to "Most Wonderful Time of the Year", JR is in a routine with the other middle school/high school kids to "Winter Wonderland", I'm a tap dancing doll in a medley of Christmas songs, and then we are both dancing elves in "Rockin' on Top of the World" (from Polar Express).

Then in the second half of the show we are dressed in Biblical costumes and sing in different songs. We end the show dressed in white robes like we are in heaven. 

We've been going to dance practices since September, and we've been staging Friday nights from 6-10 and Saturdays from 9-2 for the last 3 weeks. 

This past weekend after JR was at these practices on Friday and Saturday, he had to be back at church at 8:00 AM on Sunday to sing with the youth choir in all 3 services.  
It's quite a commitment to be in the youth choir.  They practice every Sunday from 3-4:30, and for a church that is 175 years old (Yes, the church is older than the state of Texas.) with 28,000 members, you'd think there would be lots more youth in the choir. It just goes to show how dedicated they expect these kids to be.


Here are some shots of JR from the big screen.


And a little bit from one of their songs. 


Sunday, November 20, 2016

Definitely on the Naughty List

I finished getting all my Christmas decorations up on Friday.
With everything going on I've been working on it since before Halloween.  It was a long, slow process this year.


But for some reason, Chloe has a problem with Santa Claus.
These are the remains of the second Santa she's chewed up! 


She's actually taking them off the shelves to destroy them.

I was able to find this Santa's face, but there was no way to put him back together.
Sorry Santa. 


I wanted to get mad at her, but then I found her like this.
(If you look closely at her arm you can see some Santa beard still on her!) 
And how am I supposed to get mad at that?


But, I'm pretty certain this means Santa won't be bringing Chloe any presents! 

Friday, November 18, 2016

Deer Hunt

This post got lost in the shuffle of everything going on here lately.

Kyle and Reed left right after their last football game to go deer hunting with Jason and Grandpa.
They have both been with JR before, but have never gone to hunt for themselves.


Kyle got a deer on Saturday evening.





And while Kyle was sleeping in on Sunday morning, Reed got his.


They were both very happy.


Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Yes, the Auction

First, I think I was able to fix the video in the previous post so it will play.

And now, the school auction. 

IT. IS. OVER!

Hallelujah! 


We got to have the Rock On guitars in our yard the day before and the boys were super excited.  They even light up at night.


This has been a full time job for me since May. 
 We were supposed to raise $180,000, but blew that out of the water when we raised over $250,000.

I give lots of the credit to my awesome husband who did an amazing job working the big board...we made $30,000 on just those 14 items! 


Here I am with the other auction chairs, it's pretty easy to find me in my Britney costume. 

With Jason

With our neighbors


I was so tired I went to bed at 8:45 Sunday night, unfortunately for me, I woke up to 104 emails, and that number had climbed by the afternoon.


But we are in the home stretch now of just tying up lose ends. The long days are over. 
OVER! 

Monday, November 14, 2016

Not the Auction

Our school auction I chaired was on Saturday night, I'm not ready to talk about how awesome it was yet, so enjoy this video of my kids trying really hard to break one of their bones. 


Friday, November 11, 2016

2 Concerts But Only 1 Me

JR, Kyle and Reed all had Veteran's Day concerts/programs this morning. 
They were both at the same time, so I had to pick. 

Reed (being the most like me) said there was no reason to come to their concert since neither he nor Kyle had a solo, speaking part, or special part. 

"Plus there's so many kids singing it's not like you could actually hear me."  He spoke it so bitterly, it was almost like I was saying it to myself. 

But he's right. Look at all those kids. 


Here are some of the other pictures/video I was able to get from friends.

Reed's class

Kyle is in this video, but unless you're his mama you'll never find him. 

JR's program was very nice.
They sang The National Anthem, and then a medley of songs with both the band and the orchestra.






Happy Veteran's Day to PawPaw and Grandpa Gary!

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

The Boys of Fall

This is the 3rd year of the boys playing football and they have yet to be on a winning team.
The season ended at the end of October and I honestly can't remember if they won 2 games or 3.
At least they have learned how to lose! 


Reed made a touchdown or two since my last post and completed quite a few passes. Kyle continued to do a good job hiking the ball.


They missed the team picture day to go to a Texans game, but it didn't matter since I take my own pictures anyway.


Monday, November 7, 2016

Last Lesson

JR had his last cotillion dance lesson last night.
It was also mother/son, dad/daughter night.


You can imagine how thrilled JR was to take me.  Jason threatened him within an inch of his life, and he still asked if he could take Chloe as his date instead of me.


Here we are before we left. And yes, I'm getting my Christmas trees up.


And here I am with the kids that asked to have their pictures made with me...individually! 


Kyle bought himself some Sky Walkers and only takes them off to go to school.  


They had a little lesson with the other kids, and then they spent the evening dancing with us.


Sunday, November 6, 2016

Fall Concert

JR had his fall choir concert last week.
He has a new choir teacher this year, and though the new teacher frustrates us mamas with his lack of communication, he totally makes up for it in the teaching our kids to sing department.


The advanced choirs started off with the National Anthem.  Reed has been to plenty of plays, musicals, and concerts and when they finished he turned around to me and said, "Wow! That was really good!"


JR is standing next to next door neighbor, Mary. Of course they have to act like they don't even know each other. 

Then JR sang 2 more songs with the advanced men's choir.
Here's a little sampling of one of the songs.


We were super impressed and are very happy with the new choir director!

As usual, JR had a big fan club in attendance.


\
Kyle said he refused to go to the choir concert to watch JR, but was happy to go and watch Mary.
Reed went to watch JR, but was first in line to get his picture with Mary. 

Thursday, November 3, 2016

More From the Upstairs

Like I've said before, I never know what I'm going to find going on upstairs.
There was quite a bit of banging the other morning, so I thought I'd go check it out.


No big deal, just their heads and other body parts crashing into the floor. 


Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Real Halloween

So here are last night's costumes:
 
We pulled Kyle's costume together in about 3 minutes. He couldn't believe next door neighbor, Dave, could tell immediately what he was....A Hawaiian tourist. 



Reed's costume took about 5 minutes.  
This costume came about because we found this hat in the prop closet.  We turned his school spirit shirt inside out, put on a bathing suit, and I cut the bow tie out of some Christmas ribbon...instant leprechaun. 


Reed went off with Pierce (I missed getting a picture) and Kyle went off with his group of friends.


JR was Trump and Christian wore one of my afro wigs. 
(JR is doing his "we need to build a wall" impersonation here.)


Chloe said she was Ivanka Trump because they are both so beautiful. 
(JR still doing his "Trump face".)


And Jason and I passed out candy with Granny Sherry.
Jason was a pumpkin, and I was a stressed out mom who has to raise $180,000 at the school auction in 11 days.