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

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!

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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!