Rapunzel Party

Lydia wanted a Rapunzel party for her fifth birthday. We turned our home into a beautiful village of fun :) My mom found some super cute ideas on different blogs and spent a lot of time making the decorations. The ideas were really creative and Lydia (and her friends and family) LOVED the result.
The cake shows Rapunzel running through the grass away from the tower with her first taste of freedom
Floating lanterns and the kingdom flags and long hair draped over the door (if you haven't seen the movie Tangled you should!)
more flags and favor bags
snacks included fancy bread and cheese (like they bought in the village), golden flower soup/punch (like her mother drank to be healed), apples (like Eugene fed Max the horse) and orange boats on blue jello with a flag (like they were in for the lanterns)

Playgroup at the Park

We now have a weekly playgroup with two other families in our neighborhood. It is fun for the girls to be together (there are 3 Lydia' age and one a year younger than Gloria) and for us to all be close in location! But one week when the weather was beautiful we met at Zilker Park with a couple of other girl families too. We played, ate, climbed on the statues, saw the super cool Splash Exhibit and rode the train!

SS-thanksgiving

Gloria and her 'best friend' Jackson, which is good since they've been together since the womb. He encouraged her to smile for this pic.

Wonderfully our Sunday school class has grown and we had a Thanksgiving potluck in the Fellowship Hall. We were out of town so we missed the Christmas one that was 49 people in a home!

Potty Power

Gloria finally got her trip to ChuckECheese! They had a great time, we got fries, Sprites and played games. Mostly the riding games and they also enjoyed watching ChuckE and friends 'perform' And I am one happy Mama to have two potty trained girls!

tu or UT?

We got a letter from the University of Texas linguistic department for experiments on childhood language acquisition. Over the summer Lydia did one and last month (I am super behind on blogging) Gloria got to do one. It was interesting and we had a parking pass in the middle of campus, right next to the tower so we spent a few minutes exploring. The weather was beautiful, lots of students around (like driving through swarms of ants), the fountain was fun and Lydia enjoyed playing hide and seek at each statue (they hid in the same spot every time).

Deer

We spent a weekend in Salado and Caleb shot another deer in my parents' backyard with his bow-this one was the king of the forest. The girls enjoyed seeing him and Lydia (who wants to be a doctor at Belton Urgent Care) thought the cleaning and guts were really interesting.

Then we went to a sculpture garden and saw cute bronze deer!

Holding babies

Lots of friends and family have had new baby girls this fall and we got to meet three in one week! Lucy Boyd was at Thanksgiving in Salado. We traveled to New Braunfels for the baby to meet Audrey Elizabeth (Laura from Port As' first baby) and then a fun trip to Carrie's to meet her third Cora Hope. Both girls love babies-Gloria constantly says the baby is so cute! and Lydia loves getting to hold them!