Castle Day

The girls made gingerbread houses at Friendship International. Then we and Imane, who we give a ride to each week, had nothing to do after, so we went to the park just north of church for lunch, to play and enjoy the sunshine. We spotted the Elizabet Ney museum through the trees and decided to explore the castle! The girls were good, and we enjoyed the statues and creaky wooden floors, we also climbed all the stairs up to the top of the tower. Fun spontaneous day!

Carrie's

We traveled to Arlington to meet baby Cora Hope and see Carrie and family. The kids had a great time as always. Lydia & Luke are really growing up and did fun games. Here they made a manger scene and decorate Luke's room for a Christmas celebration!
At Decorator's Warehouse-Christmas wonderland. They all had a great time seeing the millions of decorations (for free!)
Lydia took this picture of us while we were waiting for Luke to get out of school. We played at his school church's playscape and had lunch by a fountain in the lobby-simple fun times!
The gang! It was great to catch up with Carrie, after over 20 years of friendship we always have lots to say.

Birthday groups

Abby, Lydia, Heather & Adelyn, Avery, Rebecca, Alexis, Nita, Rachel & Gloria (Brooklyn had to leave early for a game)
The princesses-I wore the dress I had made in Oman for Sabriya's brother's wedding
The family! Linda & Bobby came in for the party. Yes I lined this picture up to match our dominate traits.

Lydia's 5th Birthday Party

Everyone had such a great time at Lydia's party, the same gang of girls from church came. They really enjoyed playing outside, swinging and throwing bean bags at the fun Rapunzel cut outs (painted by Nana and a recycle of my TAMU running for class officer signs). They came in for singing and cake once all arrived. Other fun activities were pin the frying pan on Flynn Rider and coloring sheets. Nana also helped them make Pascal blowers! Then opening presents-the girls were a little mob crowded around Lydia but she got some really nice presents and was good at saying thank you to all. Then back outside for more playing and finally a Tug of War with Rapunzel's hair. First two groups of girls and then all the girls against Daddy! It was fun when he let them go and they all fell to the ground.

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!