Rockin' New Year's Eve

Its only 8:49pm, so how could I already be posting our New Year's celebration?  Well we parents are sneaky and because we can we decided to celebrate at 7!  We got dressed up (the girls say I look like I am going to have a baby, so yay for mommy tummies even 4 years later), lit candles, had sparkling apple cider, said something we liked about 2012, said a prayer for 2013, watched a ball drop from years gone by on youtube and listened to Auld Aunsaigne (or whatever it is), then put the kids to bed and since its raining here we don't except a lot of fireworks so we should be asleep before the new year too!!  Here's to this season of our lives and enjoying every minute of it.

Cousins!

 We had a nice surprise visit from Justin, Catherine, Gabriel and Abigail on his birthday.  They are finished with their time in Virginia and are heading to Russia (here we come Summer 2014!) and saw some of his family in San Antonio.  They came up for Gabriel's birthday and we had a nice visit.  The cousins even posed for pictures.

 Then in Salado we captured this cute one of Boyd cousins with Granddaddy.

 in Beaumont of Christmas eve, this was after putting out cookies for Santa...

and the whole gang on Christmas night (we missed Nathanael and McKenzie this year but are thankful we got to see them at Thanksgiving).  Thankful for fun times with lots of cousins!

Radical...again

(I get books for free from agreeing to review them on my wonderful blog from Multnomah’s Blogging For Books.)  I chose to get David’s Platt’s The Radical Question & A Radical Idea because my husband and I have read Radical and Radical Together and really enjoyed them.   They challenged us, made us think, and cause us to evaluate the way we live our lives as followers of Christ and the way we do church.  I thought I would be a good addition to get the new one in the series.  Well, this is not new.  The Radical Question takes material from Radical, The Radical Idea from Radical Together and puts them into a cute little hardback book.  So the material is great; but I have already read it all.  If you want a quick Radical refresher in a nice format, this is a great book for you.  If you want to get someone interested in the concepts but they aren’t big readers then this would be a great gift.  If you want to read something new, then skip this one.  Though I don’t blame Platt for doing this because I listened to one of his sermons today and he shared that all the proceeds from the Radical series goes to spreading the gospel and helping the poor around the world; so go buy a stack of them!

Christmas in Beaumont

 We arrived in Beaumont in time for bed and Abby jumped in with Lydia-which is fine with her because she is going through a phase where she doesn't like to sleep alone.

 The next day was Christmas eve and was full of more chalk, walks, Christmas sweets, Merida bow & arrows.  A small group of us went to the Christmas eve candle light service....

 then home for our own carols and Christmas story....

 and getting cookies ready for Santa!

 who came and brought Gloria a Ariel paint tail (she wanted a paint 'neck' but was still happy)

 and Lydia a unicorn pegisus!

 then tons of presents from all the family!

 then several walks (in the late morning a crazy storm came threw and blew everything around but then the sky cleared up but the rest of the day it got colder and colder) so after walking we had hot chocolate!  Heidi, Catherine, Linda and I went to see Les Mis and left the kids with the boys who did a great job of getting them to sit still and smile for a group photo!

We woke up early the next day and were off to Caleb's cousins!

Christmas in Salado

 We arrived in Salado after Bill and family and jumped right into festivities, like decorating gingerbread men.

 The next morning we opened presents including Nana's thoughtful year in review tree ornaments.  C-fishing santa, L-first day of school, G-swimmer and me-globe for Friendship Int.

 The girls dressed up since they have so many cute Christmas clothes, then after a nice lunch they changed into play clothes to do chalk and play outside.

 Nativity play-this year a baby doll Jesus and Lucy was a cute shepherd with Lovey Lamb.  Gloria got to be the angel and even said the lines and poor Jonathan is always stuck as Joseph :)

 Sunday morning we went to FBC Salado.  Lydia wore the dress that I wore for Jan & Glen's wedding.

All dressed up.  After a BBQ lunch we drove to Beaumont!

Christmas at Home

 Before traveling we had our own Christmas with hot chocolate, peppermint bark, reading of the Christmas story and carols.  Then some presents.  Thanks to craiglist we are very newly outfitted for the new year with gadgets-we got a wii and new mac laptop.

Lydia on a horse

A few months ago Lydia became obsessed with horses.  She shouts for joy when she sees one outside the car window; she hugs the book when one is on the page.  She also requested from Santa a unicorn pegisus (why does spell check not help me with that word??).  After Christmas, we drove to Caleb's cousin's home in the country outside Corsicana and spent the day with his dad's side of the family.  Who have horses!  So besides catching up with family and eating amazing fajitas, the girls got to chase goats, build a hay fort and RIDE A HORSE!  It was worth the 8 hours in the car that day.