Our Christmas

As Chance and I sit here on the couch contemplating whether or not to stay up for the new year (I am really the only one even considering it, since we'll be up at 5:00 with our little songbird), we are overwhelmed with how blessed we've been this year. Thank you so much to our family and friends for making this such a wonderful year for our little family!

We had some great Christmas celebrations with our families the past few weeks. We were so happy that entire families got together everywhere we went, and we have zillions of pictures to prove it! I had a hard time picking out my favorites, so I made a video. If you have a few minutes, enjoy!



By the way, we are not staying up to greet the actual beginning of 2012. We "rang in the new year" with Cade at 7:00 with cowbells, fizzy juice, and sparklers. It was family-friendly, and really fun! Here's to a fantastic year ahead....

Happy Christmas to all

We've just finished the laziest and most wonderful Christmas Day ever! It has been a long time since we spent an entire day at home doing nothing but playing with toys and relaxing, and that is exactly what this family did today!

I'll post all of our Christmas pictures once we've finished all of our family get togethers, but here are a few random pics to tide over our faithful followers:

One more visit to Santa's Wonderland



Mama and Cade at Kindermusik



4th annual cookie exchange



The "young" guests!



Look at those delicious cookies!




Fun at Will's 4th birthday party





Our tree!



Cade's ornaments through the years



We are so thankful for our family day, but most of all thankful for the birth of Jesus. Seeing this miracle through Cade's eyes absolutely makes our faith stronger, and we love sharing the story with him.

O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!

Family Photos

Back in November, my wonderful friend Kelsey took some family pictures of us at the Houston Zoo. I was so excited that they turned out so well and that I got our Christmas cards ordered nice and early! Of course, they sat in their box on the dining room table for several weeks before I mailed them out, but that is another story :)

Here are our favorites. You've probably seen some of them on our Christmas cards.





Our happy boy!



Let's try one more family picture!



Or, let's just go see the elephants.

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Christmas

I love getting ready for the most wonderful time of year!

While our house is not *quite* decorated yet, we had some fun preparations last week!

Monday night, St. Nick visited our house to fill our stockings. While I'm not sure that Cade really understands this German tradition, I do know that he loves getting a few presents and candy before Christmas!



Tuesday of last week was the Christmas program at Cade's school. This is one of our highlights of parenting... two groups of shamelessly cute children singing Christmas carols at our church with hundreds of parents and grandparents falling all over themselves to take pictures and videos. It was precious! Cade's class sang Away in a Manger, Silent Night, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. We think Cade did a fabulous job... we couldn't actually hear him singing, but his rehearsal in the car was pretty cute.

First, the kids processed in. Doesn't Cade look handsome?!



Then, they sang!



The teachers tried to get the kids to sit still for pictures after the program was over. It was pretty much a lost cause since they knew cookies were waiting in the lobby!



Oma stayed at our house the next day to keep Cade. They put up the little tree in his room!

Santa's WONDERland

No, that isn't a typo in the title... that is truly how we felt about Santa's Wonderland this year! We've been going here with my family since 1999, and this was our best trip (at least with a child) ever! We went on a weeknight in late November, and apparently this is the key to very small crowds and extra friendly animals in the petting zoo. We had such a great time and were especially proud of Cade for loving his visit with Santa!



How cute is that? He just walked right up to him, gave him five, and climbed up in his lap. We had some quality time with Santa as we waited for his elves to arrive to actually take the picture. It was really fun!

My family has taken a group picture with Santa and Mrs. Claus every year too. Here we are!



After the Santa success, we wandered around Santa's Town for awhile. Cade was the only kid in the petting zoo and he had a great time chasing, I mean meeting, all of the animals. Notice the goat checking out my Dad's pocket. Do not notice that I accidently cut off my dad's head in the photo.




We also got to meet Marshall Frost.



Cade, Oma, and Opa viewed the giant Texas flag.



And Cade loved his funnel cake!



This was a perfect way to start our Christmas season!

Thanksgiving in a Nutshell

As I sat down this evening to start on our Christmas cards, I realized that I never finished my Thanksgiving blog post! Oops! So, here is our Thanksgiving in a nutshell:

Xavier spent a few days before Thanksgiving visiting Nana and Papa in Bryan. He and Cade had lots of fun playing together. They make up the funniest things to play with... here they are wearing Mickey Mouse ears, dart gun targets, one of Papa's shoes each, and playing catch with a balloon. We didn't understand, but they were sure pleased with themselves!



On Thanksgiving day we had a delicious lunch with Chance's family at Nana and Papa's house. The kids had fun running around on the porch. Or should I say, Xavier and Cade had fun running on the porch, and Zoe tolerated them :)



We were all very excited about the fried turkey! Some of us more than others!



Russell joined us for lunch and football watching! He likes getting his picture taken about as much as Cade.



When we got home, Cade did a little Black Friday shopping.



Thanksgiving weekend we travelled to New Braunfels. Here is where my picture taking totally slacked off. But, the below photo shows the absolute highlight of the trip for Cade. Chance and I finally joined this century and got iphones a few weeks ago. (Side note - after my initial flip out about how much it cost, I can now admit to all of you that I LOVE my phone. I love it, I love it, I love it) Anyway, we finally introduced Cade to a few games on my phone. Once he had enough family fun at Great Oma's house, he very happily settled into her scooter chair with his mug of milk and Tozzle. He was extremely content and the rest of us got to visit!

School Days

A big event happened for the three and four year old classes at Cade' school last week... some firemen and a fire truck visited! They are learning all about community helpers this month and have already had visits from a physical therapist, police officer, and a UPS driver and truck (by far the most popular, next to the firetruck).

Thanks to a great schedule at work this semester, I was able to visit Cade's school while the fireman was there. It is so cute to see him in his normal school routine. He listens remarkably well to his teachers!

First, they saw the not-scary fireman with all of his gear on.



Then, they learned how to crawl under smoke to get out of a building.



Here we are with the firetruck!



Cade must be slowly starting to come around to pictures, because he actually asked me to take this one of him and his friends!



Checking out all of the tools



Each child received a fire hat. Cade really liked wearing his hat, but this is what happened when I tried to take his picture.



Escape from the evil camera! I guess he is not coming around to pictures after all :)

I had a great day at school last week too. On Friday, I was able to help pass out Aggie Rings. This was absolutely one of my proudest Aggie moments, and seeing the look on the students' faces when they received their rings was priceless. I was especially honored to present one of my former students with his ring. He came back to A&M later in life and will complete his student teaching next semester while he has 2 kids in school and one in college. Here I am with my student and his wife.



Congratulations, Class of 2012! Welcome to the Aggie Network!

Super Soccer!

Thursday was our last Smart Start soccer night and we are so glad we did this program! Cade and his friends had such a good time and really seemed to improve during the 5 weeks of practice. Chance and I both got to experience a few practices with Cade and it was really fun to learn with him. I learned that I am "that" parent that takes waaaaay too many pictures at my child's sporting events, so here are just a few highlights:

Cade and Garrett liked to start each practice with a little warm up of throwing the balls into the goal and at each other. I'm not sure how this helped with soccer, but they sure had fun.



Coach Marty helped the kids with drills like kicking the ball around cones.



My mom was the official photographer at one of the practices and snapped this cute picture of me and my sweet boy!



Takin' a little break



Action shot!



They also learned how to stop the ball by stomping their foot



Oma even played a little!



The last day of soccer was actually a game. Chance and I agree that this is one of our parenting highlights... watching 3 year olds play soccer is hilarious and we were so proud of Cade for playing the whole time and not fussing about anything. We also realized one more thing about us... we are somewhat over-enthusiastic and did not sit down the entire game! Our friends, Garrett's and Davis's parents also had fun and we all laughed a lot together.

Here is the "Hornet" team in their huddle. Wonder who picked the name for their team?



Cade, Garrett, and the rest of the Hornets (on right) face off against Davis and Team Awesome



I'll spare you the 5 videos I took of the game :) Davis scored 3 goals for his team and the Hornets ended up being outscored. But all of the kids had a great time and ended their soccer experience with smiles. Thanks, Coach Marty!

What do we do without football?

It's been a few weeks since Chance's last game and we've been having some good, family fun! We really do love football season, but I have to say that it's been great having Chance home.

A few weekends ago, we went to the Museum of the American GI with Nana and Papa. For a pre-Veteran's Day event, the museum hosted re-enactment groups, tanks, and a large collection of artillery. We were all pretty interested and thought Cade would like it too. Not surprisingly, he had other ideas! We had to ride a bus to get to the museum, and Cade was completely fascinated with it. As in, so fascinated that he did not care at all about the parade of tanks or any of the other cool military stuff. He just kept asking when we could get back on the bus. Here are a few things the rest of us found interesting:





This was actually called a "high speed tractor"



A slight smile from Daddy's tickles



Finally, headed back to the bus!



Happiness



Last weekend, we met the Johnson family at the Houston Zoo. We had a great time seeing our friends and visiting a zoo when it was actually not hot outside!

Kelsey did a quick photo shoot with us for our Christmas card picture before we saw the animals. The kids were really patient with us, but were really happy to play together when we were finished!



By the way, the pictures turned out great, and you'll see a few in your mailbox in a few weeks :)

Cade was definitely promised a sucker for good picture behavior, and he and Natalie both settled happily into the wagon with their treats.



Once they sat down, they didn't want to get up for awhile and just peered at the animals from their seats. It was pretty funny!



They did extract themselves from the wagon for some drumming.



The rhinos were a favorite on this visit. We actually saw them get into a fight with their horns!



After a little snack...



We headed off to the carousel. Natalie was very excited about this, and Cade was too, initially.



But, that didn't last too long! The carousel ended up being kind of traumatic!



Somewhat enjoying the ride?



Next up - the jungle play area. The kids did the slide over and over and over!



Such joy!



Ready to run to their next adventure!



We had a great time with Kelsey, DeAndre, Natalie, and Henry!