Improptu photoshoot

We went to Virginia for Christmas and it was awesome! I'll write more about that later, but for now I wanted to put up some pictures I took of Afton at my parents' home. The lighting was great.

December thus far

Our community had its annual winter festival a few weekends ago. We rode a train.

And a camel. Poor camel.

We also took a "sleigh" ride.

 The kids got balloon objects made - Afton a dog and Sam a sword. Afton's dog quickly got messed up (see above) and we called it a giraffe. Then the giraffe morphed even more so Dan fashioned a hat for her.

Dan had his 31st birthday.

 He requested tacos for dinner and a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. As you, my faithful readers, know I like to decorate the cake in some way so his request made it a little tricky. I decided to make a rock wall on the cake with Dan climbing up. Ghetto, I know. But I think he liked it anyway.

We also started the advent calendar.

And we took a preschool fieldtrip to a "Festival of Trees" at a senior center.

 We finally took all 150 blankets that we collected with our blanket drive out of our bedroom.

 And into the van. We fit them all! We took them down and dropped them off. It was really quick, but nice to see how a little thing can help others. Houston has a lot of homeless people.

It was a little sunny.

Yesterday was our church Christmas "Breakfast with Santa." Sam was excited to tell Santa that he wants a transformer. Santa better get on that...

 When I asked Afton if she was excited to see Santa, this is the face she made:

 But I told Dan to put her on his lap anyway. I feel bad about it now. Poor girl. Her crying weirded out Sam, too, who up until that point had been just fine.

Another installment of: Pictures from the kids' camera

Once again Sam's camera's memory card was full so I downloaded all 800 pictures, deleted 600 pictures of blackness, whiteness, the floor and blurred randomness, and here are a few of what's left.

First, we've got a lot of close-ups of the picture takers.

Afton:

 Sam:

But Sam doesn't take too many self-portraits anymore. He's discovered the funny faces you can make and tends to use those a lot more:

The camera also has built-in frames you can use.

Here are some from a trip to the Houston Temple.

 That's a cricket below.

Afton took some of her doll.

Sam captured our Christmas lights perfectly.

Other randoms:

 Ghost in the kitchen.

November

November was a whirlwind.

I made a t-shirt quilt using shirts from as far back as elementary school. It's got a baseball shirt I wore in 5th grade that was Ryan's, Kirk's old middle school gym shirt that I inherited when I entered 6th grade, (even though that kid NEVER washed it), shirts from family reunions, high school student council and choir, college freebies, jobs, etc. It's fun to look at and think of memories. It was my first quilt. They are a beast. Once I got the hang of it, it was easy enough. But that's because I stuck to simple squares. I don't think I'm cut of for actual quilting.

 We made a Thankful tree for our dining room wall. Each night after dinner in November we would each write one thing that we're thankful for on a leaf and tape it to the wall. You can also see our new paint color. We'll post before and after pics once the dining room is done.

Here's our tree on day 1.

And here it is on November 30.

I love it! Anytime we had people over for dinner, we made them add a leaf, too. Afton would always say she's thankful for Jesus. Then we'd remind her that she already said that and then she'd always say friends or babies. Sam is thankful for everything from daddy to juice to calendars to cars, to "Everything that Jesus made."

Sam wrapped up his first year of soccer with the YMCA. I think he scored 4 goals over the course of the season. He's got lots of buddies on his team and they had lots of fun. Here's his team. Aren't they cute??? Sam didn't get the dark-shorts memo.

 A sweet mom on the team organized goody bags for the boys and they LOVED them. They chased each other for like 10 minutes and blew those noise things at each other. Love his laugh here. He was cracking up.

 I probably drove the YMCA photographer nuts when I told the boys to do a "funny face." In all fairness, he was already done taking pictures.

Sam after scoring a goal.

November also goes on the books for attending our first Texas high school football game. The school districts have one big stadium instead of each high school having its own. It was huge and nice. We lasted through halftime.

I organized a blanket drive in our neighborhood and people from church helped pass out flyers and pick up donations. We handed out 1,100 flyers and got 140 blankets. One hundred was my goal so I'm pretty happy! We'll be taking them down to a homeless shelter in Houston next weekend.

The rest of the month was devoted to preparing for and spending time with company. My parents and Dan's mom both came the Monday before Thanksgiving. (My parents stayed with Kirk.) Monday night we all had dinner together and Tuesday we all (minus Dan and Kirk) went to the delicious Blue Bell ice cream factory in Brenham as well as a park and a fine local eatery - Must Be Heaven.

Later that day, Adam, Yinelli and their kids came over, too.

Wednesday we headed to the children's museum with the Durst crew and stopped at Niko Niko's for gyros afterwards. Dan's dad came that afternoon.

Thursday was, of course, Thanksgiving and we had everyone over to our house - 18 people. We ate tons of delicious food, relaxed, played games, and ate more food. Adam's family left later that night.

Over the course of their stay, we also put up Christmas lights and the tree, decorated, took walks, fed ducks, and went to the park.

Friday night I accompanied Kirk, his kids, and my parents to a light display at Moody Gardens that was much better than I thought it would be. It was rainy so this is the only picture I got.

Saturday we took Dan's parents to the rockwall at the gym so they could try it out. Then Dan showed us his moves. Isn't he impressive? I can't believe he's been climbing for less than 10 months.

 The one above is a bad angle, but Dan's basically horizontal to the ground.

 

 We went to a nice dinner that night, church on Sunday, a walk on Monday, and then we bid farewell to our guests. It was a very busy month but it was also lots of fun!