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!

Halloween

The day of Halloween was a pretty typical one around here. I can't even remember what we did. We'd been getting Papa John's ads for pumpkin-shaped pizza for $12. I took that as a challenge and made one, too. Mine was probably more like $3 or $4? Probably not as cool looking, though. Humor me.

 We went out around 7 and just did a few streets. The kids have enough candy from the trunk-or-treat and I've basically been the only one eating it...

 Our sweet girl.

 Dan's scary face pumpkin that decayed in like 2 days thanks to high-80-degree weather.

 He is just the cutest!