Christmas!

Tonight for "Family Home Evening" we decorated the Christmas tree! It was so much fun to have a kid old enough to help out with the project! He loves having lights on our house! Each time Tyson sees them he exclaims, "Lights on Tyson's home!" He was a little bit nervous putting up the ornaments and decided that the one Santa figurine looked, "scary" Who knows how he'll react to a real Santa Clause!!! Anyway, I loved listening to Christmas music and decorating! It was fun! Two more days until baby number two is here! Any more name suggestions?!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Thanksgiving this year was one of the most beautiful, relaxing, wonderful holidays in my life! We loved it! The only thing that would have made it better would have been to have more family around. We love our family!

So my awesome brother and his amazing wife came down from Austin to spend the long weekend with us and it was so much fun! Tyson could not get enough of his "Uncle Dan" and I had so much fun having Katie around to talk to and work with. She even fixed my sewing machine!! Thank you guys so so so much for coming to see us!

Thanksgiving morning we attempted the turkey-which turned out beautifully! After we got that thing going we headed out to the football field to watch Christian and Dan play at the Turkey bowl and talk with friends. It was so fun to see Tyson playing with other kids and just enjoy the beautiful weather. I really feel like we've made some amazing friends here so it was fun to catch up with them, too!After football, we came home and I made a million pies! Well, we maybe just seven, but it was so much fun! Pies are not as hard as I always assumed (minus the crust) and since I knew this was a sugar-FREE day (meaning eat as much sugar as you want) I wanted to have all the options available to me :) In retrospect, we had WAY more pies than we needed but it was still fun!

We had our next-door neighbors over for dinner and the Blairs came over for games and pie later that night. I really wish we would have taken more pictures...I wish that a lot lately! You would think I would learn!! Anyway, here's everyone watching football while waiting for Tyson to go to sleep!

We couldn't have more to be thankful for. This past year we've been blessed with our home, food, transportation, a beautiful family, health, good neighbors, friends, and so many of the luxeries of life. We've also come to know deeper the love our Savior, Jesus Christ has for each of us, individually. Each week I have the opportunity to bear my testimony to the children at our church of the love our Savior has for them and I can feel his love for me each time I do. He really lived. He really loves us. He is the only one who knows how to help us. I am so grateful for that knowledge and His love. I love him so much!

Corn Maze and Austin

This year has been stressful for Christian but has been so much better for me! I wish we could do more to help him stress-wise but he can't even do that much so we just keep plugging along. Having him home on nights and weekends, though has made all of the difference in the world! This weekend was especially wonderful because he had Thursday and Friday off randomly!! We celebrated by going up to Austin and spending time with my brother and sister in law. They are so much fun! I'm so glad they moved to Austin!!

Thursday we stopped at the outlets and hung out. Friday we played folf, rode this awesome train around the park, and had lunch with my family and the Dentons! Then we went home since Tyson was exhausted. We did find some pretty great deals for Christmas at the outlets and I'm super excited to send them home!! I love Christmas! There is such satisfaction in finding the perfect gift! (I know that's not what it's all about but it is a fun part!!)

Saturday we had a lazy morning and went to the Corn Maize with some friends! It was so much fun!! These pictures show the full glory of the belly!

There was a crazy flag maze that took us over 30 minutes to figure out! Christian would not give up though and we were the first to solve it in our group and we didn't even use the cheat sheet! When we were taking our friends through Christian had to keep me on the right path! I never could have done it twice!!Here's our cute boy.Looking at the goats!
Thanks so much for spending every minute possible with us Babe! You truly are amazing!! I love you!!

Happy Halloween!!

This year for Halloween we dressed Tyson up as a cowboy. We thought this was fitting because ever since he watched Toy Story 3 he has been sleeping with his cowboy puppet and trying on "cowboy hats" Today he put his Thomas the train underwear on his head and said, "cowboy hat!" This ranges from laundry baskets to underwear to actual hats. Most often it is the green strainer from under the cupboard. We thought getting to wear a real cowboy hat would be a treat!

After countless searches for the perfect yet cheap cowboy hat we decided to use our friends and boy am I glad we did! I had bought and returned ten dollars worth of stuff to make a stick horse (since the dollar store had them for only one dollar!) and we had him wear a bandana around his neck. He looked like a great cowboy but he refused to wear his hat or carry his horse so I'm glad we didn't spend a ton of money on his costume!!

We went to our church's trunk-or-treat where there was popcorn, cotton-candy (which sort of freaked Tyson out), a bouncer, coloring station, tons of costumes, and of course the trunk or treat! Tyson LOVED saying, "trick or treat please" and "thank you" at ever trunk and especially loved the succors.

After the trunk or treat we made our way over to the Patrick's party. They throw the best parties of all time! There is always, music, games, food, prizes, and it's always festive! This year the host and hostess dressed up like Mrs. Clause (she's as pregnant as me) and Elf. It was hilarious! We also played Minute to win it where Christian had to put nylons on his head and tip over cups that were eight feet apart. He won us some scary teeth :)

Sunday we handed out candy but Tyson would cry every time so we eventually had to turn out the lights until he went to bed. Overall this Halloween was a blast! Happy Halloween but now Happy Thanksgiving coming up...my favorite holiday of all!! (well--that and Christmas!!)

PS Can anyone tell that I am a cow and Christian's a cactus? We only had one person the whole night guess right! Way to go Charly!!