Johnson City Lights

The girls' first Christmas fun was actually without us!  We had already planned a night out (thanks, Mom!!), so we missed out.  Every year, my mom & dad go with my brother's family to Johnson City to look at the lights.  Pedernales Electric Company is located there, and the lights are amazing all around the downtown area.

My sister-in-law blogged more about it here, and I stole most of her pics for this post!!  ha!  But, I wanted to be sure we documented it for our memories too :-)

one of my favorite pictures - EVA

Thanks Nana & Poppa for getting our Christmas fun started!!

Getting Our Tree

Our Christmas festivities began with getting our tree!  I decided to let the "going to the tree farm & cutting the tree down" new family tradition rest for another year.  Just think it would end up being a liiiiitle too much work and not quite enough fun to outweigh the work with so many littles.  Hopefully next year...

So, instead we headed out to Chick-Fil-A for dinner & to Home Depot to pick out a tree!

these two have so much fun together!

Home Depot had ZERO trees over 8 feet & as far as I'm concerned with Christmas trees, it's only a good tree if it takes over your room, so 7 foot trees weren't going to cut it.  So, we headed over to Lowe's.   There selection was low too - but we found one we thought would work & headed back home!

Bethany's Showers

David's sister, Bethany, is getting married!  We have been having lots of fun having showers for her!

We had the first one, here in Longview at Barron's - yum!

the "big" flower girls 

Me, Bethany & Angela

The bride with the Flower Girls

Her second shower was in Austin at Judy's sister's house!  Was so fun to get to see so much family!

We can't wait to celebrate with you guys!!

Thanksgiving in Austin

We got to spend Thanksgiving in Austin this year!  We were there the Thanksgiving after Kate was born (2009) and haven't been back since.  You know.  Been having babies and all.  So, I was excited to get to go this year!

We started the day off with our tradition of doing the Turkey Trot.  

 It was in a new location that wasn't so well planned, so parking was NUTS.  But, we finally got a spot and headed off!

 Crossing Town Lake (or whatever it's called these days - lady bird?)

 We stopped for a family picture before we split off.   David & I ran the 5 mile race while my parents and the rest of the fam did the 1 mile walk.  Big thanks for taking the kids!!

Sidenote: running 5 miles after not running since I last ran (the White Rock Relay last year) was maybe not the best idea.


We had dinner at my parents with all of my family, my brothers family, my parents, my aunt & uncle & all my cousins, and grandmother!  It was so great to see my cousins.  Hadn't spent time with them since we've all had kids!  Not that we got to have any kind of adult conversation, but oh well.

 These 2 are quite a pair!  They just love on each other and have so much fun!

Thanksgiving Feast

The big girls had a Thanksgiving feast at their school, and one of my sweet friends let Natalie come nap at her house so we could enjoy a lunch with them!  

They sat the parents down, then had the kids come in all wearing cute little hats...

 ...and ready to show us their placemats.

 Just as a side note: a friend of mine who has grown kids told me she has saved all these placemats from throughout the years and uses them to set her table currently at Thanksgiving.  She said her kids love looking back over them!  Such a fun idea!  Hard to imagine these little girls as adults looking at these placemats someday!

 Delivering a "Thankful" gift to their teachers

We love the girls' "school".  They are so very happy to go, and I am so very happy to have a few hours to breathe a couple days a week!