Thanksgiving 2011

For Thanksgiving this year, we spent the entire week in Ft. Worth! We left Lake Jackson on Sunday afternoon after church and came back Saturday night. It was a great week and we really enjoyed seeing our family and friends. I have a few random pictures from our vacation, but this post is all about what we  did on the actual day of Thanksgiving.

Each year, we go to four different places on Thanksgiving. It's a little crazy. And it's only getting harder. After going everywhere this year, we talked about it and are thinking we're going to need to do something different next year. It's just too hard on us and on the girls. And that's not what we want them to remember about the holiday! We love seeing everyone, but we may need to rotate where we go each year or something like that.

Anyway, we started off the day by going to Randy's Grandma Dane's Thanksgiving, which is at his Aunt Brenda's each year. The girls wore their turkey dresses, of course, and looked so cute! And check out Kendall's new ride! We bumped Cooper up to Kendall's seat and then got Kendall a seat that is still a harness for awhile (like, til she's 70lbs!) and then converts to a booster.

Knowing how busy the day was going to be, I wanted to try and get a good family picture early in the day before the girls got too tired. Not too bad! :)

All the cousins with Gigi and Peeps!

Kendall had fun playing with Maelie and Gracie! They had a special table all to themselves. Maelie is in Kindergarten this year and was so sweet to Kendall. We loved watching them together!

And Cooper ate a lot. She's happy all the time, but she's most happy when she's eating.

After that, we went to my Grandma and Grandpa Votaw's house for Thanksgiving with them, Mom, David, Alden, and Scott. We are thankful for so much each year, but this year we are especially thankful for how God has watched over Grandma. She was almost in a bad accident earlier this month, and we are thankful she is doing ok! Here's Cooper with Granny and Papas.

Kendall had fun playing on the piano and seranading us!

For this family picture, Kendall decided to sign "I love you," but it looks a little like she's saying "Rock on!"

Next we went out to Randy's Aunt Kathy's and Uncle Frank's for his Mamaw and Papaw Bradford's Thanksgiving. Kathy and Frank just moved into a new house, so we were happy to get to see it! Cooper fell asleep on the way there, so we let her sleep in the car for a little bit. No time for naps on Thanksgiving!

Finally, our last stop was at my Granny's for dinner with my Dad's side of the family. Dad always takes a family picture, but then that means he is never in it!

Can you tell she was a little worn out? :)

And Cooper still ate!

Granny had a bowl of leftover Halloween candy on the table, and Cooper tried to get anyone who would listen to her to open some of that candy for her all night! We finally had to just move the bowl. She's a little obsessed!

At the end of the night, we put the girls to bed and watched the Aggies btho lose for the last time to Texas. I know there are a lot of good things about us moving to the SEC, but I am really sad that we won't be playing the horns anymore! Such a fun tradition!

Even though the day is busy, we are so thankful for all of our family and thankful that we get to see everyone for Thanksgiving. We are also thankful for the two sweet little girls God has blessed us with. They are our greatest treasures!

Festival of Lights!

We are home after a long vacation in Ft. Worth for Thanksgiving! I have a lot of blogging to catch up on.

Last Saturday was the Festival of Lights and Parade of Lights here in Lake Jackson. This is one of my most favorite traditions for our family. So much my favorite that we even gave up our A&M tickets for the day!!

We started by going to the festival downtown Saturday morning. They have a bunch of booths set up with free stuff to do as well as choir groups, dance groups, etc performing all day. There is also a carnival that Kendall was interested in this year for the first time!

We took both strollers, but one or both girls ended up walking most of the time. Cooper thought it was fun to get to push Kendall. :)

One of the churches in our area had a booth set up where they did puppet shows. Cooper enjoyed watching that!

Pony rides! Kendall has always been too scared to do stuff like this, but she told us that she wanted to do this this year. We waited in the line, but I just knew she would get up there and change her mind. She didn't! She even let a strange man take her into the gate, put her on the horse, and she did just great! We were like, "Who is this kid!?" So proud of her!

She loved that her horse had a pink mane and pink tail. She was so funny - she would smile every once in awhile, but most of the time she was very serious. So cute!!

After that, she told us she wanted to ride the carousel. Again, we tried this last year, bought tickets, and then she was too scared. This time though she was totally ready - we didn't have any trouble at all getting her to ride the rides!

Cooper watched with Dad - she probably was wondering why we didn't take her! Ha!

Next Randy rode the tea cups with her. He said she just smiled and laughed the whole time! I'm so glad she's trying new things like this now!

We took the girls home for naps and I had a wedding shower to throw Saturday afternoon. Then, that evening, we met some friends for dinner and then went back downtown to get ready for the parade! It really is so neat - it's a pretty good parade and Kendall and Cooper just love it!

We sat close to the Hiatts, so of course we had to get a picture with Patrick! This is our friend Sam who helps Lindsey with Patrick during the week.

 I can't remember what she was clapping at here, but she just really loved the whole thing! She was up and down, in and out of our laps the whole night, so between her and Kendall and making sure they were ok, I didn't get many pictures of the actual parade.

 Love that smile! She's such a happy girl!

We love our Lake Jackson traditions! So thankful for small town stuff!

Lately...

Cooper has been a little under the weather lately! She has had tons of drainage, and Saturday morning she woke up throwing up! I was in Houston taking my principal's certification exam, so Randy had the girls by himself. He texted me this picture of Cooper just cuddling him and I felt so bad for her! She hardly ever sits still for very long, so we knew she just really felt bad.

Also, we have been trying to catch this face on the camera for awhile now. She makes it a lot! It's kind of a scowl, and she puckers up her lips. She does it when she wants something, or we aren't doing what she wants us to, or she is upset for any reason. She's not talking a whole lot yet, but we for sure always know what she wants or doesn't want based on her sweet little faces!

Something else that has been going on lately is our kitchen remodel! Randy put a new face on our cabinets, we painted them white, got new hardware, and now we are replacing the counters with a darker formica. We love how they are looking, but we are ready to be finished with everything!

Promoted!

We got an email this week from our sweet children's ministry team that it was time for Cooper to move on up to the next class at church! She started off in the infants class, then moved to the Wobbler's class, where she has been for a while now. She is a very confident walker now, so it was time for her to promote to the Walker's class!

She did great in her new class! I was a little sad to have her move up - just because it means she is getting bigger - but we know it's best and she is going to have so much fun!

Matching Turkey Dresses!

We got the girls matching Thanksgiving dresses and they wore them to church this morning! They look so cute - I just love it when they match!

 It's not easy to get them both in the same shot, much less both looking! I loved these pictures, though.

 We practiced this "touchdown!" move a lot during the Aggie game yesterday...unfortunately just not enough! Ags lost in the fourth overtime to Kansas State!

I told Randy I would put the girls in these dresses every day before Thanksgiving...so you'll probably be seeing them a lot! :)

Playing...together!

These girls love to play together! And we just love watching what they come up with. One of Kendall's favorite things to do is get Molly's leash and drag her stuffed animals around the house on "walks." This week she decided to let Cooper walk her! She clipped the leash to her dress and Cooper thought it was so funny to hold the other end and run around the house with her.

Kendall is handing Cooper the other end...

 ...and now Cooper is "walking" her big sister!

 We love how much they love to play together!!

Polk Pandas!

On Friday night Randy had Secret Church to go to, so I took the girls to the Polk Fall Festival! Polk Elementary is where I have been completing my administrative internship for the past 18 months. Twice a week I have gone in the morning to shadow, learn from, and complete internship activities with the principal and assistant principal there. I have loved being a Polk Panda and I was excited to get to take the girls to see my school!

At her school, Kendall is in the orange giraffe class, so she thought it was fun when I told her that I am a Panda. She said, "Mom, I like Pandas!"

The fall festival was so fun - there were so many activities! All the classrooms had little carnival games in the doorways, and Kendall loved playing the games and winning candy!

At this game, she won some Smarties. She turned around and said, "Mom! Look, Smarties like Pops!" My dad would come home from work some days when I was young and bring home Smarties for us. Now he gives them to Kendall! Love that she associates those with him!

This was a fun thing: when we came in, they gave us five tickets. We wrote Kendall's name and our phone number on the back, and then she was able to go around to these toys and put a ticket in the bag next to the five toys she wanted to win. At the end of the night, they drew a winner! I don't think we won anything, because we haven't gotten a phone call yet, but she really had fun choosing which toys to put tickets in!

Cooper did so well in the stroller all night! I loved bringing my girls to my school and we had a fun time at the fall festival!