Thanksgiving 2012

Since we are totally into the Christmas spirit around here, I figured I better blog about our wonderful Thanksgiving! We have had a pretty big week this week (more on that later), so I have been a little distracted from blogging. But we had a great Thanksgiving week and we loved being in Ft. Worth with all our family! 

We drove to Ft. Worth Sunday (in our new van! so fun!) and started the week at Gigi and Peeps' house. Sunday night all four cousins spent the night at their house and they had so much fun. We tried putting them all in one room to sleep - that didn't work out so well. After we moved Cooper to the other room, the three bigger girls eventually fell asleep sometime around 11:30. They were just having too much fun! 

This picture was taken when we were on the way to eat lunch one day. Cooper and Evy just love being together! 

Our four goofy girls after lunch. These are their funny faces.

Cooper got to feel Baby Boy Davis (come on Val, we need a name!) in Val's tummy! She actually got to feel him kick and her face was priceless. We are ready to meet him - in January! We had a great time at Gigi and Peeps' house!

Wednesday we went to stay with Kiki and Pops! The girls had fun playing in their play room, upstairs with Kiki playing mailman, and in their bathroom playing house. That night, while we were waiting for the hot tub to warm up, Kiki got out the marbles board and they had fun playing with that.

After Cooper's nap on Wednesday, she was still a little drowsy so her and Randy snoozed on the couch. I love this picture!

Thursday we only went two places for Thanksgiving, as opposed to the four that we have always done. We decided to slow it down a little and alternate where we go each year. It turned out to be a really good decision and we were really able to enjoy being at each place! And the girls did so well all day, didn't get fussy, and were so pleasant. Good decision!
We started the day at my Granny's house. She has been sick lately, so Dad picked up two complete meals from Central Market and we all helped warm them and get everything ready. It was so good and a lot less work for Granny! The girls had fun playing at their Great Granny's house. I love watching them play with all the things I have such good memories playing with. And I love seeing them build a relationship with my Granny and having fun with her. Priceless memories!

Love this family picture!

We ate lunch at Granny's and then we ate dinner at Randy's Aunt Brenda's house with his Dad's side of the family. The girls enjoyed playing outside there with all their playhouses and slides, and they got to see Gracie and Evy and Maelie and Lorelai. At one point, Cooper found these sunglasses and put them on her shirt like this, then walked up to Gigi and said "Gigi, like oooss." Oooss is how she says "your's" these days and we love it. Gigi always keeps her glasses on her shirt and Cooper was trying to be like her! So cute! We took their picture with their matching glasses. 

 Kendall loved playing with Maelie. She thinks she's pretty cool! They spent time watching Care Bears and making jewelry with beads. So fun!

Thursday night we moved to Granny and Papas' house and stayed there until Saturday. Granny and Papas got a new puppy, Bella, and the girls were excited to meet her! Bella and Sunny are the sweetest labs and they just let the girls love all over them. This is Kendall and Sunny,

and Bella. At bed time Thursday night, the dogs were distracting the girls from reading with Granny. Cooper was laying all over Bella and it was so funny!

I love this picture!

Talking to Bella. She would grab her paw, make her wave, then say "hey-yo, hey-yo, hey-yo!" She was cracking us up!

Friday we met Gracie, Evy, Val, Jeff, Gigi, and Peeps at a children's theater in Hurst for "A Snow White Christmas." It was a cute little play and the girls loved it! Auggie and Scott came over for dinner Friday night and we enjoyed hanging out with them! Then Saturday, we rested and played around the house, went to eat Mexican food (Cooper says her favorite food lately is "beans and rice!") and then we packed up to head home. Randy was able to get a ticket to the last A&M home game of the season, so I dropped him in College Station and went on home with the girls and he came home after with Greg and Kathy. We were glad he was able to go!
We had such a fun time with all our family the week of Thanksgiving! It was a great break and a restful vacation. We are thankful for all our sweet family!! And we have even more to be thankful for this week - more on that soon!!  

Big girls!!!

We have had the girls' bunk beds since August, but so far just Kendall has slept in them. Cooper has still been sleeping in her crib in her room. We tried letting her take a nap in there one day, but it didn't end well. 

But, the other night she asked if she could sleep in the bed with Kendall. We decided to give it a try. We put two pillows on the bottom bunk, read our Bible story, said our prayers, and then left them to go to bed. They talked and giggled for about 30-45 minutes, but eventually it was quiet in there. Randy went in to check on them and they were both asleep with their heads on their pillows. So sweet! 

Then - the best part - they slept all night long! We snuck in early on Friday morning to see how they were sleeping and this is what we saw: Kendall laying sideways across the bed and Cooper down at the foot of the bed, cuddled up with all the stuffed animals. How in the world did they end up like that?! Shortly after, they woke up and came in my bedroom- so proud of themselves for staying in bed all night. Cooper felt so big. We are so proud of them! 

Here they are after they woke up - we just think this is the sweetest thing! Such big girls!

Also, they both slept with one of the Baby Jesus' from one of the "activity" sets as Kendall is calling the nativity sets. Here is the one Cooper slept with! They crack us up.

We are so proud of our big girls!!

Parade of Lights!

Saturday night we drove downtown for the parade of lights! We parked and went to sit with a group of friends from church: the Mitterlings, Hintzes, Hendersons, Martins, Genres, Chrismonds, McCowns, and Michelle. We had to wait for about thirty minutes for the parade to start - you have to get there early to get a good spot! The girls thought it felt like forever! They were dancing around, playing with Sarah, Caleb, Seth and Blake, and were SO ready for the parade to start. I tried to get a good picture of the girls together, but I never could get both of them still enough. These girls love a parade!

 

Snuggling with my sweet Cooper before the parade. I tried to get her to sit still with me so that she would keep me warm, but it was short-lived.

Kendall was so excited that Baby Cohen was sitting with us! Kylie was even so awesome and let her sit and feed him! I think that pretty much made her day - she loves him so much! This was the Chrismond's first Festival of Lights, and Michelle's and the McCown's too! We loved getting to be with all of them for their first LJ parade!

We loved getting to see Sarah, Caleb, Mary, and Nathan. Our sweet friends lost their newborn baby, Hannah a week ago Saturday. We have grieved with them all week and still can't believe this has happened. Kendall hasn't been able to see them yet, and she was glad to get to see them last night and give Sarah some cards and pictures she had made her. :)

Finally, the parade started! It was pretty loud, but we loved seeing all the lights and people's creative floats!

Kendall and Seth - she kind of has a crush on Seth. :)

The Corvette club!

Chick-fil-A!

A cheer club- girls with lights on doing walking handstands - pretty cool!

And the Sonic float - since we go about once a week, this was probably one of our favorite floats :) This fall, Sonic has been giving away free "Texans" slushes on the Tuesdays after a Texans football win on Sunday or Monday. Kendall's teacher at school is a big Texans fan, so she always tells them on Tuesdays when it is free slush day. Then Kendall gets in the car and tells us we HAVE to go to Sonic to get a free slush. And so we do.

Cooper sat in Michelle's lap during most of the parade. At the beginning, a group of motorcycles came by and were SO loud. Michelle covered up Cooper's ears for her. When they were gone and she took her hands down, Cooper held Michelle's hands and put them back on her ears, where they stayed for the rest of the parade. Every once in awhile, Cooper would take a hand off and give a little wave to whoever was passing by, but for the most part she kept those hands on her ears.

We are excited that the holiday season is starting! The festival of lights is always such a fun way to get it started and we love seeing all the lights. We even went ahead and put our Christmas decorations up on Friday so they would be up and done when we get home from Ft. Worth next week. We love the Christmas season!

Festival of Lights!

Yesterday was the annual Lake Jackson Festival of Lights! This is one of our most favorite Lake Jackson traditions: every year the city lights a bunch of Christmas trees all in the downtown area and on the day they turn the lights on, they have a big festival. We have gone since Kendall was a baby and we look forward to going every year. During the day there is a carnival, lots of shows on the outdoor stage at the Civic Center, people have all kinds of booths set up, and there's lots of great food and bounce houses.  It's a little cheesy, and so small town, but it's right up our alley! We love it!

This year our church set up a booth! Randy and Michelle planned what we would do at the booth, and then members of our staff worked it all day. It was so cute - there was a pretend fireplace, big BPF banners, we gave out free hot chocolate and coffee, bags of candy with an invite card to our Christmas Eve Eve services stapled on them, and a giveaway people could enter. Randy was up early setting the booth up, and the girls and I met him down there around 10:30. Since the booth was well-staffed, we were able to walk around and partake in some of the fun. :) 

Here are the girls in front of part of our booth:

There were a ton of inflatables set up. Kendall has always been afraid of bounce houses, and any kind of inflatables, but at the Halloween festival she did a big slide for the first time. She got so excited when she saw all the inflatables at the festival and wanted to do all of them! The first one she did was a long train the kids had to climb through. Randy even took Cooper through it once!

She did a big slide, and a big obstacle course. We were so proud of how brave she was!

She was pretty proud of herself, too, and was having a great time!!

Then we went over to the carnival that was set up and the girls rode a couple of rides. First was the teacups - Kendall remembered riding them last year and this year Cooper was big enough to ride! They chose the pink teacup - of course! They also rode the carousel with me after this - they both loved it!

We ran into Kendall's good friend from school, Emma, at one point during the day! These sweet friends were so excited to see each other! It cracks me up - they run and give each other a hug whenever they see each other outside of school. Already acting like big girls!

This is Shelby Davidson, one of the students we know from church. She is a Belle (drill team) and Kendall just loves her so much. She is also one of Kendall's teachers in her class at church this year. We were able to be there when her dance class was dancing at the Civic Center, and Kendall loved being able to see her dance. We were able to get a photo with her after - we told her we were her paparazzi :)

We were at the Festival from about 10:30-3:00! These girls were worn out, but we had to go home to get a quick nap in before the parade started at 7. Such a fun day!

Odds and Ends in November

More playing catch up - 

The Sanders were at Brazos Pointe a few weeks ago! Kendall and Cooper loved getting to see Ethan and Ella! Randy was actually in Galveston preaching for Aaron, but the rest of us stayed here. I love the girls' new matching outfits!

 We have had a few nights of hot chocolate watching movies! Kendall even asked if we could make some "apple slider" so we did that one time. I love cold weather!

 Bath time!

 Lazy mornings snuggling with these two. I love our laid-back schedule where we don't have a lot of places to be. Thankful for getting to spend my days with these two!

 One afternoon, Kendall came in my room after her rest time and actually fell asleep in our bed. Molly scooted out from under the covers and I got a picture of both of them laying on the pillow. They crack me up!

 Last Friday I got to go to the Nutcracker Market for the first time. This is a huge gift market that happens at Reliant Arena each year before Christmas and I've wanted to go for several years but haven't been able to. There are tons of shops there and lots of cute stuff. I thought this sign was funny when we walked in - sponsored by a migraine medicine! It's a crazy shopping place with lots of people, so I thought that was pretty appropriate.

We've had a busy November already and are looking forward to a fun weekend going to the Festival of Lights and then heading to Ft. Worth for the week!

Teeth and Hair

I am so behind in blogging! Our computer has officially died, so it's been a little hard to blog. I have a lot to catch up on though, and a lot of fun things coming up so I am determined to stay on top of it! 

Last week we took Kendall and Cooper to the dentist. This was Cooper's first appointment. We worked a lot ahead of time on talking about opening her mouth really wide and told her that the dentist would be counting her teeth. She did a great job! And the dentist said her teeth looked great! This is after her appointment, showing Kendall how she opened her mouth. 

Before the appointment, playing in the waiting room. We love our dentist office!

Kendall did SO GREAT too! In the past she has not really enjoyed going to the dentist - honestly sometimes I have had to sit on with her and hold her down. This time she hopped right up in the chair and was so still the whole time! YEA! Bad news this time - she has two cavities we have to go have filled next month. Boo.

Here's a video we took of Cooper after her appointment.

Our next stop while we were in Pearland was to get Cooper's hair cut! This was her very first hair cut, except we really decided to just get her bangs cut. Does that count as the first hair cut? I'm not sure. But here are pictures.

Cooper chose her outfit that day - her Aggie shirt, overalls, and hot pink boots. She was totally rockin it!

She sat so still for her hair cut!! She has watched Kendall do this and was excited for her turn.

 See her boots??

 Beautiful girl!! Love that sweet smile.

We had a fun day in Pearland. After those two things we ate some lunch and then went and bought Kendall a few winter clothes. I thought she had more things from last year that would still fit but realized after our first cold snap that she really didn't have much! It was fun to get to go shopping for a few things. We love family days doing fun new things!