Looking like Christmas

Aunt Michelle continued the tradition of advent calendars for the kids. They love getting a package in the mail! This year the girls got chocolates and Dylan received a super cool Star Wars lego calendar where every day he either gets a new guy or little figurine. He says every day he can't wait to see what he will get the next day. :)

 

And last weekend we finally started decorating for Christmas!

 We went and picked out a nice small tree to fit in our nice small house.

Picture courtesy of Cadence :)

 Gotta love Phoenix winters...decorating our tree with the girls in their swimsuits!!

No they weren't swimming, just LOVE their suits.

 It was really fun decorating this year because the kids would remember specific ornaments from last year and had such a great time...and we only had 3 ornaments fatalities.

The morning ended with a great pancake breakfast. It was a super fun morning!

Randomness of this last week

 Dylan LOVES egg nog! So I thought we would give a try at making some homemade. The fist batch burned (you have to bring milk to boil on stove) so we tried again and we made it correctly but it was so thick that we couldn't drink it because of the texture. Dylan said he thought we should just stick with buying it from the store and I have to say that I agree. :)

 Wanted to capture how much Isabelle loves having "homework" time when the older ones are doing theirs. She is doing great with tracing, she just started making stick people with circle body with legs & arms, uses scissors great and is working on coloring within the lines.

We went to dinner one night last week to one of the kids' favorite places...Souper Salad :). I had to take a picture of the outfit that Cadence choose to wear! I'm pretty good with letting the kids pick their own clothes out and usually not making them change (of course it all depends on where we are going :)). This evening choice of clothes included a plaid shirt that was buttoned uneven with a pink t-shirt under, a flower multi colored skirt, tights and brown cowboy boots. Gotta love it!

 

 Dylan started having practice for basketball this week. We actually were too late to sign him up but his friends team is short one player and they asked if he could come do the practice with them so they could play 5 on 5. He isn't allowed to play the games...but he still loves just being able to play.

 Dylan, Cadence and myself went to the Christmas play at 1st Assembly church this weekend. It is a tradition for us to go every year. It was nice to spend time with the two of them without Isabelle crawling all over me :).

Fun Pictures of the Month

Fall carnival at Dylan's school

 Thanksgiving meal at Cadence's preschool.

Her Native American name was, "she who loves her sister"...How cute. :)

 Ava's princess birthday party

 Some snuggle time on our chair swing in our backyard.

 Relaxing time with Daddy watching football.

 "All grown up"

 Tempe Town Lake, enjoying the grass and sun!

Thanksgiving 2012

 Thanksgiving was spent at Mark's parents house with my family coming over for a great meal together. Kim cooked a wonderful meal of which I ate too much of! Every year I think to myself I really want to take a picture of everyone at the table...and every year I forget. This year no different. To be honest I didn't take many pictures at all...none of the hosts even (sorry Kim :)).

 The kids enjoyed the tradition of the "Thankful Basket" again. It's always fun to hear what they say and they love being able to pick out little prizes that my mom brings. :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

First Race!

 Dyan is apart of the running club at school, it promotes excercise. As part of the program they get to go to a few different races. The day after we moved into our house he had his first race. He loved it and ran the whole thing...2.5 miles. I was really disappointed that I didn't get to go and see him run but Mark was a great cheerleader for him. :)

New Friends...

We found out the week before we moved into our new house that our backyard neighbor is a little boy that is in Cadence's preschool class and that he has a older brother the same age as Dylan. How wonderful. Our fence is a short chain link fence so the kids just hop over back and forth and play...it is so great. They play really well together. Lots of sports have been played lately :).

 (Cadence, Dylan and new friend John)

 (Isabelle and new friend Will)

 We have a wonderful large pecan tree in our backyard. Isabelle has really enjoyed collecting and eating them. I love the exploration that happens in our yard. :) Picture above is Dylan knocking down the pecans that are ready.

The chickens also made the move thanks to my father in law. He worked hard on making my "chicken shack" made out of old doors that I found or was given. It's a little hodge podge but it works great and the chickens are happy. :)

We Moved!

I have so much blog catching up to do, I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted!

We moved about 3 weeks ago. We randomly came across our new house for rent while going to yard sales. We drove by and both saw the huge barn workshop in the back and said...that would be so great for us to have for my furniture business (that we are wanting to expand). So come to find out the landlord lives right next door and could show us the house right then. At first I said there is no way a family of 5 can live in 1200 square feet...but we are doing it and surprisingly it doesn't feel that small. :) We LOVE the neighborhood it is in, the workshop is 900 square feet of amazingness and great working space and the backyard is massive and I love all the time the kids are playing outside and having a great time!

We will see where the future brings us but for now I am very thankful to have found our new home!