Merry Merry!

We had a great Christmas at our house and hope you did, too! Here are a few pictures - mostly from our Christmas morning. We spent the 23rd at my parent's house and Christmas afternoon at Clarke's parent's house, and have one more Christmas celebration tonight.

Here's the best picture I could get of Arden and Huston before church on Christmas Eve. Huston was not feeling the picture taking. Unfortunately, both of the kids had colds over Christmas, but I think they're finally getting over them now.

We went to the 6:00 contemporary service, and it was awesome. I loved having the kids in worship with us. Huston was really interested in the candles that we got to light while singing Silent Night and loved helping us blow them out. Both of the kids were very well behaved during the service.

Here's our family in front of a Christmas tree at church:

On Christmas morning, Arden woke up at 6:00 (she's such an early riser lately!) so she and I watched Mickey Mouse for awhile as we waited for Huston to get up.

I think he didn't get up until after 7, and then we woke up Clarke and let the kids open their stockings. Huston was thrilled with his candy and slinky and other trinkets. It was so fun watching him pull things out, one by one.

Arden loved her chocolate "co-ins."

After they opened their stockings, Huston was ready for breakfast, so I made some misshapen homemade donuts, which ended up pretty much tasting like funnel cake. Not exactly the healthiest breakfast, but the kids liked it.

Christmas morning in front of the tree:

Arden had a great time opening her presents, which included a new highchair for her dolls, a milk and orange juice bottle where the liquid "disappears," some marbles and a jar, a Very Hungry Caterpillar game, and a sticker book. Santa brought them the Lion King, Kerplunk, and a Melissa and Doug magnetic pattern block toy.

I made the mistake of letting Huston open his new "Up!" book from us as his first gift. He was beside himself with giddiness and couldn't stop paging through it. Unfortunately, this also meant that he had no interest in opening anything else. He opened one or two more gifts at our urging, but would barely glance at them before he returned to his book. Finally he just refused to open anything else and when we left to go to Clarke's parents' house, he still had 3 unopened presents. At least he really liked his book! Just today he opened another present (he still has one more left), which was a Melissa and Doug solar system puzzle and he's been loving that, too, because he's really interested in outer space lately.

Just had to throw in this picture of Arden with her great-grandparents. Such a sweet picture! We love you, Granny and Papaw!

Pretzel Dipping

I had originally planned to let the kids help me bake and decorate sugar cookies this Christmas. But, because I am lazy, I downgraded to a chocolate pretzel dipping experience (with sprinkles, though!)

Huston took his job of dipping and shaking the sprinkles very seriously...

as you can tell by the disproportionate ratio of sprinkles to pretzels.

Arden played along, like "sure, Mom, I'll dip these pretzels for you..."

But they went straight in her mouth. Silly girl.

Lazy, but yummy fun.

Huston: 4 years, 4 months

Huston had his Christmas preschool performance on Friday. He was really nervous about it and didn't want to do it, but we talked and talked about it for two weeks or more. The morning of his program he woke up and said, "Today is my program. I'm going to sing." Just like that. And I let my heart hope that he would. I took this picture of him outside of school that morning.

When the kids filed onto the risers, he was looking at us nervously and chewing his shirt. But when "Feliz Navidad" started, he started strumming his pretend guitar like the rest of the kids and singing the first few words. Then he just fell apart. Crying, arm flinging, utter despair. The girl next to him may have gotten hit by one of his flailing arms. And the girl behind him noticed his breakdown and reached down to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

I just have to record a few more things, before I forget them. Here's a prayer Huston said at dinner time on December 2nd:

"Thank you, God, for this day and for this food and for day and night, day and night, day and night and for Mommy and Daddy and Arden and please just bless Arden not to hit." I couldn't help but laugh a little when his prayer was over, and he explained, "I was just praying for God to take away that sin from Arden."

His favorite game to play with Daddy when he comes home from work, is "Hut," otherwise known as football. Huston says "Hut!" and Clarke tries to tackle him, while Huston tries to run past him to the hallway. Arden tries to "block" by sitting on Daddy or otherwise interfering. Mommy is not allowed in the room when this game is played. I get told, "No, Mommy! Go away! I don't want you in here!" But I don't even mind, because I love his special games with his Daddy.

I also love how he says, "releven" for "eleven" and "relarm" for "alarm." And how he says, "Warmart" and "fwavwite."

Huston loves talking about outer space, which he calls, "Out-Ar Space." One day he told me, "I'm just so glad God gave us gravity so we won't go flying into out-ar space."

He still loves the movie Up and spends most of his day flying his paper "Up" house around and reenacting scenes from the movie, or carrying around one of his two books about the movie. His sweet teacher Ms. Kate gave him an Up sticker book a few weeks ago, and he walked around with a smile on his face all day. The pictures below are from October, and we're on our fourth or fifth paper Up house now (because Huston freaks out if they get bent or wet or wrinkled - he's a bit of a perfectionist like his mother), but that's pretty much how he looks most of the day, carrying around his little paper house.

We took the kids to Austin this weekend to see some friends and to see the Christmas lights on 37th street (which were not as good as I remembered, but the kids liked them). I desperately wanted to go shopping at The Domain in the afternoon, but it quickly became apparent that was a terrible idea. It was super crowded and the kids were over tired and just weren't going to cooperate. So we took them to a park to play instead, and they had a blast. Being a parent really makes you constantly die to yourself, but it's not always easy. Even though I knew the kids needed a chance to play, I was so selfish and just kept clinging to the hope of shopping. Anyway, we were rewarded with a super fun hour of playing and I'm so glad we went to the park instead of being miserable while trying to shop.

Huston was being such a boy at the park - going down the slide head first, climbing on this difficult set of stairs and doing it over and over until he could do it by himself. It's so fun to watch him get more daring after being overly cautious and afraid for so long.

We let the kids have dinner at Chick Fil A, and Huston and Arden are always beyond adorable in the play area together. It's like that playground really bonds them together and makes them a team. Arden can't get up all the steps to the slide by herself, so Huston goes behind her, pushing her bottom up so she can make it up each step. It is SO. CUTE. I could watch it all day. This particular playground went up really high and we couldn't see the kids at the top of it. They made it all the way up, and Arden started freaking out, crying and screaming, and she wouldn't slide down the slide. I asked Huston if he could help her, and he immediately started talking in this soothing tone to her,

"It's okay baby girl. I'm right here. And I'm never going to leave you. It's okay. I'm just never going to leave you. Come on baby girl." And she slid down the slide with him. Clarke and I just sat there looking at each other while our hearts swelled with joy and pride.

I love that boy.

Christmas so far...

Arden has soooo many cute Christmas outfits this year, thanks mostly to my mom's clearance finds at Dillard's last year. This lime polka dot confection, rimmed with fur, is one of my very favorites.

I wrapped 24 Christmas books before December started, and the kids have been opening one a night. Clarke's reading them "Fancy Nancy's Splendiferous Christmas" in this picture. After they read it, Arden went around saying, "Ooh Laa Laa" for days. I could just eat the kids up in their matching Gingerbread jammies.

We opened our new Little People nativity on December 1st and read the Christmas story. Arden calls Baby Jesus, "MY Baby Jesus." Huston's not that interested in it.

Huston did, however, LOVE helping me decorate the tree this year. He really helped me hang up a lot of the ornaments and was so excited about the whole process.

My friend Ashlee and I organized an advent devotional ornament exchange this year, which I might post about later if I have time. We got 24 girls together and everyone was assigned a day of the devotional - I had creation. Then we each made 24 copies of our ornament and had a little party where we distributed the ornaments so now we have one to go with each day of the devotional.

We have really enjoyed doing our advent devotional every night and hanging the ornament on the tree. The topics are simple, but good, and I hope it's preparing our kid's hearts for Christmas this year.

This Saturday Truitt and Melinda took the kids downtown to see the Christmas tree and lights. They had such a good time and came back talking about everything.

This sweet little outfit is from Melinda. So precious!

And Huston made his Rudolph shirt in school (and then threw a huge fit about wearing it and swore he was never going to wear it again).

I made the kids take another picture before church on Sunday because I thought their outfits were so cute. Huston was not amused.

Happy Late Thanksgiving!

Look at this enormous, beautiful family.

We had a great Thanksgiving at my parents' house. Huston played with his cousins, Cody and Bradley. They're always so cute together.

The girls played with Grandpa:

Arden played dress up.

We celebrated Kierstyn's birthday.

Lots of fun was had with my brother's dog, Pup.

And we took some family pictures! My brother John's family:

All the cousins together:

My parents with all the grandkids:

My brother Ben, and his sweet girlfriend, Tracy:

And I'm not going to post our family picture, because I'm using it for our Christmas card.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too!

Arden's 2nd Birthday

Someone special had her second birthday party today! And she had a blast!

I picked a "vintage cowgirl" theme for her party, but I ended up interpreting that pretty loosely. I just threw a burlap table runner on the table, some flowers in old starbucks bottles, mason jars for drinking pink lemonade, some star shaped platters that seemed cowgirl-ish to me (even though they're technically Christmas decor), and some vintage hankies from my mom thrown over jute string over the window and hutch.

My mom made the cake, as usual, and it was beautiful and delicious, as usual.

We had ham and cheese sandwiches on King's Hawaiian rolls, carrots and grapes, chips with homemade salsa, chocolate peanut butter balls, and cake. Simple, but yummy.

Arden wore a little denim mini skirt, cowgirl boots, and a pink t-shirt that said "cowgirl in training" that Mimi and Grandpa bought for her. She looked so sweet!

Clarke made an awesome video montage with pictures of her from throughout the year. It's become a tradition to do one every year for both of their birthdays. Arden went crazy when we first showed it to her, and she was gasping and pointing at all the pictures, saying "That's me!" and calling out the names of the other people in the pictures. She liked it so much that she started bawling when it ended, and we had to show it to her three times. Here she is watching it at her party with Mimi and Aunt Emily and Granny.

She loved when we sang "Happy Birthday" to her, and just squirmed in delight (unlike someone else I know). Here's the sweet face she gave, like "Is this for me?!"

Daddy helped her blow out the candles. Two years old!

She kept holding out her fork so we'd help her put bites on it.

Our wonderful family just spoiled her with presents and she loved it! She loved these two tiny ducks from Grandma (Grandma knows her well).

Sharing her crawling baby doll (from Aunt Emily and Uncle Christopher) with her cousin, Kierstyn.

Darling little table from Granny and Papaw, all set up for tea with new glasses and cups from Mimi and Grandpa.

Birthday girl.

Getting help with her new shopping cart and food from Uncle Ben and his girlfriend, Tracy.

Why is it so hard to get a good family picture? Huston did NOT want to smile.

Happy birthday, sweet Arden. We love you so so much!