Iced In (Dec 6, 2013)

At the beginning of December, we had a pretty severe ice storm here in Dallas!  We lost power for almost an entire day.  It's a good thing the kids like to read!

It's funny because it doesn't look that bad, but the stuff that looks like snow is actually ice.  We had a 2 inch thick sheet of ice covering our ENTIRE van!  Ice scrapers didn't work, Jason had to chip it all off the doors to get in and run the car for about 20 minutes before he could even start chipping away at the rest of it.

The nice thing about a power outage because of a freeze: Just turn the back deck into your refrigerator!

There was some fort building...

...And some plant freezing.  Almost like a scene out of frozen.  It took almost a week before this grass plant (which had frozen from a broken pipe that sprayed it for a few hours) thawed out!

Christmas Photos 2013

I took the kids one Sunday afternoon to the local historical park for some Christmas pictures.  I was sick, but it was almost "now or never."  I didn't realize HOW sick I was until we were all done!

November 2013

This year for the month of November, we decided to do a "Thankful Tree."  Everyday each of the kids would add a leaf with something they were thankful for.  They all had their own color of leaves, too, so we could look back and make sure we didn't have any duplicates.

Our scout pack visited the local police station to learn about police work.

All locked up!

The last thing they learned about was the finger printing process.

Braeden competed in the District Math Competition.  I had to drop him off earlier in the day, leave and go to Carsen's baseball games and then come back in time for the awards.  When he walked into the humongous gym, it took him forever to find me amongst the hundreds of other parents and grandparents!

This gives you a small idea of the amount of people who were there.  There were bleachers at one end of the gym, as well as twice as many people on the side I was sitting!

When they called his name for third place in the 5th grade, he went RUNNING up to accept his reward! 

Way to go, Buddy!

That same day, Gaven's baseball team had their "end of the season" party.  Although Gaven was only part of the team for the first 2 games, before breaking his arm, they still wanted him to come, and he wanted to go!

So proud of her princess jammies

I love it that my sweet 8 year-old felt the need to write to Santa "Claws" and let him know that we would be in WA state over Christmas!

At the end of November, we celebrated Braeden's 10th Birthday.  We didn't have much planned, but got together with Jason's cousin, Krista and her family for some pizza and cake!

This guy is growing up right before our eyes!  We couldn't ask for a better kid!  He's the best big brother to his little brothers and sister!  He genuinely loves and cares about others, and has a magnetic personality, ta boot!

Kamryn sitting next to James' HUGE German Shepard "Shadow."

Thanksgiving Day started with an early Thanksgiving feast.  We eat around 10-11am and then have the rest of the day to snack on leftovers and go to a movie.  We went and saw "Frozen."

Braeden got a Nook for his birthday... he was pretty excited about it as I'm sure you can imagine.

That sums up November as best I can!