Christmas Part 1

This year we have done things a little different. As we are going to Germany, we did not want to bring all of "Christmas" with us. So we wrote Santa a letter and he was kind enough to visit us early. We celebrated Christmas on December 14th and the kids were excited. I love Christmastime with kids. 

Christmas eve preparations...

On Christmas morning the kids have to wait for the music to play to come downstairs and at about 6:15 they made it clear that they were waiting!

This is Cavin as he opened the Skylanders he has been waiting for!

Ella seeing her "rainbow loom" that she has been wanting

Channing and her much anticipated "Doc McStuffins Doll"

I think Channing sat in this chair for an hour and played.

So exciting!

I always ask them to pick their favorite thing for a picture and Cavin didn't want to go upstairs to get his Skylanders and Ella wanted something "soft" so this is their picture ;)

My parents came over after the presents and we opened more presents and somehow we missed taking pictures :( They spoiled the kids as usual and they got Ella this flutter fairy that flies and she loves it. We got to see the movie Frozen with them and my mom cooked a nice dinner. It was fun to have an early Christmas with my family and we are so excited to leave tomorrow for Germany! Merry Christmas!!

Uncle Corey

Last week my brother Corey came into town for a few days as he was attending a conference in San Antonio. It was so fun to see him for a minute and we loved having him spend the day with us. He was kind enough to play "Tip Kick" with Cavin and entertain the kids.

Cavin was loving every minute!

Thanks for taking the time to stop by! We sure miss you and your family!

Annual Rockets Run 2013

I didn't want to forget to post about the Rockets Run on November 9th because it was monumental for our family this year ;) My mom and dad joined the kids on their kids 1K and they were so glad to have them!!

Cavin was ready to leave the house and win! He is our competitive child!

Channing was ready to go for a stroller ride ;)

And as usual Ella was the last one down the stairs bright and early to leave.We got down there and the first miracle was that my mom and dad beat us there ;) That was fun. Originally my mom was going to run with Ella, Cavin with my dad, and Ragnar was going to push Channing, because I was running in the 5K. When the gun went off Cavin took off as usual and my dad "trained" to keep up with him... which I was not worried about...my dad could have beaten him if he wanted. Anyway, Ella wanted to run faster than usual and ran along side my dad and Cavin. Ragnar, Channing, and my mom were not far behind to finish! Channing got out of the stroller and ran the last 200 meters. It was my favorite memory to see my dad holding Cavin and Ella's hand down the last stretch to the finish line, helping them along, as they were getting tired. They all finished and did great!

As for me, I got to see them finish then I ran over to the start line and ran my race. I couldn't get out of the pack of people the first couple minutes which was frustrating as I wanted to break 22 minutes, but I got 22:09 and I think I could have broken 21 if I could have gotten out of the pack. Oh well...I'm getting old and I still got second in my age group and finished in the top 100 of over 1750 runners, so I still enjoy giving it a shot! Until next year....

Thanksgiving week!

Man Thanksgiving came and went so quickly! We had a wonderful time! We got to have the kids all to ourselves the whole week and I was so glad to have them home! We had a busy week. A couple days before school let out Cavin had his Thanksgiving play. The Kindergarten class put on a little performance and Cavin was an indian boy. He was pretty excited. 

Grandma Speers came over to watch and have lunch with him and he was so glad to see her.

Our little Indian boy! He did a great job remembering his songs and lines. It was simple but sweet.

On Saturday Cavin's soccer game got cancelled and he was bummed so we asked what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to make ginger bread houses, so we did!

Cavin and Ragnar's house against the girls!

They were excited and Channing just wanted to eat the candy!

Took some work getting the walls up :)

Boys was on the left and girls was on the right!

Silly kiddos!

Then we set up the Christmas decorations because we are leaving so early for Germany that I wanted them to be up for more than 2 weeks! So the kids had fun decoration the tree!

The tree fun!

Jingles the elf came to visit our house as well!
The week of Thanksgiving on Monday we went over to my best friend Stacey's house and the kids played with her children and they had a great time. On Tuesday we went down to the Toyota Center to watch the movie "Free Birds" on the big screen. I guess Dwight Howard on the Rockets is a turkey voice or something in the movie so he got permission to show the movie on the big screen to the employees families and to a couple children's charities. The kids loved having the players right by them and Cavin was excited to high five his favorite player...the beard man...James Hardin.(even though the picture below is of my favorite...Dwight Howard)

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If you haven't seen the movie, it's probably worth a red box rental, but the kids had fun with candy and endless popcorn!
On Wednesday we went' back to the Toyota Center for the actual Rockets game. My parents and sister joined us which was a treat! We were able to get into a suite so we had a nice time and Cavin enjoy flirting with a little girl from his class in the next suite over. Silly kid!

Then Thursday was the Turkey Football game which Ragnar played in and then Thanksgiving! My mother cooked a nice meal as usual and we stayed with them for a few days. The kids enjoy going out on their new back patio. We roasted marshmallows and made smores and then my mom and I braved a little bit of "black Friday" shopping. Target was great and the line was short but Kohl's we waited in line a while! It was fun to chat with my mom though...our backs only slightly hurt from standing ;)
Friday we got to take Ella to the Nutcracker ballet performance. We have made it a tradition for the girls to go and Ella really looks forward to it. Natalie, Mom, Ella, and I went and my dad was kind enough to watch Cavin and Channing while Ragnar was working. We ate dinner and went downtown! 

Grandma, Natalie, and Ella

Our Ballerina!

We had a good time even though Ella and I have allergies because the weather goes from 80 degrees to 40 degrees and back, but we still enjoyed our time!
Saturday Ragnar and I got to see the movie "Catching Fire" which we enjoyed and then that night he performed in "The Messiah" performance that our stake put on and I wish I would have gotten a picture. He played his cello and did a great job. The kids had fun watching him play!!! We had a wonderful week and have SO MUCH to be thankful for!

Halloween Day 2013

This year the week of Halloween was so wet!! It had been raining all day so we were pretty sure that we wouldn't be able to go trick or treating. Then, a couple hours before time for trick or treating the rain stopped and we got to go. The kids were pretty excited!

Here is our little Dorothy. She had Toto in her basket ;)

Here is Ella as Ella the Rose Fairy from her favorite "Rainbow Magic" books. She is CONSTANTLY reading them and there are tons of them in the series.

Beautiful girl!!

Our SpiderMan here to save us!

Here are the cuties ready to go trick or treating!!

My sister Natalie and my mom came and spent the afternoon with us and endured the trick or treating fun! Thanks!

We walked around the neighborhood with our neighbor Katie who is Ella's friend. They had a good time...and as you can see in the back of the picture...Cavin was enjoying himself too ;)

Channing LOVED trick or treating. She kept saying we have to keep going, time to trick or treat.

And here is Ella dancing and celebrating her bucket of candy! A happy Halloween it was!

October Fun!

We had a nice Halloween this year. We spent the Saturday before Halloween celebrating with Ragnar at the Toyota Center. The kids were excited to trick or treat the suites at the Toyota Center and then even more excited to be able to hand out candy afterwards to the other kids.

This year Ella and Cavin really wanted to choose what they were and didn't want to do a family theme, so Cavin was SpiderMan, Ella was Ella the Rose Fairy (from the Rainbow Magic books that she is obsessed with), and Channing is Dorothy :)

Monday night for Family Home Evening we carved/decorated pumpkins.

Channing just painted her pumpkin and Ella and Cavin wanted to carve AND paint theirs.

Of course I got the lovely job of cleaning out the pumpkins :/

Paint was getting everywhere...so off went the shirt!

Can you guess who this is? ;)

Here are our silly pumpkins....we are no professionals..but the kids have fun. Ella's is the blue one with the eyelashes, Cavin's is the jackolantern and Channing's the painted one behind. So fun!