Happy December

The first day of December is very eventful for us.  Not only does our elf arrive, but we start our advent calendar.  This is the 4th year for us and I have to say that even though it is a lot of prep work, it is absolutely one of my favorite traditions.  I asked Reed today when he thought he would be too old for it and he said "Probably when I move out and go to college.  Well, actually, I'll probably miss it then." :)  Sweet boy. (Last night he was feeling pretty puny, so I put Thieves on his feet and neck (he was complaining of a sore throat) and put the diffuser in his room and ran it all night.  He woke up feeling okay, but not great.  He could've gone to school, but I wanted to keep him home and let him rest just in case.)  Back to the Christmas stuff...

Joy showed up this morning and brought our annual North Pole Breakfast!  

It was quite the spread - powdered donuts, mini chocolate chip muffins, don't holes with sprinkles and a few other little treats. 

Reed ate a little bit, but went back to bed pretty quick.  Hudson really enjoyed his morning though.  He played with the stuff that Joy brought and talked about all things Christmas.

He decided to wear his Christmas shirt to school (which says "This guy is on the nice list") and he wanted to wear his elf hat that Joy brought, but I knew that wouldn't fly at school. :)

As soon as he got home, the hat went back on for homework. He is just too funny.

After chores (Reed was almost 100% at this point), we pulled out our first advent tag of the year.

(Just for kicks, check this out - this is our first year for the calendar.  Reed was 6 and Hudson was almost 3. ) 

Christmas "sweater" t-shirts (if you look closely, you can see they have things from Minecraft on them).  Christmas aspect for mom, Minecraft for the boys.  Its a win-win. :)

Happy December - wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!

In case you wondered, we're still alive and kickin'. :)  So here's what we've been up to:

The house is still coming along - slowly, but surely.  I try to update weekly here.  

On Halloween, we did our normal trick or treating, except Reed decided he was too old this year.  Hudson dressed up as a character from the Skylanders video game (can't remember the name) and was super excited although nobody really knew who he was. :)

We went to see Hudson's Thanksgiving program at school and it was so precious.  He was on the front row and it quite the entertainer.

 This is how we watch TV.  Wrestle during the commercials and then when the show comes back on, fall wherever you are and watch intently. :)

Crazy, sweet kids.

 We had a little cold snap and the boys wanted to have a fire.  It was a little windy, so they went in and got their gas masks to help combat the smoke. 

There's been lots of hot chocolate and reading books in front of the fireplace... 

 The boys brought home papers from school about what they are thankful for - definitely keepers!

We're glad to be off for Thanksgiving break.  We saw Elf at Bass Hall on Sunday, messed around the house on Monday, had lunch and dinner with friends on Tuesday and have some cooking to do before our Thanksgivings on Thursday and Friday.  Our advent calendar tree is ready to go and I'm sure we'll drag out the Christmas decorations this weekend because Joy (our elf) is planning on showing up bright and early Monday morning with our annual North Pole breakfast!   Hudson has been asking about her for about 2 weeks now. :)  Love this time of year!

Mini Road Trip

This past weekend, the boys and took a trip to see my sweet friend Meredith. She and I became fast friends at the beginning of 6th grade and we're very close until she moved away our sophomore year of high school. I was devastated to see her go, but we have kept in touch all these years and I love her dearly! She now lives in Tennessee, and it's been a few years since we've seen each other, so we decided to meet 1/2 way in Little Rock for the weekend. The boys and I left Granbury about 12:30. 

The nav system said it was a 5 1/2 hour drive, so we decided to stop and eat a leisurely lunch. Pei Wei was the pick and Hudson loves his lettuce wraps. 

About an hour after lunch we stopped at QT to fill up with gas and the boys got a drink for the road. Hudson chose a slushy which he promptly dropped and made a huge mess in the middle of the aisle.  Sticky, freezing slushy juice went all over my feet and legs. Ewwwww. The sweet guy at QT told Hudson to get himself a new slushy and they would take care of the clean-up. All was well again in the world.  

I had to make a detour and pick up a canvas I had bought in Garland. It cost us some extra minutes/miles, but we were so close to the store and I didn't want to have to come back later! It's so funny because the lady that owns it is from Granbury and grew up there. Crazy.

Anyhoo, I think our summer road trips have broken the boys in well.  They are great travelers. They played video games and chatted. We stopped in Texarkana for dinner at one of their favorites...

 

We got to Little Rock a little after 8, so with the meal stops and canvas pick up sidetrack, it added a little bit.  The boys quickly settled into "their" beds...

 

Reed hates sleeping with Hudson, so I told them that I would sleep with one kid one night and the other kid the next night. I woke up Saturday morning totally understanding why Reed hates sleeping with him! He moves a LOT and is always flailing his limbs about. I woke up with his leg flopped over my waist.

We got up and showered and headed to breakfast. Meredith also has two boys very close in age to my boys, so it worked out great! We all ate breakfast together and then headed out to Pinnacle Mountain State Park. There was only a little bit of fall color, but the park was just beautiful anyway. The boys played on the playground for a bit and then we headed up the trail to the summit.  The lady at the visitors center told us it was a 1 1/2 mile round trip and Meredith and I thought "No Problem!"  Hudson picked himself up a walking stick and was ready to rock and roll.

We started to hike and it was pretty good... Except the top 1/4 of the trail was less "trail" and more "climbing over boulders". We were glad we made it to

the top though.

The boys were exhausted, but they all said it was worth it. 

Meredith took the two younger boys over to another side to check out the view and she said that Hudson asked Todd "Would you rather live up here or be a millionaire?"  Todd answered "Live here." Hudson said "Me too. Cause millionaires can't buy this and they can't buy brothers and they can't but cousins."  Sweet boy! 

Going down was better than going up, but still precarious. Hudson slipped and fell about 5 times coming down. It was good to be done. :) Here we are on the trail... Yes, I'm wearing Toms. That definitely added to the slipping around on the rocks. 

Meredith provided a yummy picnic when we got back down- a turkey sandwich has never tasted that good! The boys spent another long while playing on the playground...

and then we explored more of the park.

We left the park and headed out for some ice cream at a cute little place in town. They had this bench outside and I wanted to get a nice picture of the boys... well, yeah.

Love them so!

After ice cream, we were going to go see an exhibit at the museum, but it was almost closed so we explored this neat old iron bridge next to it.

And rolled down the giant hills. :)

We came back to the hotel and had a pizza party in the room and played games. It was a super fun day.

We got up Sunday morning, ate breakfast together and then headed our separate ways (and I had planned on getting a picture of me & Meredith and totally forgot... Boo). It was so good to see Meredith and her boys and we are all looking forward to doing it again! 

School Picture Day

Fixed hair, nice shirts... lookin' good. :)

School Daze

The boys started school today. Hudson started first grade and Reed started 5th. They had a great day. Reed said 5th grade is better than he expected.  He was very disappointed after finding out that his good friend from last year is in another class. But he came home today saying he thinks he may have made a new friend. Hudson was excited to see his friends again and I received two texts today - one of a picture of him in class...

And another from a friend that was with him at lunch. I put notes in the boys lunches and he evidently really liked it. :)

It made my day!  

I think we're going to have a great year! 

This summer has been flying by.  After the flood a couple of weeks ago, we had about a week of furniture shoved over on the tile with multiple carpet drying fans and a dehumidifier.  It seemed to have worked... there no stink yet, so I think we got everything dried out before it could mold/mildew (or it will be good enough until we move.) :)  

We finished up Seals practice and the boys have started to really sleep late, especially Reed.  I think I'm getting a taste of the teenage years - I finally woke him up at 1:00 in the afternoon a few days ago!

We've had lots of visits from the turkeys...

I've seen that large group (5 mommas and 35 babies) a few times and it's still amazing to be every time.  Then today i took this picture through the back door.  It's so cool to have all this wild life right outside.

Reed got a free ticket to Six Flags from school (by reading 600 minutes) and so we decided to go on Tuesday since it wasn't 1000 degrees outside.  We haven't been in a couple of years and I thought Reed was just too young.  But what I've realized is that he is not a thrill ride type of kid - it's just not fun to him (and it totally reminds me of Brian).  We still had a good time and I totally bought the picture from the log ride... I told them where the camera would be and to act silly.  Too funny. :)

We're having a great summer!

Summer Rain

We got a RIDICULOUS amount of rain today.  It started this morning about 6:00 and by 3 in the afternoon, we had gotten 10.75 inches.  Yep, you read that right... almost 11 inches in about 9 hours.  We didn't realize that there was a possibility of flooding so after church we had a leisurely lunch and when we headed home and the closer we got, the more we were starting to think there might be a problem.  Our house is on a low spot and when it rains, the garage always looks like it's going to flood, but we've never had a problem though.  Well,  when we got home, the yard looked like a lake and when we pulled up to the house and opened the garage door, stuff started floating out.  We opened the door into the laundry room and stepped into about 4" of water (which is a step down from the rest of the house, meaning that the water was RIGHT at the top of the step but thankfully hadn't flowed into the kitchen yet.  It was coming in the front door too.  Brian got out on the skid steer and tore up the front yard to help the water drain.  While he was doing that, I was keeping the drain in the laundry room floor clear which helped it finally drain out.  Mike and Susan came over to help us (the boys just happened to be at my parents house).  Brian's digging efforts thankfully made a huge difference and no new water came in.  I could not care less about the front yard being torn up. :)  At this point though lots had already come in, and we using shop vacs to suck it up.  The living room carpet is soaked (like you step and water shoots out) and our bedroom carpet is soaked on the front wall edge.  Good times.
As for the outside... when we went out to get these pictures, the water had already receded quite a bit.  You can see how full the tank is...

 Just for a reference point, this next picture is from the last big rain - we were so excited about how full the tank was!

You can see across the tank that the chairs that I sit on when the boys swim are more than halfway underwater.  They are usually about 4 or 5 feet from the edge.

That little black flag (sticking up in the water) is to mark the edge of the tank when it's "full".  I think we're there.

The water got REALLY close to the new house.  It washed the materials (lumber, roofing stuff, etc.) from the front of the house over against our neighbors fence.  Two things I'm thankful for - that it didn't make it into the house and that it wasn't sheetrocked yet!

The water flowed over the new driveway and washed out some of it.  When Brian had come out there to get the skid steer, he said the water was almost up to his knees.  But the good news is that seeing where everything flowed will help to know exactly where the culverts need to go. :)

 Now we're sitting in the house with the fans on high hoping they'll dry out the carpet.  It could have been so much worse, so I'm quite thankful. :)

Summer

We've finally gotten our summer started! Reed was sick almost the whole first week with some kind of stomach bug.  He missed almost all his Seal practices and then proceeded to give it to Brian (I was using essential oils like crazy and Hudson and I never got it.  Brian jokingly calls my oils "voo doo" but look who ended up getting sick). :)  Reed finally got well, but then the next week was Seals practice in the morning with VBS in the evenings.  We didn't get much done then either. :)  

Here is what we have been up to:

One project we did do was painting canvases.  I let the boys pick out a shape, cut it out on my Cricut in vinyl and stuck it on the canvas.  Then we put blobs of paint on the canvas and used a paintbrush to smear it all around.

They turned out really cute and the boys were so proud - they are both excited to hang them in their new rooms in a few months.

I'm finally starting to see turkeys again!  I've missed seeing my turkeys, but the other day, they showed up and were eating the birdseed that had fallen from the feeders under the tree out the back door.  The first day there were 2 mommas and 11 babies!  The next day, there were 3 mommas and 20 babies!  I had never seen baby turkeys, so it was cool to see so many! 

We had our first swim meet of the season on Friday night in Weatherford. Both boys did a great job.  Reed placed 3rd in both his 25 free and 50 free.  He placed 5th in his 25 breast.   It was Hudson's first time to compete and we put him in 2 events - the 25 free for ages 6 & under and the 25 free for ages 8 & under.  In the 6 & under, he placed 4th and in the 8th and under, he placed 15th.  He told me at the next race that he wanted to swim a longer distance, but he was struggling towards the end of the 25, so I think we'll keep him there for a bit. :) 

This week we stopped after Seals practice to try out the new bake shop off the square.  The boys shared a ginormous piece of chocolate cake and some cake balls. :)

During all of this, we've been busy with the house.  Not me NEAR as much as Brian - he has made so many decisions and getting everything lined up... he has really been working hard.  You can click here for the latest updates. 

Today the boys and I went up to Fort Worth to look for some house stuff.  After 4 "boring" stores (Hobby Lobby, Target, Kirklands, etc.), I took them to the trampoline park and Toys R Us (where they spent every bit of their allowance/birthday money.) :)  

I'm looking forward to more swimming, water parks, and fun summer stuff!