Our Manger Scene

"So they hurried off and found Mary, Joseph, the baby, and Reindeer Dog."
Have a very Merry Christmas!

Santa's Song Dance

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My Dad got a new toy for Christmas - he can turn his old LP's in CD's. While doing this he heard this song by the Oakridge Boys. Sunday night he played it for Laney just to see what see would do. This video is the result.

Kick Christmas Week off Right

We got Christmas started this weekend. My parents came in on Friday for the week. Laney's Christmas pagent was Friday night. Laney was in the Advent pagent at her school on Friday as part of the angel band. (Sorry to picture is grainy it was taken by my video camera while I was taking video)On Saturday morning we went and picked out our Christmas tree. I got to say, it's a little odd to pick out a tree in near 80 degree weather.

Look at trees with Mama Janie.

In the evening, Rob & I got dressed up and went to his company Christmas party.

Tonight we decorated our tree. The girls were playing around while we got the lights strung.

Laney's teachers gave her felt ornaments for Christmas. She got to hang them on the tree herself this year.

Here we are with the finished tree.

Mama Janie & Daddy Ron with the grand-daughters and a couple of fuzz balls.

Making Christmas Cookies

Friday night before we left to go camping Laney refused to sleep. So I spoiled her and let her stay up for an extra hour & help make gingerbread cookies. She tried rolling the dough, but she's not quite strong enough.
Helping place cookie cutters

My cookie making girls

Camping in the Cold

We took Laney on her first camping trip this weekend. Several families from our church met at a nearby lake for a weekend in the great outdoors. A cold weekend. The high on Saturday was in the low 60's and we hit freezing overnight. Super fun! Actually it was. We knew the cold was coming, so we had hats & mittens & fuzzy wuzzy jammies packed. Laney did pretty good, she had a rough time of it at night, between not knowing where she was, the cold & a weird bed.

We lived up the camping life - camp fires, s'mores, hiking & hot dogs.

Here's the view from our tent on Saturday night
Saturday afternoon

The deer in the park were very tame, so we saw a lot of them. Laney asked where they were when we took walks and they weren't there.

Here's Rob & Elena toward the end of our Sunday afternoon mini-hike.

Elena & Kathryn after one of many trips down the slide at the campground playground.

Tag I'm it

How's this for a cruddy photo. After Tara's set up, geez!My fourth folder in my most commonly used photo file is 11-21-2008 and this is the fourth photo. Rob was trying to take a picture of Laney and me at her Thanksgiving lunch at day care, but someone spoke to me just when it was taken. I am not sure what Laney is pointing to.
I like this one better. This one came from the fourth folder in a lesser used photo file, the one where I keep the portrait proofs. This is one of Laney's 6 week old portraits. I'm tagging Angela at Party of Five and Caron at Blessed With Riches.

A Visit to Lala Land

We spent Thanksgiving with the newly weds, my brother, Ronny & his wife, Lauren (or Aunt Lala to Laney). Kathryn christened their house Lala Land because that's where Aunt Lala lives. We got to Ronny & Lauren's house in time to finalize the Thanksgiving feast. Here they are posing for a picture before we took the turkey back to the kitchen to cut it with the electric knife.
Our little family posed before dinner.

After loading up on a Thanksgiving foods, we went to the beach for a walk. Here's Kat messing with a jelly fish. Ok, to some it's gross, to us it was kind of cool to get that close to one & just get to check it out. Laney loves her Aunt Lala. They spent a ton of time together. At the beach:

Watching the Aggies get stomped on by the evil Longhorns:You may not be able to see it, but Laney has an orange bow on one pony tail & a maroon one on the other. My mother made her "House Divided" hair wear, since Daddy Ron was a Longhorn and Ronny & Lauren were Aggies.

Desert time - Good moms let you let the beaters, great moms turn off the mixer first. My mom is a great mom when it comes to homemade whipped cream.

Friday morning we decided not to shop until we dropped and instead went to the park. We did some sliding & climbing, and Laney got in some swing time with Mama Janie.

In the afternoon, it was time for more tradition - turkey tamales! What a great way to use the leftovers. Laney gave spreading the maza a try, but wasn't really too keen on it.

Daddy Ron & Mama Janie getting their maza on.

Lauren's brother, Adam making his first tamales with Lauren and Kathryn.

My cheesy brother and industrious husband.

The tamales turned out yummy and we had a fabulous couple of days with the family. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving too.

Turkey Bowl

Our church had a youth vs. adults flag football game called the Turkey Bowl on Sunday. Rob & Kathryn signed up as players, Laney & I went as spectators. Elena also gave cheerleading a try.
Laney & I hanging out in the gazebo while Daddy & Sissy play.

After Rob left the game to give someone else a chance for the fun, he & Laney had a game of tackle.

We ended up the evening at Fuddruckers. Here's my cutie patootie girlies.

We're out of town for Thanksgiving. May your holiday be safe, blessed & yummy!

Ren Fest '08

We made what has become our annual trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival this weekend. In addition to our little family of four, we took Kat's friend Paige & our good friend, Christina. Kat & Paige spent most of the day without the uncool grown-ups, so we didn't see much of her.

Here's Laney on the carousel. She kept telling us all day, "I rode the bunny"
We went to the dance lesson at 1:00. Here's Rob dancing Half Hannigan.

We finally caught up with Neil (our friend who works at the festival) late in the day. This is Christina, Rob & Neil.

Laney wouldn't stay with Neil, but at least this year she didn't cry at the sight of him. She was still very cautious of the people in costume, especially the barbarians, but they did not scare her as bad as last year.

Is this Rob's new princess hat?

No, it's Elena's.

Getting in a little swing time with Kat & Paige as we leave for the day.

Take a look at this!

Kat brought home an honor roll certificate for 1st six weeks!

Christmas Portraits

We went and took our Christmas portraits last weekend. It was a zoo who knew so many people take Christmas pictures more than month & a half early?!? The shoot was smooth and they turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. We actually had a hard time picking which ones to buy.