New Years Eve Crystal Beach Style

Another fun New Years Eve at the beach with a few added bonuses this year!  1st we had a super fun time hanging out with our friends the Olanders, glad they decided to go down.  Also, thanks to Ella's new ear muffs she was finally comfortable being outside and enjoying the fireworks action. She even did her own Roman candles, held sparklers and all kinds of things she would never do before the ear muffs.  Plus she looks super cute in them!  New Years Eve was actually pleasant weather, but sure got cold and wet on the 1st.

 Big kids like big fireworks

 Ella holding a sparkler was a huge change from 4th of July

Being on the deck while Roman candles were shooting would have been unheard of - actually holding a Roman candle was a major accomplishment. 

While we are super proud of Ella for overcoming her fear of fireworks, Star on the other hand still wishes they had not been invented.  She did have fun walking around on the beach during the day and had no fear walking into the water and getting her paws wet.  None of us would have considered that!

Christmas 2015

 Don't be fooled, fake glasses are popular at our house right now and Santa brought some new ones.  Addy also got a really large Lego set which she put together all by herself.  

 Fun times with new toys!

 Christmas morning smiles 

 At Thanksgiving we were talking about how no one uses china anymore, so I got inspired and I pulled the price tags off of a lot of our china and crystal and used it for Christmas morning brunch.  

 Addy and Betsy both got Harry Potter coloring books.

 Fun family photo

Addy and Ella are expert gingerbread house makers.  Jean, Tom and Betsy had the bright idea to have a house for them to build while the adults were being boring and just sitting around talking at Christmas Day dinner at the Kelly's.

And of course we enjoyed our annual Christmas Eve tradition of early church with the Densons and then dinner at the Wolfs. 

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Christmas Tree Train

It is a much smaller version, but Ella was inspired by the train around Granddad and Meme's tree, so she added a train around the tree in her room!

San Antonio Getaway

To kick-off winter break did a quick getaway to San Antonio for the night.  We went to the San Antonio zoo, walked the Riverwalk, ate some yummy Mexican food under the lights on the Riverwalk and finished the night with a river boat ride.  The lights on the river are so fun and festive (yet difficult to photograph, hence no pics from the river adventure of the trip).  And I think that we could just get a hotel room here in Houston and the girls would be giddy.  We didn't even do any swimming at the hotel, but just sleeping in a hotel was a big adventure for them.

Family pic on the zoo train

On the way to San Antonio we saw one of the Natural Bridge Cavern signs and decided to swing by on the way home on Sunday.  Michael and I both remember going to the caverns as kids, but it has been so long it was like a completely new adventure.  I wasn't sure what the girls would think, but I think they both really enjoyed it.  There was a lot of walking and fortunately we didn't end up having to carry anyone!

Gingerbread House Building

Our friends invited us to join them for a gingerbread decorating party.  There was a huge table with all the decorating pieces you could imagine, our house turned out fantastic! Fortunately we were able to put it back in the plastic box it came in, otherwise I am not sure it would last too long.  At some point Ella just started eating the candy and Addison was sculpting things out of tootsie rolls.  I am not sure I had ever decorated a gingerbread house before.  I am a fan!

Thanksgiving 2015

Loved spending my favorite holiday of the year with my favorite people in the world.  Unfortunately I didn't get pics of everyone, but they know who they are!

 The official turkey dunking pic.

 Post dinner entertainment included Addison telling jokes and riddles and the adults trying to guess the answer.  Based on the laughs, I think a fun time was had by all. 

Family Day In Aggieland

We celebrated the end of the Aggie's home season with a family day in Aggieland.  The day started off with lunch at one of our favorite College Station restaurants, a quick visit to say hi to friends at Northgate and then lots of campus game day festivities.  While Addy would tell you that she did not have fun because she was forced to go to a football game, I think that a good time was had by all. It was Ella's first time to a real game and I think she enjoyed soaking in the sights. And the Aggie's treated us to a final win at Kyle Field this season which was nice.  

 Since we were on campus we got into the stadium early and were able to capture this super cute pic.  Unfortunately it was pre-game so the stands were pretty empty, but we all did a great job rockin' our Aggie hats!

There were quite a number of photo ops and while this statue is actually a bit creepy when you look at it closely, I love the pics of our future 12th Men! 

Big Day!

The tooth that I swore was going to come out the first week of school finally came out 3 months later! Ella was not going to let anyone pull her loose tooth, she swore she was going to be the one to do it and that is exactly how it happened.  In Spanish class she said it started bleeding and she told her teacher, but her teacher told her to go back and sit down.  Then she kept tugging on it and pulled it out herself!! Off to visit the nurse and she got a treasure chest for it, but it was apparently not real secure.  She happened to go to the JCC that afternoon after school and they safely put it in a ziploc and gave her the cute Hip-Hip Hooray sign.  

Her adult tooth was coming in behind the baby tooth, so here is a picture of her minus one baby tooth, but you can hardly tell because the adult tooth is already so far in.  There is a wiggly tooth next to the one that fell out, so we'll see what the story is on that one.  Maybe she will let Michael pull it, or maybe she'll lose it at school again.   All I know is that it is going to happen the way Ella wants it to happen!

Halloween

The big day FINALLY arrived!  I think that Halloween may give Christmas a run for its money has far as level of anticipation and excitement.  Fortunately the torrential thunderstorms left the area in time for trick-r-treating.  Once again our block was the place to be, so the girls had fun passing out candy, we had friends come play and the kids hauled in plenty of candy after some pretty serious trick-r-treating themselves.  There was even a candy exchange between the kids to make sure everyone got plenty of their favorite sweet treat!

 Our beautiful peacock and angel (with kind of frozen smiles, they were wanting me to hurry so they could get back to passing out candy!)

 In their element, passing out candy - Addy was especially excited about it from the 1st time the door bell rang to the last.  I think it was especially exciting since half the time she opened the door it was someone she knew from school.

The crew had a great time running around together.  In addition to the Taylors and we had Caroline join us for the night and then they picked up Josie while trick-r-treating.

Pumpkin Carving

After much debate, Addy ended up doing a Minecraft Creeper face (on the left) and Ella ended up wanting something more free form that I was able to draw and carve to her satisfaction (on the right).

Book Character Parade

Another first for Ella - she has been a spectator for years, but she finally got to participate in Kolter's Book Character Parade (a.k.a. a fun way to allow kids to wear costumes to school, but make it educational since they are supposed to be dressed up as a character in their favorite book - good thing you can find a book about nearly anything these days!)

 Ella picked the peacock costume first and then we found a great book about a peacock that she loves to read (thank you Amazon)

"Technically" Addison was not the same Harry Potter as she was last year.  This year she carried book 7 and she had finished reading the series. Last year she was just getting started with the series.  Completely different apparently.  She chose an angel costume for Halloween and our only angel books were packed up with Christmas decorations, so I got a cute book about kids behaving in school and earning their halos, it was called Third Grade Angels.  Apparently I should have consulted with her first because the cover of the book was a school play ground and it was about kids, not real angels, so it was not acceptable for the book character parade (according to Addy, it would have been totally fine).  9 going on 15!

Ella's First Field Trip

Ella got to go on her first field trip with her class a few weeks ago.  And it was a trip to the zoo which is super fun!  She got to ride in a big yellow school bus for the first time too.  She said she had fun, although the 1st bit of news she shared about the experience was the fact that it started raining when they were leaving and they had to run to the buses. Always so interesting to hear the highlights from the 5 year old perspective!

Renaissance Festival 2015

The Renaissance Festival did not disappoint this year and to top it off we went with Ella's BFF and her family for extra fun.

 Ella and her BFF Ella sporting some fancy face painting.

 Since we left the Renaissance Festival in 2014, Ella has been watching Clan Tynker Family Circus videos on YouTube and talking about wanting to see their performance again.  She was SO excited to see them again this year. Here she is waiting for Santiago to give her a Clan Tynker sticker.  

 All the other kids were excited to take a pic with Santiago.

 People dress up for the Renaissance festival in all kinds of crazy costumes.  The girls just like to wear their Halloween costumes, not that they have anything to do with the Renaissance time period, but anything goes!  Addy had on her Harry Potter robe at the beginning and then got hot.  

The Wolf girls and the Cumagen girls make for a cute pic!

Happy 9th Birthday Addy

 Addison may be Harry Potter's #1 fan, so a Harry Potter themed birthday it was!  We tried to incorporate as much from the stories as possible, so our guests walked into the house through the brick wall at platform 9 3/4, were greeted by Dobby, there were owls with the mail hanging out in the family room, Aragog the spider was climbing on the wall, Moaning Myrtle surprised people in the bathroom, cupcakes had icing in the Hogwarts house colors and chocolate frogs on top, guests dined under floating candles like in the great hall at Hogwarts and guest all won with the golden snitch in their party favor bags.  The main event was watching the 1st Harry Potter movie and then some of the kids went home and 5 of Addy's good friends spent the night.  No clue what time the girls went to bed, although the next morning they talked about having sang Happy Birthday to Addison at 12:01.

In costume of course! 

9 candles barely fit on the cupcake - she is getting so old!

5 spunky girls the morning after the party.

October the 10th was spent celebrating with friends and then we got to celebrate her actual birthday with the grandparents, Jean, Tom, Granny and even Betsy on the 11th.  I think Addison felt pretty celebrated.  One more year in single digits - I can't believe it!