Christmas Cards!

It's already December and I still haven't put up any pictures from our trip OR Thanksgiving weekend... sorry!! Tonight we'll begin decorating our Jesse Tree to start the days of Advent with the kids (and to prepare our own hearts for Christmas too!), we're hoping to cut down a tree this weekend (although we might end up at a tree lot), it's time for parties, dinners and concerts... and to start thinking about Christmas cards! We've been using Shutterfly to share pictures with our families in whole albums (because it would take forever to upload them all to blogger and because no one else but our families would care to see the 200 pictures we can take in a day!) and we're planning to go through them for our Christmas cards this year as well. I'm always impressed with their quality and they have some very fun designs for this year so I'm going to have a hard time deciding what to send! ALSO, a friend of ours, Danielle, posted on her blog that Shutterfly is giving 50 free cards to bloggers who are willing to do a write-up on their blog about their great cards... hence, the plug from me ;o) You can get all of that information here! I'm mainly looking at the cards with one hole for a picture, so I'm liking this one... but they are all very nice so we'll see what picture we end up choosing and what it goes well with! Maybe I'll even take the time to make a calendar! Anyway, it's time to figure out a bite of dinner before Nat gets home and Kate wakes up. Next up, a real update? Hopefully soon! :o) Happy December 1st!!

Our Little Pilgrim!

We've had a fun and full recent few weeks... on Nov 4th I headed to Virginia with the kiddos to spend some time with my family, Nat flew into Charlotte on the 8th where we were able to catch up with a few good friends and then my parents graciously drove us up to Maryland to see friends and family there! We came home last Tuesday and have jumped back into life here with both feet (and it has been nearly non-stop!)! I will try to post pictures from our visit on here soon, but one of the things we had going on last week was a Thanksgiving Program and Feast at Graham's school! He was a little pilgrim and was so cute to watch! Enjoy :o)

Graham is 4th from the right on the back row! It's a little fuzzy on the blog but is clearer if you click the YouTube link.

Happy Reformation Day!

Happy Reformation Day! We had a great time dressing up and going to our church's annual Reformation Celebration! The church joined up with the school's annual West Fest... we loved having another opportunity to have the two together :o) While most things on this day focus on Halloween we really enjoy celebrating the start of the Protestant Reformation and learning about Martin Luther (who nailed his 95 theses on the door on Oct 31st)!

Graham dressed up as an astronaut... appropriate for living right beside NASA :o) As you can tell he was already pumped about his prizes!

Kate was a ladybug! She would have sat in the pool if we would have let her!

Beanbag toss

Two little ladybugs!!

The youth group did such a great job helping out!

Our pumpkins (and a lion!)

Graham, Kate, AND Nat's first time trick-or-treating!

Classic jack-0-lantern and space invaders :o)

Pumpkins!

A few days ago we headed to the Methodist church for some pumpkins!!!

The Visschers were there at the same time... isn't Ella cute?

And Kate!

G spent most of his time playing in the pile of hay!

Sweet :o)

And filthy! Ha!!

Hodgepodge

My apologies... this is a slight mess of pictures from the past couple of weeks... Enjoy!

Nat went on a men's retreat in the middle of October... a few girls came over for fun and then Heather and Elliot (swinging with Kate) spent the night since we were both husbandless - such fun!!

Graham enjoyed getting packed up :o)

Big girl!

Aslan still loves attention as soon as the kids go to bed... he is totally lounging!!

Playing in the backyard...

This worked a little better!

We had some fun new friends, Scott and Mallory, over for dinner... I forgot to take pictures while they were here, but here are some sweet flowers they brought us! They're coops with Nasa so it's fun to hear about all of the neat things they get to do!

Sharing m&ms :o)

Mallory invited us to take a tour of the "Super Guppy" which is a huge aircraft that carries big things (like other airplanes). Kate played with her buddy Ella so we could take Graham on a special trip. Here are Nat and Graham in the cockpit!

This won't rotate back but this is the inside of the guppy - isn't it huge?!

Across the way was also the jet that carries the Space Shuttle around!

Outside of the Super Guppy

She also took us in the Weightless Wonder (astronaut training jet)!

I think this is a WB-57... someone would have to correct me if I'm wrong.

T-38s... Thanks to Mallory for an awesome tour!

Girlie-girl... bows, shoes, necklaces, bracelets - she loves it all! :o)

A walk in the park hoping to see some hot air balloons... unsuccessful but still a fun time!

Not much is better than ending the day with some hot chocolate :o)

Quick Picture Update

Here's a quick idea of what we've been up to... trying to make it fast before Kate wakes up from her nap!!

Graham's first go-cart ride!! ....And he's still pumped that the youth group was there to cheer him on!

Nat and Tyler made a picnic table for us so we have a patio table for the first time since we've been married! Thanks guys!

We finished staining all of our projects :o)

Nat caught a hummingbird that was stuck in our garage... poor little guy!

And because it's October, we are starting to have days that we can be outside more than inside (and we're taking advantage of it!). It's still in the 80s, but at least it's in the low 80s and then cooling off at night. Whew! We survived another Texas summer :o)

Pigtails!

Nat had an awesome opportunity to fly up in a B-17 (he's doing a service for the air show that is in town next weekend and had also been asked to pray for them during their media day... what a neat perk)!!

Enjoying some sweet Daddy time whenever we have a chance :o)

More outside... Kate started climbing ladders this month and I go between being excited that she can do the playgrounds on her own and being panicked that she's going to forget that she is up high and let go (or step off). I can't believe how big they are both getting!!

Silly kiddos before bed :o)

And we're starting to have a lot more park time once again... G loves riding his bike to the neighborhood park!

We love fall!