Avery's Christmas Party

Friday was Avery's Christmas party at school. Love her teachers and all the sweet kids in her class. The teachers let the kids plan their parties. The kids come up with the ideas (with the teachers input of course) and they vote on what they want to do. They decided to make a Christmas cake for snack, play 2 games, and make a santa pinata (which they made at the beginning of the week) and broke open at the party.
I always enjoy these special times with Avery.

*no clue how to get my pictures bigger- help anyone? ... but for now you can click on the picture

Drew's art

I love how Drew loves to do art like his sister. He enjoys me drawing a picture of a tractor, fire truck, some kind of animal, ect and him coloring or painting it. He also likes to use glue, LOTS of glue. He enjoys gluing tissue paper on his art work. He also likes creating art with foam stickers.

He recently began drawing pictures of people. I LOVE this! He tells us who everyone is. He even has some of us drawn with hair. LOVE!

Creative Ave

I love how creative Avery is. She can sit for hours doing art. I love when she just digs out stuff from the art materials and creates her own art work. She has a little tree we put in her room for Christmas. She immediately began making ornaments to hang on her tree. Here are a few she created...She asked me for a picture of her and this is what she came up with.

Today she made me this bracelet with a picture of us attached to it. She told me whenever I missed her when she was at school, I could wear this and know she's with me. :)

Avery lost her first tooth!

Avery lost her first tooth. (sniff, sniff) Her tooth had been wiggly for a few weeks. The other night her and Drew were watching a movie in our bed. We heard Avery say, "Daddy my tooth fell out." We were like what!? Sure enough we ran in and she was holding her tooth. She said, "Drew kicked my tooth out!" We thought how typical that her little brother would kick out her first tooth. She let us know it was just an accident though.:) She was SO excited. She ran around the house squealing, and wanted me to send a picture to Mimi, Kelly, and a few friends. The tooth fairy came and brought her a dollar which she was just as thrilled about. She made a book about losing her tooth and the tooth fairy- so cute!She now has 2 more teeth that have just started to wiggle. I sure am going to miss that baby teeth smile!!

American Girl

My mom, sister, and niece Kelly came in town the weekend after Thanksgiving for a girls trip to the American girl store and restaurant. My mom let the girls pick out a doll for their Christmas present. Avery picked out the Hawaiian doll, Kanani. I tried to encourage her to choose one with not such quite long hair, (too hard to keep tangle free) but she had had her eye on this one months ago and insisted this was the one she wanted. Thank you Mimi for a wonderful time and sweet memories with our girls!

Here's my sister, Kelly, and her look alike doll- Lainy.
My mom and me. Thankful for a wonderful mom and grandmother for my children.
Our sweet girls who love each other as much as their moms do! We are so blessed that our girls are so close. Kelly gave Avery a best friends necklace over Thanksgiving, and they both cry whenever they have to leave each other.

Cutting down our Christmas tree

We went out to a tree farm about 45 minutes east of Dallas to cut down our tree. We had a great time. We were taken on a little hayride out to the trees. The kids help Philip cut down the tree, then we headed back for hot cocoa and hot dogs.:)
I have some decorated pictures I'll post soon.

Thanksgiving

I didn't get many pictures over Thanksgiving, but we did enjoy our time with our families in Austin. We went out to a family friends ranch house one evening. We got together with a few other families that I grew up with and all their boys! There were 11 boys total and 2 girls- Kelly and Avery. The kids had a blast. They got to ride a horse for the first time and take a hay ride.
I plan on taking lots more pictures over Christmas!