Christmas with Nana

My mom came for an early visit for Christmas. She held down the fort while we took the kids to see the new Star Wars movie on Ross' birthday. It was awesome! We wrapped up the birthday celebration watching the Cowboys lose another game this season at a great new restaurant in the area. Despite the loss, I think Ross still had a good day.

We celebrated Christmas with Nana the next day. We exchanged gifts and visited Santa at a house down the street from us. There were lots of lights, hot chocolate, cookies, and presents, as well as laughter.

Her last day here we had a great time just hanging out and playing!

The Perfect Tree...for this year

There are quite a few tree farms near us in CA, so we took advantage of the opportunity and cut down our first Christmas tree as a family this year! It was fun to walk through the farm and find just the right tree for us...or so we thought. We found a tree with the perfect shape. We cut it down, took it home, and then remembered we have shorter ceilings than we remembered! After removing a little from the top and a little from the bottom, we had the perfect Dr. Seuss tree. I love it! We also got a smaller tree for the kids. It's a little bigger than we've gotten in the past, but they were still able to carry it, decorate it, and make our house a fun celebration of Christmas!

Thanksgiving in Leakey

We traveled to Texas for the week of Thanksgiving this year. The trip started off with an exciting ride around the ranch...until the Polaris died. Then we had fun attempting to push it back to the house. We eventually gave up, but both kids did their best to help! We ended up walking back and towing it later.

Tuesday was our nephew's birthday. Mitchell turned 6 while we were there, so we got to join him at school for a little celebration with his friends!

We also got to meet our newest nephew, Taylor! He is 4 months old now, and he is so sweet and wonderful! We all loved getting to hold him, play with him, and make him laugh and smile. Both Jackson and Audrey were amazing with him. They really love both of their cousins!

Despite a little chill in the air, the kids decided to play in the river. They got a little wet and had a ton of fun!

It was a wonderful way to spend our Thanksgiving week!

There are more pictures in the album.