Deck the Halls and Bake the Treats!

We got the house all decorated for Christmas, and made all our Christmas treats.  Our list of baking is super long, and it is a very overwhelming task, but with everyone working together it got done pretty quickly!  I love my house, and the Christmas cheer in it now!

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, we made turkeys and wrote what we are thankful for on them.  I loved seeing what my girls are thankful for!  It was fun.  We had Thanksgiving dinner with our friends, the Dennys and Fraughtons.  It was nice to not have to cook everything!  I made the pies though, which turned out really yummy!  (Then, we did have a Thanksgiving dinner with just our family the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  Dave smoke the turkey, which was delicious!)  Happy Thanksgiving!  I am so thankful for my family and the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life!

Hockey and Choir & Sisterly Love

Chloe's choir got to go sing the National Anthem at the Allen American's hockey game at the beginning of November.  They did awesome!  (Much better than the American's...)  It was a fun date night with Dave.  (It is Mo-vember, where all the guys at Dave's work joined in raising awareness for Men's cancers by growing mustaches.  Dave's is the best!)  Chloe is really enjoying choir, and is doing well!





Autumn came home with a picture that she had made for Brooke in class at school.  It made me so happy to see how my girls love each other!

Halloween Fun

This year, we had our ward's Trunk or Treat on Halloween day, and then were able to go around the neighborhood with the little two, while the big two had a Halloween party at our house.  (Remind me next year that I don't want to do that again!)  We carved our pumpkins on Monday evening for FHE, and by Halloween (Saturday) they were too moldy inside to light... Maybe we should wait to carve them until the night before next time!  My girls were so cute in their costumes. Ciera was a angst filled teenager, an emo, a mod, whatever you want to call it (I thought she looked like she belonged in "Divergent", in Dauntless Faction), Chloe was Supergirl, Brooke was Princess Leia, and Autumn was a zombie cheerleader.  Fun times!

Happy Birthday Dave!!!

Dave is forty.  Holy cow!  How did we get to be so old!???! (And by "we", I mean "he".)  I love this man so very much.  He is such a great guy... he is an amazing husband and father, and is always looking for ways to improve his service to the Lord.  I am so lucky to call him mine!  Happy Birthday Dave!

I don't have many pics of just Dave... I guess I will have to snap more of him this year!

Animals, Books, and Mums... Oh My!

In Dallas, in September and October, they hold the State Fair of Texas.  It is a big deal.  (We have never gone.)  We didn't want to go this year either.  The kids in each school district get a holiday from school one day, with a free ticket to the fair.  We still didn't want to go.  So, on their holiday we went to the zoo.  It was perfect.  We went with friends, and the weather was beautiful, and it was not at all crowded.  I think we found our new tradition for "fair day"!

A friend of ours, who lived in Wylie for about a year or two a while back, is now an author!  She was a member of our book club while she lived here, and we got to know her and that she was working on a teen fiction/fantasy novel.  She found out that she had a brain tumor, and had to undergo treatment, which helped in their decision to move back to their hometown by family.  We miss having her around (she was my girls piano teacher as well... so we really miss that too!)  My book club read her book last month (which was published in September), and she came to our book club meeting to talk about it with us. (I brought Ciera too... since she is a teen reader!) It was great!  We love Kathryn Cooper!

For Homecoming in Texas, it is tradition for girls to wear mums (made by the guy's mom usually), and the guys to wear arm garters (made by the girl or her mom).  Weird!!  (You can google pictures of Homecoming Mums and see what I mean!) Ciera and her friend were not going to Homecoming, so they made each other a mini-mum.  (They were about the size of a guy's garter.)  They had fun, and the finished products were cute.  Although I still think it is totally weird!

La La La...

Chloe is in the advanced choir class this year.  She is doing really well.  They were able to sing the National Anthem with the high school choir at a football game.  They sounded really good!  They also had their first concert of the year, and Chloe got to sing the descant part on one of the songs with a small group.  She was so excited.  It was a good concert... they sounded really nice!  I hope Chloe sticks with choir.  It seems to be a talent of hers!