Sunday's are quite crazy for us and full of activity. We have a little downtime in between church and 'Cubbies' (Sunday night program for kids at our church). So this afternoon I got to sit on the couch and do Emily's Bear Hug assignment where we read about some of the Cubbie characters and then reviewed some Bible stories. At the end of the session it asked the parents to have the kids draw out their favorite Bible stories and make a little book. So our kids being totally into the craft thing set out to make their little book of favorite Bible stories. Emily apparently is quite into tracing the life of Jesus from birth to Jesus as a kid to Jesus sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. So here's a little clip of her explaining her little Bible story book she created.

On Saturday we attended Ashlyn Schraders birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. In case you've never experienced Chuck E Cheese it is a place filled with animatronic mice, games, ski ball, pizza, cake, lights, sounds, rides, etc. Part of the time I was Emily's chaperone and coin distributor as she played games and then for the latter part of the time I was with Joshua. To my amazement out of all the amazing and fun stimulus overloading opportunities that surrounded my little 2 year old son the thing that amazed and delighted him the most was the little machine that counts your tickets. I mean he was plain giddy as I would hand him a strand of tickets and he would take his little pudgy fingers and finagle and fix the tickets just right and he knew at any moment the machine would gobble up all the tickets when he least expected and he would just give out a huge laugh each time he did it. It kind of reminded me of how parents go to all the trouble to pick out all these elaborate and crazy gifts for out little kids and they end up getting much more enjoyment out of the bows and wrapping paper. Go figure.

You gotta love Houston

Wow, yes, today was January 9th and it was shorts weather here in Houston. I think it got up as high as around 78 degrees. We got up and rolling around 8:30 to head out to a doctor's appointment for Whitney and my job was to hang with the kids and feed them. So I headed out to find their favorite breakfast foods, Emily - Sausage Kolache, Josh - Scone (yes and he's two, wow). Kolaches are easy to find. I went to the Kolache factory and was hoping maybe they might sell some scones but no luck. Yet I knew there was a Starbucks a little ways down the road so I knew I could maybe get a scone there. Well all they had were some pumpkin scones and I wasn't going to chance that. Next I went to Shipley's and they didn't have scones so I took a gamble and got Josh a kolache and chocolate covered doughnuts for both of them. Chocolate covered doughnuts in the car, hmmmm, brilliant. We started to head back to go pick up
Whitney as I'm constantly telling the kids not to 'lick' the chocolate off the doughnut. Well as you can guess like all kids Emily and Josh have an uncanny ability to remove the chocolate off of an object and transplant it all over their face and clothes. But after a good baby wipe session I was able to get most of the chocolate off. Another amusing element of the day was Josh and his 'boy.' Josh aparently made a 'boy' at church earlier this week. His 'boy' consists of a small paper plate with a boys face on it and yarn for hair attached to a popsicle stick. He became very attached to his 'boy' and wanted to take it with him throughout the day. We eventually ventured over to the trails near Walmart and Branch Crossing in the Woodlands and parked our car and walked over to a park. Of course we got to the park and Josh had peed through his diaper so Dad got to go run all the way back to the car to retrieve the diaper bag. They had a good time playing together and we all definitely enjoyed our spring day in January.

Poppaw and Grammy's Visit

We've had a great time visiting with Whitney's parents, 'Poppaw and Grammy'. We experienced the Woodlands Mall (which is amazingly more crowded after Christmas than before Christmas and Poppaw and I hit up the Hickory Farms 75% off sale and have been stuffing ourselves with sausage and cheese balls all week), Rockfish (great restaurant - jalapeno corn fritters are yummy), the new 290 outlet mall (we managed to survive without going broke), Santa's wonderland (near college station with 2.5 million lights, petting zoo, bonfire, pony rides, hot chocolate, shopping, and even a mechanical bull), Old Town Spring (pictured above), Wuenche brothers and their famous beer bread, spaghetti dinner with Ted and Shelly, projects (Bunny (Whitney's mom) pulled about 156 weeds out of our front yard, Ronnie and I fixed our fence, Ronnie also worked his magic and fixed our back door and front door lock (he introduced me to this amazing stuff called 'silicone spray' which is like WD40 on steroids), they helped us take down Christmas decorations, we ate some fajitas, guacamole, salsa, and cheese dip, watched half of the Georgia Tech game until I became nauseus, watched old family videos, and played some Wii. Overall it's been a great visit and we've all had a really nice time together. Last night Emily performed one last time for everybody. I've posted her rendition of 'Blue Suede Shoes' by Elvis. Enjoy.

Glimpses of Christmas

Well Christmas has come and Santa Clause made his appearance. For Emily she kind of had a rock star theme this year. Between her Hannah Montana pop up stage, Hannah Montana wig, her new pink guitar, microphone and stand she is ready for her first world tour. It was really cute last night as she sang on her little microphone, 'happy Birthday Jesus' and we all listened. She came back out for an encore performance of Away in a manger. She has been enjoying getting to spend time with her Grammy and Poppaw who are visiting with us from Georgia.







Josh was particulary pumped about his new Diego train set or as he calls it his 'eggo' train. Him and his sister have had fun playing with each other for the most part with the occassional meltdown over playing with some toys. He also had a little performance on the little microphone singing 'God is so good'.

Hidden Cove Christmas Party

Well, our neighborhood social director, Tommye Barrett, hosted the first annual Hidden Lake Estates Christmas party. It was a great time. We had about 21 kids crammed into her living room and a bunch of adults. I think one of the main themes was sugar as it came in various forms like multiple cookies, icing, sprinkles, cake and candy canes (our kids were super charged chihuahuas when we got home). Tommye had this like 20 ft kid-sized banqueting table that like ran almost the whole length of her living room. We had all the chairs lined up and they decorated cookies, they made santa hats with cotton balls and glue, they had a battle royale in the playroom. Then the big man himself showed up, S.C., and passed out presents for all the kids. Then we sang some Christmas songs and did a kids version of the Christmas story. One of my favorite parts was getting to sing 'Away in a manger' (over and over as they kept wanting to do it again and again) and the kids just sang it at the top of their lungs and also did interpretative dancing all over the living room. It was pretty awesome. Then Tommye brought out the Jesus Birthday cake and we sang happy birthday and the kids blew out the birthday cake. Uh oh, Emily wasn't there...so we relight the candle and sing it again. Uh oh, some one else missed out so I'm pretty sure we relit the candle a third time. Yeah it was complete Christmas chaos but pretty awesome for us all to be together.

Christmas in Wimberley

Well we spent the weekend out in Wimberley and tonight we did our gift exchange. Joshua had his santa hat on and we asked Emily if she wanted to wear her hat but she said that she wanted to be Mary. So we proceeded to create a make-shift Mary costume out of baby sheets and then during the reading of the Christmas story by my Dad from Luke 2, Emily, I mean, Mary walked out on cue and stood in front of the baby Jesus. It was a pretty cool moment. To add dramatic effect she happened to have a light up shirt underneath her 'sheets' that made it look like her heart was glowing as my dad read the part about Mary pondering and treasuring in her heart all that God was doing through the birth of Jesus.
Josh and Emily both received these really cool books from Aunt Trina and Uncle Brad. Here is a clip of Josh reading from his new book about himself.

Christmas Time Snapshots

"Freaky" the Snowman
So we are trying to join in the festive spirit of our neighborhood with Christmas lights and inflatable Christmas creatures, etc. Everything was looking pretty good until our neighbor pointed out that our inflatable snowman up in our second story window had a slightly 'freaky' look to him that was just down right scary. As we stood in my driveway a week or so ago and stared up into it the second story window we beheld the above sight. The first freaky factor was the fact that the snow man's eyes seemed to be looking right at you wherever you moved. The second freaky factor was pointed out by Ted our neighbor. He pointed out that lighting the snowman from the bottom increased the freakiness exponentially. We also discussed how there is something spooky about taking a normally loveable creature like a snowman and casting it in an eerie way (like a 'clown' from Stephen King's 'It', or 'Chuckie' the little doll, etc).
The Advent Calendar
Well, Whitney's mom got us an advent calendar for the kids this year (as pictured above). And it's been quite an experience. They definitely are into it. So as you can see there is a little book that you pull out for each day of December thus building the anticipation towards Christmas day and then on Christmas day you have the big book about Jesus birth that you read. Well there favorite part about the whole experience is the nightly pulling the day's book out. To keep it fair we alternate between Emily and Josh pulling the book out each night. Emily, being 4, gets this and sees it as fair. Josh, being 2, does not. When it's his turn to pull the book, there is peace on earth, and I am at ease. Yet when Emily gets to pull the book out Josh has a complete cataclysmic meltdown every time. 'I wanna pull it out!!!!!!'. He will listen to no reasoning and there is no substitute for getting him to stop the meltdown. Finally, I've just started letting Emily pull it out and then I'll put it back in and then let Josh pull it out which seems to work for now. Another little surprise about this Advent experience is the books themselves. They may look like cute little books but they are packed with text, have very few pictures and are exerpts from classic literature like 'the Wind in the Willows', 'the Nutcracker', 'Little Women', etc. So our kids are having a little mini Masterpiece Theatre each night before they go to bed. But overall it's been a memorable experience.