New Tradition

This year we started Elf on the Shelf with William and Lily! It has been a BLAST having Red come and stay with us this Christmas season. For those of you who don't know what it is, Elf on the Shelf is a story book that comes with an Elf. He is sent by Santa to make sure everyone is being nice. He reports back to Santa and plays a game where he hides every night. We named ours Red. William really wanted to name him Robot Red White, so we shortened it to Red. He's been into a lot of things since he's been here and William and Lily love going on the scavenger hunt every morning trying to find where he is and what he's gotten into over the night. This is SUCH a fun new tradition that I look forward to doing every year.

Red got the kids Santa hats the other day and made this for them. The kids had a kick out of it!!  

Old Tradition

This past Monday night, we put our Christmas tree up! Our little one. Although, we didn't have the stand for our little one. I think it's packed in a box somewhere in our closet. So, we had to go a buy a new little one. But, who doesn't love to buy new Christmas things, right? The kids had such a fun time putting up the ornaments. Of course, they had to start by putting every one's ornaments in piles and then they put their own on. We love our tradition of a new ornament every year. Except, this year, our tree is kind of full. We'll have to see what next Christmas brings!

Here are the choices for this year!

Traditions are so much fun. We've been doing this every year since we've been married. I've also been working on a new tradition this year that I'm excited to share soon.

My Week

Sometimes pinterest knows exactly how I'm feeling. 

Sometimes Awkward Happens

I have made a new discovery about myself.

I don't know how to pose for a picture in a group setting. It's just been recent, for some reason. It all started at Brittany's graduation. I was a little TOO into the picture:

Poor Olivia seriously had to move to get in the picture.

AWKWARD.

Now, keeping that picture in your mind...

We had a little get together to go see Breaking Dawn last week (LOVED!) and watched Eclipse before the movie at midnight. Well, we took pictures before we left and I had that picture flash back. I wanted to keep my distance as to not have another awkward picture!

 EPIC FAIL!

I am so far away that this could happen:

When I saw this picture, I couldn't help but laugh. Oh, sometimes awkward pictures happen.

Now, my goal is to find that "I'm in the picture, but not OF the picture" placement!



Longest Post Ever

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been the best about keeping up with my blog! So, I decided to make some changes to the looks of things today and hit you with a HUGE picture-fest blog post. Just because if I don't, I will never get caught up. Which results in more procrastination on my part.

This past October was the start of a beautiful fall here in Tennessee. I have definitely missed these gorgeous colors. And I definitely enjoyed William's week long fall break!

We were able to go with Jeremy and Monica to Fall Creek Falls the weekend that Fall Break began. It was SO much fun hiking to see the falls. William and Lily did fantastic! Matthew and I didn't do too bad either! Matthew told me that I did better than he thought I would! Why, Thank you.

 Isabel, William, Lily, Breanna, and Serenity

October ended pretty well too! Halloween was fun, except that William was sick all the night before. It never fails that someone is sick around Halloween!

 So, William doesn't look like that because he's not excited about trick-or-treating, he's just sick. Lily looks like that because she's SO excited to trick-or-treat.

I was pretty proud of myself because I made their costumes. The first time I ever made anything with a legit pattern. It was a learning experience and I think they turned out great! William is Luigi and Lily is Princess Peach. She only wore her crown (that took me the like 2 hours to make!) for pictures at home.

 Then we were able to go to John and Krystin's neighborhood to Trick-or-Treat with the cousins. William was embarrassed about his mustache, so he decided to take it off, but not before Matthew tried to talk him into keeping it on by putting one on himself.

And a wig.

So did John and Christopher.

 So far, November has not disappointed either! We started it off with a bang by going to see Wicked at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. It was incredible.

 Did I mention that we went in a limo? Because it was awesome and hilarious.

We also had our friend Jeni take our family pictures at Crockett Park in Brentwood. It was a lot of fun and we are SO pleased with the way they turned out. I have already put some of them on our header( do you like?) But, here are some of our other faves.

Maybe this wasn't the longest post ever. If it was, at least I warned you, right? I am going to try to be in a better blogging spirit and update more often to avoid from blog posts like this. No promises though!



Pumpkins 2011

While William's been on fall break, we've been up to lots of things! We went to 2 different pumpkin farms. Walden Farms was a lot of fun. The kids got to ride the train, go through a hay bale maze, feed goats, and we only looked at the pumpkins there. The second patch was only a small one with a smaller variety of pumpkins, but we bought our pumpkins there anyway because we were excited to start the carving!

So, for FHE this past monday, we carved our pumpkins. William wanted to do Luigi and Lily did Princess Peach (which is what they're dressing up as this year!). And they had jello.

The final product was worth all the carving and finger cramps. I carved Linus and the Great Pumpkin and Matthew did the logo for Browning. Did I mention he's really loving guns lately? It was a lot of fun to do this and we love doing it together.

We Spent a Day with Him

 Yep, that's right. After about 3 years of William loving Thomas, we thought it was finally time to take him to meet the guy. Or train, rather.

There were a lot of "stations." William and Lily got tattoos, met Sir Topham Hatt, saw the animals at the petting zoo, watched some of a Thomas movie, they even were able to go color Thomas pages and play with the trains they had set up there. There was also a gift shop, of course. We got William a hat, a train for him and Lily, and a bag that says, "I Spent A Day With Thomas."

We were able to be the first people in line for our car. We were in car #4. 

And, we rode on a train that was pulled by Thomas himself. William and Lily loved it. And it was nice because it was air-conditioned.

After our ride, we were able to go see Thomas and get pictures taken with him.

Lily didn't like doing that too much.

A Day Out with Thomas was a lot of fun. I'm so glad that we were able to do this. William is already talking about going again next year. We'll have to see...