December 2011

Thing #2 has a thing about showing off his dirty socks in photos.

Our poinsetta wall - blurry phone picture

 This December we traveled to South Carolina to spend Christmas with the Shaw clan. Everyone was there except my baby sister who is on a mission in California. Trainboy had a birthday before that, but it appears we only took video of his cake and family party, I cannot find a photo of it.

Love this little cutie

Visiting Great Grandma

LOVE her outfit here. Cracks me up.

Christmas morning was busy and full of adventure. It was fun but Christmas on Sunday means not getting to stay in your pajamas all day. We had present time and then a delicious breakfast thanks to my brother making sure food got cooked on time. Baby was introduced to his new favorite food, lil' smokies.

 The adventure was with our van. We borrowed a friends van for the trip (and then ended up purchasing it later). Side note: My life is SO MUCH BETTER with a minivan for driving! They really are awesome when you have a bunch of kids! Okay so the day before Fixitman and I were at the store finishing up some shopping when he mentioned the van needed some transmission fluid. We went to look at it but he wasn't completely sure that he was getting the right kind and didn't get any. I wish I'd insisted. Anyway, Christmas morning we loaded up the van and started to drive to go to church with my Grandma. Only the van would not shift above second gear and we needed to get on the interstate. We stopped at a gas station and bought some fluid and he put it in but when we got on the interstate it felt like the car was shaking itself apart. (We were at 6000-7000 RPM's). So we got off and added more fluid. Still no improvement. Now we were sure we weren't making it to my Grandma's church so we started home and stopped at church with my parents for the last end of the service. When we went left 20 minutes later and got back in the van, it drove perfectly. In other words...it just needed to cool down and sit for a little. Ugh. I was very frustrated about it Christmas day. (I was also very tired from a late night and early morning.)

Shortly after Christmas was Princess' birthday. We took family pictures, went out for BBQ, went bowling and then had cake and presents. All before loading up the van and driving home. It was a very busy day.

Shaw family minus one. Where's the cardboard cut out?

I like this one even though we all felt like we were squinting.

Yep. This is the best one. And we took a bunch. Also tried earlier in the month and those were worse.

When we got home we had to go shopping for food of course. And there were tons of gingerbread house kits on clearance. So we built a gingerbread house for New Years. Or just for fun. The kids had fun building it and eating it.

Boys and their giant Reese's cups. Neither of them was able to finish it.

November 2011

Highlights from November:

We held a small birthday party for Dinoguy with a couple of his friends. They had a great time. We went mini-golfing on a glow in the dark course and played a few arcade games before watching a movie, jumping on a trampoline, and of course having lots of treats.

Yep his two closest friends here are the same height and build and have the same hair color as him. It's funny.

We went to Home Depot for project building of course. Here is a cute shot of Baby.

Baby, Princess & I went on a couple mommy preschool field trips. One to a children's barnyard put on by the university and another to a bakery.

She preferred the tractor to the animals!

Princess is in an orange shirt on the left

What a big mixer!

The fabulous weather here always results in fun play outside in our yard.

The door is open - run for it!

And Baby started jumping in front of the camera to get his picture taken. It's adorable.

Cheeeeeeeeese

Fixitman and I went on a date.The kind where you leave the house. There are some great families here and we did a kiddie swap. Well, first Fixitman made us delicious sandwiches at home for dinner instead of eating out. Then we went to the bookstore and picked out cookbooks for each other and read favorite children's stories to eachother. It was a lot of fun for us. We're book nerds!

Best shot of my haircut from October you'll probably get!

Super flattering shot of us on our date!

We went up to visit Fixitman's sister for Thanksgiving and I LEFT THE CAMERA AT HOME. I was very unhappy about it but we still had a fabulous time. But seriously! No pictures of the feast or of my niece and nephews! The kids had a blast. No one wanted the fun to end.

I also substitute taught every day for several weeks in Novemeber and Princess and Baby tried out daycare.

Halloween 2011

Painting pumpkins

Designing an Achilles helmet

One princess

A Parade with a Viking and a Greek warrior

Have you read the book "How to Train your Dragon" ?

Watch out for Achilles!

A baby bat! Scary!

Hanging out with Dad

Ready to go around the neighborhood.

The boys finally settled on Hiccup the Viking for Dinoguy and Achilles for Trainboy as costumes. Princess picked out a princess dress she had to have at Goodwill and then refused to wear it and only did at the mention of candy. Baby wore the bat costume and toddled around being adorable.

So Halloween involved a costume parade at the boys' school, a trunk or treat at church, a Halloween party for Trainboy, pumpkin painting at home and then actual trick or treating in our neighborhood. By Halloween night I think they'd already eaten enough candy but we went to a ton of houses in the neighborhood. Princess rode in her stroller and only got out to walk up to the door and wordlessly ask for treats. Everyone thought she was adorable. I think she got the biggest amount of candy and was in a candy coma for the next week. Baby ate his weight in suckers. It was a good Halloween!

Firefighters

You may know that Texas is in a pretty bad drought and has had wildfires going on some place or another for a while. Our main hotel while we waited on home repairs happened to be a home base for some firefighters in case some of the fires nearby spread or got out of hand.

My extremely friendly kids of course quickly became friends with several of the firefighters. Before they left for another area, the firefighters wanted to give them a tour of some of their trucks, parked in a field near the hotel.

Can I tell you how cool it was to get our own personal tour of Forest Fire trucks? They are different from city fire trucks in several ways and there are several types of trucks too. It was really interesting and the kids loved it.

Princess did not want to get out of the truck. She told me she was staying in it forever.

Dinoguy of course wanted to put on some gear

They have the lights and sirens on in this picture.

Here's where we attach the hose

 

The various fire trucks

A special bulldozer they use in fighting the fires.

It was too powerful for her to hold by herself

I narrowly missed being washed away after this picture

Holding a giant powerful hose is pretty fun

I think they could have used the hose all day. It really sprayed quite far.

A wet Princess thanks to Dinoguy.