Fall Fun

Family Hike

Pumpkin Carving

Boo at the Zoo

2011 Christmas

I'll spare you every picture of every gift anyone opened this year. For some reason my picture taking skills left much to be desired and about 1 in 5 pictures actually turned out good!

We were blessed to be able to spend the week before and Christmas Eve with Jeremy's sister and her family who traveled from El Paso. Carter and Andre had so much fun catching up with each other!! They started off good, but it wasn't long before they were back in the ole swing of things and telling on each other and fighting over toys. Just like the good old days!

Christmas day was spent with my family at my Mom & Dad's. A good time was had by all!! We are so thankful for our family and friends and already we're looking forward to next year!! :)

Check

We attended our first Christmas of the year. Check. One down, two to go. It is fun to get together with family and play games and watch the kids play together. Carter and the others played so good this year that after lunch, I never once saw Carter until it was time to open gifts! It was Gemma's first time to open a gift or anything, so she was having a ball. As a matter of fact most of the pictures I have are blurry because she never quit moving!!

From the Rundquist Christmas, we headed over to Olsburg to see Santa, aka Grandpa Warren. Gemma did just fine. She never batted an eye.

Carter, however, well I don't think he knew what was really going on. He told me later that he thought Santa looked like Grandpa Warren, but apparently, that wasn't good enough.

They are calling for snow - 8-10 inches I hear. People are starting to talk here at school... :)

Thankful November

This upcoming holiday season I need daily reminding that life is not about things. It's not about what I have or don't have, it's not about what gifts I give. It's not about how much money I spend. During the month of November, I am going to try to do daily photographic posts of things I'm thankful for - past or present. I need to remind myself that all things I have are a gift from God and that I need to put more focus on Him than myself. Since it is already November 3rd, here are the first three posts.

Day 1 - I'm Thankful For...

Little 2 year old boys helping Grandma make mashed potatoes at Christmas

Day 2 - I'm Thankful For...

Freedom

Day 3 - I'm Thankful For...

My little man being such a good big brother!

Sneak Peek

I don't have the full Halloween post ready yet, but here's a little sneak peek:

Party On!

Today was Carter's first school party. I think he had fun. There are 9 boys in Carter's preschool class. There was a Superman, Buzz Lightyear, a couple of Transformers and a few others. Only one other Cowboy. Although, Carter isn't really a Cowboy, he's a Calf Roper.

I just popped across the street for a few pictures.

Carter shared his funnel cake with me. :)

Superman is Carter's buddy Landon, from church.

Miss Kim is a cute little Green Crayon. She helped spin Carter around for Pin-The-Nose-On-The-Pumpkin. How'd he do?

Pretty good, I'd say!

Be sure to check back next week for hopefully a complete post of Halloween weekend fun. I hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween weekend!!

Traditions

I have never had much for our own traditions for holidays other than Thanksgiving and Christmas. We dress up for Halloween and go trick-or-treating, but other than that, I haven't done much on my own for my family when it comes to holidays. This will be a year of firsts in our house.

We have had pumpkins around the house before but we've never really carved them. (I don't like to pay for pumpkins, so if we can't "find" them, we don't get them.) This year, we landed on 5 pumpkins. So we decorated them - potato-head style.

My mom found us a set of these fun little plastic eyes, mouths, noses and ears a few years ago. Carter had a ball using these! He's big enough now where he can almost punch them in by himself, but he still needed a little mom-muscle.

I think I might try to talk Jeremy into carving the other 3 sometime this week if he can get home before dark. :)