Christmas...

We just had a lovely 4 day Christmas celebration as a family. It was very nice and relaxing! We pups got some new pink collars (our other ones were STINKY! In fact, WE are stinky and need baths too- get on that, EMMA!) The boys loved opening presents this year (Cole especially), and moved from one present to the next very quickly. We read the story of Jesus' birth from Cole's new Bible. When we woke up in the morning, it was raining very hard. Cole asked, "Is it raining because God poured a cup of water down?"

It's been fun to have Jon home for 4 whole days and not be traveling! I'm sure we won't always have Christmases like this one, but I do hope that we will try to be still and remember why we're celebrating in years to come!

Favorite gift for each kid?

Colton- Legos. He loves those things! (And Jon had a fun time assembling them too!)

Beckett- Chapstick. He'd carry that thing around and put it on all day if he could. He's so proud to have his own.

Peanut Butter Kisses ROCK!

Addie Here. I just wanted to share with you the most delicious treat that I experienced this week. Yes, they might have been sealed in a bag and pushed to the back of the counter top... but I found a way to reach them and eat every single one (even most of the plastic bag too!). These peanut butter kiss cookies were quite a favorite- Jon and the boys LOVED eating them and Emma obviously liked taking pictures of them. I hear they'll be making more and plan to keep them away from me. We'll see how that goes!

Today

Highlights of our trip to Texas

We doggies were not allowed to fly out to Texas with our family for Thanksgiving this year. We're not holding it against them, just saying that Jessica made the effort to drive down with her pups and they had a great time spending time with our family. In this blog post, we're going to pretend we got to have fun in Texas...

Jessica and the boys. Suprisingly Emma didn't take any pictures of Banter and Taupper!

Grannie and Grandpa with the boys. I think we bribed Colton with dessert here...

We went down to Temple to spend Thanksgiving day with family and had a great time!

Zane and Maddie kept the boys entertained and they had a great time together. Zane even taught Colton how to tackle his mommy. Hmm.... Thanks Zane!

Here's Jessica and Al when we went to the Botanical Gardens to take family pictures. It was a beautiful place!

The boys loved playing with Jeremy and Chillon. The boys quickly warmed up to Chillon when she gave them a piece of gum. GUM is their favorite these days! Beckett finally keeps it in his mouth now.

A goofy family photo. Those are always fun.

The boys' favorite activity in Texas was a train ride in Fort Worth. We went twice and the train went through the park, across a river and under another (real) train track. They thought it was great!

Besides the trains, an all week favorite activity was playing in the leaves in Ima and Papa's backyard. Neighbor kids came over.

They ran, jumped, hid in & threw all over- wonderful fall leaves!

skydiving

As some of you may know, Jon got to go skydiving while he was out in Texas to celebrate turning 30 this year. He dove along with his brother, sister & dad. They had an amazing experience!

Jon's grandparents along with his Aunt Sheri & Uncle Benjie joined the rest of the family to watch the event and we all had a great time together. The boys had a great time playing outside, drawing with chalk on the pavement & watching their daddy jump out of a plane!

[ Beckett liked playing in the doorway to the airplane hangar. ]

Beckett's 2nd Birthday!

BECKETT is 2 years old! Since our family was in Texas for the big day, Emma and Jon took the boys and a few of their friends to Plaza Fiesta, an amazing Latino mall with a gigantic playplace in the middle. The kids had a blast!