Thanksgiving

I always love Thanksgiving. We had my parents come up from Lubbock along with my sister Jenny and Mema. We had a fun week going to Six Flags, making delicious Thanksgiving dinner, watching movies, hanging out, and going to a football game!

Ashley and Zack opened their "Heritage spa", complete with a menu of services ranging from 15 cents to 60 cents. Everyone really enjoyed this special treat. The kids were super excited with their aunt Jenny's tip of $1.00. Part of Natalie's specialty is walking on your back and then jumping off of it as hard as she can. Gives an extra "oomph" to her massage.

As always, Natalie goes through a "Grumpy" time when she's tired, usually around 5-6 pm. I wish she still napped, but she definitely doesn't.

Aunt Jenny tried to help and convinced her she should be happy and have a happy picture.

Another highlight of the week was going to the Texas Tech game at the Cowboys stadium. It was our first time inside and we were very impressed. The stadium is really large, and the screens are amazing. What a fun game...

Six Flags, Holiday in the Park, was a blast for the kids. They loved riding rides with their grandparents and Jenny.
Natalie was so tired at the end of our day, she cuddled up to Josh's arm and promptly fell asleep in the car. She's quite the daddy's girl.

Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun! Zack was a knight, Natalie a princess, and Ashley was a prima ballerina. Everyone knew immediately that Zack was a knight and complimented him immediately on his costume. Natalie of course would then chime in with "and I'm a princess!!!" so of course they would have to compliment her too. It was pretty funny.

Ashley wore her costume to school for career day and Zack was able to wear his for his preschool's Halloween parade. Natalie's dance class said they could wear costumes, but since her princess dress was too long for dance, she wore one of Ashley's old dance costumes and LOVED it. She looked adorable and we said she was a dancing princess.

Easter

Easter was very nice this year. Josh's parents and brother Parker came up to visit and we enjoyed a little boating, some yummy food, movie watching, and Easter decorating and egg hunting. The kids really liked spending time with their grandparents, especially since we hadn't seen Grandpa for a while (he was on a research vessel for Texas A&M for several months.)

For one of the movies, we watched "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," a WWII film about a Nazi concentration camp. It was very interesting, but the ending completely caught me off guard. I recommend the movie for those who enjoy movies of that terrible time period.

On a more upbeat note, we LOVED decorating Easter eggs with dye, food-safe markers, and stickers.
Don't they look so cute? Ashley and Natalie loved being twins and Natalie said she loved her "dancing dress."
Everyone loved looking for the eggs. The Easter bunny hid them inside since outside was all wet and soggy.
While opening all the eggs, I noticed Natalie would open and eat, open and eat, etc. I asked Grandpa how much she had eaten and he said "Alot!" Needless to say, we put the candy away after that. I didn't want any tummy aches!

Our real Lubbock Christmas

We headed to Lubbock the afternoon of Christmas Eve. We got there just in time to read the Christmas story from the Bible and other favorite Christmas stories, and give big hugs to everyone! We then hurried the kiddos to bed so Santa could come (again for us, but the kids were just as excited) and the grownups visited. I love this picture josh shot from the Christmas tree:
We had a wonderful Christmas morning, much different from our smaller one the morning before. There was quite the business of activity with presents for 17 people!

Everyone loved playing with their Christmas presents...

We then had a yummy Christmas breakfast and enjoyed lounging around, playing with new toys, cousins, and aunts/uncles.
Here's Jenny with all the cousins together:

We also had an enjoyable time reenacting the Nativity. In our family, Ashley was an angel with her Aunt Jenny, Zack was a donkey and then a sheep, Natalie was a sheep, Josh was a shepherd, and I was the Innkeeper's wife.
We loved seeing our new little cousin Kyle. Natalie and Ashley were particularly infatuated.

Natalie and her cousin Gracie (also 2) LOVED playing together and Ashley liked helping them in their play adventures.
We enjoyed feeding the ducks at a local pond. Some of the geese were pretty aggressive, so we had Natalie and Grace on a higher rock.

Best friends!
Ashley and Zack really bonded with their "cool uncles." Thanks for those fun times Chris, Todd, and Dave! They still talk about the hide and seek game at the Playground of Dreams. Natalie also particularly loved bonding with granddaddy. She almost took over his whole soup...

Another very special event was the blessing of the newest addition, Cheri's baby Kyle. It was such a memorable event to have everyone present for this blessing. We had this family photo afterwards, sadly it is the only picture we have of all of us! We had meant to have another, more planned picture, but ran out of time :( Zack was a little sad in this picture and I couldn't get him to turn around. For those who don't know--all of the girls are my sisters. We've all missed each other!
We also had a fabulous time riding horses. Ashley and Zack got their Christmas wish and were able to enjoy horseback riding at a small ranch here in Texas. It was their first time, but their great-uncle Al was able to spend some quality instruction time and get them up to speed on the basics lickity split! They were both leading the horses by themselves, despite my freaking out everytime their horses would speed up even the slightest bit. They did really good and can't wait to go again. They both also loved going a little bit faster with their aunt Stephanie.

Finally, what would Lubbock be without a trip to the science spectrum?