Picture Day!

I've never purchased school pictures, until these!

So grateful for my precious girls!

Let's Rodeo!

This was the first year that we decided to take the entire family out to cook off!  Usually just the Mr. and I go out for a night, but this year was a great change of pace and hopefully a new annual tradition!

Family pic where everyone is sort of smiling and looking at the same camera – yay!

Just some of the kids' crew (not all smiling and looking at the same camera)!

My little cowgirl did not want to leave the dance floor!  As we were finishing up our awesome bbq dinner, she kept asking me – “Please, Mommy, can we stay for just one more song!!??”

I’m still waiting on some pictures of Avery and Jack dancing (ahem, Carrie!!) – not sure who taught those two to dance, but it was absolutely priceless!  I have a video too that I need to post!

The first time the Mr. has worn a cowboy hat – not his thing, but he was a handsome cowboy that night!  These are the only two girls that can drag him onto a dance floor!

Anna was obsessed with Miss Carrie:

Love this one of my banana…

 The groupies…

  

One of my very best friends and me - yay for an updated Carrie-Traci picture (and Anna gettin' her dance on in the background)!

Thank you Pratis for always inviting us back!  We had SUCH an awesome time!!                  

Thank you, Mr. President!

This year we actually made plans for President’s Day since I always have the day off and so do the girls.  Daddy joined us along with Carrie and her boys, and we headed down to Kemah!  The girls were SO excited to ride the rides…

Avery wanted to ride everything – she may be shy, but the girl has no fear when it comes to big rides.  The 2 story carousel was the first stop, and of course we had to ride on top!

Anna wasn’t quite as sure about the ride just yet, and judging by my face, I wasn’t quite sure that we were being photographed:

The train was the highlight as evidenced by the huge smiles!

We had to wait for The Aquarium to open for lunch, so we decided to have the kids pose for a photo op.  Anna wanted nothing to do with the shark, so she got as far away as possible, and even that was not far enough for her – haha…

Then, all the kids took turns with Avery’s Hello Kitty camera and made us pose this time… 

Anna’s turn!

 Finally, we made it inside for lunch… this was our view from our table!  Thankfully the kids were very entertained!

After lunch, we headed outside for a walk along the water and for a few more rides:

The airplane ride was high on Avery’s list, and since Anna wasn’t tall enough to ride alone, Daddy offered to ride too.

If you notice, all of the other planes are up high, but the Sims’ plane… not so much.  Love the Mr.’s expression here:

If you look closely, you can tell that Avery has now figured out what is happening!  Luckily, they let her ride again – without Daddy to weigh down the plane. ;)

The ferris wheel was the last ride of the day – it was a little chilly way up high (and actually a little terrifying for the Mr. and me), but the girls loved it!

We had such a great time, and the girls crashed 30 seconds after loading up in the car to head home - Thank you, Mr. President for a nice little holiday!

San Antonio

It’s still February on this blog!

We decided that it had been too long since I had seen my BFF, Suz, so we headed down to San Antonio the first weekend in February. We also hadn’t seen Ryan’s grandmother in ages, so we paid her a visit as well!

Carter was in school on Friday, and Suz had to work, so we headed to Grandma’s house.  It was so very cool for my girls to visit with their Great Grandma!  We took her out to lunch, and at 85 years old, it is amazing to me how sharp she is and how well she gets around. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit!

After lunch with Grandma, we headed down to El Mercado to cruise around and let the girls experience a little bit of San Antonio. The girls were each able to pick out one thing to take home…  Anna is sporting her new bracelet while she is checking out a dandelion for the very first time:

And Avery decided on some brightly colored paper flowers:

When Carter got home from school, the girls were fired up and ready to play.  

Thanks Suz and Jay for having us for the weekend – we had such a great visit!!

Cuties

One from the weekend...

NYE

Historically, we have tried everything on NYE – the dressy night out, the hotel package, the night out with friends, and I feel like every year, we end up spending too much money for a mediocre night…  This year, we decided to have 2 of our favorite families over for some family-friendly fun, and we have not stopped talking about it since! 

The Schoppes and Almans arrived after nap time on NYE – we lucked out with the weather, so we all had a chance to catch up while the kids played outside.  The Schoppes brought the Disney version of the game “Headbandz” – clearly intended for the kiddos to play… but… since they were having a blast upstairs, the adults decided to give it a shot.  And oh my gosh, it was SO. MUCH. FUN.  We played for HOURS (probably because the drinks were flowing!). Just before midnight, the kids “popped” a few fireworks and then headed back inside for adults (and kids this time!) to play Just Dance for the Wii.  We played until we all wanted to pass out – and pass out we all did.  I can’t believe my kids were up until 11:30 (and were surprisingly great the next day…???)!

Here’s to a new annual tradition!

Christmas Wrap Up

Well, it’s a good thing that my New Year’s Resolution was not to blog in a more timely manner!

Christmas this year was so much fun, and I can honestly say it was the first time that it was not stressful!  The Mr. and I took 2 weeks off (almost for me), and we enjoyed every second of it! 

It’s just not Christmas unless you decorate sugar cookies!  This year, I took a page out of Sandra Lee’s semi-homemade book… we sliced and baked Pillsbury cookies and made the icing from scratch…

And they were oh-so-yummy!

Avery busted Buddy Jingle Bell with a sugar cookie, so she decided to write Santa a note to make sure he knew that they were HIS cookies.

Side note – The elf on the shelf was really fun this year – the girls could not do anything until they found Buddy! I wish I would have taken more pictures of the places we found him this year!  Ah… there’s always next year…

Since it took Anna for forever to open her birthday presents, we decided to let the girls open a present every day Christmas week.  It was really fun for them to focus on one thing each day, and there was still PLENTY for them to open come Christmas morning!  Here the girls are in their new boots from YaYa:

It was so fun watching the girls actually play together this year!

Christmas Eve church family picture.  Someone is happy that the Mr. decided to shave his mustache. Amen.

Boompa, YaYa & the girls:

Somehow we missed Deda & JoJo at church, so we took a pic at home!

We had our traditional tamale dinner and opened gifts with Deda & JoJo, changed into our Christmas jammies and took our annual tree picture (thank you Shalonda for the idea!!):

We thought for sure that the girls would be up bright and early Christmas morning since they knew that Santa was on his way, but they decided to sleep in – ah… a Christmas miracle!

Santa brought Avery roller skates:

And Anna got her own little chair:

YaYa’s gift was a big hit though (with both girls)!

The girls could not wait to go try out their toys outside, so despite the cold, we headed out…

Daddy chasing Anna as she learns how to steer…

At the end of our street, 2 of our neighbors had inflatables in their yard – Anna ALWAYS wanted to go see “Frosty No-man” and “Baby Jesus”.  No matter how late it was, I absolutely could not turn down that sweet little voice when she would say, “Come on Mommy, go see Baby Che-sus”. So as soon as she got to the end of the driveway, she knew exactly where she was headed.  She parked her car, and headed straight for Him…

She thought Frosty was pretty cool too.  Here she is yelling for everyone to “COME ON, COME SEE FROSTY NO-MAN!!!”

Avery – still trying to skate:

Meanwhile, Anna’s still hanging out with Frosty…

Boompa the hero (or sucker!)!

We headed back inside to warm up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing with toys. Avery and YaYa loved the super fun piano from Grandma Sims! Here they are perfecting their chopsticks duet...

And we even had a chance to make some snow...

Instead of Christmas lunch this year, we had Christmas dinner... Cooking during nap time = one happy mama. Daddy was in charge of the Pioneer Woman's beef tenderloin, and it was SO good. I think we found ourselves a new tradition!

Hope everyone had a VERY Merry Christmas!