Family Pictures 2011

Happy Thanksgiving! We are so grateful for our family and wanted to share these with you (there are a lot so we won't feel bad if you don't look at all of them).

2011-11-21

All Over in October

We went to a Hot Air Balloon Festival, but because it was so windy the balloons were not able to go up, so we enjoyed the rest of the festivities. The definite favorite was the petting zoo. And yes, these are llamas. I just had to post this picture because they look like they are posing so well.

Right after I took this picture the Llama actually grabbed the whole cup of food right out of Carter's hand. Then we noticed there were about 10 other empty cups in his pen. He's a sneaky one!

Wesley with a chicken. I never think of chickens as a nice cuddly animal to hold but he was quite enthralled with it!

There were lots of goats, bunnies, geese and guinea pigs and a pot bellied pig as well. All the animals were very nice to each other and because it was kind of cold and windy they were all intermixed just snuggly together.

Cameron and Carter were most interested in the little chicks. They spent most of the time chasing them and trying to grab them.

I had never seen a brown sheep before, but they had one and it was really soft. Bethy loved it!

They loved the rides!'

This was actually a pretty scary ride on a pirate ship. It went up and down really high, but Wesley survived!

There was a car show of old restored cars. This was the only car that you could even touch, let alone get in. It was restored by a 13 year old girl and it looked like the perfect size for our children.

All the cars were so neat, shiny and pristine. It was amazing! We liked them so much we decided to sell our mini van and buy this old 1923 Model T as our new family car. We thought it was a very practical move.

Here are our very tired children after a couple of hours of trick or treating...way too much candy. But all of our children were so willing to share with mom and dad our favorites. They gave me almost all their Twix and Kit-Kats and Ken got almost all their Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers. What great kids :)

Here are the full costumes: Hiccup (from How to Train A Dragon), Pikachu (Cameron's favorite Pokemon), A Dragon (from How to Train a Dragon), and Cinderella (our little princess).

We went to the Dallas Arboretum with the Tayyari family and it was very beautiful with pumpkins everywhere!

Wesley was kind of rude to spew all this water from his mouth at the other guests.

There were lots of little houses and cottages there that were mostly made of pumpkins (you can't see them in this picture, but there are some pretty cute little kids peeking through the windows.

The wicked witch of the west was there and surprisingly Bethany and Carter were not afraid of her even when she cackled.

The whole fam in front of a cool water fall! There were actually two weddings there that day as well, so it seemed like we were seeing brides, grooms, bride maids and groomsmen all over the place. A beautiful place for a wedding!

We went to the pumpkin patch by our old stomping grounds in Flower Mound when the kids had a day off school. We took some of our new friends from Frisco and saw some of our old friends from Lewisville. Cameron and Lillian Lloyd were very excited to see each other!

Bethany riding the tractor--so feminine.

Carter continues to play his heart out at all his soccer games and scores and blocks goals all the time.

Here is a picture of his team. We have enjoyed all the wonderful families on this team!

Ken and I went to a dress up party at the Empey's house (we're nerds if you can't tell). Part of the party was going on a road rally/scavenger hunt type thing and one of the requirements was to hitchhike. Luckily no one picked us up!

Bethany is still enjoying dance and likes to stay in her dance outfit all day long!

Our cute little pumpkin!

Bethany loved being Cinderella and she got to go to the parade at JC Penney, the trunk or treat at church and trick or treating to get candy. She was fully loaded.

Cameron received his Wolf Badge at the last Pack Meeting. We are so proud of him!

He is now officially a Bear.

Austin trip

We went to Austin over a weekend to see the BYU/UT game even though BYU lost :( and visit some friends. It was so fun to see the Mons family. We are excited they are back in Texas and we get to see them more often. Yes, my children love mud. They definitely have a lot of their dad in them.

Logan peacefully floating with his football. You can tell he just loves that ball!

We were grateful we survived all the fires that are burning down Austin and had fun with our friends.

We went to the game and stayed with the Fluckiger family as well. We had so much fun catching up with them, eating their yummy and very nutritious food and attending church at their ward. We are so blessed to have such great friends!

Good times in September

On Labor day, I met up with some great friends in Lewisville and we went and saw "The Help." It was a great movie and most of us were crying at some point. I read the book and loved it and I even loved the movie...which is saying a lot. We had lunch afterwards.

Bethany started dance with a lady that used to be in our ward in Lewisville and now lives over here in our stake. She does a great job with all the little girls and Bethany was so excited to start!

As you can tell, I am definitely used to being a boy mom. I put her leotard on backwards and I didn't even think to get here a tutu!

So thanks to Yunhi (a wonderful lady I visit teach) and her husband, they bought her a tutu and we were saved. I got her one too :)

Bethany is also participating in a play group co-op with a bunch of children her age in the ward. No, we don't just put them in jail during the play time. This is just a cool jungle gym the Combs have in their house for the kids to play on.

Cameron turned "9" and had a fun Harry Potter b-day party at our house. We started out with a Harry Potter quiz and some snacks like: Petrified witch fingers (pretzels), house elf brains (big marshmallows), Hedwig droppings (raisins), Buckbeak food (popcorn), Every flavor jelly beans and of course Butter Beer (Cream Soda). They also each had a Harry Potter character on their back and they had to ask yes or no questions to guess who they were.

Here is the whole group before they got sorted into their different houses.

Wesley's reaction when the sorting hat told him he was in Slytherin...ouch!

Cameron's reaction to being told he was in "Griffindor." We played games around our "womping willow" (weeping willow), a version of quidditch, cast spells on each other, and played hide and seek with and "invisibility cloak."

Then from youngest to oldest we hit the Dumbledore hat pinata.

Luckily, everyone got a turn and here is the mad rush to get the candy! They were actually pretty nice because I told them 15 pieces each.

We opened presents and Cameron scored with some really nice gifts...he has such generous friends.

Then he blew out his candles and we had brownies and ice cream. I am still finding stuck brownie pieces on hidden in random places on my tile floor. It was a great party :)

We had a little party at Gram's house the next day, so the celebrating continued.

One FHE night we started out with couch acrobats and caught some pretty cool pictures. Needless to say, it was a little hard to get them calmed back down for a lesson. Also, Bethany had a little cut on her ankle that started bleeding and so there was little drops of blood all over the floor and couch, so we all spent 15 minutes with wet rags scrubbing up the blood ( a fun FHE work project).