Christmas Joy

Christmas Eve for us was fairly busy. In the morning we made Christmas Cookies (Santa can only have freshly made cookies!). Then it was off to the Gym for our favorite weekly workout class (and to work off all that cookie dough). Next up was church, where I got my first initiation into ushering... even getting to play secret service with an earpiece. Luckily, the 2p service was fairly light and I didn't have to do too much.. but I'll be much more prepared for the next time I volunteer. Then the family came up and joined me for the 3:30p service, which was packed out. Afterwards, it was off to try out the outside seating at the new Patrizzios (yes, the heaters really do work out there). Finally, we came home for the traditional family picture by the tree. This year was a bit of an adventure trying to get both the girls and Bailey all looking at the camera... but we found one decent picture.
The night included the usual Butler activities, including the girls giving each other a gift, setting out cookies and milk (the request this year was for Strawberry milk) for Santa, and putting reindeer food on the lawn for when the Big Guy stops by. Speaking of Santa, we spent the entire day tracking him using the noradsanta.org positioning plugged into Google Earth. It was very cool and let Abigail learn a bit of Geography.

Christmas morning started WAY too early. We heard some 'fussing' in Emma's room via our monitor that we still have turned on, and I found Abigail in Emma's room reading a book to her... at 4:20a. Emma had her princess crown and wand out, and they were having a good ol' time. Nothing like starting out the day with 2 tired kids. They ended up sleeping until 7:11a... but it took jen and I a while to go back to sleep, so it wasn't long enough. We let them come down and open presents (which doesn't take long with the 2 of them). So far, Emma's favorite gift has been her bike (she had been riding it all over the house waiting for the weather to be nice enough to ride outside) along with the pink poodle that she got from her sister. Abigail has spent a lot of time playing Cooking Mama and Nintendogs on her new Nintendo DS Lite. They've played with a lot of other presents but these are the big hits so far.
Bailey got into the Christmas spirit as well, getting a box of toys. She was soo excited that she would grab a toy and run off like she had something she wasn't supposed to have. After starting up the Turkey Breast in the crock pot for our Christmas dinner, we headed out the door to Mesquite to have lunch with Jen's family.

After a wonderful lunch, we let the kids dive into the presents. With 4 grandkids between 3 and 6, it took no time at all to open all the gifts and cover the floor in wrapping paper. We socialized a bit and then headed back home. Later that afternoon, my dad and step-mom came over for more gifts and dinner (hence the turkey breast). This was our first attempt at a turkey of any kind and it really turned out well. It was a 7 lb breast, cooked 1 hour on high and 7 hours on low. As the recipe said, the meat fell right off of the bone, making my job as the carver quite simple. As we waited for Grandma and Grandpa to show up, Emma tested out her new bike.
We opened more presents and had a very delicious dinner. All in all, a busy but exciting day.

Brownies Give Back

Something I've been meaning to post was a trip that Abigail's Brownie Troop made to a local assisted living center. Once again, they really do some neat things, and I give all the credit to their leaders. They all went there, played some games with some of the residents, decorated cookies and sang some Christmas carols. Abigail had a wonderful time playing Bingo with her partner (above)!

Happy Birthday Jesus

Jen put together the idea of having a Happy Birthday Jesus party in our neighborhood. She handed out invitations to all the houses on our street, worked with 2 of our neighbors to put together the activities and supplies, and God provided a nice sunny day. We had a little over 20 kids attend. Below, you will see one of the activities where Jen narrated the Christmas story with the different kids playing the parts.

The kids also put together a candy cane as a craft with the story of what the candy cane means attached to it and finally the kids went over and played a couple of games including the reindeer hokey pokey. After all the kids rotated through all the activities, they came together to sing happy birthday to Jesus (who had no problem blowing out the candle) and the kids got to have refreshments.

All in all it was a lot of fun and we got to meet a couple of new neighbors that we hadn't met before. I'm sure it will become an annual activity.

Clip Clip

Well, we finally got Bailey in for a real haircut. As you can see, it's pretty much shaved like a schnauzer. We asked around and decided to try a local groomer place instead of PetSmart. Twice we have taken her to PetSmart, and they said she wouldn't sit still enough to get a haircut.

We called up the new place on Friday morning, and they asked if we could bring her in within the next 10 minutes. Off Jen went. They said it would probably take 3-4 hours, which we expected, but they called us in 2 hours. She had the usual stuff, shampoo, cut, clean, nails clipped, etc. And it didn't cost a fortune; it was actually cheaper than Petsmart. The amazing thing is we are so surprised how soft she feels even though she has some pretty short hair. The staff said she was fine during the whole process. Even more surprising is the bandana lasted for 2 days on Bailey before she chewed it off.

The first night Jen decided Bailey was probably cold, and she threw a small towel on her as a blanket. We have also gone down the crazy dog owner's path and get her a sweater to wear from time to time. I think it's rather silly, but I'm in the minority on this one.

Also, you can see one of Bailey's favorite things to do... sunbathe. She sure does act like a cat. She gets out there, all spread out, sticking her legs up in the air, soaking in the sun. She actually sleeps sometimes with all 4 legs up in the air just to catch some rays. And she follows the sunshine across the back yard, moving when the shade gets to her.

School Christmas Parties

Jen was busy on Thursday. She stopped by Abigail's school for the beginning of her Christmas party. All 7 first grade classes were in the gym for a number of activities that they rotated around to and then got to have some cookies in the cafeteria.

Emma's party included her class getting to have pizza and a visit from Santa. Emma had a lot of fun and didn't show any fear when Santa showed up, getting to sit in his lap for a good couple of minutes talking about additional gifts that she wanted.

Visit from Nana

My grandmother stopped by for a couple of days on her way from Arizona to Orlando to visit my Aunt and cousins. We had a nice time together, getting to have lunch with Abigail at school, and some dinner out on the town. We ended the visit with the girls opening up their Christmas presents from her.

Catching Up

I've been a bit behind in updating on the comings and goings of our family. So, below are few things that I've missed.

First, we attended the annual Flower Mound Christmas parade. As you can see, our girls are quite silly when it comes to anything that makes noise. They also got lots of candy thrown out from the variety of floats and other groups in the parade. It was a nice parade, but it sure seemed like a good 60+ minutes of advertisements for businesses in town...

Next up was Emma's Christmas Party at church. Her class went caroling around the church to the other nursery classes.

Then, the girls decided to put on a princess play at home. We happen to have 2 matching Belle dresses, so they looked very cute together.

Emma's Christmas concert at CCDC was up next. It was her first performance of any type and she did well. We didn't have the music beforehand like we did with Abigail so we had no idea what songs to expect or if Emma even knew the words. She knew some, but sang about as much as all of the other 3 year olds.

Finally, Abigail got to perform in her first halftime show! Ok, it was the Marcus Varsity basketball game, but it is what it is. Below you can see the smile and joy on her face during her routine.

That's all for now. I'll have a couple of more pieces to put out here hopefully before all the Christmas pictures show up.

Final Thanksgiving Tradition

I'm finally getting around to finishing up all of my Thanksgiving traditions... which required me to first replace a couple of burned out bulbs. During the week off, I put up the lights on the house. Weather plays a big factor into the selection of the day (this year it was done on Monday) because you have to consider things like wind and precipitation. Yes, I went all the way to the top to put on the lights. I come from a long line of Butler's that put lights up on the roof... my parents won first place one year for the city of Owasso Lights contest.

Guys, the secret is just get up on the roof, take your time, and do it. After you have done it once its a piece of cake the next year. The first year I did this house I did everything using an extension ladder. Then, I finally figured out its not only quicker but somewhat easier to just do it all from the roof itself. This year's arrangement includes some additional lights in the bushes that I picked up on Dec 26th last year. Next year I think I'm going to tackle the tree in front (on the very right side of this dark picture) and try to do it up like the trees at Parker Square.

Here we go again

Most of you know the fun I've been having with my home computer. Well, I went and re-installed most of my applications on a new hard drive inside the same machine. All was well and then Saturday morning it died again. Same issue as before, the network partition table got corrupted. UGGHH! Luckily, I had backed up my pictures and quicken data a couple of days before and hadn't lost anything (other than my own time in re-installing everything).

Sunday, I was off to Best Buy to buy a new computer. I finally gave it. It was my first commercial PC since 1996 (outside of a couple of laptops). I've built a few PCs in that time to my own desired specs. Anyway, I wasn't much of a fan of Windows Vista that came with Jen's laptop that I got in January and I'm even more not a fan of it now. I love the Mac commercials out there (I'm a Mac and I'm a PC). I'm seriously considering putting a second hard drive in the machine, install Windows XP on it and move on with life. 5 years of development at microsoft and this is what we get?

Butler Family Fun Day

Tuesday Nov. 20th was Butler family fun day. At our house we have a marble jar that we use to reward the girls. When the girls do something good or use good manners or show some act of true kindness, then we reward them with a marble or 3 in the jar. When the jar gets full, then we get to have Butler Family Fun day. There really aren't any 'rules' or 'criteria' for what we get to do, its just supposed to be a fun day together.

As the day got closer, we talked with the girls about what they wanted to do and we settled on seeing the Bee Movie. We took that and built on it. We headed to Grapevine Mills to fulfill our day. Our first stop was Santa Claus. It has long been a tradition in our family to go see Santa the week of Thanksgiving. We've had pretty good luck of not having to wait in line (at least not too long). Today was one of those days. We walked right up at 12:45p and got to spend at least 5 minutes with St. Nick... long enough for me to snap 10 pics with my camera before getting the one above. It only cost us 1 5x7 (only slightly expensive compared to all the pics I got).

For being the first time ever that we didn't have at least 1 kid crying / fighting to see Santa, we stopped next door to get a cookie. What a rip off (theme of the day). Anyway, the Santa trip went so well we were able to head to a 1:15p movie (we had targetted a 2p show). 4 tickets and a combo meal later (more rip-off) we were ready. I brought a couple of sack lunch bags with me and was able to divide up the popcorn for everyone.

Then, 20 minutes into the movie, Abigail acts scared and says that she doesn't like the movie anymore. This has been a problem for her over the last 6 months or so. She doesn't want to see the bee get smashed (which of course he doesn't). It gets really frustrating dealing with what she calls 'scary movies'. I hope its something that she grows out of soon. Then, with about 20 minutes left in the movie, Emma starts doing the same thing (monkey see, monkey do). Guess we won't be going to the movies again any time soon. We survive to the end of the show and move along.

Next, its off to Build-a-Bear. We had a gift card from Emma's birthday along with a couple of coupons to use (finally, somewhat of a bargain!). Abigail ended up with a Rudolph (the nose even glows) and Emma went with her favorite color, pink! We made it out of there with minimal out of pocket expense. Next up was the merry go-round in the food court. As you can see from the pics, the girls had a lot of fun, with a big 'yee-haw' at the end. The walk there and then across the mall gave jen enough time to make a short shopping stop of her own.

Finally, we had a 'surprise gift' to get for the girls. We headed over to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get a 4ft pre-lit tree that they had on sale to put into the gameroom. Another coupon later (I love it) and we head home with a tree that the girls can decorate and use in the gameroom.

After heading home for dinner, Abigail and I headed out with my Dad and nephew to the Mavericks game. The 2 first graders had a grand ole time chanting 'Lets Go Mavs' and 'De-Fence' as it was shown on the screens throughout the game. Abigail was always more of a cheerleader then a player when she was on her soccer team, so she was completely in her element. Add that the Mavs won the game with the second largest come from behind victory in franchise history and the night was a success (along with a free Taco Bueno taco coupon in hand - ahhh, my FAVORITE fast food restaurant).

As you can tell, I'm a coupon fan. Its not that I dislike spending money, I just dislike paying full price for stuff.

Black Friday

It has long been a tradition to go shopping on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I started doing it even before Jen and I got married. To understand the passion, you have to realize that both of us are bargain shoppers. I spend at least a good hour each Sunday searching through all the ADs that come in the paper looking for a good deal. I sometimes will wait months looking for the exact price that I want for an item before I buy it.

This year is the first year that we have both gotten to be out shopping at the same time since Abigail was a little baby. We went to have Thanksgiving over at Jen's parents house in Mesquite and left the girls to spend the night over there. We came home, plotted our course, and off to early bed we went.

At 3:45a, we jumped up, took 2 cars and ran off to Kohls. Kohls has been a standard for the last few years for whomever was first out. In addition to at least some of their toys being 50% off, there is usually some other items from the AD that we like. Add in our additional 15% off coupon and $10 for every $50 bucks you spend, and its a given we will go there first. Next was a detour to JC Penneys, where I went ahead and picked up a few items while Jen waited in the Kohls line. Kohls was its usual packed self, with a good 15-20 minute checkout line... but Penneys was tame in comparison. Once Jen arrived, I handed off the items and was off to start my important part of the shopping day, the great tecno-geek shopping spree.

I've done Black Friday shopping at best buy before (or sent my poor wife one time) but the lines there are just horribly long and horribly slow, so I try my best to skip it if I can. My First stop was Fry's in Irving. After parking half way into the home depot parking lot at 5:15a, I was still able to retrieve my desired free 2GB SD card along with a couple of other things and headed for the check out. Despite the terribly long line (I was past the magazines and into the major appliances section), it took only 15 minutes because they had like 50 checkout lines.

I was a little off schedule and took a detour to the Staples in Irving. My original plan was to head up toward vista ridge then to the Staples in Lewisville... but one must be flexible. This was not a good choice. I got there at 5:55a, with a bit of a line waiting to go in. There were a couple of employees handing out tickets for some items. I jumped in line and waited. 6a came and the line move a bit but then it stopped. In case you don't remember it was in the upper 30s that morning, so it was cold. For some reason the manager was only allowing a small number of people into the store and wouldn't let anyone else in until someone left. Needless to say, those of us in line were not happy. 45 minutes later, I finally get to go in to find out they were out of the 2 things I really wanted. I went to look for my third item and just gave up. I was not happy.

There was one good thing for sitting out in the cold for 30 minutes... Jen called to say that Target was already out of one item and I was able to stop in Irving to look. They didn't have it, but Walmart was able to price match without a problem. Needless to say, my schedule is shot. I made a stop a sports authority, of which one item was already gone but they had a couple of other ones. Its now 8a and I give a call to the Staples in Lewisville on the off chance that they might have my item... and they do! A quick trip up 35 and I was able to get what I wanted. A stop at 2 Radio Shacks on the way home to find the one item I wanted from them and I was done. All in all a good days' work, all before 9:30a.

BTW, Jen was at Target in Flower Mound at 6a (after stopping at the new Walmart in Highland Village for a couple of items) and the line was just nuts... out the electronics side and all the way around the side of the building all the way to the back. She waited on the grocery side entrance, which they didn't open until all the people on the electronics side went in first. After her few discount items (as mentioned above, one was gone), she went on to do the weeks' grocery shopping. If you ever wanted to find the perfect time to go grocery shopping, its on Black Friday at Target. There is not a sole on that side of the building (I'm sure Walmart is the same way, but we are Target folks).

Until the next great shopping day (the day after Christmas of course).

All I want for Christmas...

Well, I'm a bit behind in blogging for the holidays, so I'll be posting in bunches. Today, Abigail finally got her loose tooth to fall out. So, she can be just like the famous song during the holiday season (we can already see both teeth coming in, so who knows how long the 'gap' will last)...


Speaking of Christmas, Abigail decided that today she wanted to have a 'Silent Night' by the Christmas tree. Since part of her desire was to have a dark room, we waited until after dinner. She had it all planned out... we would have some praise and worship, followed by some bible time, small group time of drawing a picture of our best part, then reunion and finally a song to finish it off. It took 1/2 dozen times to make her realize it was communion (and not reunion). Anyway, after a little preparation, off we went.

We sang some songs together (I was tasked with finding music to play on the computer), then I was tasked to read from the bible (of course, it was related to the Christmas story), the small group time got post-poned because of time constraints, followed by Abigail with help from mom handing out communion and we finished with me playing a special song (Silent Night of course). Who needs an organized family bible study when you have a 6 year old to put it together for ya.


It was a wonderful time together and it showed so many things. It showed how Abigail's imagination just keeps going as she gets older. It showed not only how much she loves Valley Creek, but also all the wonderful volunteers that work each week in pre-school, high 5 and now adventure zone and the great caring hearts that they have to nurture a young Christian. But it also showed just how strong her faith is. During our 'silent night', Abigail gave the blessing for our communion and you could just see the growth in her since she was baptized earlier this year. God truly is faithful and good.

A father (me and I assume Him too) couldn't have been more proud.

My (getting) Big Girls...

Where does the time go? You always hear it from your parents or aunts and uncles, "You have gotten soooo big, I can't believe it." We had a few occasions to admire how much our girls have grown and wonder where the time had gone.

It started on early Saturday morning when Abigail came downstairs at 4:45a to tell us that she had gotten sick... these are not the words you want to hear to start your day. We have fought the roto / stomach virus it seems at least once a year since Abigail first got it when she was 18 months old, and we had to drive 45 minutes home from Garland after she had gotten sick at Paula and Jason's house. By now, we are old pros, but it never gets easy. We got up stairs, and I was amazed to find out that Abigail had made it to her bathroom before she had gotten sick. Usually, it's everywhere in the room. And she was walking and talking like it was no big deal. No whining like our dear Bailey (see the blog below for details). She just asked for some pink medicine (chewable pepto), a prayer to feel better, and was ready to go back to sleep. I told her how big she and how proud I was of her for how she handled it.

Well, she got sick again around 7:15a (barely making it back to her bathroom) and that was it. Her going 2 1/2 hours between the first and second episode was a good sign that it wouldn't last long, but she still spent most of her day in her room watching DVDs, playing with her leapster, and reading. Eventually, I brought the laptop up to her to let her play games and offered her something to eat. She started with some pretzels, then wanted some more, and I gave her some toast with a hint of butter. I came back upstairs, and it was all gone, and she was ready for another piece of toast. She didn't fuss or complain about being stuck in her room all day (or eating nearly dry toast)... and she only ate small portions at dinner, stopping when her tummy was hurting. I told her again how proud I was of her and told her how big she was.

Today, we went out to do some family pictures in a part of our town that has a small creek next to one of the 30 miles of hike / bike trails. We've heard about it from others and had to check it out for ourselves. It was the 4 of us and my tripod. Overall, the girls did a good job of listening, smiling, and putting up with the 1/2 dozen different poses and locations. Emma was a bit tired, didn't really want to be there, but we were able to get her to be involved in the process.

Then tonight, while watching some video from this summer where the girls were singing VBS songs around the house, they wanted to watch Emma's 2nd birthday party. So, I found the tape, and we watched home movies for 1/2 an hour. Oh the memories... but mainly just looking back and trying to remember the moment. Trying to remember was it really like that?? Why haven't we realized how much Emma looks like Abby when she was that young?

It forced me to dig back further to find video of when Abigail was in her 3s (where Emma is now), and we'll probably sit down as a family and watch it tomorrow. Just previewing it a little bit, they look even more alike. I do remember how much of an "adventure" it was to try and take pictures with Abigail at 3...and how big Emma was being today during our photo shoot. Below is a pick from when Abigail was 3 at Christmas time.



This doesn't even begin to speak to trying to remember the early "baby"years... Maybe because we didn't sleep as much then and we just blocked it our of our minds???

Our little cone-head

Friday was a big day in the Butler household. Our dear little pup turned 6 months old. Below you can see her in her normal morning routine. It's amazing how she has gotten herself into a routine. It goes roughly as such:

• Run out of her crate with a little excitement / joy to be free.
• Walk with you right to the back door to go do her business.
• Come back inside and hop up on a few people.
• Sits patiently and waits to find out what's next (either on a kitchen mat or the living room carpet right by the kitchen.
• Follows someone off to a bedroom to say good morning or help wake them up (she loves to go upstairs and wake up the girls).
• Investigate the rest of the rooms and look for Dad (if I'm at work and not at home).
• Eat breakfast (unless she needs to go #2, then she usually waits to eat until after she has gone back outside to do that).
• Makes her way over to her toy bin by the kitchen and chew on / play with a few toys.
• Once every 3-4 minutes make a sweep of the kitchen floor for any food that has fallen there.
• Back to her toys.

And she seems to love every minute of it. Here she is with one of her toys (a toy phone that Emma thought she was getting for herself) on this Friday morning...



Well, today was a bit out of her routine as we had an appointment with the vet for her to be spaded. We had no desire to mess with being in heat, pups, and all that entails. My only fear was whether or not she would be the same pup afterwards. I took her at 7a to the vet and dropped her off. Right on cue as the technician came around to pick her up and take her back, she dropped a little happy water on the floor. Since she hadn't had anything to drink in 12 hours, it wasn't much (Does this ever stop???). And off she went. No goodbyes... No see ya soon... No it'll be ok.

We went and picked her up around 4:30p and the vet came in to see us. This was to let us know how to take care of her... what to expect... etc. She said that the procedure went fine, but for some reason, Bailey was being really whiny. Her surgery didn't go any different then the other dogs there... so she said either Bailey has a low pain tolerance or is a drama queen. She gave some extra pain meds (which in turn cost us more) and sent us on our way.

On Friday night, she would barely walk, take 2 steps and then sit right back up, couldn't get her to go potty at all. We took the cone off of her head for most of the night thinking that it was bothering her (and she wasn't moving much), and we just sat next to her to make sure she didn't mess with her stitches. Amazingly, she slept through most of the night on Friday... until Abigail came walking in our room on at 4:45a saying she had "throwed up". Having known that the roto-virus / stomach bug was going around, we had wondered when it would be our turn. Anyway, that's for another blog... But getting Abigail back in bed did wake up Bailey, so I got to sit in the office with her, my cup of coffee and the Saturday newspaper. Below is a picture of her on Saturday morning looking all pathetic with her little cone around her head.


Bailey finally got better on Saturday afternoon, walking around a bit, even trying to play baseball with Emma in the back yard. She did whine from time to time all through Saturday, but for most of today (Sunday) we haven't heard her whine at all. You do feel for her though when she tries to scratch an itch on her head.

So, I vote for 25% low pain tolerance and 75% drama queen... fitting right in with the females of the Butler family.

The Mean Green?

My dad and I made the 20 minute trip up to Denton tonight to watch the OSU Cowboys play against North Texas. Expecting a convincing win by my 'boys, I was rudely introduced to what is going to be a long season. The team just doesn't have any type of inside presence at all. They got bullied around by a 6'9" guy that looked like a stiff at the beginning of the game but turned into quite a player.

Is it too early to say there is always next year?

82-73 Mean Green Eagles.

Backups, backups, backups...

As many of you know, I'm a computer maniac. I have been ever since the 6th grade when I got into my first 1 day a week advanced computer class and got my first computer, an IBM PC jr. I've moved on thru many computers since then, most of them put together by myself so that I can the exact specifications that I wanted (and reuse some parts from the previous one, etc).

As I moved on to college, I got my degree in computer science, and my only job post-graduation has been as a computer programmer for Sprint. As you can tell, it is my life. Well, I had my first almost catastrophe this weekend. I went to startup my computer and it gave me a windows error immediately. As much as I despise the evil empire that is Microsoft, there isn't much else out there. No biggie, I've worked around many an annoying windows error. After a couple of more reboots and the same error, I rested for the night and waited till Saturday to pull out my windows install CD to try and do a recover.

That's when panic set it. The windows recovery console couldn't read my C drive. It was giving me system failure. Next, being the technomaniac I am, I pulled the harddrive out and put it in an external USB case that I had to try and read the drive from my work laptop. The drive just clicked a few times over and over. I was not happy. Finally, it came up and it could read one section of my drive and not the other. The problem is it couldn't read the main section.... Not Good, but not horrible. At least I could read something so I know that the entire harddrive itself hadn't failed, just a small (but very important) part of it.

See, there are lots of things on that missing main section. Our recent digital pictures being the main thing (Once every 4-5 months we gather enough data to burn a DVD, and I also move them off to a spare drive). I hadn't backed up my pictures since July. Next, was my quicken and tax data... hadn't backed that up in about 15 months (been 4 years for my turbo tax files). Then there was some digital scrapbooking that jen had done, other various files, etc.

That hard drive casing I used above normally contained a fairly large harddrive that I used to back up data too... however, on Saturday I realized that I had been much more diligent in backing up stuff from my work PC then I had from my home PC. Life was not good. Emma and I packed up the harddrive and headed down to some local tech place called Data Doctors. I picked them because I figured they would specialize on this type of thing. They said they could see my data on my messed up portion of the drive and they could rebuild it, file by file, in a couple of days and get it back to me. The problem was a corrupt partition table which tells windows what section of the harddrive is the main part and what is the second part. It would be costly though...

I'm now impatiently waiting to find out the results. Hopefully, I will have a handful of burned DVDs with all my data on it from my messed up drive. The morale of this story is BACKUP YOUR PC but also do it often. It would've taken me hours to rebuild my quicken data, not to mention all the lost memories of pictures from the last 4 months.

It still looks like I get to re-install my PC with a new harddrive though, including Microsoft and all the needed apps. Oh well, life goes on.

Trick-or-Treat

Our little cowgirls got ready for their night of grabbing lots of candy. (Abby was supposed to be wearing her cowgirl boots, but when it was time to leave, we discovered she had outgrown them since we bought them last spring. Nothing like waiting til the last minute). I don't know who in the government got the bright idea to move daylight savings time back a week, but it really messed up trick-or-treating. Since it's a school night, we got to start long before it got dark outside. We saw a lot of other families out doing the same thing. All in all, it worked out well because its much easier to see everyone.

If you look closely at this door, you will see a guy dressed up as a Christmas tree. I've seen him do this before... he has the attached extension cord to go with it. He really knows how to get into the Holiday spirit!

And finally, you can see the collection of cavities... I mean candy... that the girls brought in. The neighbors all seem so generous. No longer is it just one piece of candy, apparently. One neighbor was giving out giant sized chocolate bars (word traveled fast because there was a constant stream of kids at his door). Another neighbor invited our girls inside to make caramel apples dipped in 6 different toppings. Both girls had a lot of fun (as you would expect), but they got so many complements on their good manners that they used. They did a wonderful job of being polite and telling everyone 'thank you' and 'Happy Halloween'.



P.S. I dug up the following picture from last Halloween.... Emma still plays dress-up with that pumpkin outfit from time to time.

Again... and again...

So much for our last trip to the Pumpkin Patch... Abigail's Brownie meeting this week was held out at the Pumpkin Patch. They did lots of Brownie related things before heading out on a Hayride together. Jen didn't get to spend much time seeing what they were doing because she was running around everywhere with Emma. You would think Emma would be bored of the place by now. But she loves going on all of the bounce houses / slides.

Finally, Jen and Emma went back again on Halloween with Emma's friend Lauren after their gymnastics class. I guess we can finally say this is the last trip because it's all closed up now... and moves on to being a tree farm next month for Christmas Trees.

Emma's Fall Festival Party

Today was Emma's Fall Festival Party at Mother's Day Out. Here you see cowgirl Emma having fun with her best pal princess Jordyn. The kids attempted to make a few crafts, had pizza, and then got loaded up on candy corn and cookies.

Brownies

This year, Abigail is starting Brownies. I'm not sure what her ambition was to do it... I think it was because of the cookies (yes, she gets to sell cookies in the spring). We had a couple of choices of groups to put her in, and we ended selecting the one at our church. All the girls there did Daisies together, but Abigail knew a number of them from church, so she fit right into the group.

Below is a picture of one of the projects they did together that was really neat. They each sewed a heart pillow to give to ladies that are recovering from surgery from breast cancer. It's just an example of being part of a group that already spent a year together and were able to put together a project such as this.



Last weekend, Abigail got to go on her first outdoor adventure. They had a big campfire, made s'mores (which Abigail has been dying to do), and sang songs. Their first trip out reminded me of one of the first camp-outs I went on with my dad in Boy Scouts (more below)... A couple of days later they found bites all over their bodies, most likely chiggers. Now, if they had let us men attend, we could've shown our outdoor experience.

I reference my early camping expedition... we got to the site, and the older boy scouts and dads there told us that a particular spot would be nice and soft to sleep on. It was some kinda tall brush that had been trampled down a bit. Sure it was soft, but we got lots of chigger bites from the overnight trip. ouch.

One last time (we hope)

What will probably be our last trip out to the Pumpkin Patch occurred on Sunday. Jen and the girls went out after church to meet up with her side of the extended family while I stayed behind to attend a meeting at church. This is an annual get together with the cousins creating havoc all around the place. Below, you see the gang heading into the BIG hay maze. Kids can get lost in this thing for hours... but they seemed to navigate it well. Fortunately, Emma and Brandon are old enough now to join the older cousins in the fun.



As expected, there were dozens of pictures taken by all to try and get at least one with all 4 of them looking in the same direction. I've included the 2 best ones that I could find. Who can blame the kids, who have all the fun things that you can do out there such as hay rides, bounce houses, mazes and of course lots of yummy food like cotton candy, popcorn and snow cones. Add in the hundreds of people walking around and bright sun on a beautiful morning, and the last thing they want to do is all sit and look the same direction for a few seconds.



After the fun, I met up with the gang at a wonderful local restaurant called Life's a Beach. It has a huge wood patio deck out back that extends from the main building out to a huge sandpit. While the adults are sitting at their table enjoying the beautiful 80+ degree sunshine of the noon hour (it ended up being 91 before the current winter blast of wind chills in the 30s on Monday night showed up), all the kids were running around building sand castles and lost in their own vacation paradise. The concept really is a well planned out one... and it has good food to boot. Add in the constant soundtrack of Jimmy Buffet playing, the view of the tops of trees, a couple of fountains in the middle of man made water areas, and a couple of softball fields off in the distance, and you would have no idea you are in the middle of the metroplex.

And if that isn't enough for ya... the Bar (inside and out) is decked out with the NFL Sunday Ticket in HD. I counted at least 7 different HD games going on the different TVs, none of which looked smaller than a 42" Flat Screen. A vacation spot all in itself.

Rain rain go away

Just like my last trip, it just wouldn't be good trip without a little flying adventure. Because of the wonderful storms in Dallas this morning, 2 flights got cancelled and all the other flights are delayed at least 90 minutes. I was supposed to return on a 7:40p flight tonight, but it currently is scheduled to leave at 9:30p... which means 10:30p probably.

Anyway, I had flexibility on my side. My dad is picking me up at the airport... so I was able to re-route myself on a flight to Love because those flights are running on time. Its the big dis-advantage of the hub system that American runs. When a delay hits the area, they up and delay every flight that day in order to allow for connections to still be made.

I can thank Southwest for the extra flights by American. My kids (and my sanity) luv ya southwest!

The Chiefs

We might be all smiles in the picture, but the Bengals were a disappointment. The offense, outside of 2 drives, was still on their bye week. Having a somewhat makeshift offensive line didn't help, but they were just not in-sync at all.

KC did their best to keep the game close, but in the end it was just way too much of Tony Gonzalas, who had 2 TDs.

The fans were great though. No problems like we would've expected if we had on Cowboys jerseys in Chicago. And the sun only hit us for about 30 minutes of the game.. giving us wonderful weather for the game.

27-20 Chiefs

The Bungles

Well, its halftime. The weather has turned out beautiful, if not a little hot. Luckily, we have spent the first half in the shade. We are in the first row of the club level looking right down the Bengals sideline.

The Bungles are doing their best to make the Chiefs look like an all-star team. Its 20-7 and the game shouldn't be even that close. Above is the next to last play of the half where the Bengals did get a very minor win by stopping him at the 2.

Here's hoping that the the Bengals can find the magic of the first drive in the second half and turn this game around.

As expected, the fans are totally decked out in Red just like the Bears game. Why Cowboys' fans can't come to games in all blue is beyond me.

Go Bungles

Who Dey!

Well, it didn't take long for the Bengals to get on top. After holding the Chiefs to a FG (thanks to 2 personal fouls flags on the defense), they took all of 4 plays to score a go ahead TD.

Go Bengals!

Arrowhead

We have made it to Arrowhead stadium for the Bengals vs the Chiefs. We are hoping that the hometown fans are a bit more friendly than the ones we sat around in Chicago a few weeks ago.

Go Bengals!

Pumpkin Patch (Parts 2 and 3)

We made it out to the pumpkin patch twice this week. First, on Wednesday afternoon Emma went with her friend Lauren. They pretty much had the place to themselves and it looked like they had a great time.




Then, on Saturday morning, Daddy took the girls. There definitely was a lot more people there and it was really starting to get crowded when we left around 10:30a.

The Great State Fair of Texas

Another October family tradition is trekking out to the Fairgrounds for the Great State Fair. The girls are always very excited to go. The reasons include seeing the ferris wheel (but no one ever wants to ride it), merry-go-round, and playing games on the midway. Finally, every event that we go to has to include the purchase of cotton candy. I sure wish they could make that stuff not be so sticky.

Our first stop was the rides. Here, Abigail did an awesome job of getting Emma to join her on the ride, and then made sure not to spin the tea cup too fast, and finally when Emma started to get scared, she didn't spin it at all and tried to make Emma feel ok. We were so proud of her being such a caring big sister.


After trying out another ride that Emma didn't want to get on, we headed down the rows of games looking for a fishing game. We ended up playing a simple duckie game and then 2 booths down from it we found a fishing game (just our luck). The fishing game did produce the princess crown you will see below... better than any stuffed animal that she could've won.

This year we thought the girls might take their imagination and dress-up talents on stage at the backyard circus, but it turned out that they both were quite shy and decided just to watch. This led to lunch, of which Abigail and I both enjoyed yummy Fletcher's corny dogs.

Below is the annual picture of the girls with Big Tex. A nice change this year is the removal of additional vendor booths around him... and replaced with a bunch of model trains going around.


We made our way over to the Food and Fiber building it pickup some samples of tea (Abigail thought it looked like apple juice and quickly gave it to us saying she didn't like it), a free ice cream cone for everyone and a visit with the Elsie the Borden Cow and a new baby calf. This led us to the annual car show and another exciting part for the girls... getting to play around in lots of different cars (mostly mini-vans). I don't think we will be getting a new car anytime soon, but the AC was a nice break from the heat.

By now its mid-afternoon and we stop by the children's barnyard. Of course, all the animals are stuffed from being overfed all morning long and really didn't want to eat the feed that we bought at the door. We did find one baby goat to stop by and eat our hard earned money.



Then a visit to the children's farm where the girls learn what its like to be a farmer... and a quick stop at a play sand area with a Texas sized sand display of the fair and Dallas skyline... we made our final stop for some tasty funnel cake. It was loved by all.


All in all it was a good day. The weather could've been a little cooler, but from what we heard it was even hotter on Monday (along with 22 area school districts all off and some new boy band doing a free concert that caused it to be packed beyond belief). Just like our trip to Sea World, who ever came up with the crazy idea of putting down black top for lots of people to walk around on in mid-90 degree heat is beyond me.

Pumpkin Patch Part 1 (of many)

Today was the first of what will be many trips to the pumpkin patch. With it being all of 3 minutes from our house, our family goes out there quite often every October. Sometimes, it's just Jen and the girls (as it was today), or the 4 of us, or we go with some of our friends or family that want to visit it.

Today's first visit was a reward for the girls going to get their flu shots (bribery always works)! The rain moved in; however, and made it a pretty short trip. They still had fun!