Mavs Game

On Tuesday night we went to go see the Mavs play vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves. Lucky for us, we were able to score 4 FREE platinum level seats... and now we can understand why people spend the big bucks. Our parking spot in the garage was less than a minute walk to the stadium entrance. Next, we headed up stairs to an included Platinum Club buffet. While we definitely wouldn't pay the stated $30 a person for it, we were very thankful that it was free. Our table looked right out the window toward the plaza on the south side and the buildings in downtown. The girls got to eat some real manly hot dogs, not the normal sports area fair.

We finished up and headed to our seats about 5 minutes before tip (and brought a to-go box of food with us to eat there). Once there, one thing we noticed was the lack of isle vendors which allowed us to escape without having to buy any cotton candy. Apparently when you pay the big bucks, each section has their own waiter/waitress taking personal orders all from your own seat.

Everyone had a lot of fun and the game worked out perfectly for the girls. Just as Emma was starting to fade into boredom in the third quarter, the Mavs made their big comeback from 29 down and the crowd really got into it. As it got louder, Emma would cheer as well and she enjoyed the rest of the game.

Of course Abigail enjoyed every second of it. With this being her first year to play basketball, she was trying to understand every action that was going on. Her first comment to me was 'Oh, they don't have to hold it', referring to the rule for 2nd grade and under girls that don't allow any fast breaks... so, when you get the ball on defense, you hold it until all the players have gone to the other end.

As for myself, I was spending a lot of time hitting refresh on my cellphone checking the Holiday Bowl score, including watching the game during the Mavs halftime at the bar. At least I got to see one team win (poor OSU).

Anyway, we got to see history (biggest comeback ever for the Mavs), the game got done rather early and no one fell asleep on the way home. All in all, a very good family night out.

Christmas #4

On Sunday we had our last Christmas celebration with my sister's family. They came over for dinner and to celebrate Christmas since she was working on Christmas day. We had a great time together and the cousins enjoyed their time playing star wars. The night finished up with a fashion and dance show, which the girls thoroughly enjoyed while sporting their new hannah montana make-up.

Christmas

We told the girls on Christmas Eve that they were not allowed to come downstairs until at least 7 a.m. Abby woke up at 5:40, but she (surprisingly) read in her room until 7:00 before we heard her reminding us that it was Christmas morning. Emma was up by 7:15, so we headed to the Christmas tree to begin our first Christmas of the day.


By 11:00, we were packed up and headed to my parent's house for Christmas #2. We got there just before noon and had a wonderful Christmas lunch. Afterwards, we opened presents and the cousins ran around enjoying each other.


Next, we packed up the car and headed to Brian's dad's and stepmom's house. We arrived there a little after 3:00 and proceeded to have Christmas #3 of the day. We opened presents and had another wonderful Christmas dinner. We were all stuffed!


As you can see below, Rocky the cat thought he was one of the kids eating at the kid table...


By 8:15, we were home and very tired. Our 4th and final Christmas will be on Sunday with Brian's sister who had to work a 12 hour shift on Christmas. We have been blessed with such a wonderful Christmas season!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve morning, Brian and I got in a pre-Christmas workout, came home to get cleaned up and grabbed a quick lunch. We left at 12:20 for church. Brian was helping out by being an usher for the 1:00 service, and I took the girls with me and taught the 4 year old class. Next, we attended the 2:30 service as a family.

After a much needed trip to the car wash, we went to try out the newest Flower Mound restaurant, Texas Roadhouse. We got there about 4:30p hoping to beat the crowds (last year it was a long wait starting at 5p at Patrisio's). Once we got there we saw the signs stating that they will be closing at 5p, so we were thankful for our timing. We left there feeling very full. It was great food. We headed home and made homemade cookies for Santa, 2 homemade apple pies, and a potato casserole. Somehow, that took over 3 hours, and we were finally out of the kitchen around 10:00 and ready for bed.


In the middle of the cooking, the girls made it outside to put out some reindeer food for when the big guy arrived. Also, as is tradition in our house, they got to open one present each. Finally, they set out the freshly made cookies with some milk for Santa to snack on later that night.

Ice Skating

The Galleria Mall in Dallas puts up a giant (I believe it is 95 ft. to be exact) Christmas tree in the middle of the ice skating rink each year. This year, we decided to attempt to take the kids ice skating.


We braved the cold, drizzly, foggy weather and got there at 2:00 on Tuesday. We had to wait in line to get in and get our skates. The place was very crowded.

The girls did a much better job of skating than I anticipated. Abby fell down several times (no surprise there for my clumsy daughter), but with help, she got right back up and kept going. Emma stayed close to the side handrails, but she loved it when Brian would take her out in the middle, holding her hand, and skate really fast. There were people everywhere...and people falling down everywhere...so, you had to really watch yourself to make sure that you weren't going to be brought down with them. I am not the best of skaters, but I did my best to help the kids get around the rink without a trip to the ER. It was fun, and I hope we can make it a Christmas tradition.




As you can see from the pictures, Brian was the only one with a steady hand (and balance)... so he took all the pictures and didn't make it into any of them.

Happy Birthday Jesus Party

Our small group decided to celebrate Jesus's birthday by having our children come to our classroom during our normal small group time last Sunday. Several of our families were out of town due to the approaching holiday, but we still had a great turnout.


We had a Nativity Bingo Game, a Bible story and re-enactment of Jesus's birth, a candy cane craft and story, and gingerbread craft. We ended the party singing "Happy Birthday Jesus" and having cupcakes. The kids had a great time!

Emma's Preschool Party

I attended Emma's preschool Christmas party on Friday (which would be my last Christmas party for a child in preschool) :( Honestly, it was the strangest school party I've been to in my 5 years of having children in school. Her room mom was the room mom in both of her boys' classes; however, they are in 2 different classrooms down the hall from each other (I would highly discourage any mom from doing this). (On a side note, I had e-mailed the room mom and asked her how I could help, but I never got a reply).


So, the kids ate pizza and had juice boxes. After that, the room mom placed a plate of oatmeal and a plate of glitter (yes, a full plate of glitter) on the tables and gave each child a bag to make reindeer food. The only instructions were, "Put some oatmeal and glitter in your ziploc bag." Then, the room mom disappeared (obviously to go to her other son's classroom). As you can imagine, the kids were using their hands and taking generous amounts of oatmeal and glitter and attempting to make them land in their baggies. The room was a disaster.


Once the boys began wrestling and the teacher's aide had to blow her whistle in the room, one of the moms started playing musical chairs. Kids were running and pushing...not good. A chair got pulled out from under Emma, and she fell on the ground and cried. I ended up holding her for the next 10 minutes. Granted, she has a cold/allergies and had been rubbing her eyes and nose raw that day. So, it didn't take much to set her off into tears.

The room mom still wasn't back, so the same mom in charge of musical chairs asked them to all line up and they started singing songs from their Christmas program. At this point (12:40 - the party was scheduled to be from 12:00-1:00) the room mom ran back in the room looking very frazzled and said we could all leave when we were ready to go. We were...so, we left just in time to see the room mom running back down the hall to her other son's classroom.

Cookies with Luke

Today, Luke came over to decorate Christmas cookies with Emma. They had a good time using icing, m&m's, sprinkles and colored sugar to make their cookies. Afterward, they sat down to enjoy their creations with a juice box.

After a couple of games upstairs, they ended up downstairs practicing for their nights out on the town via MarioKart.

Pinky Dinky Dog

Bailey got a new sweater this year to help keep her little 15 lb body warm on the colder days. Last year she got a blue sweatshirt but this year we finally found a pink one fitting for our little Queen. Doesn't she just look happy and proud to be in pink?

Busy day continued

This is the long awaited continuation of the previous post from our very busy Saturday...

After the parade, Abigail had Dance practice while Emma had a birthday party. Lucky for us, both were at Excite. Next, I took Abigail over to watch some of the Excite girls dance and the Parker Square festivities. We didn't stay for all of it because it was very windy and a bit cool.

After a quick snack at home, we were off to Abigail's second basketball game. While this game had some more challenges (including only 1 shot attempted in the first half), Abigail started getting into the game on both ends. During the first quarter she played against a girl who had either played basketball or a lot of soccer before because she did a lot of pushing and fighting for position. But, good for Abigail she held her own. At the end of the quarter she came over exhausted telling me 'That girl was tough'.


In the 3rd quarter, she played against a different girl and showed that she is getting pretty good at figuring out defense, getting a finger on a couple of passes due to good guarding of the ball handler and also got a steal. On the offensive end she actually attempted 2 shots and got 3 rebounds. I think she is starting to get the hang of it. When Abigail finished the third quarter, she told me her legs hurt and she felt like she needed to sit in a chair... she ran and played hard.


Right after the game, we zoomed back to Excite for the Dance Company Christmas party, which had already started. After coming home to get ready for our small group party, I went back up to Excite to pick up Abigail and took her and Emma to the other Excite location for parents night out. The girls had a blast, getting to play around the big gym, got to do lots of crafts, visited with Santa again and watched part of Kung Fu Panda.

I came back by the house to pick up Jen and headed over to our small group party. Lucky for us, it was fairly close to our house so it wasn't too much backtracking. At the party, we had a lot of fun hanging out with the other couples in our church group. In the end, we actually ended up with a gift we liked at the white elephant exchange (its currently on display in the kitchen).




The girls were exhausted when we finally picked them up after 10p... they normally are in bed by 8p at the latest... but as per the norm were up by 7:30a then next day, all nice and grumpy.

We all survived and had a lot of fun.

Christmas Parade

Today we went to the annual Flower Mound Christmas parade. The weather was a little cooler than expected, with it being quite overcast and windy for most of the parade. Nothing like it was 2 years ago, but there definitely was a chill in the air.

This year, Abigail was asked by 2 groups (her brownie troop and her dance team) to be in the parade, and she picked her brownie troop. The rest of us found our usual spot along the route and waited (and waited and waited...) for the parade to start.


Once it did get started, all the kids were excited to collect the candy being passed out and look at all the entries. This year seemed to have a lot less 'advertising' then in years past (i.e. businesses driving their cars with banners about themselves) with a whole lot of scout troops and sport teams to fill out most of the parade (in addition to both high school bands and santa).


There was only one time that Emma covered up her ears... when the drum section was playing as they marched by.


The parade lasted about an hour and it would've been over by 11a if it had started on time but I guess they wanted everyone to get a little bit colder in the weather before warming everyone up with holiday cheer. Merry Christmas.

Christmas concert

This week was Emma's Christmas concert at her preschool. For Jennifer and I, this is our 4th and final preschool Christmas concert, and it ended up being one of the better ones. This year, the music teacher did a good job of just picking a few songs, only doing the main verse for each and shortened the program down to less than 20 minutes (we've been known to be there for up to 45 minutes). Emma kept telling us all week, "I don't need to practice, I know all the songs!" Well, she was telling the truth. She sang all the songs and included all the hand motions.

Unfortunately for some of the kids around her, Emma got put on the first standing row front and center (with her classmate and best pal Luke standing next to her left). As you can see from the picture above (she's the one in the black and gold dress with the Texas-sized bow on her head), she looks about 2 years older than anyone around her, which included Pre-K 4 year olds and Pre-K 5 year olds.

Below, you can see Emma with her 2 best girl friends before the concert.


And, here is Emma and her boy Luke afterwards.

Dear Santa

Abigail came home from school this week with a letter that she had done in class. The version below is her 'draft' version that she then re-wrote on a smaller piece of paper and then sent it on to Santa. Not much else to say except I thought the letter was awesome...

A new game

This summer Abigail went to a basketball camp at our local High School. After it was over, her 2 friends at the camp talked about playing on a YMCA team in the fall. Well, this week was the beginning of basketball season. Luckily for us, the season runs opposite of soccer season for Emma so we didn't have both seasons going on at the same time. Also, since Abigail is in dance with her friend, Brooklyn, (whose dad is the coach) we were able to work the practice around our dance schedules.

For those that don't know, YMCA basketball is really meant to go out and have fun... so one of the 'rules' of the league is that you can't practice more than 1 hour a week. So, the team of 8 girls got together for the first time last Tuesday and on Saturday was their first game. Talk about a crash course!


Coach John did a great job on coaching the fundamentals, and the girls caught on rather quickly. However, at the first game, we ended up playing a team that had played together last year in 1st grade... so they looked much better than we did. The girls finally got the hang of it after about the first half, but we never managed to score any points. The final was 14-0.

Abigail figured out how to handle the offense zone pretty well, getting off a couple of shots, but she is still a little scared of the hard ball, so it makes rebounding somewhat hard to do. But, I think she is grasping the game well and goes outside every morning before school to practice her dribbling. We also went up to her school on Sunday afternoon and practiced some on the outside hoops. She is very coachable (and has a definite height advantage), and I think she will learn a lot this year.

KLTY Christmas Wish

KLTY is a local Christian radio station that the ol' minivan is tuned to when we aren't listening to a HSM CD or Radio Disney. Every year, I hear them reading Christmas wishes on the radio. People write in and nominate people who are in need and ask listeners to help. I usually cry every year, and every Christmas I say that I am going to help, but I never follow through. This year, I heard they would be at our local Chick-fil-A from 6-10 a.m. - and a bonus - free chicken biscuits to the first 94 people. :)

I told the kids last night what we were going to be doing today. They seemed eager to go (not sure if they were excited about the Christmas Wish part or the free biscuits)! Both of my children were up at 6:05 a.m., so it was no problem going there before school.

Once at Chick-fil-A, I was pleased to see so many people there reading through the folders. What I was most shocked by was the magnitude of wishes there were - the guy from the radio station told us there were over 10,000 wishes, and they had spent last week shredding other wishes that, for some reason or another, the radio station decided not to include. So many people in need!

It was heartbreaking to read through the folders and learn about people with so many problems. Our family decided to help the Sinclair Family. There is the mom, Debbie, who is 40 and recently diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer, the dad, Kimbell,who recently lost his job, and 4 (what seems to be) amazing teenagers. The older teenagers are working part time jobs in order to help the family with expenses, but they only have one unreliable vehicle - mom needs to be driven to chemo and kids need to go to work- quite a predicament. At this point, they aren't sure how to even put food on the table. The dad told me that his teenagers haven't even asked about Christmas presents; they know there really won't be a Christmas this year, and all they would ask is for their mom to be healed.

After doing some research (via the internet), we found out that they are actually a family that lives right here in our town. I've already e-mailed the family, and they seem very gracious for any help.

I hope this season finds you with a heart to give to others, however big or small your gift might be.

Acts 4:32, 34-35 — “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”