We have liftoff!!

We got our new mattress about a week ago, but today was our first chance to go pick up the bedframe. Hmm. It's...tall.



-- Posted from my iPhone

O Christmas Tree, continued...

Kayci's new pink tree is so fun! We put it up this morning and she's been working on it in between watching the Santa Clause and hanging out with us.




Noble likes the giant singing snowglobe, and I think it's cool that he's surprised when we sing along. Christmas probably feels like some big inside joke to him...




We just put up our tree, and it's gorgeous! For the little green house, the best fit is a tall, skinny fir. Add some lights and lots of memories, and voilà! It's Christmas! We didn't plan to do the tree without him, but this worked out well. It was fun to see Noble's face when he woke up.










































Posted from my iPhone

O, Christmas Tree

On the way home from Ronny's yesterday, we stopped at the Christmas tree farm in Elgin just to check it out. It was lots of fun, and we found the perfect Pharaon tree in the fir barn. We can't wait to see the finished product!












-- Posted from my iPhone

Marble Falls!

NOW it feels like Christmas! We had a blast at dinner and then down at the lake. Funny--we ran into another family we know from Brenham at both places! Here are a few fun shots...

Noble sat on Santa's lap...but he wasn't excited about it. At all.




After he got a candy cane, though, he livened right up. :). Kayci had fun chasing him through the lights!








A couple of family shots:









Here's the view of our hotel from the lake, then the lake from our balcony.









Did I mention we forgot a camera on this trip? What are the odds?!

Finally, a sweet shot of our exhausted kiddos in their new pajamas. And to all a good night!



-- Posted from my iPhone

So far, so fun...

We just checked into our hotel in Marble Falls for a quick rest before dinner at Bluebonnet Cafe and lights by the lake. It's been an awesome day already--breakfast at Ronny's, then a leisurely (and scenic!) drive to Fredericksburg. We spent several hours there and hit all of our favorite spots. :)

In the car before we were even out of Austin...


...she's writing a letter to Santa, thanking him for the gifts Taylor brought (pjs this year). Too sweet!


First stop inFredericksburg, Wheeler's for lunch...


...followed by some shopping, and a trip to Clear River for ice cream...


...and rides on Old Paint. Kayci's an old pro, but...


...Noble wasn't a fan.


No matter what we tried.


After a few more stops, we headed to the car to hit the road. Noble liked THIS ride!


We visited Luckenbach--it's awesome, as always--and now we're enjoying the view from our room in Marble Falls. And dreaming of pie...but more on that later!


Happy Christmas season!
--Posted from my iPhone

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble 'til you wobble,

then count your blessings, too.

And know that when we count ours,

we'll be counting YOU!

Happy Thanksgiving, from our family to yours! :)

Wandering Wednesday

I'm sitting at the table, taking a break from the odds and ends that come along the day before a major holiday. Kayci's in the office, reading Junie B. aloud to her class. Noble and Grandma are napping, and Daddy's finishing up his day at work. We'll have to wake up the sleepyheads momentarily if we're going to make it to recycling & the mission before they close, but for now, I'm enjoying a sit. :)

This has been a wonderful week; Grandma Curtis visited us for several days, and we all had a ball. For us, it was such a blessing for her to be a part of our "normal" daily lives, and see what life is like here in the little green house. I'm very proud of who James is and how he lives and loves and treats his family, and I'm glad his Grandma got to see it, too. And she's a hoot and a half, so we had a lot of fun just visiting with her! Nana, Dan and Celena came for lunch on Saturday, and Jhido and Adam came over on Sunday, so we had some good family time all around. Here's Nana (who's training to be a Medical Assistant) teaching Kayci how to use the stethoscope she got for Christmas 2 years ago. Turns out, you've gotta turn it ON! Who knew? Thanks, Nurse Nana!

One of the highlights of Grandma's visit? We went to visit Blue Bell on Monday during James' lunch--and it was James' first tour EVER. We lucked out and got an amazing tour guide. But I won't bore you with that--it was awesome!

Yesterday James and I took the kids to school then took Grandma to the airport in Austin. We rushed back so he could get to work and I could get to Bitty's school for the first grade feast. It was...an experience. I'm sure the kids had lots of fun, and one of the parents was generous and donated ALL of the food. Thanks, Brenham Catering--you rock!

Guess what came home yesterday? Yup--school pictures! I'm biased, but I think this so captures Kayci and where she's at right now. This will probably be the last school picture without funky teeth for a while, so I'm glad it came out. (Shallow, I know...but you remember my teeth, right? So unfortunate...)

And finally, just for grins: today Grandma drove in. She's spending the night here tonight then we'll all go to Ronny's tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Of course she wanted Must Be Heaven for lunch, and who are we to argue with a guest? :) Noble found something he liked right away...he made me think of Noblilocks in a just right chair!

Wherever you are today, I hope you're having a great day as we all get ready to sit down tomorrow and give thanks for our many blessings. It's getting harder and harder to focus on that and not let the buying frenzy creep up, but we're doing our best to focus on one thing at a time--and today, that's giving thanks. We're especially thankful for friends and family this year...hey, that's YOU! :)

Fairly Random Friday

This week, the first graders had to memorize a poem and create some sort of a turkey to go along with it. Kayci wanted to make a pointer puppet, and I told her she could make whatever she wanted but we weren't going to buy lots of stuff. We got off easy--all she asked for was a brown glove, everything else we had in the Mommy closet. :)

Meet Thumbkin. Here's his poem:

A turkey is a funny bird,

His head goes wobble, wobble.

He knows just one funny word,

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble.

(This was easy for Bitty--that's one of my favorite classroom songs this time of year, and we sing it to the tune of "Pop! Goes the Weasel.")

This one's kind of random...

Yesterday right before 5:00, we got a phone call from Daddy, telling us to go outside and watch Market Street. So we did, and a few minutes later we saw Daddy's truck go by pulling Germania's float. I snapped this picture as we went back inside...I was just struck at how BIG both kids looked. I wish I could have truly captured the moment, as Noble was so excited he was dancing up the sidewalk. You'll just have to take my word for it--it was cute.

Great Grandma Curtis flies in to Austin this evening; we'll go pick her up then head back to start our weekend. We can't wait!

The Bad Kids List

As you know, Kayci "teaches" a class made up of her family and friends in her spare time. I ran across this today on her white board, and it made me smile - the Bad Kids list:



I wonder what her friends did to get on the bad list, and why Noble is on the Very Good list. Perhaps it's opposite day in Miss Kayci's class?

Big Doings!

We had a great time in Pflugerville this weekend, celebrating Grandpa & Reagan's birthdays. Ronny arranged it all--Lois, Richard & Marsha came in to surprise Mom and it was a busy, food-filled, fun time. :)

Now I have to back up a little bit--if you've ever visited us, you know that we have a very, very small house. And James and I have a very small (full size) bed. Since we've added a 4th to our happy little family, that bed has been shrinking and shrinking, it seems. We've talked about moving up to a Queen size but have been putting it off and putting it off...but for lots of reasons, we're ready to move up. We went mattress shopping last week when James was off and have plans to purchase one here pretty quick, and we found a bed frame we like, as well. Which leaves our bed. We could put it in storage, but we'd promised it to Kayci, thinking we wouldn't get a bigger bed until we moved into a bigger house. And once James and I started talking about it, it just makes sense to put our old bed in her room--it's a great bed and a great mattress, which means we'll have a decent place for guests to sleep. If they don't mind shelves and shelves of books and toys and Hannah Montana watching over them from every surface, that is. But I digress...

We took advantage of our time in Pflugerville and did lots of shopping. Kayci picked out a comforter at Target for her "new" bed (unfortunately, her brand new Dick & Jane quilt is twin-sized...that's the only drawback to our plan); we compromised and found something that makes her happy and still matches everything. And boy, does it make me happy, too--I promise I did not pick out the polka dots, Kayci did. :) Of course, as it always happens, the Target we were at didn't have the comforter in the size we needed, but we were able to go to another Target yesterday and pick it up. And while we were there we decided to surprise Bitty with new sheets (the striped ones she really wanted this summer, but they didn't look great with her new quilt so we went with the orange which was perfect!) and a fuzzy green blanket like Keely's (she loves green and she looooves Keely). When we got home last night, James cooked dinner and I made the switch. Kayci was sooooooo happy to see her "new" bed, and even happier when she realized it was truly ALL new from the mattress out. She and Grandma shared her new bed last night and they both had a great night's sleep. We were all a little slow starting after such a great weekend, but I am happy to report that Grandma's on the road, both kids are at school, James is at work and I'm doing my Monday morning Mommy thing.

What's next around here? Well, Kayci has a fun school project this week (she's making a turkey puppet and memorizing a poem) and Thursday is our Girl Scout meeting. Great Grandma Curtis is flying in to spend some time with us this weekend and we're really excited about that--and then, after she flies out on Tuesday, it's practically Thanksgiving! Time is just flying by...it'll be Christmas before you know it. We're trying to take it one day at a time, though...

Having a ball...

I'm sitting here finishing up some work stuff and James is puttering around with our network which of course involves moving furniture and making just enough noise to keep me on edge, wondering if he's going to wake Noble up. Cross your fingers!

Anyway, it's just funny because no matter what James moves, balls come rolling out. Like, if I didn't see it I wouldn't believe it--a LOT of balls have rolled through this living room tonight, and some of them I haven't seen since I don't know when. :) Balls of all colors and sizes, and a few odd shapes. I guess I just wanted to share that we're having a ball at our house...literally!

Stop and smell the...flowers?

Yesterday the kids and I went to the new playground (at Fireman's Park) for the first time. On the walk from the car, Noble spied a bunch of flowers and asked (in Noble's way) to stop and pick some. It was so cute! Of course I didn't get a picture in time, but here's what I got...

Kayci had fun trying out the rockwall, and of course, I just missed the picture of Noble up there with her. Of course.

After our busy-crazy week, a night at home was just what we needed. We had fun making pizza and watching "Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving" for family night, and for the first time, our Jiffy Pop turned out right...and tasted good to boot! Here's a fun clip of Noble laughing at Snoopy's antics...we know he won't have that baby belly laugh forever, so we're trying to capture bits and pieces when we can.

This morning we're just hanging out for a while, then it's off to celebrate GoGo's FIFTIETH birthday. But we won't tell you how old she is...that wouldn't be right. And of course, if it's GoGo's birthday, then you know it's Angus' too...but we can't tell you how old he is, because of the whole Scotland-USA time conversion that we don't really understand. Nana, Dan, and Reagan will also celebrate birthdays this week...it's a big one around here! Happy birthday to all, and to all a good day! :)

Noble's Favorite Color

While we were in Philly, Noble started saying "yellow," and in typical Noble fashion, it's something quite special.

Daisy, Daisy...

Last night was our first "real" Daisy Troop meeting. It was lots of fun--there were 7 girls and 7 parents, and I am shocked at what a great group we've ended up with and how well everyone has meshed already. I think we're going to have a great year!

The challenge, since I'm the troop leader and we're going to do this at our house, is to help Kayci stay "just" a scout...and not the boss of things, as she'd prefer to be. She comes by it naturally, I know. So I planned the meeting and tried to keep the fun stuff a surprise, and I hope to be able to continue that as we go on. I want her, for that hour, to enjoy Girl Scouting and not worry so much about directing how the girls play, etc. (Since she's been teaching full-time lately, she really JUST wants to play school...and guess who gets to be the teacher and boss everyone around?) I hope it doesn't sound like I'm criticizing my Bitty, because I don't mean to. She's AWESOME, and I hope she knows that. But she's also a leader and is still shaking off almost 5 years of being an only child, so it's odd for her to be in a group and not be in charge. But it's good for her, too. :) So that's where we're at with that.

We got home late Tuesday night and after a false start Wednesday (Noble was too ick for school still), we kind of got back into our routine yesterday. Well, the routine for days that include major friends' life crises (we're okay, everyone's okay, schedule was shot) and Girl Scout meetings at our house. And start out with a house so trashed that you can't walk from one end to the other! So we're getting back to normal...the house is mostly clean and laundry's half done, and that's good enough for me. We have big, big Pharaon plans tonight...PJs, pizza, popcorn and Peanuts (Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!). After the week we've had, I think that's exactly what we need.

And check out what I found at WalMart this morning--I promptly e-mailed Daddy so he could be jealous as I am now, officially, the Best. Mom. Ever. Ha! I'll be one of the first in car line today (well, that's the plan!), then Kayci and I need to run an errand for PTO before we go pick up our Bubby. I have a happy note for her, and when she gets home she'll find some surprises in her PJ drawer--these new Snoopy PJs (she loves, loves Snoopy!) and some Jiffy Pop. :) Can't wait!

Good morning...

...from Independence Hall. Wow. Just, wow.


-- Posted from my iPhone

This one's for Ant Peggy :)

She's holding a new Rock Angel shirt & thinking of you. :)