Santa Clause is Coming to Town

I know this is all a bit early but I got an email from La Palmera Mall in Corpus Christi that Santa was coming in today in a helicopter and that there would be free festive activities happening this evening.  I jump on every opportunity for free fun, so here we go.

The first thing we did was get our faces painted by some very friendly (oversized) elves.

 We enjoyed walking around the mall looking at all the new christmas decorations and listening to the two live bands that they had playing at opposite ends of the mall.

 As we were waiting for Santa to arrive we watched a performance by the Corpus Christi Ballet.  They were promoting their upcoming production of the Nutcracker.  I took this picture because that Arabian dancer in the middle there is Kelsey's dance teacher and Kelsey was quite thrilled to see her performing.

Santa finally came.  The thrill and excitement and magical wonder on the kids faces made this whole adventure worth it.

 Next we went upstairs to the 2nd level of the mall to see Mrs. Clause and listen to her read a story.

Is anyone else disturbed by this?  Here we have Santa come escorted by a young and scantily clad woman in a christmas lingerie looking outfit while Mrs. Clause is upstairs reading stories to the children???

I REALLY REALLY REALLY miss the South Towne Mall Santa!

Not even SAINT Nicholas is a descent role model here!

All morals are GONE!  This City has gone to the crapper!

 At least the evening ended well with free cookies and milk and lets faceit, that's the REAL reason we went.

Just Because

Just Because

My kids are so so so

Adorable

Sweet sweet Juliet.

Will her eyes stay blue?  We will have to wait and see.

We just set up this toy for her.  We bought if for Ethan back in the day but he HATED it.  She likes it though, so at least we are getting our money's worth now.

I thought this one was a cute one of Matt and Jules.

This is not a great quality picture, but I thought it was so cute how Ethan had his tools in his pocket.

Awesome Hair.

 This is my Prima Ballerina.

Lets talk a little more about this girls hair.  Could she look any more like a Barbie?

Why doesn't my hair ever look that good?  She wants to grow it to her butt.  How many more years do you think that will take?

 T I R E D   Boy!  So exhausted he can't even eat his grilled cheese.

Love,

Andrea

Halloween Jollification

Warning:  There are a LOT of pictures in this post.

Starting off we have the annual Fall Festival at the Asbury Methodist Church.

We spent most of our time in the bouncy house things

 Ate hot dogs and chips, drank soda

 Played games

 watched a puppet show

 rode a hayride

 got faces painted

 Ethan wanted it on his hand

 and picked out a pumpkin.

Next we have the halloween costumes

Kelsey wanted to be a Barbie, so we decided on dressing as a Barbie Musketeer

She has a crown for the Ball

 That doubles as a mask--so that nobody knows who she is!!!

 And of course a sword, very cool

 Here is the back of her cape.  This Musketeer knows how to sword fight AND dance.

 Ethan insisted on being Super Why.

 That made for an easy costume.  Lots of Felt.  The funny thing is that his pants are girls stretch pants and a pair of Juliet's diaper cover thingie that goes with a dress.  Funny how her 3-6 month bottom fits on Ethan's tiny butt.

 Here is Matt's costume.  This image induced such a conflict of feelings that I had to take a picture (it's so horrifying, but it's so sweet!)

 We had a ward party friday night, but we forgot the camera and didn't take any pics.  But here are a few pics of a party we had at our house saturday night.  I had nothing planned and didn't want to sit around saturday night feeling depressed with nothing to do so I threw a last minute party and invited just a couple of people who had kids over.  Here some of the food.   Mummy dogs, and monster eyes, and Matt talked me into making strombolli.

 We played monster bean bag toss

 Pass the Pumpkin, and pin the nose on the pumpkin (but I don't have pictures of that)

 All the kids got a little prize

 Then we sent the kids upstairs to play and the adults played a couple of really funny games.

 I'm going to add in here some pictures of Kelsey's little party at preschool.  The family was invited and they sang a cute song for us (Have you ever seen a pumpkin).  They also read halloween stories, decorated cookies, and got their faces painted.

 It was a fun weekend, but I'm glad its over!  I feel exhausted from putting those kids in and out of their costumes several times.  Kelsey also got to dress up for dance last week so I think she wore her costume a total of four times.  And Barbie hair isn't the easiest to do.  Thank Goodness Ethan's super why costume was low key.

Thanks for reading.



"If Your Gonna Play in Texas" (you've gotta have a fiddle and a band)

Mom and Sisters came to visit.  I was so FREAKING excited for them to come.  We have the best times together.  Usually, when Christy is not sick, we sit around and laugh our heads off at nothing.  Poor Christy did get sick - which was a huge damper on the vacation - but we still managed to have some good laughs.  Here are some of the things we did.

This is a gift shop.  A very elaborate one and I love it.  I stop here almost every time we go to the beach on Padre Island.

 I finally had quarters in my purse so I let the kids ride these inside the gift shop.

 We went to my favorite beach

 built sand castles

 burried Kelsey

 this is a good one of the kids.  The cute redhead is my sister Christy's little boy.  I am glad my kids got to bond with him for the first time.

 I forgot Juliet's sun hat so I put a diaper on her head to protect her from the sun.

 She is going to love me for preserving this memory, haha.

 We swam a lot at their hotel swimming pool.  We didn't need swim suits.  We just dove right in.

 Jessica ROCKED band hero

 We all laughed hysterically at Carter's AWESOME dance moves

 We went to see this movie.

On our way there we were traumatized by viewing a rollover accident when the car right in front of us drove up a freeway wall and then rolled about 3 times.  The driver was ok, angels must have padded that boy because he walked away with only cuts and bruises.  I thought for sure he would be dead! I swear, Texans are the worst drivers ever!!!  He wasn't even drunk.  I can't even imagine what was going on in his head.  Anyway, he sure gave us a scare - and a story to talk about for many years to come, I'm sure.

We ate a lot of good food, talked a lot, played with babies a lot, laughed a lot.  I can't wait for next time.