Lake Jackson Christmas - Galveston Edition!

Last night we celebrated Lake Jackson family Christmas at Kevin and Jan's new place in Galveston! We are excited...and sad...that Holly and Aaron are moving to Galveston to replant a church that will be a satellite of Brazos Pointe. Aaron will be lead pastor. Kevin and Jan have sold their house too and moved into a new house to be a part of the new church! The Sanders and Johnsons are a lot of what makes Lake Jackson feel like home to us, so we are sad that they won't be around the corner anymore, but thankful they are just 45 minutes away.

Kevin and Jan are living in a very cool loft on the strand in Galveston. Holly and Aaron have bought a house and close on it right after the new year. So for our Christmas with them this year, we all went to their new loft and had dinner, the kids opened presents, and we had the 2nd annual auction!

 Cooper was so sweet opening her present from them. She is going to be so much fun this Christmas! She got a Melissa and Doug 2-block puzzle that when you match the front and back of the animal correctly, it makes the animal's sound.

Kendall was excited, too!

She got a Melissa and Doug magnetic pattern block board! Jan has saved one that was the boys' when they were little, and Kendall has enjoyed playing on it at their house. Now she has her own!

After the kids opened presents, it was time for the auction. This was so fun last year and Kevin and Jan were so generous to do it again! Alden, Scott, Amy, Jeff, Aaron, Holly, and Randy and I each got $100 play money to spend in the auction. There were 8 of us and 16 gifts. We were so excited!

Each gift had a clue, and that was all we had to go on to start the bidding. Some we were able to figure out, but others were harder. It was fun to see what everything was! Randy and I got a Pei-Wei gift card, a Best Buy gift card, and the coveted Taste of Texas gift card (for the second year in a row!). We knew that it was in there somewhere, and I was able to figure out the clue first and bid all the rest of my money. We love Taste of Texas!

And we love the Johnsons for all the fun we had and the awesome gifts!

These four were busy all night..they had a blast exploring the loft! Kendall is going to miss not seeing her buddies almost every day like she's used to!

We had such a fun night and are so thankful for our friends that are like family here in Lake Jackson...and now Galveston! It was a great start to our Christmas festivities!

Ringing the Bell!

We started a new tradition this year of ringing the Salvation Army bell with the girls! Randy has done it in years past, but just by himself. This year he started (it's a 2 hour slot) and then the girls and I met him up at the mall to "help." Kendall loves the bell ringers. So when she actually got to be the bell ringer she was pretty thrilled.

 Cooper even helped! She turned around right as Randy was taking this picture, because she is never still. Never. But she was having so much fun and making lots of friends while she held her bell.

And finally, here are some videos of what I am going to go ahead and say is the best bell ringing in Brazoria County. Maybe even Texas. It's pretty awesome. :)

Emma's Birthday Party

Most days Kendall comes home from school talking about things her friend Emma and she did together. They have even had their color changed together already. :) She loves Emma, so she was super excited about her birthday party on Saturday! It was a princess party, so Kendall wore her Barbie princess dress. She had so much fun!

She started off by decorating a crown.

 Then she went to play tea party and dress-up with Emma. This picture cracks me up. I promise - all I did was say, "Girls, can I take your picture?" And without talking about it, without looking at each other, they both immediately struck this pose. So funny! They are loving themselves in their princess clothes.

 One of Emma's two cakes. Her mom made Snow White and Cinderella cakes - so cute!

 Snow White even made an appearance and read the friends a story. Kendall loved it.

This is her "I feel so beautiful and lady-like" smile. So grown-up.

 Playing a game with Snow White.

 Then she took her picture with Emma and Snow White! It really doesn't get much better in Kendall's world. :)

This video makes us laugh. Emma's party was at the Civic Center (her mom said she was not about to have a big party at her house the week before Christmas! Smart!) and Kendall kept saying it was at the "snicka snicker." It cracked us up everytime she would say it. We never did correct her - too cute!

Kendall the Angel

Kendall's Christmas program and party at school were last Thursday...the day after our crazy Chick-fil-A adventure! We got home around 6am, the girls got baths and went straight to bed a little before 7. I went in to wake Kendall up at 8:30 so she could get to school and it was so hard to wake her up! She took a good nap that afternoon - and so did I!
She has been so excited about her Christmas program though, and I knew she wouldn't want to miss it. She has been coming home each Tuesday and Thursday telling me all about getting to practice on the stage and has been singing the songs randomly throughout the past few weeks. We couldn't wait to see her!
On the way to school that morning, I was telling her that Cooper, Daddy, and I were going to be coming back to watch her sing in her program. She started telling me that she wanted me to come up on the stage with her. Having flashbacks of walking down the aisle with her last weekend when she was a flower girl, I told her no, that we were going to sit in the audience and watch her and take pictures. I wondered what she would do when she saw us from the stage, though.
She did great! All the classes walked in from the back and she was so cute when she saw us. She is just getting so big!

The 4 year olds played the roles of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, wise men, and animals, and the 3s and 2s were the angel choir. We were so surprised she let them put her in a costume and that she wore the halo! So precious!

The sleeves on her dress are a little long, and that morning I asked her if I could roll them up. She told me no - that she likes them that way.

Love that smile! The program was really cute...Counting Down to Christmas. Kendall did a great job singing and doing the motions!

This picture just cracks me up! It's so Kendall.

After the program we went back to her class where they had their book exchange and party. Cooper had fun playing with all the toys.

We didn't even ask her to share with Cooper. I just love it when I catch her doing things like this - she is so good with Cooper most of the time and loves to take care of her. :)

She still calls cupcakes "muffins" these days.

Walking out to the car after the program! I was so worried about her being grumpy and not doing well in the program because she was so sleepy, but she did such a great job! And Cooper had a lot of fun, too.

Here are some videos from the program.

Chick-fil-A Camping!

We did the most fun thing this week: we camped out at Chick-fil-A!! Kind of crazy...really fun....great memories!

So here's the deal: every time a new Chick-fil-A opens, they put on this big event called the First 100 Event. They let 100 people come and set up tents and camp out at the restaurant so that they can be the first 100 people at the new restaurant. The camp-out starts the morning before the opening at 6am. Once 100 people are on a list, they cut it off. Once you are on the list, you can't leave, or you're out. You have to stay until 6am on the morning of the opening, and if you make it til then, they give each of the 100 people free Chick-fil-A for a year (52 coupons for a number one meal)!

We had heard of this before - Randy's cousin Jeremy and his family did it at an opening in Ft. Worth. They had told us about how much fun it was...how they feed you all day, have a dj, lots of games and activities and just tons of cool things to do. So when we found out our Chick-fil-A was closing and being torn down to be rebuilt bigger, we wondered if they would do the Grand Opening event. We found out a while back that they were and joked about maybe camping out. Well, Thursday was the opening date, and Wednesday morning Chick-fil-A tweeted that they still had 60 spots left! Randy told me to go get the details. The girls and I went up there and found out all the rules. I called Randy and said, "Let's do it!!" He took a half day off work and we started packing up to camp out. So.much.fun!!

We got there around 1:00 and found out they were just in the sixties. We debated driving around for awhile or going ahead and getting on the list. We didn't want to wait too long, but we also wanted to wait as long as we could before being stuck. Eventually we decided to go ahead and set up camp...we didn't want to risk not being in the 100 after loading up the van and Randy taking off work. And the girls were so excited! Kendall has been asking for a long time now to go camping...it doesn't get much better than combining camping and Chick-fil-A!

We were numbers 63 and 64. We set up our tent and Kendall's hippo tent. We put lots of toys in the hippo tent for the girls and set up cots and our stuff in the big tent. You would have thought the girls were at Disney World. They were having so much fun! They kept running back and forth between the two tents, playing on the beds, riding the car and the tricycle, and just laughing and smiling. It was so fun to watch them and made all the work of doing it worth it!

Playing in the tents!

We didn't even try to put Kendall down for a nap, but Cooper started getting sleepy around 4. We put her in the stroller and just made laps around the building! She fell asleep for awhile and got a little thirty minute nap.

I told Randy that I thought I might have been more excited about the actual event than what we would be getting at the end. They really made it very fun. They had a dj, and every hour or so they came out and would have some kind of new activity. One of them was a marshmallow war, and one that Kendall loved was building gingerbread houses!

Totally interesting bit of info: Randy talked to a lot of the other people who were doing this and there were very few locals there. Us, some friends from church next to us, and one other couple from Brazoria. Everyone else we met were from other parts of the state...people actually travel around to these things and do this a lot! We met one lady who this was her 17th opening and one couple who it was their 52nd!! Now those are the real crazies....I mean, we love Chick-fil-A, but that's a lot of free chicken! :)
We had a lot of visitors come see us throughout the evening and night! It was fun to get to see friends and to break up the time hanging out. Laurie and Tony came, and even went to the store and brought Kendall back some fruit snacks...

the Beams and Mitterlings came and all the kids played for awhile....

Ronnie and Cory came and brought Randy some tacos...

the Pickerings came to say hi (and we got a picture with Vicki who was camped out next to us with her girls Dominique and Marissa, friends from church)...

and Gayle and Tamara came by. We had fun seeing everyone! I just can't even explain how much fun Kendall and Cooper were having. They were so cute!

Chick-fil-A fed us lunch, brownies and cheesecake in the afternoon, dinner, and then they had ice cream sundaes at 9:30. Here are Cooper and I waiting to go in for ice cream. :)

Staying up late, getting to see lots of friends, sleeping in a tent, being at Chick-fil-A, and eating ice cream at 9:30...best camping trip ever! :)

We put on a movie to try and wind down around 10:30 and Randy walked Cooper around in the stroller until she fell asleep (it took about 10 minutes!). Kendall fell asleep around 11, so we each had a girl with us on a cot. They slept from about 11-4, but Randy and I didn't get that much sleep. People were up talking, playing 4square, and some of the "pros" started packing up their tents around 3:30. At 5:00 they started getting everyone stirring, packing up, and ready to get in line. We all got in number order in line and they passed out Chick-fil-A shirts and hats. At around 5:45 they started ringing bells and banging pots and pans and we went in the store and got our coupons!

Then we threw everything in the van and got out of the way because the restaurant was open for business at 6! We loaded up, and made it home just in time for the rain to start!  I gave both the girls a bath and put them to bed and they were out...it didn't take them long at all to fall asleep!

Our prize! 104 free number ones! :) It was so much fun to be spontaneous, do something different, take Kendall camping, and have fun at Chick-fil-A! Pretty crazy, but that's how we roll!

We were out shopping yesterday around lunch, so we grabbed some coupons and stopped there to eat. We were walking across the parking lot and Kendall said, "Here's where we camped! In the street!" Ha! It will be so fun to hear what she remembers about this. So thankful for my fun family!