Thanksgiving 2011

For Thanksgiving this year, we spent the entire week in Ft. Worth! We left Lake Jackson on Sunday afternoon after church and came back Saturday night. It was a great week and we really enjoyed seeing our family and friends. I have a few random pictures from our vacation, but this post is all about what we  did on the actual day of Thanksgiving.

Each year, we go to four different places on Thanksgiving. It's a little crazy. And it's only getting harder. After going everywhere this year, we talked about it and are thinking we're going to need to do something different next year. It's just too hard on us and on the girls. And that's not what we want them to remember about the holiday! We love seeing everyone, but we may need to rotate where we go each year or something like that.

Anyway, we started off the day by going to Randy's Grandma Dane's Thanksgiving, which is at his Aunt Brenda's each year. The girls wore their turkey dresses, of course, and looked so cute! And check out Kendall's new ride! We bumped Cooper up to Kendall's seat and then got Kendall a seat that is still a harness for awhile (like, til she's 70lbs!) and then converts to a booster.

Knowing how busy the day was going to be, I wanted to try and get a good family picture early in the day before the girls got too tired. Not too bad! :)

All the cousins with Gigi and Peeps!

Kendall had fun playing with Maelie and Gracie! They had a special table all to themselves. Maelie is in Kindergarten this year and was so sweet to Kendall. We loved watching them together!

And Cooper ate a lot. She's happy all the time, but she's most happy when she's eating.

After that, we went to my Grandma and Grandpa Votaw's house for Thanksgiving with them, Mom, David, Alden, and Scott. We are thankful for so much each year, but this year we are especially thankful for how God has watched over Grandma. She was almost in a bad accident earlier this month, and we are thankful she is doing ok! Here's Cooper with Granny and Papas.

Kendall had fun playing on the piano and seranading us!

For this family picture, Kendall decided to sign "I love you," but it looks a little like she's saying "Rock on!"

Next we went out to Randy's Aunt Kathy's and Uncle Frank's for his Mamaw and Papaw Bradford's Thanksgiving. Kathy and Frank just moved into a new house, so we were happy to get to see it! Cooper fell asleep on the way there, so we let her sleep in the car for a little bit. No time for naps on Thanksgiving!

Finally, our last stop was at my Granny's for dinner with my Dad's side of the family. Dad always takes a family picture, but then that means he is never in it!

Can you tell she was a little worn out? :)

And Cooper still ate!

Granny had a bowl of leftover Halloween candy on the table, and Cooper tried to get anyone who would listen to her to open some of that candy for her all night! We finally had to just move the bowl. She's a little obsessed!

At the end of the night, we put the girls to bed and watched the Aggies btho lose for the last time to Texas. I know there are a lot of good things about us moving to the SEC, but I am really sad that we won't be playing the horns anymore! Such a fun tradition!

Even though the day is busy, we are so thankful for all of our family and thankful that we get to see everyone for Thanksgiving. We are also thankful for the two sweet little girls God has blessed us with. They are our greatest treasures!

Festival of Lights

We are home after a long vacation in Ft. Worth for Thanksgiving! I have a lot of blogging to catch up on.

Last Saturday was the Festival of Lights and Parade of Lights here in Lake Jackson. This is one of my most favorite traditions for our family. So much my favorite that we even gave up our A&M tickets for the day!!

We started by going to the festival downtown Saturday morning. They have a bunch of booths set up with free stuff to do as well as choir groups, dance groups, etc performing all day. There is also a carnival that Kendall was interested in this year for the first time!

We took both strollers, but one or both girls ended up walking most of the time. Cooper thought it was fun to get to push Kendall. :)

One of the churches in our area had a booth set up where they did puppet shows. Cooper enjoyed watching that!

Pony rides! Kendall has always been too scared to do stuff like this, but she told us that she wanted to do this this year. We waited in the line, but I just knew she would get up there and change her mind. She didn't! She even let a strange man take her into the gate, put her on the horse, and she did just great! We were like, "Who is this kid!?" So proud of her!

She loved that her horse had a pink mane and pink tail. She was so funny - she would smile every once in awhile, but most of the time she was very serious. So cute!!

After that, she told us she wanted to ride the carousel. Again, we tried this last year, bought tickets, and then she was too scared. This time though she was totally ready - we didn't have any trouble at all getting her to ride the rides!

Cooper watched with Dad - she probably was wondering why we didn't take her! Ha!

Next Randy rode the tea cups with her. He said she just smiled and laughed the whole time! I'm so glad she's trying new things like this now!

We took the girls home for naps and I had a wedding shower to throw Saturday afternoon. Then, that evening, we met some friends for dinner and then went back downtown to get ready for the parade! It really is so neat - it's a pretty good parade and Kendall and Cooper just love it!

We sat close to the Hiatts, so of course we had to get a picture with Patrick! This is our friend Sam who helps Lindsey with Patrick during the week.

 I can't remember what she was clapping at here, but she just really loved the whole thing! She was up and down, in and out of our laps the whole night, so between her and Kendall and making sure they were ok, I didn't get many pictures of the actual parade.

 Love that smile! She's such a happy girl!

We love our Lake Jackson traditions! So thankful for small town stuff!

Wee Place Feast!

Today was Kendall's Thanksgiving feast at school! She has actually been referring to it as the "Thanksgiving festival" - what can I say? The girl loves a good festival!

Randy, Cooper and I all went up to the school to be with her and when we got there we were shocked that she had let them paint her face like an Indian! Back up - she has been telling us that they were going to be Little Indians for the feast. And that they painted a tv and marched around it. Randy figured out that she was talking about a tee-pee! She still is determined to call it a tv though. Anyway, she had told us they were going to be Little Indians and that she made a feather hat with pink feathers. She has never wanted her face to be painted though, so we were pretty shocked that she let her teacher do that. She was pretty cute!

Standing next to the tv. She showed us the part she painted. And then wanted to do a funny pose.

Emma! We hear so much about Emma and the last thing we heard was that on Tuesday they had to move their clips from green to yellow because they were playing ring-around-the-rosie and having too much fun. Troublemakers.

Her whole class looked so cute!

I love this little turkey!

Before we went to eat, all the classes sat in front of the ark and sang a song and said their prayer. We watched Kendall go from being so excited, out-going, and silly in her class to being very quiet, shy, and still with all these other kids and an audience of parents around. She did a great job of participating, but we could just tell she was nervous and a little overwhelmed. We love watching the little personality that God gave her and our hope is that we are sensitive to that as she grows and learns!

And....back to silly! :) The feast was Chick-fil-A nuggets, fruit, vegetables, and cheetos and of course, all she wanted was the cheetos. She also keeps talking about wanting to eat pie. As we have been talking about Thanksgiving, we always list pies as one of the foods you eat. This girl is ready for some Thanksgiving pie next Thursday!

Love!

And here are a couple of videos of the little performance. The first is of the song they all sang...

...and this is the prayer they prayed. Kendall came home on Tuesday telling us that they said a different prayer. When we heard this today we understood what she was saying - in her class everyday before they eat, they say a different prayer than this. I think this is one they just taught all the classes especially for today.

The one she usually says is so cute - we need to get it on video. She says, "God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Bow our heads, we are freds, thank you God for day-ree bread."

BFFs

I had a meeting all day last Thursday, so after school, Kendall went and took a nap at Sarah's house! She was so excited about having a sleep-over with Sarah - it's something she asks to do all the time.

They both had on their fall outfits, so Mary took a picture. I love these two friends!!

What a deal!

(the post that could also be titled "Why I cried when Kendall put on a white dress...")

Kendall is about to be a flower girl in our friends Lauren and Kevin's wedding! Lauren and Kevin were both in our small group and Randy is officiating their wedding. Ethan is the ring bearer, so all of these things put together gives us high hopes for how well she will do in the wedding.

Lauren has been working with Tamara at our church's orphanage in Cambodia for the past year. She had her dress made there, and was going to have Kendall's dress made to match her's, but ran out of time. So when she got home last week we talked about what she wanted us to look for. She told us that her dress has some ivory in it, and that it has ruffles on the bottom. I told her we would start looking.

Last week we went up to Pearland for lunch and some shopping. We ran into the Dillards up there, because I thought they might have a better selection than our Dillards. I asked if they had any white dresses, like for a flower girl, and she said there was just one. She pulled it off the rack, and it was perfect! Had some ivory, ruffles, and it was Kendall's size!! The only one left and it was the perfect dress.

All that is awesome, but here is the best part...it had just been marked down to $14! What?! It is beautiful, her perfect size and style, and it was $14!

So we were super excited, she was super excited, and we went to try it on. And that's when I teared up! She looked so beautiful and grown-up! Look:

She loves her dress so much and loved posing for Randy to take pictures. Now if we can just get her down the aisle at the right time!!!

Matching Turkey Dresses!

We got the girls matching Thanksgiving dresses and they wore them to church this morning! They look so cute - I just love it when they match!

 It's not easy to get them both in the same shot, much less both looking! I loved these pictures, though.

 We practiced this "touchdown!" move a lot during the Aggie game yesterday...unfortunately just not enough! Ags lost in the fourth overtime to Kansas State!

I told Randy I would put the girls in these dresses every day before Thanksgiving...so you'll probably be seeing them a lot! :)

Playing...together!

These girls love to play together! And we just love watching what they come up with. One of Kendall's favorite things to do is get Molly's leash and drag her stuffed animals around the house on "walks." This week she decided to let Cooper walk her! She clipped the leash to her dress and Cooper thought it was so funny to hold the other end and run around the house with her.

Kendall is handing Cooper the other end...

 ...and now Cooper is "walking" her big sister!

 We love how much they love to play together!!