Thanksgiving, with much giving thanks!

Pie. What is Thanksgiving without pie? In our case, each adult kid made one: I made this Dutch apple pie, Phil made a pumpkin pie with streusel topping, and Jonathan made a chocolate pecan pie.

 

 Dickens on Main! Finally a festival where Naomi wanted to do the rides. She rode in the barrel train and on a pony ("I had a pony!!" for any Seinfeld fans out there). Very cute to see her enjoying Boerne.

 

Hayride time!

 

 Who is most excited?

Oh, the sites you'll see on Nana and Papaw's 'farm.'

Digging into her musical roots.

 

Time to bond on the porch in the freezing cold night air with good conversation to keep them warm.

 

Joined by Packa and Geemaw for Thanksgiving lunch.

 

How do you get a 3 year old, 1 year old, and < than 1 to smile for a camera? Well, you don't. After 78 attempts, this is one of the best. We did manage to get the cousins' children to sit still, however, with a remote control each.

Surveying the land together.

Cascarone time! (For any who may not know - cascarones are emptied, and presumably cleaned, egg shells that are filled with colorful confetti).  Good times.

Had we attempted to do a Christmas card, the picture would have probably come from this series.  Happy New Years everyone!

Icemageddon of North Texas, 2013

 So, here in Texas, we don't typically have a whole lot of use for these. So, you can't blame Naomi for coming out with a mitten on her foot. It does look almost like a sock.

When I imagined putting up the Christmas tree in 2013, it did not include these two little elves. 

 But having them around did add a certain sense of adventure, enthusiasm, and se ne said quoi.

 Thanks to Naomi's help, we ended up with several of these which is really adorable, and who cares about ornament crowding, really?

That was Tuesday. The mitten on the foot was Monday.  

 Then this happened to us: ice, ice, and more ice.  

It was gorgeous, but super cold and really not that great for snow angels or snowmen, sadly.

 These two Texas didn't really know how to feel about this. We did learn about the need for mittens here, but sadly we couldn't find the pair, so the kids walked around with socks on their hands for warmth.  Classy, I know.

 We ventured out on the first night of ice for fun sliding, sucking on icicles broken off cars (didn't catch that one until it was too late), and sliding down our driveway on recycling bin lids.

After the first night when we had another hard freeze, we couldn't make it out our front door without slip-sliding, so we stayed inside and drank lots of Nutella hot chocolate instead for the next four days. Even church as cancelled.

Finally free from ice, we went to Phil's school to cheer on the volleyball girls. The kids dressed to impress in their CCA orange. 

 Looking forward to Christmas, the kids inspect Leif's new stocking…only one year without a stocking isn't too bad, right?

For some unknown reason - and I mean that as I do nothing remotely related to ballet, ever - Naomi has taken to dancing ballet. 

She considers herself so advanced, she also teaches a class of students, and here you can see she has set up a backyard show complete with seats for the audience. Her brother's head is barely visible in the front right.  Good show.