Happy Birthday, Ben!

Our friend, Ben, turned the big 3-0 this December and his sweet wife wanted to give him a surprise party. Tiffany got all the people there and we hosted the event. We had a great time and a LOT of people in the house. It's so nice to have a place that can hold everyone and be "somewhat" comfortable. The guys watched some Aggie basketball, the ladies visited and all 12 kiddos played! Oh, and yes...Ben was surprised!

Yay for a camera with a timer & a tripod!!

Happy Birthday, Jesus! Party

Our playgroup had a Happy Birthday, Jesus party in December. The kids had coloring sheets, cookies, made ornaments (okay, I did that) and did the usual...play. Thanks to Amanda B. for hosting us this year and for the idea of doing the ornaments!! So glad she wanted to do that!

Belated Christmas Decor

Now that it's all taken down, I figured I'd show what some of the Christmas decor looked like all of December. This is mainly for my mom since she wanted to see and never got to come up during the month - and I never emailed her pictures.

The mantle already had 5 hooks for our stockings (how perfect!). Last year I had these monogrammed with our names on them. The only drawback...they aren't very big - so Santa can't fit a lot into them!

Christmas tree was in our front study this year and visible from the street. I always love that...

From the street... I used our tree from last year mounted in an urn on the front porch. Next year we hope to have lights on our roofline... we'll see how that goes. :)

She smiles!!!

I just had to post this adorable picture of sweet Hallie. She stayed home from school today after having a couple of days of bad diapers (moms, you know what I mean!). She's in a great mood, no fever - but our school has a #3 policy... haha! We ran some errands - took my camera to see what was wrong with the lenses - both would cost at least $120 to repair and to HEB. After I came home I had the light bulb to see if my lens from the old film SLR would work... and sure enough it does. It actually zooms farther than the digital lens. So, I was testing it out and this is the picture I came up with. If you know Hallie, you know she NEVER smiles for cameras - but has plenty of smiles. I finally caught a great one on film. Nevermind that she was carrying a laundry basket in the garage. This one is a framer! So, turns out I saved Christmas too -- now we have a working lens & all our activities will be documented... I was getting a little concerned. Especially since I can't find our other "back-up" camera. I blame the children....