Easter "Walk With Christ"

 

Our stake put on an amazing event for Easter, a "Walk With Christ", where each room had different pieces of the life of Jesus.  You walked through and contemplated his life and sacrifice.  They had beautiful music piped in from the chapel, which Annmarie and Eliza had signed up to sing (while I played) a few good Easter songs.  It was set up to run for two nights and took up the whole church building.  It was really amazing and so well done.  

Last Valentine's Box Ever

This is Nathan's last year in elementary school; thus, it is the last time any of our kids will have a Valentine's box.  He chose to make an "Audrey II", based on "The Little Shop of Horrors" that Eliza was in recently.  Corey helped him with it.  He took a nerf football and cut it in half and carved out the center.  Then Nathan painted it.  Corey also took a funnel and cut it and used it as the place to deposit valentines between the jaws of the plant.  We used a bubble gum bucket that Annmarie got at the Homecoming parade as the pot for the plant.  They made teeth from cardstock and leaves and vine from green construction paper.  The final touch was adding "Feed Me Seymour" in white creepy letters.  It was pretty cool.

Christmas 2025

On Christmas Eve, we hosted the sister missionaries for dinner, Sister Tobie Polanco from Arizona and Sister Mikaela Christensen from Provo, Utah (Timpview HS).  We had a delicious ham dinner with some great dessert of chocolate cream pie and brownies.  We also had a musical program.  Westley and Jonah played trumpet together (Westley played on the old coronet in the guest bedroom).  Annmarie and Eliza each sang a solo.  We then read Luke II with singing Christmas songs throughout the story.  Then we opened our ornaments and I had bought some special Texas ornaments for the missionaries.  It was such a fun Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day was the usual.  We lined them up.  Travis was even represented with the South African flag hanging from the top of the stairs.  We opened stockings, then presents and had our big breakfast.

I worked really hard and gave my mom a drawing I had done of me, her, and her mom all of us around the age of 20 or so.  I used photos that I had from those ages and composed them into a picture. I did use AI to help by having it create the picture and then I used it as a basis for my drawing.  Alejandra and Westley gave Corey and me these great Mexican shirts (they probably have a name but I don't know it).  They were so nice!  On Christmas Day, some of us drove up to Plano's Deerfield Neighborhood and walked through Christmas lights.  We also had our chicken nuggets and applesauce on Christmas Day.

The day after Christmas, we had a breakfast gathering with the Fowles family and played some games.  It was a fun time. All in all, a very good Christmas!  

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was just us, Austin and Paige's family, and Grandpa and Grandma.  Paige and Austin hosted.  We went over early and helped get it all set up.  The dinner was really good and then we played some games.  Grandma brought a version of "Guess Who" that she had recreated using pictures of family members.  It was a fun way to get to know the names and faces of cousins.  We all had fun playing with it.  

Halloween

After school on Halloween, we finally carved our pumpkins.  I bought four pumpkins and let each kid carve their own.  They did not like taking out the pumpkin guts.  

That night, Eliza stayed home to answer the door, but we only had a few trick-or-treaters. It's too bad the kids who live on our street don't even trick-or-treat on their own street. 

We dropped Jonah off at Livy Otts' house to trick-or-treat around Sage Creek and then they went over to Hazel Palmer's.  I did not get any pictures of him with his friends.  

I went with Annmarie and Nathan to trick-or-treat with the Ewells. But when we ran into some friends of Nathan's, he decided to go off with his buddies instead, which was fine with me. I walked with Sarah Ewell behind our kids the whole time. We went around Sage Creek, which was basically like an 80s movie Halloween. It was really fun and friendly. I enjoyed myself and the kids had fun.  It's nice when Halloween falls on a Friday and you don't have to worry about staying out too late!

 

Fall Festival

Out ward had the annual Fall Festival. We got dressed up, most of us, and went. Jonah could not come because he was at a marching band competition. Eliza was Tinkerbell with her friend Emily who was another fairy. Annmarie and Nathan were Star Wars characters--Nathan was Luke and Annmarie was Leia. I dressed as a cowgirl. The festival was pretty fun. We had to move it indoors due to the weather though, so instead of a "trunk-or-treat", people trick-or-treated to various rooms in the church. We also had a chili cook-off. I brought cornbread, which was gone really fast. And the double rainbow that we saw in the sky on the way to the church was pretty great.

 

Independence Day Celebration

All we did for the Fourth of July this year was go to the fireworks on July 3rd at Founders Park in Wylie.  Travis was at work but the rest of us went.  We played Nertz while we waited for fireworks and walked around.  The show was actually decently long and had some great big ones.  I like having it so close by.