We had a REALLY awesome November.
My sister, Stephanie, and her family came to visit FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH!!!!
We loved having them here and wish they could have stayed longer. :)
Here is some of the fun we had while they were here...
The girls were SO excited for them to get here. They waited on the front porch for them and were being really silly. :)
We checked out the natural science and history museum. It's free and fun!
Digging for dinosaur bones
We trapped the kids...bwahahaha. (evil laugh)
Cute Colie at Chuy's
Steph home schools her boys, which is why they can take month long vacations.
We went to the zoo. The Austin Zoo is small. Think dirt paths and chain link fenced cages. You can get super close to the tigers and lions. The kids are looking at the HUGE pig in the picture above.
Ducky Kenna
Ducky Jack
The crazy monkeys at the zoo
Ducky Natalie
Ducky Jordan
Ducky Kenzie
The kids in front of the big chicken. Coleman called it the Big Red Chicken (any Dora fans out there!?).
Sweet Nati
Jack and Jordan both had Mohawks while they where here. Awesome!
Kenna LOVED all the lunch buddies she had. :)
I think we did pretty good...for the entire month they were here Makenna only missed 3 days of school. She did come home early a few times, though. :)
We took a quick and spur of the moment trip up to Dallas to see our cousins, Kallie and Peter and Brittany and Joe and their kids. I am sad to say that we didn't get any pictures besides this one. But it was so nice to let us come crash with them, feed us, and entertain us for a day! :) We had a great, fun time!
Hayden, Max, Kenna, Jordan, Natalie, Coleman, Jackson, Mackenzie
They loved watching cartoons together on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Kenna and Coleman loved being together.
Natalie went into the bathroom one day and said, "Mom, what is the green stuff coming out of the sink?" I went to check it out and saw that something was GROWING in the sink. After further investigation, we found it was popcorn. Someone had dumped popcorn kernels down the sink and they liked it there apparently. :) I pulled out about 15 plants total over the course of a week or so.
We planted them in the back yard. A few of them did really well at first, but in early December we had a really cold few days and it killed them. :(
We took them to our favorite Austin spot...Hamilton Pool
Kenna is SO strong!
We headed down to San Antonio one Saturday to see the Alamo and River Walk.
Steph and me
Jack and Kenna in front of my favorite tree at the Alamo. This tree is 140 years old and the branches crawl along the ground. It is an amazing tree!
Our cute kids.
One of the things that made this visit so fun (even though it was long...I mean...how many of you could live with another family for a month and be sane and sad to see them go!?) is that our kids LOVE each other. And they get a long SO WELL. There was not any fighting between our kids (between siblings, yes, but not between cousins).
We also hit Zilker park. And rode the train. Jordan was hilarious. He and I sat next to each other (my girls and Kenze were in school this day (Natalie's awesome preschool teacher invited Kenzie to come to school with her. :) )). He kept asking me questions like...has this train ever fallen off the tracks? Has it ever fallen into the water (there is a lake below at one point)? Has it ever come unhitched from the other car? Has the train hit anyone before? Haha. Like mother like son. :)
Makenna has a gymnastics class every Tuesday. Jackson went to watch one week and then decided he wanted to try it out the next week. They had a spot open, so they let him try it out. He LOVED it. :) And I loved watching them both.
I cannot even tell you how much cereal and milk we went through! WOW...it was a LOT! :)
(The kids may have had cereal for dinner a few times...hey! they love it!)
Just like their daddies. :)
Steph and I went out to lunch together one day and I got a call from Richard saying that we had pet bunnies. WHAT?! He found these little guys in our yard and the kids loved them. I mean LOVED them.
Stephi watching the kids play with the bunnies.
I won't tell you the final fate of the bunnies....it's too sad.
The kids had so much fun playing together. It was non stop party time every day.
We spent a lot of time outside. It wasn't as warm as the last few Novembers we have had, but it was still sunny and nice.
Stephi soaking in the rays.
We have always wanted to check out Destin, Florida. It is a popular beach destination around here. It is only 12 hours away (which in TX isn't far...if you want to get out of TX that is). So we booked a place for the week of Thanksgiving. It was AWESOME! You'll see why...
We drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. It was a cloudy, kinda stormy day in Louisiana. This is the swamp we drove over. Richard was sad we didn't see any alligators.
On the beach!
The sand is incredible! Bright white. And the water...oh so pretty!
It was really really really really cold though while we were there. This was one of the warmer days.
We stopped to take a picture after church, which is why we are all dressed up. :) We don't usually go to the beach in our Sunday best...
After eating some lunch and changing our clothes, we headed back to the beach.
Kenna asked if she could get her feet wet and said, "I won't sit down or anything." I said that was fine. The next thing I knew, she was waist deep in the water! WHAT?!
Love these two!
And these two!
On Sunday night, after getting the kids in bed, the adults sat down to watch some Downton Abbey (we started with season one when Steph and Doug came...I forced them to watch, but I think they liked it. :) ). After an episode and right before starting another one, there was a knock at the door. I looked over at Stephi, who looked surprised and confused...just like me. Richard opened the door and said..."uh, there's a baby." I jumped up, looked at that baby and said, "THAT IS CAMRYN CRABTREE!!!!"
Then the rest of the family came out from behind the cars. :)
Yeah, I was VERY excited and VERY confused!
And SO SO SO happy to see these guys!
We went and woke up Kenna and tried to wake up Natalie...she was too far gone. But Kenna got up and was so excited too!
I had to ask a few times what they were doing there. Haha. And Steph is the best secret keeper ever. Seriously.
The Crabtree's had been on a cruise that let them off in Miami. They had 4 days before their plane left to go back to Seattle. Stephi convinced them to drive up (a 10 hour+ drive) to surprise us.
IT WAS THE BEST SURPRISE EVER!!!!
I couldn't stop smiling.
They spent the next day and a half with us before they had to head back to Miami to catch their flight.
Ash and me
Natalie, Ash, Kimber and me
We went over to a little village that had some fun games and stores. It was cold, but fun.
All the Riding cousins.
The big kids did a huge ropes course. They loved it and did great. I didn't get a picture of the course...sorry.
And we did some rock wall climbing.
Cute kids!!!
There was a cute candy store. The girls picked out these huge suckers.
Moms always like pictures of their kids together...no matter how old they are. :)
This is for you, Mom. :)
We were sad to see them go after such a short visit, but SO HAPPY that they came! We LOVED the surprise visit and our surprise visitors. :) THANK YOU Crabtree's for coming. We love you!
We had to eat at the Waffle House for breakfast! Kenna stayed home and Kenzie came with us.
The beach was SO cold the day before Thanksgiving. Oh. My. it was cold! We only lasted about 5 minutes.
Trying to fly the kite.
Since it was so cold, the kids did a lot of this.
Oh I forgot to say that Doug's brother, who lives in Georgia, drove down the day the Crabtree's left to spend Thanksgiving with us. Their kids fit right in with ours and we had a lot of fun!
We had the firemen show up on Thanksgiving. Some of the drippings from the Turkey got on the bottom of the oven, which caused a lot of smoke. And since it is a vacation rental property we didn't know the code to tell the security company that called, so they sent the firemen out to check on us. :)
Don't worry...our food still tasted YUMMY!
Even though there were enough beds for everyone to sleep...there was a lot of closet sleeping. This is Natalie and Jordan. Jack, Kenna and Carrine all slept in another closet. They referred to themselves as "the seven year olds."
We went to another little town and spent some time walking around. Kenna, Jack and I were left behind and so they did some rolling down the hill.
We headed back to TX the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
And arrived home on Sunday afternoon...just in time to get out the Christmas stuff and do some decorating!
Makenna was so excited about the train! We bought it at a garage sale last spring, so this was our first time with it on Christmas. :)
Natalie put on the first ornament.
Kenna did the star.
Love that Colie boy!
We had a lemonade stand.
We didn't have any plastic cups...so we had to use ours. :) We just put them in the red bucket when they were used so no one else would use it. Luckily we only had a few customers.
My neighbor saw all the kids outside and brought over this GIGANTIC bag of beanie babies hoping to give them to the kids. We let them choose 2 each and gave the rest back. :)
On one of their lasts night here, we finally took them to get some Texas BBQ.
We went to my favorite BBQ place, Rudy's.
The kids can just run around in the field...it's so nice!
There is a tradition in Austin where people decorate trees on the side of the road. It is fun to drive by and see a lot of Christmas trees! This year I was determined to decorate one. We had the Dance's help us!
The bare tree before we decorated.
Natalie and Kenzie didn't really care to help.
Tinsel and ornaments
It's looking good!
When we finished the tree, I told everyone to turn around for a picture. Jordan fell off of the stool we brought and tried to catch himself on the tree...and he ripped all the tinsel off. Poor boy! And poor tree! Kenzie and Natalie were both crying at this point...and Jordan since he fell. Steph and I quickly put it back together the best we could, snapped this picture and left with our screaming children. We had fun. We did.
The last few days went too fast. We went back to the dinosaur pit and Zilker park.
The kids played games and had fun.
Some things not pictured...
The crazies that rang the door bell and knocked on our door three times in the middle of the night. It ended with Richard chasing them with a bat, the police coming, and a broken water pipe (theirs, not ours).
All the yummy treats we made. I think we made like 10 batches of smore bites.
Riding bikes to the park.
Watching Downton Abbey or Parks and Rec every night. We even watched Season 4 of DA :)
The boutique I sold some sewing projects at.
The kids jumping on the trampoline together.
The roller coaster hill.
Sonic drinks.
The library.
Dinner with our cousin Lindsay and family.
The kids' slumber parties every weekend. They all slept in the same room on the weekends. Every night they would ask, "can we have a slumber party tonight!?" :)
All of Colie's yells...haha. That boy is loud! And we love him! We picked up a few Colieisms...ee a utt a oon (peanut butter spoon), MOMMY DO IT!, COLIE DO IT!, quiet game!...etc. Oh and Natalie now calls oatmeal oatmel. And she corrects me if I say oatmeal. :)
All the piano playing. Kenna and Jack learned chop sticks. They didn't quite have the timing down, but they knew their parts. :) And since it was Christmas time, we had lots of printed Christmas music for them to play.
Cramming 9 of us in an 8 passenger van to go places. Poor Doug sat in the noisy back with the big kids.
Stephi and I went out by ourselves a few times. Lunch at Thai Spice...which has THE spiciest fried rice and a really yummy garlic chicken.
And probably so much more.
I wish that the Crabtrees could have come too. And my mom and dad. It is so fun to be with family and we miss them so much now that we live far away!
THANK YOU, Dances for coming to stay! We are expecting you to come every year for a month at a time. :) I hope that works for you too!
PS. THIS IS THE LONGEST POST EVER!!!!!
