Saturday was a perfect day to go Christmas tree hunting! We arrived at Merket Tree Farm around 9am with the authentic wet, dreary Christmas weather of Texas. Santa greeted us immediately and Grace wasted no time telling him what she wanted for Christmas. Ryan thought he was quite amusing himself! He was the perfect Santa with a real beard and jolly laugh! If I was impressed, you know he had to be a good one!

After a brief meeting with Santa, we decided to go tromping through the soggy forest of pine trees. You could tell we were the first to arrive by the lack of bare spots on each row. All the trees looked so perfect and seemed to beg, "pick me, pick me!" What a hard decision! We found a few perfect sized ones that we couldn't help but take snapshots of. Grace loved all the trees and was quite indecisive about which one would win the prize. (Not sure where she gets that from!)

We finally decided to take a look at some pre-cut trees in a large tent at the front of the farm. After debating back and forth, and finally convincing Grace that no matter where the tree came from, we wouldn't get to cut it down anyway, we decided on the lovely one shown here in the picture. I know, I know...we couldn't have just gone to Wal-Mart and saved a lot of time and effort! But walking around the farm and experiencing a dream come true with my "babies" is absolutely priceless.

The perfect size for Ryan!

Grace was not too impressed with this one! Mommy with her two blessings

Grace all dolled up this morning for church.

Ryan putting the star on the Christmas tree.


Grace putting the star on the Christmas tree.

It's been a while since I posted, but as you know, life is crazy hectic! November is finally coming to a close, and sadly, we still have not gone camping. Basketball season is off to a good, (not neccessarily great, start. Rick's Varsity team is 2-2, which isn't bad considering he's implementing an entirely new program. He has tournaments every weekend in December, so we'll be quite busy in addition to everything else Christmas brings to keep us moving.

This was Ryan's first Thanksgiving! We celebrated at my parent's house in Golden, TX and had a

blast! The weather was very "fall-like". He is trying so hard to walk and getting into everything! What fun!

Ryan loved the trukey and dressing, and, well, everything else! He definitely is not a pickey eater!

Grace loved playing with all her cousins! She adores anyone who will pay attention to her for longer than 5 seconds, even Pop!, and loves being in the spotlight-typical 3 years old!

In all, we had a wonderful time and ate entirely too much pecan pie!

October has been pretty uneventful around here. Football season is FINALLY over and basketball begins this next week. The fall weather around here is just absolutely breathtaking. A far cry from Sugar Land's!! I can't say enough how nice it is to be back in East Texas.

This house is about to get the best of me. I've been fighting off mice and roaches ever since we moved in. Don't get me wrong, this is a nice little house. It just hasn't been kept clean and well taken care of in the past, so we're having to play catch up. I think I've found the last of the mice in the house and sealed up any entrances they may have been using, but I sometimes think I can still hear them in the walls! Hopefully they will just quietly leave or die leaving us a nice smell for a few weeks. The roaches....ugghhh... disgusting is all I can say. We have bombed the house and they have mostly gone, but we will continue to do so once a month until I see them completely gone. I still see about 2 or 3 a day. Let's just say I can deal with mice better than roaches!

Well, enough about the gross stuff! Ryan has been sick again (double ear infection and severe sinus infection) but we switched doctors this Friday and I feel confident that he's going to be completely well again soon and hopefully will stay that way for a long time. Here are some 9 month snapshots of him. He has his appt. in a couple more weeks with his new dr., but I do know he's weighing in at 22lbs and he's around 28 inches tall. He is trying desprately to learn how to walk! I think he'll be cruising around by Christmas!

Here too are some snapshots of Grace in her cheerleading outfit. She is so proud of it and goes down and cheers with the cheerleaders for a little while every Friday night. She's actually pretty good, but unless she wins the lottery, I don't see cheer anywhere in her near future except for play!

I think if you click on the picture you can see it a bit better. Anyway, she is such a big help these days and has started doing "chores" around the house. Kid's gotta earn their keep around here!

That's all I can think of for now! We're excited about the holiday's coming up and seeing everyone! Ryan has already decided he loves pumpkin pie. Grace, on the other hand, says she'll just stick with icecream!