Christmas 2011

Wow, what a wonderful Christmas we had this year! The snow on Christmas morning looked beautiful on Granny & PePaw's wreath and I thought it completely captured the beauty and joy of Christmas. Sure the presents are great, but the best part is speninding time with family and thinking of all the blessings God has given us.

Mom and Dad moved into a new house this year, and I loved their new tree.

Since my birthday is so close to Christmas, there's almost always at least one picture of me opening birthday presents in front of the stockings.

The stockings at Mom & Dad's were also beautiful. Christina has a stocking on the end...we can't wait for her to join our family in May!

I love this picture of Avery and me with MeeMee & PaPa.

Bryan was tickled with one of his new presents!

I loved how Dad stacked all of his presents up in his lap! He must have been a really good boy this year!

Mom got a new bead for her Pandora bracelet...a cute bead of a house since they moved into a new house this year.

Here we are at Granny & PePaw's house on Christmas Eve.

Look at these 2...don't they look great!

And here's Terri with a great picture of Avery & Christina! Granny always loves pictures of us...she sure grows a pretty garden with them!

MeeMee & PaPa's stockings always look beautiful. Even Emma (Rick's sweet puppy) got her own stocking this year. So cute!

When there was still a lot of snow on the ground the day after Christmas, we decided we had to go sledding! It was really fun!

Admittedly, I was not the best sledder. Dad got the record for the longest sled ride!

I think Avery wins the award for best form. The backwards hat really gave him an advantage with his aerodynamics.

Bryan was working on his manuevers before he went to the big hill.

Avery and Bryan invented a new sled/football combo. Bryan (since he looks so much like Tony Romo) was the quarterback and Avery was a wide open receiver on a sled. We won't talk about the completion percentage...although it was actually pretty high.

Here goes Bryan on a world record run. Look how steep that hill was! Yes, that is a small creek down there...Bryan actually skipped across it. It was unbelieveable. None of the rest of us were brave enough to actually try it.

And here he is making the hike back up. I'm actually not sure which scared me more and prevented me from trying this hill...the steepness (and speed) of going down, or the fact that you would have to hike back up that monster hill.

We are looking forward to a wonderful New Year as we embark on 2012.

Adi & Santa

Yes, we are those people. The people who have a picture of their dog with Santa Claus. So, actually it started out innocent enough. We needed to get out of the house for a while and thought Adi would enjoy walking around the little lake at a park a few miles from home. But, it was a little chilly out and we decided it would be warmer for us if we just took her to Petsmart. How were we to know that Santa would be at Petsmart? So of course we had to get her picture made. She did remarkably well. We won't talk about how much we spent on the pictures and frames.

New Toy

So, Bryan let me open an early Christmas present...a new camera! I was so excited, and of course I had to try it out at the Cowboys game last weekend vs. the Giants. I wish I could say that my new camera brought the Cowboys good luck, but that was not the case. But we still had a great time and the new camera did not disappoint.
Since it was Christmas they had beautiful lights decorating the trees and the stadium had a unique night-time glow. I don't think we've ever been to a game when it was already dark when we got there.

Let me just say that we sit WAY at the top of the stadium...and yet the new toy zooms in close enough to get pictures this clear of the sideline. You can see Rob and Jason perfectly...down to the long grey mane and the red flag in Garrett's pocket!

Pretty good for an action photo right!

Coin toss to start the game. You can even tell that's Eli Manning even though his number is blocked by #51.

I was pretty proud to get a clear shot of the flame while it was actually shooting during pre-game.

I'm amazed how close I can zoom in from as far back as we sit! You can't even see the little jets on the star with your own eyes from where we sit!

Nice zoom shot of the cheerleaders.

Here's Tony in the huddle...

Nice shot, huh?

I should also mention that the new camera can shoot short videos. I actually got a great video of a touchdown pass. I just need to figure out how to post videos on the blog...

Thanks for my new toy Bryan!

Fall 2011

Well, it is already December and I have not posted anything since this summer! Oops...my bad. I admit I have procrastinated some on that end, but we've also been really busy. I'll start with a quick pic of Adi on her new living room bed...it took her a while to warm up to it, but now she LOVES her new little bed. Isn't she cute!
Right before school started Bryan and I ran in a local 5K with my friend Melissa from work. Sorry about the red faces...maybe a "before" picture would have looked better. But hey, at least you can see we really did run the 2011 "Melon Dash."

We had a great time at the Texas State Fair. Here I am about to enjoy a delightful Fletcher's Corny dog beside Big Tex. I think we ate almost every fried food the fair was selling this year.

We saw an extremely talented pumpkin carver at the fair.

Here I am about to enjoy a fried banana. It is a little embarassing to me that all of the food pictures are of me...let me assure you that Bryan ate his fair share of fried foods as well. Fried moon pie, fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich, gumbo (okay that wasn't fried but you get my drift...)

And, we caught the pig races at the fair as well. We also saw the Bangles perform a few songs...yes I realize that dates us a little bit as my students would have no idea who the Bangles are. But, we had a great time at the fair!

The Texas Rangers had another big season...made it to the World Series! I've almost come to terms with them losing...almost. I sure do love the Rangers! I went to a couple of games with Susan this year (including on the 10-year anniversary of 9-11). Anyway, Josh Hamilton and one of the Cardinals players flipped the coin at the Cowboys game (ironically against St. Louis) during the World Series. It was a crazy day to be in Arlington!

After the Cowboys beat the Rams, Bryan and I walked over the the Ballpark in Arlington to catch some of the World Series fever. Tickets were of course sold out, but it was still fun to be in the atmosphere for a few minutes before racing home to catch the game on TV.

The Cowboys had a rocky start to the season, but hopefully we are headed in the right direction now.

The fall has also had some hard times. Bryan's grandfather passed away in October. We miss him dearly, but we feel so blessed to have been part of his family.

We got a new roof last week...just in time for the 2+ inches of rain! The drought is certainly not over, but we are thankful for the rain. And, Bryan surprised me with an early Christmas present last weekend. Hopefully my new camera will let me actually take pictures of the action on the field at the Cowboys games and I won't have to take pictures of the action on the jumbo-tron! Ha! Mom, Dad, and Avery visited a few week-ends ago and we had a great visit. We even took them to the new In-N-Out Burgers. I'm not going to post the embarassing picture Bryan took of me there with more food...

Minneapolis

We had a wonderful trip last weekend to Minneapolis. It was a great reunion with Avery & Christina and Mom & Dad, and we got to meet Christina's family. We also got in a little sight-seeing including a trip to the Mall of America and a Twins game at their new stadium (Target Field). The ballpark was beautiful!

On the way home we realized that we got to attend ballgames in 3 different major league stadiums this summer (the Rangers in Arlington, the Astros in Houston, and the Twins in Minneapolis). Thanks for a great trip Avery...we had a blast!

USA! USA! USA!

We had a wonderful weekend cheering on the Unites States Davis Cup team in their Quarterfinal match against Spain. The team lost, but we had a great weekend in Austin and got a chance to see some family and friends that we hadn't seen in quite a while.

I love this picture of Mom and Dad overlooking the court. We had great seats!

It was great to see Kim and Rick on Sunday for the last match. Mardy Fish lost in 4 sets but it was a great match and had lots of excitement. Yes, Kim's arm is in a cast, but she took the opportunity to use the cast to provide support for team USA!

Here is a picture of the rest of the group in our seats. Mom and Dad and the Marables. We all wore matching T-shirts for the matches on Friday (Roddick and Fish's singles matches) to show our team spirit.

Here are the teams during opening ceremonies. The had kids hold the flags for all the participating countries around the edge of the court. There were fireworks when they announced our team and during the National Anthem.

The Net-Heads sat in the section below us. We couldn't see all of their antics but they were definitely a sight!

Here are the Bryan brothers during their doubles match on Saturday. They won in 4 sets and provided the only USA victory for the weekend. They put on quite a show!

Here is one of the Bryan brothers signing some autographs after the match.

After the doubles match on Saturday, Roddick practiced and let the audience stick around for a few minutes to watch. Here he is warming up his forehand while Jim Courier (US Davis Cup captain) looks on. Courier wore a suit to all the matches.

Courier took a brief time out during Roddick's practice session to do an interview with Justin Gimmelstob for the Tennis Channel.

We had a great time in Austin! It was too bad the US team lost, but there were some great matches and it was really fun to be part of such an enthusiastic crowd!