Christmas Parties!

The past three Saturdays this month have been filled with fun Christmas parties. 

The first one we went to was the USAA party for the kids. Every year USAA does a kid Christmas party, and an adult one. They really know how to throw parties, and spoil their employees at Christmas time! At the kid party there were all sorts of games for the kids to play and earn prizes, a magician, balloon artists, Santa, and treats.

The USAA kids party was during the day, and later that evening we had our ward Christmas party. They had different rooms set up for the kids where they could learn about the meaning of Christmas, visit Santa, make an ornament, listen to Christmas stories, and make a Christmas card for the missionaries in our ward. Then we had a nice Christmas dinner and listened to a Christmas program. The primary kids sang some Christmas songs, and Boson went up there even though he's not in primary yet. He didn't know the words to the songs, but he pretended to sing. He just wanted to feel included, and hold one of the little candles. He'll be in primary soon though! Just a couple more weeks, and he'll be a Sunbeam.

The following Saturday we went to the USAA adult party. We look forward to this party all year! The theme this year was Fire and Ice, and the band was Earth, Wind, and Fire. The decorations and entertainment are always awesome, but our favorite part is the food. It's amazing! They told us the amount of food it takes to put on this Christmas party, and I can't remember all the numbers, but I do remember they said 53,000 desserts, and a TON (literally) of green beans. Crazy!

We also went to a fun Christmas party with some friends last night. White elephant gift exchanges are so fun. There's always lots of laughs. The best gift of the night was the awkward family photo album. It was purchased at Target, and it was a book full of the most awkward, but real family photos. It was hilarious. Scott and I actually got some pretty cool gifts that we'll be wrapping up and giving to Boston on Christmas. Ha ha. One was a Darth Vader gum ball machine that has sound effects, and one was a gingerbread cookie making kit. I originally opened that Texas longhorn snuggie, but it got stolen from me. I was actually excited when I opened it, and the girl that brought it looked surprised and said, "Oh, Did you want one of those?" It was funny. So I got laughed at, but I kind of did want one, and apparently I wasn't the only one since it got stolen. :) The green shirt with the T-rex up there says, "Hates push-ups." That was a good one too, and the recipient of the little piggy slippers was happy with her gift.

And I wanted to post a picture of the veggie Christmas tree I brought to the party in case anyone wants to make one for Christmas dinner or something. Really cute and easy! 

Adorable

Here are two of my favorite mom moments captured on video. These videos were posted especially for his grandparent's enjoyment too, but I'm pretty sure they'll make anyone smile.

I was in the kitchen making something, and I heard Boston start reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears to himself. It was adorable, so I sneakily grabbed the camera and hid behind the counter while I recorded him. I didn't want him to know I was listening because I knew he would stop if he saw me.

He didn't notice me until he was done. His face at the end is so cute when he looks up and sees me with the camera.

After he finished Goldilocks and the Three Bears, he started reading The Mitten. Even though he saw me, he kept reading like I wasn't there. I am impressed by how well he knows these stories. I guess I didn't realize how well such a young mind could memorize. If I hadn't caught him reading these stories, I would've had no idea how much he was soaking in. It was very motivating for me to see! If you listen really closely, you'll hear him say, "What a shame." right after the mitten bursts. That was one of my favorite parts. It was so cute to hear his little three year old voice say, "What a shame." I also love the part where he says, "I'm just a wittle mouse," and "My toes are cold as ice!"

10 Things We'll Miss

I already did a post about all the things we won't miss about our apartment, but here's some things we will miss. 

1. Being able to walk 1 mile to the shopping area next to us. 

2. The smaller your house, the less you have to clean. :) I'm sure I'll miss our cute little apartment just a little bit the first time I mop our new kitchen floor, or carry our vacuum up a flight of stairs. 

3. Free cookies in the clubhouse. Boston's really going to miss those. One of his first words was cookie, thanks to living here. He learned really quick that the office in front of our apartment had cookies, so whenever we would drive by it, he would point and say cookie. (He still does that.)

4. Free printing in the office. It's been nice not having to worry about refilling our ink cartridge. 

5. Being able to ask the maintenance guys for help when something needs to be fixed while Scott is at work.  Like the time when there was a HUGE, disgusting spider hanging in our stairwell and I almost fell down the stairs when I saw it. The maintenance guy saw me and thought I tripped or something, but when I told him it was just a spider, he came and killed it. I was grateful that I wouldn't have to see that thing again the next time I went down the stairs. Boston's going to miss the maintenance guys in general. They are his buddies. He always says hi to them, and stops to talk to them for a  minute, and they love it.

6. Our neighbors. We've gotten to know a few people in our complex, thanks to Boston. He says hi to everyone, and he thinks anyone that crosses his path is his friend, no matter how old they are.

7. Not having to do yard work on Saturdays, or any day. :)

8. Having "fun" money. Hello mortgage, goodbye fun. :) It's worth it for a little while though because we only have to move once since we'll stay here as long as we're in Texas, we love the area, and we love the house! 

9. A gym across the parking lot. I didn't use it all that often, but it was really convenient for the times I did use it. And Scott said we'll miss the hot tub, even though I think we used it maybe twice the entire time we lived here. But I'm sure he's right. Once we don't have it anymore, we'll miss it. 

10. Not having home ownership responsibility and commitment!

So those are the things we'll miss about our apartment, but they definitely don't stop us from being really excited to move into our house. It doesn't feel real to us yet. Scott and I were talking about how weird it's going to be the first night we actually sleep in our house. 

Getting Ready For Christmas

This year getting ready for Christmas isn't just wrapping and shipping boxes, but packing them too. I was shocked the other day when Scott told me we will be moving in two weeks. How did it come so fast? We have a busy few weeks ahead of us, but we're still squeezing in all the usual holiday parties and fun.  

The Bass Pro Shop near our house has been a favorite Christmastime tradition since we moved to Texas. They create an awesome Santa's Wonderland in their store with free crafts, activities, and a picture with Santa. 

Last Monday for family night we took Boston there. He was excited and nervous to see Santa. Not nervous in a scared way, but nervous in a star-struck way. He was worried he was going to forget what he wanted to say to Santa. He had this cute nervous/excited/concerned look on his face when we were getting in the car and asked me if I could help him remember what he was going to tell Santa he wanted. 

He didn't end up needing help though once he got up there. It was adorable. He told Santa he wanted a bike, a dragon shirt, and Batman powers. (I finally found a dragon shirt. Thank you Walmart. It's ugly, but that's OK because it will make Boston happy since it has dragons on it.)

We got a real Christmas tree again this year. Boston loved picking it out, and he couldn't wait to decorate it. 

We got home too late Saturday night from picking the tree out, so Boston had to wait all the way until we got home from church the next day to decorate it. 

He was especially excited to get on daddy's shoulders and put the star on. 

Getting out the Christmas box means we have one more box to pack back up now, but it's well worth it, especially since Boston was so excited about it. 

Boston looks so cute and happy in this picture. :) We finished decorating the tree just in time to sit down and watch the First Presidency Christmas devotional. It was a fun Christmasy Sunday. 

We've scheduled our final walk through for our house a week from today, and we get the keys to our house the day after Christmas. Crazy! 

Preschool Field Trips

Boston loved his preschool field trips this past month to HEB grocery to learn about nutrition, and the fire station to learn about safety. 

His favorite thing at HEB was the live lobster that he got to look at and touch. I love the fascination on all the kid's faces in this picture. 

Boston's favorite thing at the fire station was "driving" the truck. 

He also loved trying on all the firefighter gear.

He's loving his preschool so far, and we love having a preschooler!

Thanksgiving

I taught preschool the week before Thanksgiving, so we had fun learning about Thanksgiving. 

Our craft was a toilet paper roll turkey with paint samples for the feathers. Really easy and cute. 

Our friends invited us over to their house for Thanksgiving this year, so we did that instead of Cracker Barrel. It was our favorite Texas Thanksgiving so far. Cracker Barrel is good, but this year's food was much better, and so was the company! There were three families including ours, and our friend's parents, so that made 8 adults and 6 kids. I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures this year, but I did take a couple pictures of the kids and the food. 

 We were all too excited to eat once we sat down at the table, so I got a picture of the food on the table, but not the people at the table. Darn. Next year I'll be better. We had the traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey, green beans, sweet potatoes, salad, rolls, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. There was aslo a yummy cranberry sauce made with real cranberries, pineapples, and pecans.  

The kids were a lot more interested in playing than eating. I think they all ate a roll or two and then headed out to jump on the trampoline and play on the swing set. Boston is usually a little outnumbered, but he doesn't seem to mind. He likes all his girl friends. He was even holding hands with the girl in purple at Sea World later that night. (I also have a funny story about the girl in the pink shirt, Brinley. I go to Gold's Gym with her mom a lot, so Boston and Brinley are in the kid's club together while we exercise. One day another little girl was trying to "get" Brinley (according to Boston), and Boston punched that girl in the face. The punching part is not funny, and he got in big trouble for that, but I think it's cute how protective he gets of his girl friends. I've also seen him growl at other kids when they're trying to take toys away from his girl friends. Ha ha.) 

After dinner the girls sat around and talked while the guys watched football. Then we had some yummy pie for dessert. We had lemon meringue, pecan praline, and pumpkin. I think it's funny how I used to not even like pumpkin pie, and now it's my favorite. Taste buds really do change. After dessert we went to Sea World to walk off our fullness and enjoy the pretty night. Sea World got us in the Christmas mood because they had all their Christmas decorations up, and their Christmas shows going. 

It was a great Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for! 

Preschool

Boston got his wish! He's officially a preschooler now. He was so excited when I dropped him off on his first day. He didn't even think twice as he said, "Bye Mom!" 

I wasn't planning to put Boston in preschool until next year, but a few moms in my ward started a preschool co-op, so we joined in on the fun. We divided into two groups, with 4 kids in each group. There are two boys, and two girls in Boston's group. They meet twice a week for 2.5 hours, and we rotate teaching weeks.

This week was Boston's second week of preschool, and it was my turn to teach. I thought he might be disappointed that preschool was at his house this week because I know he loves feeling all grown up and going somewhere without me, but he loved having it at our house. As soon as the kids left he was asking me when we could have preschool at our house again. 

Aren't these kids so cute? I took this while they were having their lunch break. My first day of teaching turned out really well, and the kids did an awesome job participating and behaving. After being a Sunbeam teacher at church to 10+ sunbeams, teaching these 4 kids was a breeze! I'm grateful for all the things I learned about teaching 3 and 4 year olds when I was a Sunbeam teacher. It will definitely come in handy during my preschool teaching. 

For our preschool curriculum we do one letter, one number, and a theme that goes with the letter. I had letter B, so we did a bugs theme. At the end of preschool they had fun playing this butterfly catching game while they waited for their moms to come. 

10 Things and House Pictures

We really do love living in our cute little apartment, and we are going to miss a lot of things about living here once we move into our house, but there are also so many things that we cannot wait to have a house for!

Here are 10 things we are most excited about when we move into our house:

1. Not having to carry our groceries up a flight of stairs, especially after a Costco visit. That's a workout, and time consuming task. Soon I'll be able to park in the garage, open the door, and set the groceries on the counter. Wahoo! 

2. Having a separate room to put Boston's toys instead of his bedroom. His toys are so distracting when he's supposed to be sleeping!  

3. Having a garage to put our bicycles so we don't have to carry them up and down the stairs every time we ride them.

4. Having some counter space when I'm cooking! I can't tell you how excited I am for this. Most of the time I use the stovetop to set ingredients, bowls, etc. on because there is nowhere else to put stuff. This means I usually spill flour, spices, and all sorts of stuff in the stove burners, and those are a pain to clean.

5. Having a backyard for Boston to play in! Our backyard may not be very big, but it's a whole lot bigger than the porch we have for a backyard now. Plus it will have it's own sticks, dirt, and rocks for Boston to play with. He's still so obsessed with sticks (has been since he was 1). He's always bringing sticks home and putting them on our porch. They keep him entertained and they are his favorite thing to play with, but they also make our porch look messy.

6. Not having upstairs neighbors. We've been pretty lucky with our upstairs neighbors while living here for the most part, but there were some noisy times up there, and that was not fun.

7. Having a place to plant a garden.

8. Going for walks, riding bikes, and playing with friends in a neighborhood. We go for family walks several times a week, and I don't like that the speed limit right outside our apartment is 45mph. I can't wait to walk outside to a culdesac instead of a main road.

9. Storage closets! We wish they made basements in Texas, but we will be very grateful for how much closet space we will soon have compared to the closet space we have now.

10. SPACE in general.

I could name a dozen things we can't wait to have space for, but here's a few of them:

An office for our computer and printer.

A place for our lovesac. It's been hanging out at our friend's house for the past 2.5 years. We also have some baby gear at our friend's houses that we'll actually have closet space for soon. They are so nice to store that stuff for us.

Our keyboard, and someday a piano (It's tucked away in a closet, so I haven't played or practiced in years. I still really want to learn to play the piano.)

A kitchen big enough to use all sides of our table.

A treadmill (someday). This is one of the things I'm most excited about having room for someday.

More room for visitors, guests, teaching preschool, playing hide and seek :), etc. (I need to do a post about preschool soon, but I recently started teaching preschool in a co-op with a few moms in my ward, so I'm excited to have an empty room in our house for that.)

Those are some things we won't miss too much when we leave our apartment, but I'll have to do another post soon about all the things we will miss when we leave our apartment.

And here are a few pictures we took of our house this morning. I think the workers are going to start thinking that we have nothing better to do than walk by our house and look at it. 

It's been sheet-rocked! This is the kitchen. 

Dining area.

Front Entry

Here's what they have done so far of the stone and brick! This is what I've been waiting for. I'm really excited to see what it looks like on the outside once it's done. Choosing the outside was one of the harder decisions. We really like it so far!