Our First Thanksgiving

We were lucky enough to have two Thanksgivings this year because Ryan's parents and brother came down to visit us on Thanksgiving. We had a great time! So, the week before Thanksgiving we had a Thanksgiving with my side of the family. It was a beautiful fall day so we spent some time outside in the leaves and took LOTS of pictures.

First we headed to feed the ducks.

Jackson found this decorative ball outside at my moms and just ran around carrying it.

We actually get some fall color here in TX. Surprising I know!

Adorable E posing outside.

Cutie pie Ben.

I tried to get a few pictures of my boys posing but that didn't work out so well. Here is one of the four kids. Jackson was NOT wanting to pose.

Jumping in the leaves!

Awww, sweet brothers.

Cooper wasn't really loving it at this point.Afterward we had a very yummy dinner. The kids always start the meal with a toast. (jackson was asleep at this point so I could actually sit and eat with everyone else!)

After dinner there were a few presents! Spoiled spoiled kids!

A fun end to a fun day.

Our New Home

A few of my out-of-town family and friends have been asking for photos of our new home, so I am finally posting a "tour."
Warning, there are a lot of house pictures and not much of the boys, so if you're not interested feel free to skip this post :).

Here's our house!

This is what you see when you enter our house. This is the day I was having a little "sprinkle" for my friend Diane, so there are a few baby things sitting around the house. I figured this might be the cleanest and most picked up it'll ever be so I'd better take the pictures! Straight ahead is the staircase going up to our game room (the only room upstairs) and then the family room. To the left is the hallway going down to the boys' rooms, and to the right is the dining room (we are using it as a library).

Here's the library. Right now we have it set up for the party, but usually we have a rug in here and we are planning on finally getting our sofa out of storage and putting it in here. We have had our storage unit since we put the house on the market and STILL haven't emptied it out. We need to soon! We haven't painted any of the house yet, but we are planning on painting most of the rooms and hallway, hopefully soon. It's taken me longer than I thought to do anything in the house. We'll get to it eventually I guess. We also haven't hung any pictures or anything yet, I think that'll be the next step.

Here's the family room with the kitchen behind it. So far we replaced the floors and blinds in here, but that's about it.

View of the family room from the other side.

Eating area.

I wanted to post pictures of these Thanksgiving printables I found online: http://www.flamingotoes.com/2010/11/get-your-pie-on/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FlamingoToes+%28Flamingo+Toes%29http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/2010/11/great-ideas-thanksgiving-printables.html and http://craftily-ever-after.blogspot.com/2010/10/thanksgiving-gather-here-with-grateful.html

I had some requests to post where I found them. Hopefully this works, I don't know how to put links on very well.

View of the kitchen from the eating area. We are planning on painting the cabinets a cream color so I'll have to post pictures once we finish that. You can see into the library way in the back of the kitchen.

This is the favorite part of the kitchen, the tiny butler's pantry.

more kitchen.

Our bedroom. It's located right off of the family room. So far we replaced the floor and blinds, but still need to paint. I painted that chest at the end of our bed and I started to paint our bed. I'm painting the furniture cream and the bed got SO scratched up during the move, plus I dropped the base of the bed and broke the post. Ooops. Ryan's going to try to fix it, we'll see. I think our room is going to be on the bottom of the priority list!

Down the hall is the half bath. Needs some paint! Lots of the house is white or cream so I'm excited to add some color to it.

Cooper's room! Yes, it's pink. It's still pink even thought it's been almost a month. He doesn't seem to care though, and we'll be painting it first.

Jackson's room. It was already yellow which is perfect for his room, and we added that lovely window covering. So chic huh?The last room downstairs is the playroom.

And that's the house! I don't have a picture yet of the gameroom and I'm too lazy to take one now so I'll have to post one later.

I of course have to post at least one picture of the boys! Jackson loves to give Cooper a hug. Awww, sweet boys.

So that's it! I hope that you all who live far away can sometime come visit us here!

Jackson's First Haircut

The time had come for Jackson's first haircut. I was really sad to do it, but as I look back at pictures, he was getting a little shaggy :) It was perfect timing really because my Aunt Sue (my dad's sister) was in town visiting and she is a hair stylist! Perfect. She offered to cut his hair for me which I thought was so special for his first haircut. He was a very good boy because he got a sucker the whole time (his first sucker in fact!).

Here's a good before shot of his little "curls." (as good as any child of mine will get.)

The after. Doesn't he look so grown up?!?!

From behind. He is such a big boy now. He turned 15 months old yesterday! So hard to believe. He is saying a few words now which is so fun to hear. He's SO social, but is definitely becoming a mama's boy. (no complaints here!)

Thanks for giving J a haircut Auntie Sue, you did a great job!!!

Friends and Tigers and Crying, Oh My!

Kind of a random post, but I'm finally catching up on my posts! For zoo school a few weeks ago the craft was to have your face painted. Cooper LOVED it. Both he and Ben chose to be tigers (go figure that they'd be the same!).

OOOooo, scary!

That same day our friend Allison came into town all the way from California! We had a wonderful time spending time with her and her daughter Emily.

Emily, Ben, Elizabeth, Jackson, and Cooper

The kids plus moms at my house the next day.

This one's for you Amy! You thought he never cried, but here's proof! Jackson can DEFINITELY cry, and cry well :). But I love him anyway!

Halloween

Halloween morning we went trick-or-treating at my parents' house. The kids loved it as always. Here is Alice in Wonderland, a dalmation, and two Buzz Lightyears.

The kids all got fun treats for Halloween.

They love these mouths.

Afterward we fed the ducks.

Cooper was so excited to go trick-or-treating that evening!

Here are the boys ready to trick or treat!

When we went outside to start trick-or-treating, some of our neighbors we had met the night before we out. So we went house to house with them which was fun! Here is Cooper and another neighbor boy at the first house.

The boys waiting to go to more houses.

Coop with the neighbor kids.There was a scary house in our neighborhood that the kids were in awe of. Cooper hesitated for only a moment, then marched right up to get his candy. Nothing was going to get in his way of candy! Later on one of the boys got scared and wouldn't go up to a house, and Cooper got him a piece of candy! Wasn't that sweet of him?

I don't have a picture of Cooper with all his loot, but he's coming to the end of it. He's very disappointed (but I'm not, we need it out of this house!).