Mattie is 7! :)

Last Monday was a busy day!!! Mattie had her 1st grade Christmas program. Her class sang a really cute gospel version of Jingle Bells:

Mattie looked really cute!!! She was so excited about her program...she'd been talking about it for about a month. I'm glad it went well!

After the program, Thomas and I went to Mattie's classroom for a class reception!

Once we got home, it was time to celebrate Mattie's b-day...a few days early. We decided to have her family party for Family Home Evening! 2 days early :)

We had the table all set with the fancy tablecloth and fancy dishes! We had one of Mattie's favorites...Chicken Stoganoff!

After dinner, we let Mattie open her presents! Then it was time for birthday cake an ice cream! YUM!!! Can't believe Mattie is turning 7!!! :)

We have had other excitement at the house this past week...

We finally had a tadpole turn into a frog!!!!

Wow, was that an exciting day!!!

Out of all those tadpoles we caught way back when we only had one turn into a frog!!!

I hadn't expected this science project to drag out for months!! We had a few tadpoles start to grow legs, but then they'd die. This is the lucky sole survivor!!!

Mattie got another fun early birthday present. Monday night when she came to kiss me goodnight, she announced that she sort of had a wiggly tooth! Tuesday afternoon, when I got back from the store, Mattie had NO TOOTH!! She wanted fairy dust from Tooth Fairy!

Boys will be boys!!!

My boys were in 7th Heaven when Andrew splurged on two sword and armour sets for them to share! It's been crazy at our house every since...well just a little more than usual! :)

On Sunday, we as a family, went with Edd to his High Council speaking assignment! We drove about two hours to Thibodaux and Houma. Both Edd and I spoke. Bethany played a Christmas medley on her violin. After church was over, we were invited to stay for their ward dinner! That was sure a treat!!! Some good Cajun cooking! :) We had some gumbo, "cornbread casserole," along with some other yummy things!

On our way home, we stopped to take a picture of this really neat old house. It was about 2 miles down the road from the church.

The owner was out working in the yard so Edd asked him if we could take some pictures. We also asked about the house. They started building it in 1895--the year Grandpa Ray was born! They finished it five years later. The house has stayed in the family all those years!! Pretty neat!! But lots of work apparently! :)

OOPS!!!

We had a BIG OOPS at our house the other day!

Andrew let his curiosity get the better of him...there was an orange power cord hanging down from the lights that must have been screaming..."ANDREW GRAB ME and PLAY WITH ME!!!" Because that's exactly what Andrew did.

I tried to tell him to stop, but I was too late...all of the sudden, the lights started to fall off the roof!!! Andrew and I watched in horror!!! Luckily, only a section of lights fell off and not all of them!!!


This is how the house looked before the accident...BEAUTIFUL!

Unfortunately, I'm afraid of heights. I tried several times to climb up the big ladder, giving myself a pep-talk the whole time. But I could only get up half way. I decided that if I put the ladder up by the garage, instead of by the front door, it wouldn't be so bad because it's not as high, but same story...could only get up about half way.

So I called Andrew back outside. Since he's the one who made the lights fall down, I figured he should be the one to get them back up. Andrew climbed the ladder just fine, but he couldn't get the lights to stay put. He gave up.

PLAN B...have Bethany try! Bethany had no problem climbing the ladder and decided to start by the front door to get the highest part out of the way first. She got the lights to stay and we slowly moved around the corner and over to the garage. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves and were almost done! We had about 2 feet of lights left to hang when the unthinkable happened...the lights all fell off AGAIN!!!!!

It was too late to try again so we cleaned everything up and went inside. Edd had hoped to hang the lights on Saturday, but it just rained and rained and rained!!! If you haven't heard, I think we got about 14 inches of rain this weekend. Maybe this weekend Edd will get the lights back up...or Bethany may beat him too it...she hates not having them up, but has been too busy studying for finals to try again.

"Watch out for the "SWOG," Mattie!"

Well, in the rush of things, I've fallen a little behind on my blog...

We had a very fun Thanksgiving! We drove 8 hours up to Austin to be with Edd's side of the family. The kids were soooo excited to see their cousins again!!!

They were in heaven!!! Out of the 20 grandkids, we had 16 of them running around...good times!!! :)

Thanksgiving weekend provided plenty of good times!!! Football, baseball, kickball, slumber parties, playing on the nearby school playground, going to the park, Cabela's and just plain goofing off were some of the things we did! :)








All the cousins who came for Thanksgiving! :)









We had our 2nd annual Burrito Hike...this time all the hiking was with the football. After all the breakfast burritos were devoured, we had our own family football scrimmage.

Allison, Aimee, Mattie & Zoey ready for their slumber party! :)

Checking out Grandpa's new truck! :)

Edd's grandma wasn't feeling well so that was hard, but the BIG KIDS went over to her house to keep her company for many hours of watching football! :)

Another fun tradition, Edd's mom lets the kids go fishing Thanksgiving night! Each year she has a fun ornament for each grandchild! This year the boys got homemade snowmen and the girls got homemade kittens!

The next weekend, (last weekend) we received a fun surprise...
SNOW!!!!!!

We had heard that it had been snowing in TEXAS all day long. The kids were hoping that we'd get some too! It didn't snow until 10pm Friday night. Andrew had planned on staying up all night, if he had to, to see the snow! Luckily, it came on the early end!!!

Mattie & Thomas were already asleep, but the Andrew & Aimee woke them up so they wouldn't miss out on the excitement!!! Mattie & Thomas went back to sleep and Bethany, Andrew & Aimee went outside to play in the snow!!

IT IS REALLY SNOWING!!! :)

Aimee and Andrew tried catching the BIG FLUFFY FLAKES in their mouths!

They threw snowballs!

They made snow angels!

They played with friends too!!!

We went over to play with the Whipple kids! They just live in the neighborhood across the road from ours!

The next morning, this is how our house looked...

Mattie and Thomas were so excited to see that we still had snow!






















Mattie ran out and made her own little "snow" ball!














When it was all said and done, we got about an inch of snow...the snow storm lasted about an hour and so did our snow fun!


We were glad we got some snow to help get us in the mood for Christmas! Edd spent his Saturday putting up icicle lights around our house! It looked really nice when he was done! :)

So today, Sunday the 13th day of December, Thomas was telling Mattie that she needed to watch out for the "SWOG!" Mattie asked him what a swog is. Thomas said that it is a monster that will eat you, so you need to be careful!

They had a big conversation about what a SWOG is and how you say it and if it is real and if it will really eat you...Thomas was convinced that a SWOG IS REAL and HE WILL GET YOU!!!

I just asked Thomas what a SWOG is, as he was headed up the stairs to bed. He replied, "It is a dinosaur that sleeps all day."

Hmmm...so this morning one of the creature pictures we looked at on our morning Google image hunt had a sloth along with a bunch of other dinos...why a sloth was with the dinos I really don't know.

Anyway, Thomas asked it was sloth and that it was a creature that sleeps all day. So I'm thinking that the SWOG is Thomas' version of a sloth...mixed with a little mythical creature background. Andrew loves watching the mythical creature shows on TV and of course Thomas watches them too!

What a fun imagination!!! Thomas also told us that Missy, our dog, was his dad. He talked it about it all day long!!! Tonight, Edd was questioning him about where his tail was, etc. Thomas told him that Missy was going to give her tail to him and she'd get a new one. He'd also take her fuzzy ears!!! FUNNY BOY!!

When Thomas was done, he stood up, told everyone goodnight, kissed us all and went straight to bed!!! That is amazing!!! :)