Family Fun Day

We took the trip to see Santa today. It went much better than last year. Here are the kids all excited with the anticipation of sitting on Santa's lap.


Elliana wasn't so sure about this whole thing once she saw Santa up close...notice her eyes!
She put on her fake smile though when she saw the bucket of suckers next to his chair!We rewarded the smiles with some dollar hamburgers at the food court...
Then after naps, we took some dinner to friends and then drove around and looked at Christmas lights. We came home and surprised the girls by pulling out lights to put on our house. I love Avery's reaction in this picture! Christmas is such a fun time of year!

Family Fun Day

This pretty much sums up the activities for the day

Other than a quick trip to the gym and some house cleaning, our day pretty much consisted of dancing and playing dress up. You gotta love having little girls =)

And now Brent is taking the girls up to the Journey to the Manger at the church while I put Justus to bed. My best friend from college is flying in tonight so I'm off to finish cleaning up the house before going to the airport to pick her up. Its been 3 years since we've been able to hang out in person and I can't wait to spend the weekend with her! Enjoy your weekend =)

Family Fun Day

No pics of our day this week, at least not yet =)

We spent the afternoon taking family pictures so I'll post those as soon as I get them back. Other than that, we had a relaxing day as a family eating breakfast at McDonalds (nothing but the best food for my kids =) ), playing board games, and running errands.

So sorry about the boring post, but to quote a line from the movie "UP", "I know it may sound boring, but its the boring stuff I remember the most". (You know the scene...where the little boy is telling the old man about all things he remembers doing with his dad, and all his fond memories are the ones where him and his dad are doing nothing together)

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Family Fun Day

A trip to the zoo with Grandma
The weather was perfect and the animals were active. The girls showed no fear getting up close and personal with this tiger!
The elephants and giraffes were a big hit as well. I've never seen them run in the zoo before. Usually they just stand there and eat. I think Grandma and I had just as much fun as the girls!What makes a trip to the zoo even better? Riding the train!
The girls even put on a little show for Grandma and practiced their dance routines. Well, Avery danced; Elliana giggled and "skipped" through the living room.
It was a great day!

Family Fun Day

Just a little glimpse into some of our family fun day. Pretty sure Brent may kill me later for posting a video of him in his PJs playing the accordion, but it was too good to pass up =) Enjoy!

Family Fun Day

Pumpkin Patch Time!

Avery loved posing for pictures
Elliana loved searching for the perfect pumpkins
Justus wasn't so happy about the whole experience

We did get a fairly decent family pic at the pumpkin patch though. Check out the new picture in the header if you're interested. All in all, it was a fun afternoon and evening!

(on a side note: I tried to top off the experience with a "pumpkin" pie made out of butternut squash. Allrecipes.com swears it tastes the same if not better. It doesn't! We'll have our real pumpkin pie next weekend =) )

Family Fun Day

Or maybe its better titled "Family Sick Day". Yup, we're all sick this Friday. Even Justus has this pitiful little cough and fever.So we didn't leave the house.

This picture was taken at 6:30pm and notice everyone is still in their PJs. And yes, those are the PJs we slept in the night before. Everyone needs those kinds of days every once in a while =)
Playing make believe, board games, movies, and telling stories in a tent were some of the highlights of the day.
Lucky for us, there were some glow sticks left over from last night's home makeover rally. They made the tent even more fun!
I mostly included the above picture because its not very often you can capture on camera both girls picking their nose at the same time. We'll just say we're still working on the whole hygiene thing =)

Family Fun Day

I think we failed on the "family" part of the title! We generally try to make Friday a day where we enter into the girls' world and just have fun at their level. Not for the complete 24 hours of course, but for most of the day, we just relax and play.


Not this week...the dreaded stomach virus attacked me on Friday so all plans were forfeited. Instead Brent finished some home improvement projects that have been on the back burner since little guy was born.

Yup, this week our house got a face lift with some new wood and a fresh coat of paint

and Brent finished it off with the trees on Friday. The girls had a blast "helping" daddy, and the little guy and mommy had a blast sleeping through all the noise of the chain saw. Definitely a "Fun Day" but not necessarily a "family" day!

Saturday we went to Day in the District and tried to be a fun family but I was still a bit sick, the kids activities stopped early, and a tumble into an ant hill by Aves made us all eager to just be back home. Oh well...can't win every time =) We'll try again next week!

Family Fun Day

The morning hours consisted of Imagination Land. We built "houses" and then just played.




Alphabet Puzzles








"Singing" lessons with daddy








"Swimming" lessons (the blanket was our swimming pool if you couldn't tell)

and Hide N Seek.
After naps, we used the rest of a gift card we had from Elliana's birthday to take a trip to Incredible Pizza where we ran around, played games, drove race cars, ate pizza, and finished the night off with ice cream. What could be better than that =)

Family Fun Day

Family Fun Day was relaxing and low key this week. And believe it or not, I took no pictures the whole morning =) But we started off the day with Norwegian pancakes. If you've never had Norwegian pancakes, you'll have to invite yourself over next time. You can't have a bad day when you start it with Norwegian pancakes!

We then took a trip to the gym to work off those pancakes =) Then spent the rest of the morning at Dunn Bro Coffee. Twice a month they do free kids activities in the coffee shop and this Friday was card making day. The girls had fun. I was even talked into getting them this Vanilla Crema something or other for them to split. I clearly did not think that decision all the way through however. While it did not contain coffee, it contained tons of sugar. The time between the coffee shop and nap time was spent running the kids in the backyard =)

After naps, we went over to our great friends house for dinner. Not only are they are friends, but our kids are the best of friends. We got in the car at the end of the night and Avery got really quiet. Suddenly she said, "I'm gonna miss Connor." He is her very best friend.












Their oldest kid is 3 months older than Avery.













Their middle kid is 1 week younger than Elliana.











And their baby is 2 months younger than Justus. We have so much fun when we're all together!



They move on Tuesday and we had to spend one last night as families together. We'll just say I only cried once at their house, twice on the way home, and three times on Saturday. But more about that at a later time! We love you McManus family and will miss you greatly! Thanks for spending Family Fun Day with us!

Family Fun Day

Yeah for parents! My parents drove down from Iowa on Wednesday evening and have been spending the weekend with us. I think the older I get, the more I desire to always be around my parents. I thought the opposite was supposed to happen =) So needless to say, I was ecstatic to share the weekend with them.

For some reason, we have never taken my parents down to the stockyards, so that was our adventure this Friday. My dad loves stuff like this so I was surprised when we discovered they had never been.

Avery, my little animal lover, loves the chance to pet all the horses. She is so enamered with animals, I know the endless requests for a dog or a pony are never going to stop. Its always fun for me to watch her interact with animals though!





We had fun walking through the little shops and seeing all that Cowtown has to offer. My dad even posed for some good touristy pictures! The weather was perfect and overcast and not so humid too. It was a perfect day to tour the stockyards.



After naps, we stayed close to home so the kids could just play with grandma and grandpa. My dad is the legendary story telling to the kids. He sits with them for hours and makes up stories. The girls will just sit wide eyed and listen to him forever. Whenever they hear he's coming to visit, they start talking about building forts so that grandpa can tell them stories.
Grandma is the girls special friend. Anytime something exciting happens, they want to call grandma so she can hear about it. When she's in town, they know they will always have someone to color and play with. Have I said I love my parents yet =) I love watching my kids interact with them as well. What a great way to spend family fun day!

Family Fun Day

Is it too late to post last Friday's happenings? =) I spent the whole weekend at the church for the Mentoring stuff so this is the first time I've had a chance to sit down and post this...I found this great little play place in Colleyville a few months ago called Antz in Your Pantz. We never went because it was a little pricey, but when I looked on their site Thursday night, I discovered they were having a half price weekend deal! Which meant we could all go for $9.
The place was split into 9 different rooms. There was a stage with a closet full of dress up clothes. Avery loved all the dress up stuff!There was a sandbox room
An art center
A fire truck room
a Kitchen rooma Veterinary Clinic room, a Puppet Show stage and room, and a grocery store room complete with grocery bags and a cash register.

The girls had a blast playing pretend all morning. I think I'll be keeping my eye out for more half price days!

Family Fun Day

We played in the rain
Took a trip to Cabela's Made and delivered some get well cards for a friend who had surgeryAnd met friends at Babes to eat dinner. The girls call Babes "hokey pokey Babes" because they get to dance the hokey pokey with the waitresses everytime we go. It was a great day as a family.