Sweetie and Family...Our stray cat, Sweetie, had 4 baby kittens over the weekend. She is a great mama and so sweet (hence the name) and doesn't care how many times a day we come in to look at the sweet kittens. They were born sometime during the night between Friday and Saturday. This was our surprise as we brought her food the next morning. As you can imagine, the kids (and the adults) are excited about this sweet new family just in time for Christmas when we celebrate the most wonderful baby of all. Thank you, Jesus, for all your blessings.

Daddy Daughter Day...This week has been a catch up/get back into the routine for us. And I finally got the house fairly clean...yea! That feels good. Here are a couple of pictures from John and Julia's last Daddy/Daughter Day. So cute! She does love her make up! So funny. I just love that sweet face.

Christmas is zooming in fast. But other than the Christmas tree, the inside and outside is decorated. And after school today, John and the kids are heading out to get the Christmas tree. Tonight will be a fa-la-la-la-la tree decorating extravaganza at the Elliott house. Will post pictures of the completed product. Tomorrow night John is taking us all the see the Nutcracker. Now that Julia is in ballet/tap, I think she will really love seeing all those dancers. Can't wait!

Halle's Bday Party...Last Sunday I took the kid's to their friend, Halle's, birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese in N. Richland Hills. The key word in this sentence is N. Richland Hills. Why you ask? Because I looked at the invitation and since in was on Grapevine Pkwy, I mistakenly thought it was the location at Grapevine Mills Mall. I was WRONG! So, my poor children arrived at the party 45 minutes late. I felt like such a tool so I bought more game tokens and we stayed later than the party to play more games.

The kids have been out of school all we for Thanksgiving break so we've managed 2 trips to Oklahoma to see Grandma and Big Daddy. We had a wonderful, relaxed Thanksgiving meal at home on Wednesday and now we are just trying to relax and get the house cleaned up so we can decorate for Christmas. Have I mentioned that cleaning is not fun? Oh well.

Merry Christmas! Can't believe it is now time to say that! Ha! Have a great week!

More pics from Arboretum...

Storybook Houses 11 thru 13 plus the straw horse from House 4...

Storybook Houses 6 thru 10...

Storybook Houses 1 thru 5...

An Adventuresome Week...I have so much to catch up on. A week ago we had our usual Saturday baseball game of Jacob's but then that Saturday night, I got to go over to a girlfriend's house for a Girl's Night In while John and the kids had a pizza/movie night. The next day we had a Baseball Team Picnic complete with a Parents vs. Kids baseball game. We roasted hotdogs in the park and just had a fun afternoon to end the season's success. However, we weren't really finished with the season since the YMCA scheduled 2 makeup games this last weekend to make up for the ones that were rained out. But the great part about that was that Jacob's teacher at school and her husband came to one of his games this weekend. Jacob was so excited and did so great at the game! She is such a great teacher and so sweet to take time out of her weekend to come to Jacob's game.

On the 9th, the kid's were out of school for Veteran's Day so we met up with my mom to visit the Dallas Arboretum. They were having their Storybook displays set up for kids. There were 14 houses with storybook themes that the kids could go in and out of. Each house had a giant storybook set up outside telling the story of that house (ie...James and the Giant Peach, Thumbelina, Treasure Island, etc.). So cool! We got lots of great pics that I will slowly but surely get loaded on the blog for you to see how beautiful the flowers, trees, and gardens were this time of year. Just awesome! And the weather was perfect so it was really pleasant to just wander around with the kids.

Thursday night was Jacob's 3rd grade musical at school. All the kids were dressed up as pirates and they sang all kinds of pirate songs. Jacob did great and all the kids were so cute!

So, as you can see, we've had a busy week. Fill that in with school and just day to day activities and you can understand why I am just now getting a chance to post. Lots of Fun!

Jacob's Baseball Game...Here are a few pictures from Jacob's baseball game yesterday. John was the Coach this season. Jacob did so GREAT! And Jacob was so proud to have Ma Mere and Pa Pere at yesterday's game and see how good he has gotten. It was a fun day!

Jacob's Class At the Fun Run...

Fun Run...Yesterday was the Fun Run at Jacob and Julia's school. I went to cheer them on and take pics (of course). They did great! They both ran 28 laps. Woo hoo! I was very proud. Jacob's class name for the event was The Ranchers and Julia's class was The Rovers. For Julia's class, notice the red dog ears and tail in a few pictures. So cute! The boy holding Julia's hand up in the air is her friend, Patrick. He is one of a quadruplet set. The rest of his sibling's are girls. Patrick wound up in Julia's kindergarten class this year. We met them at the pool this summer and the kids always played together.

My Day...Got up at 6:15am, showered, got kids ready for school and out the door, loaded the dishwasher, sent out a few emails, went to the dentist for a cleaning, drove to Richland Hills for fingerprinting (per new sub teaching regs), went grocery shopping, picked up baseball trophies at the YMCA for Saturday's game, came home to look up new flight info for friend, put in 3 more loads of laundry, made posters for both kid's Rockin Fun Runs for tomorrow at school, coached bird who flew into the house out of the house (don't laugh...it worked!), picked up kids at school, worked on resume, sent out emails for rescheduled baseball games, made dinner, picked friend up from airport, watched head spin around on neck in the mirror, laughed uncontrollably, thanked God for all my blessings, and went to bed. Amen.

A Few More Halloween Pics...Here are a few pics from Halloween with our friends, The Pates. One cute dog, one beautiful witch, one scary witch, and two ghoulish Jason's.