Ava's Christmas Program

Ava was in her school Christmas program last week.  After her Nutcracker performance, where she did nothing, I was a little concerned about her ability to perform in front of an audience.  But she did great!  She is one of Santa's reindeer and says the line "There's snowflakes in the air!".  She also did a great job singing her songs.  Click here if you want to watch the video,  it's about 8 minutes long!

Breakfast with Santa

Last weekend we went to have breakfast with Santa Claus at Neimans. By we, I mean all of the young cousins on my side, plus at least one adult per kid. We had a good time and the kids behaved very well for Santa.

All of us

Amber with Ava and Max

Ava did great with Santa Claus

Max didn't want to sit with him at all

Ava and Emma Claire with their balloon animals

The Nutcracker Dress Rehearsal

Ava is in her dance studio's production of the Nutcracker this Sunday. Today was dress rehearsal, the only time we can take pictures. She cried for about an hour before she "performed" because her costume was too itchy and it was making her bleed (No bodily harm was caused by the costume, but hers was a little small). Ava plays the part of a present, and she is supposed to dance behind Clara and do whatever she does. Today, however, she was too interested in all the decorations and things to actually do her dance. But she didn't cry and she didn't run off, so it was somewhat successful. Hopefully tomorrow at the real performance she will actually do something!

Fun In Louisiana

In October we went to West Monroe, LA to visit Andrea, Karl, Kaden, and Leland. Ava and Max had a great time playing and Micah got put to work, as always!

Halloween

For Halloween this year Ava and Max dressed up as Jesse and Woody from Toy Story. Ava got to wear her costume to a party at school and to her ballet class. Max just wore his on Halloween. We sold our house in Corsicana and closed Halloween morning and Micah had to get stuff ready for school the next day, so we just did a quick trick-or-treat at our house and at Papa Jack and Grammy's. Ava and Max knocked on our door about 10 times and got really good at trick-or-treating. They had fun and looked really cute!

Painting Pumpkins

I have not been doing a good job of keeping up with the blog since we've moved, so instead of going back and blogging everything we've done over the summer, I'm just going to pick up at Halloween. This year we didn't carve pumpkins, but we did paint them. We went to the Dallas Arboretum and Ava and Max both picked out pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. They had a great time painting them and they've been sitting on our mantle. Yesterday, I finally decided the pumpkins had to go, so we went down to the pond and threw them in. That was the only way I could get Ava to part with hers!

We're Still Here...Kinda

I haven't blogged in a while, mainly because we moved. Micah got a new job on somewhat short notice, and this summer we packed up and moved. We've been busy moving and readjusting and trying to get into a routine which hasn't really happened yet, making things somewhat difficult for me and Max and Ava. Also we haven't had the internet! We are living kinda far from town and any service we could get was expensive. We finally figured out we could get mobile service through Tri-Con, so we just recently got internet. We miss Corsicana and all of our friends there a lot, but hopefully once we get more settled in here things will be better. We are living in a house temporarily right now while our house in Corsicana sells (should happen the end of the month). As soon as that is done we can hopefully find a permanent home! So, I'm going to try and catch up on blogging. Here's just some random pics from our summer!

Sweet kids

On the scissor lift at Micah's old school

At the spray park in Corsicana with Colton

Playing in the gym at Westhill

Max rockin the 'stache

Ava decided to try on her baby lobster costume

Playing in the Water

Summer has begun, we were able to play in the water for the first time this year. What started as four girls playing in the backyard quickly turned into a waterhose fight thanks to Papa Jack and Uncle Jake. Luckily the girls all had their swimsuits on hand. Ava and Zoey fought over who had control of the water most of the time, and everyone got a turn to spray each other.


Ava trying to spray Jake, but he stopped the water.

Ava and Zoey

All the girls playing in the water

Max chillin watching the spectacle.

Pictures

I have not been doing a very good job lately keeping up my blog. We've been very busy, my computer broke, I got a new one, the internet hasn't been working, and I haven't been taking many pictures because my camera is acting weird. So here are just a few pictures from the past several weeks that I did take.

Ava fixed Max's hair with a pretty purple clip.

Max spilled a whole box of cheerios. He and Ava thought it was great.

Ava wearing shades on the playground at school.

Easter 2011

This year for Easter was spent at Papa Jack and Grammy's house. The kids had lots of fun hanging out and playing with their "friend cousins" as Ava calls them (i.e. Zoey, Maddie, Emma Claire, and Sawyer).

Ava and Max before the Easter Egg hunt

Coloring eggs with crayons.

Roasting marshmallows at the barn with daddy

Ava and Vanessa watching cartoons

All the great grandkids

Hunting Easter Eggs. Ava did good, Max didn't care.

The Boyd and Fry kids all dressed up for church.