Jackson Turns 1!

The day after Thanksgiving, we drove down to San Antonio for Jack’s first birthday party, which was a western theme! The drive went ok – the kids did pretty well. We were so glad to be there for this milestone! Of course Will was right in the middle of Jack opening gifts. He’s an excellent helper!

Poor little guy wasn’t feeling very well for his own party but Kevin did manage to capture a sweet smile from him! Love those cheeks!  He wasn’t overly interested in his cake as he wasn’t feeling great, but he did get a few good bites in.   Happy Birthday sweet Jackson (aka Jack/Jackpot/Jack-o)!  We love you and are so glad you are a part of our family!  So happy we get to spend more time with you now that you have moved closer!

Cousin love

So Dylan turned 6 on Dec 3rd. I know - I can't believe it either! He's in kindergarten and way too grown up. He had an awesome birthday party at a trampoline place. On his actual birthday we went to dinner with him. Got these cute pics of Will with the birthday boy.

Thanksgiving at our house

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year.  It was a lovely day!  I didn’t have to cook a turkey (thank you Dustin for the amazing smoked turkey you did) so hosting was fairly easy.  We did a good job of taking pics before lunch of everyone (yay)!  Sue was there but I guess we took pics before she arrived.  We missed Lindsey as she was with her family.  Here is J and MImi:

Mimi and the boys. She made them all these cute shirts!  They all 3 looked so cute in them – good job Mimi!

Sweet cousins!  Little cousins with the big cousins, Addison & Ian

Me and my cutie patootie. Her outfit is cute, right?  Oh the hilarity of this outfit.  I think I could make a whole blog on it alone.  Long story short mom and I have started using her embroidery machine to make cute clothes.  I do help even though I don’t know how to use the machine.  Mom doesn’t know how to do the computer stuff, so we are a good team. This is version 5, I think!  Several issues occurred and it worked long enough for a cute pic.  The ribbon is coming off – which is a whole other hilarious hiccup in itself.  At one point mom and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t talk.  It was so stinking funny.  At that point, we were either going to cry or laugh.  Hopefully we learned a few things and her Christmas outfit will go easier!

Our family!  Proud of them!  The McCoy’s! Pretty sure Miles is trying to eat the glasses.  :) Mimi and her granddaughter (I know she always wanted to be able to say that!) The Yales!  Harder to get the older cousins excited about pics!

Preschool Thanksgiving Party

Let’s see if I can catch up on some blogging.  I hosted Will’s school Thanksgiving party this year.  I felt like a real mom!  Will was so cute as he was thrilled to have me there.  He loved helping me pass out (or be the passer outer as he called it) cookies and juice boxes. These kids are so stinking adorable.  They all have great families that came together to help out their teacher who has a son with a tough illness.  Here is a pic of his table (please excuse the chocolate in his teeth).And the other table.  They all LOVED me taking their picture.  Hilarious.  Cheeseball!! Here is a pic of Will with Ms. Connors.  She is ah-mazing!  She is so wonderful with Will and has learned to deal with his hard headed/SWC-ness (anyone else have an SWC – you know what that means but if you don’t, strong willed child).After loading them up on sugar, Ms. Connors threw on the music and we had a dance party (to work off some of it).  If you ever want to feel good about yourself, go to your kid’s preschool class and dance!  They all want to dance with you!  You are the special guest! It was so fun! I sure enjoyed spending a little time with Will and his school friends.

Mom blogs worth reading

I like blogs.  I read them a good bit.  Sometimes I read them at work when I should be doing something like oh you know, working.  But that is about the only time I have to make that happen.  I came across this list of great mom blog posts.  I had read several of them before but some of them I had not.  This past week has been a little rough with a sick baby (who has been sick non-stop with one thing or another this last month) and very little sleep.  Anyway, some of these are written very well and say the things that a lot of us don't say aloud.  I especially like the one that addresses social media and how we only display the "pretty" parts of our lives.  It is easy to compare yourself to other people's pretty lives.  But really - how pretty is it really?  No one knows and generally all moms of young children (probably children of any age) are struggling with a lot of the same things.  All of this to say, I thought I would post just in case there is some other mom feeling really bad about their parenting/marriage/house/finances, etc. that might make them feel not so alone. It was a little lift to this tired mom.

School Days

Got Will’s school pictures back and I thought they turned out really cute this year! I couldn’t decide, so I bought 2 different poses.  They were all actually very cute!  He hammed it up this year!  Look how much he changed from last year!

Festival Fun

I forgot to post these. Dylan took Will to a festival at his church and Will had a blast! Dust and Tricia sent me these cute pics. Cousin fun!!