Texas Tech Football Game

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went with some of our neighbor friends to the Texas Tech vs. Baylor game.  It was the first Tech game the kids had ever been to and also their (and mine) first time to Cowboys stadium.  This was the last year for this game to be held in Dallas, so I'm sure glad we made it.  We had great seats. . .top row of the lowest section.  Unfortunately for us, Tech lost, but we still had lots of fun. 

Happy Thanksgiving

We went to Mimi and Papa's house for Thanksgiving this year.  I failed big time on the picture taking this year.

Thankful for this family of mine!

Aunt Julie and Evan playing LCR.  Neither of them were the big winner.

Annual Trip to the Gaylord Texan

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, we stayed a night at the Gaylord Texan.  Shawn's cousin, William, had told us they were coming in town and staying 3 nights and asked all the family if any one wanted to join them.  We had always talked about staying over since we go visit Santa at the Gaylord every year, so we figured this was the reason we needed to actually stay.  While they stayed 3, we only stayed 1.  Shawn's aunt and uncle and other cousin, Blake, also stayed. 

We walked around and took our annual pictures of all the Christmas decor and also with Santa.  Our room overlooked Santa and as soon as we checked in and realized no one was in line for him, we jumped at the chance for the kids to meet him and not have to wait.  Evan was very excited about showing Santa the list that he wrote. 

We ate dinner with his family at the sports bar and our kids had a blast chasing their little cousins, Abby and Addy.

After dinner, his Aunt and Uncle graciously offered to watch all the kids for a couple hours so we could have a few drinks with his cousins.  It was fun to catch up.

The next morning we ate the breakfast buffet at the Mexican restaurant and then while his family went to do Ice, we opted to take the kids tubing.  This was their first time doing it and they loved it.  The best part was that it was unlimited runs.  They got to go down 3 slides and had to exit afterwards, but then they could get back in line to ride again.  Since we got there early, the lines weren't bad and I think they ended up riding around 4-5 times.  This was by far the biggest bang for our buck while we were there.  We also did the scavenger hunt, which the kids enjoyed and was something we had never done before.

Overall, I'm glad we stayed since we had always talked about it, but I'm not sure we'd do it again.  Everything is just sooo expensive and I don't feel like the service is that great.  I think in the future, we'll go back to just making it a day trip.

Emily's 9 Year Old Stats

Just a quick post to record Em's 9 year old well visit stats:

Height: 48.6 inches (6%)

Weight: 59.2 lbs (33%)

Vision: 20/20

Teeth lost to date: 8

Em only grew a 1/2 in. in the last year.  The dr. isn't concerned yet, but is hoping that she hits a big growth spurt in the next year or so.

Downstairs House Remodel

I realized I never posted pics of our downstairs remodel.  Now our house is still very empty as I have lots of decorating to do, but figured I would still post pics of all the work we did.  We painted the whole house, with the exception of the bedrooms, redid the kitchen, laundry room, downstairs bathroom and tile around the fire place.  We also painted all of the trim in the house from off white to true white. Thank goodness the work went super fast - just a few weeks.  I'm not sure I could have lived in such disarray much longer than that.  We love the results, now just to decorate.

Here are the before pictures.  In the kitchen, we painted the cabinets.  Lowered the raised bar area and extended the bar.  We removed the 2 upper cabinets on either side of the sink, got new back splash tile, new floor tile.  We re did the cabinet to allow for a double oven and got a new sink, microwave, stove top, vent and ovens.  We also took out the big fluorescent light and put in can lights.

And here are the after pictures.

Here are the before pictures of the laundry room.  In here we removed a linen closet that was in the hallway in order to make the laundry room bigger.  We put in sliding barn doors, a built in mud room area, new floors and new cabinets above the washer and dryer.

And now here's the after.  It's soo much bigger and I love having the drop off area with hooks.

The last big project was the downstairs guest bathroom.  We did new counters, painted the cabinets, new fixtures, new toilet and new floors.  Here is the before picture.

And now the after pictures.

Aside from painting the whole house, we also changed out the tile around the fireplace.

Here's the before picture.

And here's the after.

I'm so glad it's done.  We still have several more projects in the house that we need to do - new carpet upstairs, new kids bathroom upstairs and update the guest bedroom, but we made big strides in our project list with this remodel.