Well here we are at the end of another year and another decade - wow! I have off until after the new year (yay!) so this will probably be my last post until next year. Over the weekend, the kids and I went shopping in Fredericksburg, so I snapped some pics of them with the Christmas decor around town. Everything is so festive! Here are some of the pics:
Saturday evening we celebrated John's birthday with friends and family at the brewery. It was a great time for all of us - even the kids had a good time... I snapped this pic of Colten and his friends - it kind of looked like a premonition of things to come in a few years, hehe:
Sunday we had a nice lunch with Oma Reeh for her birthday and then went to see the "Christmas at the Theatre" show with Roseline - very neat show, the aerial dancer was awesome!
Ashlyn had an out of town game this week in Menard. They lost the game and she didn't get to play and was upset again, but I think she expected it since they were losing. Hopefully things go better after the new year. Ashlyn also had the 7th and 8th grade Christmas dance last night and had lots of fun. It was the first time she went to a dance at school - she never wanted to before. She mostly danced with her friends, but 4 boys asked her to dance, too! My baby's growing up!!!!
We're all looking forward to visiting with family and friends over the holidays, but still have lots to do to get ready. Thank goodness for the time off!
Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!!!
Ashlyn had a basketball game Monday night, and while she didn't get to play during the regular game (pretty much only the starters played), she did get to play in two extra quarters against a team from the Christian School in Mason. They ended up losing 8-7, but Ashlyn made 3 of the points - 1 from a free throw that Mom managed to snap a good pic of :) YAY Ashlyn - she made points and got fouled - so we were very proud of her!
Tuesday morning, Ashlyn informed us there would be a Christmas band concert that evening - nice warning! Anyway, we were able to get her there of course, and I remembered my camera this year! This year was a little different as there were 3 bands (beginner, white and purple) instead of two (beginner, 7th-8th grade). The white and purple were both combos of 7th and 8th graders and have different teachers. Ashlyn is in the purple band and WOW, they sounded great. We were impressed with how much better they'd gotten since last year - hardly any squeaks :) and much more complex.
Here's a video of her band playing Feliz Navidad - it doesn't have a great picture, but you can hear the music. You can see Ashlyn's head in the middle behind the dark-haired girl in front.
Now compare that to her first year Ashlyn's Beginner Band Concert - 2007
Whoa!
John took Colten hunting after school last Thursday (3rd time out this season) and he shot his first buck with one shot in the "lung" like Colten likes to say. It's a nice 8-pointer. He's ready to go again!
We got some early snow Friday, but sadly, it didn't stick. The pic is from when it was whitest. It snowed good all morning, but then the sun came out and it was all gone by mid afternoon. Colten was VERY upset when he got home from school because his class was the only one that didn't get to play in the snow at school. By the time it was their turn for recess, the snow was gone!
There have been a couple of basketball games since my last post. Last week, the team they played had Ashlyn's twin on it, and they were guarding each other - can you tell them apart?
She did get to play twice in that game and was happy about that. This week Monday she didn't get to play during the regular game, but they played an extra quarter for those that didn't play during the game and she played the whole time during that. She did pretty good, but as point guard, we need to work on her passing ;)
We had Thanksgiving out at the ranch this year and had about 36 people over to eat lunch! It was fun and crazy and we had sooooo much food and even more desserts. Dad and John fried two turkeys and I baked my first Turkey ever, all of which were very tasty. Everybody brought side dishes and/or desserts and I almost couldn't find room for it all! We are truly a blessed family to have such a wonderful smorgasbord for our holiday meal. Thankfully, the weather was great and most people were able to eat outside.
Friday & Saturday were spent winding down after all the Thanksgiving hullabaloo, but we did manage to get our tree up Saturday - still need to work on the outside, but now it's tooooo cold :)
Sunday was an exciting day for me & Ashlyn. We met up with Mom, Rena, Oma Reeh, Carol, Lyla, Amanda, Savannah & Sydney to see the Nutcracker Ballet in San Antonio. It was the first time to see a ballet for a lot of us - Ashlyn had already seen the Nutcracker in Austin when she was at school in Georgetown. It was so beautiful - the music from the live symphony and the dancers were wonderful to experience. I felt like a little kid again watching it! Ashlyn got to see the trumpet players warming up before and kept wanting to go check it out.
Here's a pic of Ashlyn and I before the show started -
Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures during the show, so that's all I have :(
I'm hoping to go get some Christmas shopping done on Friday, but the forecast calls for snow.... I'm torn - would LOVE for it to snow, but I really need to do some shopping before this weekend - THREE Christmas parties!!! Yikes!!! Either way, I'll be happy, though :)
Just wanted to add a quick update about the food show. Everything went well - no disasters this year, thank goodness! Ashlyn got 4th place in her division out of 15 and Colten didn't place - there were 17 in his division. He was very upset, but we got him to feel better with a trip to Target so he could finally spend some of his money on more Bakugan toys - boys!
Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!
Ashlyn's team had their first real game Monday (the previous was just a scrimage) and they won by a point at the very end of the game - it was very exciting. However, Ashlyn only got to play the last 30 seconds and was VERY upset about it. We had to calm her down a bit and explain that life's not always fair and to keep working hard. She's very frustrated, though, because the coaches mostly let the starters do the scrimmaging in practice so she doesn't get much real practice, but she wants to really bad. Hopefully it gets better....
So John & I can officially take cubscouts camping now. We went to a day long BALOO (basic adult leader outdoor orientation) training this weekend to learn a lot of things we already knew, but now we are official. Not sure yet when we'll get to go camping, but we plan to in the near future. First we'll have a practice family camp in the pasture to make sure we have everything we need and make a good list of what to bring. We don't do the tent camping thing too often so we will need a dry run...
That's about it for now. The kids have the district food show this weekend so wish them luck! I have off next week and so do the kids (OFYP optional flexible year plan - they are passing everything and so don't have to go to school) and we'll be running errands and getting ready for Thanksgiving out at the ranch. Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Things have been kinda crazy around here lately, but here's a quick update.
Judy came for a visit this past weekend and we enjoyed seeing her. We attempted to climb Enchanted Rock with her Sunday, but the rain forced us to turn around before making it all the way to the top. We still got some good exercise in though!
Ashlyn had her first game Monday - a scrimmage against Llano. They were divided into A & B teams for this game only since most schools Mason plays against don't have enough for two teams. She played on the B team and I was impressed with how much she had improved since last year. She plays point guard and made some pretty good plays and even was involved in some fouls which means she's finally getting aggressive! They were winning the entire game until the last 19 seconds when the other team scored and beat them by 1 point :( Oh well it was fun to watch!
Monday was a crazy day though. I worked in Austin so I left the house at 6am and John was going to be cooking hotdogs for the cubscouts at 6pm after taking Judy to the airport in SA that day and then had to be at a DVFD meeting at 7:30p. I had to come from Austin and pick Colten up from cubscouts after helping clean up from hot dogs and grabbing a few for Ashlyn and then went to the gym to watch Ashlyn's game which didn't start until 8:30pm. We were all exhausted by the time we got home a little before 10... whew...
Today I'm taking the afternoon off to help with distributing popcorn for the cub scouts. John picked it up Saturday morning and barely had enough room in his truck to bring it all home. Our pack did some serious selling - we had the biggest stack of boxes out of the packs in the Hill Country District! I just hope I got all the orders right.
