A Dollar for Our Thoughts

 

I struggled with trying to figure out what to give our teachers at school this year.  It seems that a lot of the Mom's try to outdo each other and though I may have a crafty bone or two in my body, it doesn't hold a candle to what some of these ladies come up with it!  So after thinking, and searching and thinking, it finally dawned on me that it really doesn't matter what it looks like or what we spent on it.  All that matters is that the teachers know how much we appreciate them.  And so our craftiness and interviews, yes, interviews commenced.

 

First we did a little painting...

 

 

 

And then we interviewed the girls.  We ended up making four of our little notepads.  One for each of the girls teachers and then one each for Sassy and Kayla.  We had a lot of fun getting the girls' responses to our questions.  Some of my favorites were:

 

Where does Ms. Donna live? 

   "With her Momma and Daddy like me, only I don't think she has an Ava like I do."  - Carli

 

Ava, who are your friends at school?     

     "Ms. Robin and some other little people."

 

The boys were not good today at school.  We need to pray for Ms Donna and maybe the boys too! - Carli

 

"Ms Robin misses me."  - Ava when on vacation.

 

"Sassy's real name is Sassy.  Remember Mom?  She comes over all the time and we call her Sassy!"

 

"Sassy tickles Carli's arm.  Sassy tickles my arm and it makes me laugh!"  - Ava

 

"Kayla’s favorite color is blue, or maybe purple.  It could be brown.  I am not sure.  It’s probably a rainbow.  Yeah, she likes rainbows."  – Carli

 

"I love Kayla and she loves me."  - Ava

We ended up getting 25 comments, scriptures and encouragement notes for each note pad.  Then we alternated them with one dollar bills and made a little note pad.

 

 

 

 

 

It turns out they were a BIG hit!  They weren't perfect by any means, but the teachers, Sassy and Kayla loved them.  I ended up picking up Ava from school early the day we gave the teachers their gifts.  Ava's teacher was almost in tears thanking me for the awesome gift we gave her.  Then Carli's teacher had already written Carli a pretty generic note for some pumpkin bread we had given her earlier in the week.  We got a second thank you note gushing with thanks over the "Best Gift she had ever received in her 20+ years of teaching."  Awesome!  I think we figured out what to give our teachers from here on out! 

We got a text from Sassy thanking us for her notepad saying it brought tears to her eyes.  :)  Kayla loved her notebook too!  Yea!  Mission accomplished.  Make these four ladies feel special and make sure they know how much we appreciate them.  Success!  :)

Christmas with Grammy & Pa

 

We had Christmas at Grammy & Pa's on the day after Christmas.  Since more than half of us were recovering from a bout with the flu, it was a pretty laid back day.  The first thing we tried to do was get a cute picture with all the grandkids.  Turns out Carli still doesn't like for people to watch her take pictures, even if it is family.  Logan and Ava cheesed it up for the camera.  Carli, not so much...

 

 

 

 



 

My handsome nephew, Logan.

 

Carli & Ava

The picture says it all!

Now, when you tell Carli she can't open presents until she smiles for the camera...you get results!

And finally, they got to open presents!  The kids were taught a lesson in patience this year.  They had a hard time waiting their turn to open their gifts!  Some of Ava's favorite gifts included some new Calliou books, a baby doll stroller, a jewelry box and a lot of homemade busy bags from Grammy!

Carli got a lot of neat things.  She really likes her new jewelry box, a real big girl necklace (camo) from Pa, her busy bags from Grammy and some sparkly new pants.

We had a lot of fun getting gifts for our family this year.  The girls picked out a couple of gifts, including a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shirt for Uncle Tone...

We got and made Aunt Chelle a "Child Training Bible."  I really liked this project and hope to finish up one for us to use really soon too!

Grammy was surprised that Pa got her a new Nikon Camera like I have!  We are going to get to take a class together soon so we can learn how to use it!

Pa with his Angry Bird Pajama's from Carli and Ava.  This was one of those gifts that we walked by in the store and Carli about had a coronary trying to get me to buy it for Pa...because he really, really, really needed it.  Pa loves Angry Birds, it's the only game on his iPhone!  So obviously, her powers of persuasion won.

And after all the gifts were unwrapped, Pa had one more present for the grandkids...it was upstairs waiting on them...

And they had a blast playing with it!  I'm sure there are many memories to be made with this new toy!

We finished up our day eating some pizza at Pizza Hut...and it was good!  :)  We were all worn out by the time 5:30 rolled around.  Ava fell asleep in the car about 6 and she slept until 8:30 the next morning!  We had a great day and felt very blessed to have spent it with such an awesome family!

King Family Christmas

We had our King family Christmas in Fairfield this year.  God bless our family for putting up with the half of us that were recovering from being sick!  I was suppose to have brought rolls and dessert.  Keith went to Sam's one day while I was sick and bought some Sister Schubert rolls and I had a cheesecake in the freezer that we brought.  I held up my end of the bargain, though I would have preferred to have brought some homemade goodies the energy just wasn't there.  :)  Thankfully the family didn't seem to mind at all! 

After a yummy lunch, we let the kids open all their gifts before doing our white elephant exchange.  Carli and Ava had a lot of fun playing with Logan, Jake, Allison and Weston.  I think that was the highlight of their day. 

Logan and Carli watching Jake play on the Nook.

 



 

Getting some lovin' from Pa.

 

 

Carli and Allison opening presents together.

 

 

Ava checkin' out her new stuffed bear from Aunt Carolyn & Uncle Johnny.

 

 

There were a lot of awesome gifts this year at the white elephant exchange.  We had a lot of gifts get frozen really quickly!  Some of my favorites were a blue jean quilt from Grandma, a sign with Pawpaw's prayer on it, and the every infamous Duck Dynasty video.

 

Here is a picture of my beautiful Grandma on Christmas day.

 

One pretty cool thing is that about 4 pm we noticed that people started posting that it was snowing in DFW and then eventually in Tyler!  Who would have thought we would have gotten a white Christmas?!  We decided to head home before it got too late and the roads got bad.  We got home in time for the girls to see the snow before begging to go to bed!  Exhaustion brought on by a blessed day full of family!

Christmas Morning

Carli asked for two things for Christmas:  a bike and a pogo stick.  We are pretty sure that she got up in the middle of the night and took a peak at the Christmas tree because the first thing she said Christmas morning from the hall was, "Where is my pogo stick?!"  Yeah, Santa fail on that one!  We told her he must have left it at Grammy & Pa's house because Grammy told us she found one there...saved by the grandparents!  Ha!

 

Carli got a new Tutu.

 

 

We would have never thought that the new hats would have been such a hit!

 

Ava got really good at opening presents and was not very patient about waiting her turn!

 

The girls in front of the tree and Ava with her new Tutu.

 

Carli ever so carefully opening her present.

 

 

Sporting their new bathrobes

 

 

Helping Daddy open his presents. 

 

We tried to keep with the four present rule:  Something they want, need, wear and read.  We had the read and wear down.  The problem is that they didn't really need anything and they wanted everything!  ha!  So their "need" were new beds that we ordered a week before Christmas and probably won't get here until the end of January.  Their "want" were new bathrobes with slippers.  They did end up opening four presents each and that was nice.  They also had some full stockings to explore.  I like the four present rule.  It helped a lot in figuring out what to get Keith!  Plus it helped keep the budget in check and not go overboard with too many gifts.  I think it is something we will stick to in the years to come.

Our Christmas morning was awesome.  The girls had a blast and Keith and I did as well.  After we got things cleaned up, it was off to celebrate Christmas with some extended family in Fairfield.

Christmas Eve PJ's

In an attempt to start a little tradition with our little family, we decided to let the girls open one gift on Christmas Eve.  The girls were very excited to get to open a gift early!

It is so fun to watch the different personalities come out between the girls.  Ava was quite the present unwrapper, and Carli slowly took her time....

They got new PJ's!  They weren't Christmas PJ's but were princess PJ's that they both LOVED!  We figured it would be best to get them some pajama's that they would enjoy wearing all year long instead of Christmas pajamas to wear one night.  Granted, I would have put Christmas pajama's on them in July but they are getting a wee bit opinionated about what they wear so it was a fight we chose to avoid in the future!  :)

 

Shauntea's Final Acts

Being our first year with an elf, I thought we did a pretty decent job keeping up with Shauntea every night.  Then the flu hit our house, more specifically, it hit Momma and Daddy was surviving as best he could!  So Shauntea, bless her little elf heart, behaved for a night or two while everyone was preoccupied.  Carli even noted that Shauntea sure was being sweet not getting into trouble while Momma was sick!  :)

Here are the last few pictures of Shauntea's activities at our house before Santa picked her up on Christmas Eve night to take her back to the North Pole.

Trying to stuff Santa in a box.

 



 

Coloring with some of the girls new coloring books and crayons.

Eating some Christmas Candy the girls brought home from school.

Sitting in a birthday hat hanging from a balloon on the fan. 

Had she been super inventive, she could have turned the fan on and taken a ride, but Shauntea knew her limitations!

 

 

Keith did an awesome job bailing me out more than once during the whole Shauntea experience.  He got up one morning and noticed I hadn't done anything with Shauntea and quickly put her in the time out chair surrounded by the girls Christmas Chain links they had put together with Naggy.  Carli was quick to point out that Shauntea must have fallen while trying to use the links as monkey bars and put herself in time out!  

Keith even wrote a farewell letter from Shauntea to the girls to find on Christmas morning.  Ava was a little upset that Shauntea left but opening presents helped her a lot!