Pancakes with Santa

Saturday morning was spent at church having pancakes and visiting with Santa. The decorating committee did an awesome job with some super cute gingerbread people and lollipop designs. The kitchen crew (Chris included) did an awesome job churning out the pancakes and keeping the cocoa hot. It made for a nice Saturday morning with friends.

Making a foam Christmas tree. We used A LOT of those stickers.

Some of the cute Gingerbread decorations.

I just love Santa's face in this pic, like he's really listening to what Maggie has to say. Cameron's request to Santa in his letter and when sitting on his lap was for a Harry Potter Wand and a Nintendo DS. Maggie wants a pink castle with a tower.

Hope Santa gets those orders to Austin!

Dewberry Farm 2010

Today we met Bekah, Nick & the boys, and Nana & Pops out at Dewberry Farm in Brookshire, TX to have some Fall fun. We were all exhausted by the end of the day, but had so much fun with the many activities.

Duck races - however, all the kids did was get up there and pump the water like crazy, not really concentrating on "racing" the other kids. They just tried to go as fast as they could.
Bouncy pillows - these were really neat, sort of like a bounce house/trampoline. The kids could have spent the whole day just doing this.

Corn Maze - run Nana & Pops!

I'm gonna hope that Bekah or Jeanne got a better group shot than I did. At this point Cameron was pushing Maggie off the pumpkin and royally making her mad.

So I think our favorite part of the day was the pig races. The farmer came out and said that he needed 4 volunteers to help get the pigs ready for the race. Although Chris didn't volunteer, he did get picked to help. The farmer had the volunteers go to the center of the ring and then asked them each to do a good pig call. The other 3 contestant's calls were okay, but nothing compared to the "Sooie" that Chris let out. Of course he won - a camo hat! We were certain that his Uncle Lindy, an Arkansas Razorback fan, would have been very proud to hear that call.

We had a really good time out on the farm, and will have to join the family out there again next year. Maybe Nick will do the pig calling next year. . . teehee!

Paid off!!

The van is now ours, we paid it off on Friday! It's so awesome to say that we own something out right that's such a big purchase item. We would have paid if off in February, so we are 4 months early.

We've been on Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University since the middle of August. Our focus right now is Baby Step 2 - paying off debts. We paid off a few small things in the prior months and that was nice. But dropping a car payment - that is an awesome feeling! Makes you want to dance in the street!

Now to keep rolling that snowball and knock out the student loans and truck payment. We do not want to be paying student loans and putting a kid into college. So, we've got our eye on the prize, which is to be debt free by December 2012. Oh yeah, I know that sounds far away, but in all honesty, we've lived the last 9 years in debt (and doing it all wrong), what's 2 more to know that we'll be done forever?

What else excites me is that I keep bumping into others that have been doing FPU and some are on the same step as us, and others have way surpassed and completed more steps. In all cases, every one of them has been excited to talk about all the cool things they've done and learned while participating in FPU. In fact, I ran across a craft blog the other day, a family of 7 that is being frugal and doing FPU, they paid off their SUV a few weeks ago. She was, like us, so excited to get rid of that payment. It's a blessing for sure.

We've been so blessed already and are so excited that we will be prompting FPU to all of our church starting next month. Not only will the members get a chance to participate and change their own lives, the church itself is utilizing the concepts to become debt free.

What kind of changes would you make to your world if you didn't owe anyone (Sally Mae, a credit card company, etc.) any money? We've talked about things we'd like to do, and people we'd like to help. And we've done stuff on a small scale for now, but we'd love to do things on a bigger scale.

As Dave says, you can live like NO one else now, so you can LIVE like no one else later.

Texas State Fair

We took a trip up to Dallas to go to the State Fair with our friends, the Maese Family, last weekend (Oct 8-10). In all the years we lived in the DFW area (even Chris) we never attended the Fair. I really hated that we missed that experience - I have a thing about experiencing the "touristy" things in the city you live in.

The men, Chris & Joe, got tickets to see Tech play Baylor and aren't we glad Tech won! Go Red Raiders! They even ran into a few other almuni they knew, at the game.

While the men had fun at the game, Erica & I maneuvered the crowds to have fun with the kids.

Barrel kids - Maggie, Quentin, & Cameron.

Got a pic in front of Big Tex, with a less than cooperative Maggie.
Okay, personally I thought the puppet show had some creepy looking characters in it, however my kiddos were enamored with these guys. Quentin shared my sentiment and chose to not take a pic with the Stars & Stripes guy.

Another funny story about the puppets. At one point there's a duck puppet that is supposed to be psychic (go with it, we did). Anyhow, it had an accident on stage. As soon as we were allowed to go up to the stage, what's the first thing Cameron does? He wipes his hand over where the duck "peed" and says it's not real pee, it's just water. Really, kid? What if it had been real pee? What would you have done then? I guess that's a boy thing, gotta check it out and let everyone know the "truth" of the matter.

She's so confused, you don't push a tractor, you ride on it!
Oh, we loved the baby pigs, they were so cute. They raced all around the cage and then came over and let the kids pet them. I could totally take one home.
Of course we had corny dogs. Maggie stole mine, little stinker!
It was super crowded and Chris says he's checked the Fair off his bucket list. However, the kids had a great time and despite the crowds I did too. I think next time (if I can get Chris to go back) we'll go on a non-game weekend.

Chris was so spoiled that weekend, I'm just going to call it his birthday weekend. He got to attend game 4 of the Rangers playoff series against the Rays. And then walked across the parking lot to see the Cowboys play the Titans. Even though both of those teams lost, David and he had so much fun at both stadiums. It was David's first time in Cowboys Stadium and I believe his comment was "That place was huge."

It was a good weekend with friends and family up in DFW. Sometimes we really want to stay for a whole week instead of just 2 short days. We just can't do everything and see everyone in such a short time.

Grandma & Pawpaw's Barndominium

While we got to attend the retreat my parents graciously took care of the kids. They got to run around on a lot of land, and entertain my parents with their wild ways.

The Barndominium is coming along really well. Mom is looking out the front door of the apartment side, and then the other door on the side leads into the barn part.
I'm excited they've made such good progress, but I'll be even more excited when they actually build the real house.

Marriage Retreat 2010

Chris and I got the opportunity to attend the marriage retreat through our church last month. It is held at the lovely Summer's Mill Retreat Center near Salado, TX over 2 days.

We were able to head out a day early so the boys could play golf and the ladies got a chance to do some shopping in Round Rock & Salado.

Me, Dee & Heather
We ate lunch on Saturday at the Dead Fish Cafe in Belton. It's right on the lake so we had a lovely view, even though we did get sprinkled on a little bit.
At the retreat property, they have all sorts of fun animals to visit with - ostriches, buffalo, donkeys, deer and some sort of elk. The longhorn that tried to get me last time was much bigger this time, but wasn't really interested in any of us.
View of the mill and creek. The week before we came there had been lots of flooding, but you really can't tell from the creek on these day.
Most of our group, missing Chris as he's taking the pic. Had lots of fun with all of you and learned some awesome new things from our facilitators Scott & Shelley.

A Party Weekend

Cam happens to share his birthday month with a few friends and we got to celebrate our friend Owen's birthday the next day.

Mrs. Lisa is an awesome cake maker and I think she was quite creative this year. It's a golf ball cake because we were at Putt-Putt. How cool is that!?!

Rock wall climber.
Possibly the favorite, the bumper boats.
Fun friends.