The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Right down Santa Claus Lane

Happy Monday and Christmas Eve Eve Eve!  🙂  We’re getting ready for Santa around here – one box at a time!  We did make a trip to see the jolly man last week and Maxwell got to tell him what he wanted.  We were supposed to go the week before but then Maxwell got sick. He was trying to so hard to convince me we could still go that night but then finally, through sad tears, said he didn’t feel good and wanted to stay home. He was trying so hard to go because he was worried that he wouldn’t get to tell Santa what he wanted in enough time for his elves to make it!  Precious boy.  I assured him that we could go see Santa the following week and that would still give the elves plenty of time to make his presents!

Like last year, we saw Santa at The Club and Maxwell marched right on up and sat on his lap!

santa

He said he wanted emergency vehicles – a fire truck, police car and ambulance.  Hmmm….seems like I’ve heard that list before!

santa

Let’s hope he’s been good enough!  🙂

santa

Spencer didn’t want to get near Santa. Even the promise of a candy cane couldn’t lure him onto his lap.

santa

So, we all hopped in and got a family picture with the man himself.

santa

Santa told us that he likes chocolate chip cookies.  Duly noted, Santa, duly noted.

santa

santa

Ho Ho Ho!

Oh Christmas Tree!

So, the outside of our house looked ready for Christmas…

decorations

and our mailbox looked super holiday-ish (Thank You Susan!!)…

mailbox

so we had to get the inside of the house to match! Getting it done this year looked a little different than previous years but that’s ok. I went and picked out the tree by myself and, since we’ve taken a picture every other year when we got our tree (2013 and 2012 and 2011 and 2010), I had to take one of myself at the tree lot with our tree of choice!  ha!

tree

We actually had it delivered and then it was raining when it came so it got to sit outside for another day to dry. We finally got it inside and then I got sick. Then Robert went out of town. Then the boys and I were determined to decorate the tree on Wednesday only to get all the lights out and discover that half of them didn’t work. Well, after an emergency trip to Little Hardware at 5pm that night to get more lights we were finally in business!  We fought through all the obstacles and ended up with the best tree yet!  🙂

tree

Little Hardware had these neat, big, colored lights and Maxwell thought they were FANTASTIC because they had some orange lights on them. While I usually prefer all white lights on my tree, I have to admit that these colored lights are really fun and add just the right touch to our tree this year!

tree

My “helpers” were a really big “help” and super proud of the tree when it was finished!  They even wanted to go put on their Christmas tree pjs and take another picture!

christmas tree

Ok, Santa…we’re ready!

tree

Have a great weekend!

Concert

On Friday of last week, the 3 year old classes at Maxwell’s school put on their Christmas concert. It was adorable. They’ve been practicing the songs for weeks apparently and, well, you couldn’t tell at all.  But, that didn’t matter because they all looked super cute standing up there!  It was a big crowd too which had to be intimidating for such little guys. Robert sadly had to miss because of the flu but I got there really early and had a front row seat so I could record a bunch of it for him.  Luckily, Maxwell ended up standing on the front row right in front of me!  Yay!

Here’s all 60 kids in the 3 year old classes ready to sing!

concert

Maxwell is on the front right next to Lila, of course. They were glued together the whole concert!

concert

Maxwell was very concerned that I was not doing the right thing.  Here he is telling me to stop taking pictures…

concert

and I think here he’s telling me that I’m supposed to be clapping!  Ha!

concert

They sang quite a few songs but the whole thing only lasted maybe 15 minutes.

concert

They sang Jingle Bells, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Christmas Tells of Jesus, Cristo, Cristo (Christ, Christ), Away in a Manager, Baby Jesus, The Angel Band, and We Wish You A Merry Christmas!

concert

Overall it was precious and I couldn’t have been more proud of my little buddy!

maxwell

And, I have to say, I think he was the cutest one up there too!  🙂

concert

Ho Ho Ho!

Long weekend happenings

After our great Thanksgiving, we thoroughly enjoyed having a few days off together with no plans!  Well, no plans other than check on the new house, go to Lowe’s (shocker), and start cleaning out our current house for packing.

Robert and I took the day off Wednesday and we were all up and going early. After a morning trip to Lowe’s, we decided to stop off at Bass Pro on the way home just because…

bass pro

For the record, it’s actually a great place to go kill an hour on a cold day. There’s tons to see and they have a whole Winter Wonderland area with Christmas decorations, crafts, a carousel and Santa!  We were too early that day for Santa but we may be back!

bass pro

The boys had a blast and I was shocked at how many people were already there at 9am in the morning!

We then had a great Turkey day but, the day after Thanksgiving, Spencer was sounding really congested, croupy, and wheezing so we made a trip up to the doctor to get him a steroid prescription and another albuterol mask.

doctor

I hate when my buddy is sick but he handled it all just fine…wind chapped cheeks and all!

spencer

The rest of the weekend was spent stopping by the new house…

house

going back to Lowe’s (check out Maxwell’s awesome bed head!)…

bedhead

and enjoying the pretty weather.

outside

We even took time to make the new house look Christmas-y!  This makes me pretty darn happy!

xmas house

Finally, on Sunday night we put on our Christmas shirts to go to the Advent Workshop at church.

xmas shirts

cheese

The boy made some cute crafts and we all got into the Christmas spirit!

advent workshop

We’re in the home stretch now for our big move and it can’t come soon enough!

Thanksgiving in the Gump

Happy Monday! Hope everyone is feeling great (and not too stuffed!) after a long holiday weekend. We thoroughly enjoyed our holiday and had a great Thanksgiving day down in Montgomery. Jenny nicely offered to host and cooked up a big feast but I did take the desserts.  I made a pumpkin pie (which I love but Robert thinks is nothing short of a waste of a pie) and a pecan pie.  Both were really good (if I do say so myself!) thanks in part to my kitchen helper…

pie crust

For my memory, I branched out from my mom’s tried and true shortening pie crust recipe and went with an all butter crust from Smitten Kitchen.  Turned out great!

That morning, I actually got to pick out Maxwell’s clothes and had him looking cute and dressed just like Spencey!

tgiving twinkies

Thanksgiving twinkies!  🙂

We got down to Montgomery around noon and Ronnie had ordered this cardboard rocket ship for the kids to color all day – total genius move.

rocket ship

The boys especially loved it! We had a fun day all around watching Ronnie fry the turkey…

turkey fry

feeding the kids an early “feast” of their own…

tgiving

and then letting them have one of the turkey cookies I made along with the pies!  gobble gobble!

turkey cookies

It was a beautiful (albeit chilly!) day and the cousins had a blast running around outside on the golf course.

outside

outside

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In fact, we all enjoyed the sunshine that day!

tgiving

The meal was fantastic (thank you Jenny!)…

tigivng

and we enjoyed the outdoors just as much after the sun went down…especially with the fun(ny) head lamps and glow sticks for the kids!

head lamp

Let me tell you, you haven’t laughed until you’ve seen Spencer running around with a headlamp on!  ha!

Overall, it was a perfect day that made me realize how thankful I am for my entire extended family and definitely for this guy…

tgiving

and these little turkeys!

tgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!