Big Lou's Pizza

Troy's cousin, John Paul, visited for a very short few days in our busiest week of December.  I'm sure we did tons of fun stuff, but I only took pictures of our trip to Big Lou's Pizza, home of the BIGGEST pizza ever.

We ordered the 42-inch, which we thought was the biggest they made.  Think it's enough to feed our crew of 7?

The pieces were huge, and they had special trays to hold them.

 Everyone had his own method to eat it.

 Turns out that the biggest they make is actually 60 inches!  We'll have to go back another time to try that one out!  As it was, there was enough pizza to feed us for 3 more days, and then it got thrown out because we were so sick of it!

Pre-Christmas Fun!

Tree decorating!

 Hey, look, a rare picture of Mommy!

 I did some baking with the girl.

 A big, cardboard gingerbread house was donated to the garage sale and didn't sell.  I'd been saving it for months!

 It kept these 2 busy one day while I did school with the other 2.

 Poppy and I went for a walk to see lights one evening while the brothers sneaked off to church.

 I'd like to say she just liked playing close to the tree.  The entire side of the piano was COVERED in poop when she vacated her spot.  It wasn't pretty.

Breakfast with Santa 2013

I'm almost to the end of 2013, guys!

All the kids enjoyed our annual Breakfast with Santa.  There were crafts:

 Don't you love those boots with the footed pj's?

 I love it when he cooperates for pictures.

 The boys were so ready to share their lists with Santa...

 But this girl wanted NOTHING to do with him!

 Candy-topped pancakes are always a hit!

 I'm not really sure why his lips are blue!

Ducks!

We headed to Brackenridge Park for playgroup one day to feed the ducks.  All the kids loved it, and luckily some of the other moms had been saving bread for months!

Thanksgiving 2013

We invited ourselves to the Craftons for Thanksgiving again, and, again, they graciously let us crash the party!

Stacia gave me a quick tutorial on my new camera and these are the (very) few pictures to commemorate the event.

Thanks for always having us, Craftons, and we will be there in November again if you'll have us!

Homeschool Day at The Witte

Reef and I have enjoyed homeschool day at the Witte the last 2 years and were excited to have Jonas and the Ebroms with us this year!

Reef made it all the way to the top of the rock wall!

Ellie gave it a try and made it even higher the second time!  Jonas wasn't into it this year.

Finally, he was tall enough for the tightrope bike!  Jonas really wanted to do this one but was a smidge too short.  Next year for sure!

The Texas exhibit was new to us, and there was so much to see, do, and touch!

Love that tongue sticking out!  He was concentrating hard on that Labyrinth-type maze!

We had a great time but quickly learned that the special CSI exhibit that we paid extra for was definitely age-appropriate!  We raced past the crime scenes but enjoyed looking at different fly larvae in the microscopes.

Can't wait till next year!

Fall Co-op Fun!

I'm attempting to jump back into the blogging...again...

We continued with our co-op in the fall and had a great time with friends.

Our art was to make fall leaves.  This was the sample:

 These were their projects:

 Totally nailed it.
We also packed boxes for Operation Christmas Child.  It was so funny to watch the girls and boys shop!  The boys were all about getting what was on the list while the girls wanted to buy every pink thing in sight!  In the end, they did great sticking to their "budget".

 Our finished boxes.

 The girls, Molly and Ellie.

 The boys.  Can you tell Jonas was having a bad day?