Christmas 2011

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s with our families.  I wasn’t great at remembering to take pictures, but here are at least a few that hopefully highlight the festivities.

We spent all Christmas weekend with Kolby’s family.  The highlight was definitely our one month old niece, Kyndall.  We mainly just laid low, passed the baby around, ate some great food and played Pictionary on the Wii. 

 The whole family attended the Christmas Eve service at our church and it was really neat to have everyone there.   

On Christmas day we had a morning full of opening presents and then we had a big meal with the extended family.  It was a wonderful and relaxing Christmas!

***

After Christmas, Kolby and I joined my parents and Russell for a trip down to San Antonio to watch Baylor play in the Alamo Bowl (Brad & Remy were in a wedding so they couldn’t come).  After being notoriously terrible at football for a very long time, Baylor has been on the rise and wound up having a fantastic season this year.  The pinnacle was when our quarterback, Robert Griffin III, won the Heisman.  But winning 9 games and then beating Washington in the Alamo Bowl was an exciting accomplishment as well. Baylor scored 67 points in the bowl game, setting an NCAA record.  It was crazy.

Mom putting the Baylor flag on the truck before we hit the road (and then flashing what she called a "gangsta" sign for the picture).

 Me and Russell at the game.  He's a senior at Baylor this year.  What good timing!

We then celebrated Christmas with my family over New Year’s weekend.  Here are a few really random pictures.

Kolby took this because he thought the sunset looked cool in the background.  Tucker was going for a pretty sophisticated look here.

Santa brought a suped up golf cart to the ranch for Christmas, which we all took for a spin.

 The kids set off some killer fireworks off the dock on New Year's Eve, while my mom and dad and Tucker watched from the patio.  We only had to run and take cover twice.  Might be a family record. 

So, that about sums up our year-end family fun.  Merry Christmas to all.  And here's to 2012-- I have a feeling it's going to be a great year!

P.S. Thanks to everyone who sent a Christmas Card!  Our refrigerator was looking mighty festive this year  :)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, from our family to yours.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.    Luke 2:8-11

Anniversary Weekend(s)

The weekend before our anniversary, we hosted our parents for our annual anniversary dinner.  It’s a tradition we started on our first anniversary.  Here is an explanation, taken from a post I wrote in December 2008.

          In honor of our first anniversary, we hosted our parents for a nostalgic celebration of the wonderful wedding weekend that they had blessed us with now one year ago. We are so grateful to them not only for that most beautiful and perfect time of celebrating our marriage with our family and friends, but for continuing to shower us with love and support. We had the wedding of our dreams—so far beyond what I ever could have imagined—and we are so fortunate to have begun our life together in such a special way. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts :)

It’s really fun to have them over, and we try our best to make it as fancy as we can.  It’s such a great time of year to have company because the house looks really magical with the glow of the Christmas lights and the smell of the pine tree.  This year for dinner we had rib-eye steaks, three cheese risotto and bacon-wrapped green beans.  It was all delicious, if I do say so myself!  I tried to set a nice table, even putting out our cloth napkins that we probably haven’t used since last year’s dinner!

We interrupted the very end of dinner to tune in and watch the Heisman Trophy announcement (OK so maybe the dinner wasn’t all that fancy after all).  What a great day to be a Baylor Bear!!

And nothing wraps up an anniversary celebration like a good old fashioned photo slideshow!  Cheesy?  Sure!  But also really fun to watch and reminisce?  Definitely.

***

To celebrate our anniversary, Kolby and I spent a weekend at a hotel nearby and went to nice dinners and had a date to the mall on Saturday to take care of all of our Christmas shopping.  We even wrapped everything back at the hotel while watching a movie.  It was the perfect “getaway” weekend for us, even it if was only 15 miles away!  Spending time together was the most important thing.  It was a bonus, though, to unload the car and see that our tree was totally full and know that we’re all ready to celebrate Christmas with our families.

Four Years

Wow, has it really been four years?  On one hand I feel like we JUST got married.  But on the other hand I feel like we’ve been married forever.  Maybe because we started dating at such a young age (15) so I can’t clearly recall much of what life was like before Kolby.  Especially since I blocked out age 11-14 due to a terrible case of braces and bad bangs.

I honestly can’t put into words how amazing it is to be married to Kolby.  He’s my best friend, my partner in EVERYTHING, and most of all—he makes me happy.  He has such a positive and joyful spirit; I am so blessed to wake up every day to live life alongside someone as great as him. 

In honor of our fourth anniversary, I want to list four of my favorite things about my husband extraordinaire.  I could go on about his character, his love for the Lord, or any other more serious matter, but I’ll keep it light here. 

1.  He is wicked smart.  Intelligence wasn’t really on my radar screen when I was in 9^th grade and on the hunt for the next boy to have a crush on.  I don’t know what was on my radar screen, but I imagine it was mainly availability for the homecoming dance and willingness to accept the aforementioned bangs situation.  So I guess it was just luck that I happened to fall for (and subsequently date and marry) an incredibly smart guy.  Kolby is the smartest person I know.  I know people who are smarter than him in certain fields, but Kolby has more broad-based knowledge about everything than anyone else I’ve ever met.  I think it’s because he’s such an avid reader.  Or maybe he was just born that smart.  Either way, it is such a luxury for me, and I don’t think I can even describe why it’s so great.  It makes him a great communicator and he always knows exactly what I’m thinking even when I can’t articulate it well.  I wish I could say that being around him makes me smarter, but I don’t think it really does because I like being difficult.  Exhibit 1, a conversation we had in the car the other day.  He was in the middle of giving me a hard time (jokingly) for always mixing up common sayings or using words incorrectly.

K:  “You have quite a propensity for aphorisms.”

E:  “I don’t know what that word means.”

K:  “It means fondness.”

E:  “Not that word.  Good grief, how do you think I wouldn’t know what propensity means!?!”  (it’s an economics term)

K:  “Oh.  An aphorism is like an idiom.”

E:  “Then why didn’t you just say idiom?”

[Let the record show what we don’t usually have such dorky conversations.  My brothers will disagree, and add this to their list of reasons why Kolby and I are the lamest people they know.]

Being smart also makes Kolby super witty.  That brings me to the next item on the list…

2.  He is outrageously funny.  Kolby and I have our own brand of humor around our house, and he totally nails it.  Flawlessly quoting funny TV show lines in the most fitting moment is the definition of my kind of humor, and Kolby is truly gifted at it.  He’s also just generally really, really funny and makes me laugh every single day.  And he’s gotten a lot funnier over time.  Or maybe I just find him funnier now.  Either way, he’s a hoot and it’s one of my favorite things about him.

3.  He is a teacher.  I LOVE that Kolby teaches.  It’s such a great fit for him and he is so stinkin’ talented at it.  But there are also a lot of selfish reasons why I love that he teaches.  To start, it makes him happy and it doesn’t really stress him out.  To be able to say that about the occupation of your spouse is quite rare and is a tremendous blessing.  He comes home in a good mood every day.  He’s also home by 5pm.  He (generally) doesn’t bring work home with him.  Kolby has my full support in anything that he chooses to do with his life in the future, but I have to say that nothing would please me more than for him to teach forever.  I just love how much time it allows for us to spend together.  Another selfish reason why I love that he teaches is that with my job I’m often meeting new people and they usually ask what my husband does, and I absolutely love getting to tell people that he’s a teacher.  I think teaching is one of the most important jobs anyone can have, and I swell with pride to talk about what Kolby does and what an amazing talent he has for shaping the minds and hearts of students.

4.  He has a joyful spirit.  That is mainly just a fancy way of saying that he is a really happy person.  He is always in a chipper mood and it’s contagious.  He jokes around all the time and keeps things positive.  One of my favorite things about this quality is that he laughs out loud a lot.  I’d like to think I’m a very happy person as well, but it takes a lot for me to laugh out loud.  I find a lot of things funny, but more of a laugh on the inside or let out a little chuckle kind of funny.  But Kolby?  He belly laughs at things he finds really funny.  A couple nights ago we were lying in bed and he was reading aloud from his iPhone this web article entitled “When Animals Run Attack Ads,” and he was cracking up at it.  I didn’t think it was that funny, but watching him laugh so hard was seriously endearing.

Happy anniversary, honey!

You have my heart.

Catching Up

Here's a quick update on what's going on around here these days.

This time of year is busy for Kolby because it's college application time for his students.  As an English teacher, he gets A LOT of requests to help edit college essays.  It's a lot of work but it's also really fun to hear about his kids getting into the schools they were shooting for.

This fall Kolby hosted a Poetry Out Loud competition at his school and it went great!  I went and was really impressed by the performances.  One of Kolby's best talents as a teacher is that he has a unique ability to get his kids really interested and excited about the things he is really interested and excited about.  Memorizing and reciting poems--- I would never have thought about doing anything like that in high school!  But these kids had a blast with it.

Also on a school-related note, Kolby created a project where some of his seniors directed some freshmen in a performance of Romeo and Juliet last week.  They did it during the day and the whole school attended.  It went really well, and Kolby told me a neat story about how one of the freshman--who happened to be a big-time football player--discovered he was really good at acting and also really enjoyed it.  He was the star of the performance and now has started attending the school's acting club.  It makes me really proud of Kolby that he's in a career where he can have such a neat impact on kids' lives.

Sometimes I'm really fascinated about how different our jobs are.  Last week Kolby was nervous about the play going well, and he said to me, "Imagine calling a meeting for your whole department--asking all of your co-workers to give up three hours of their very busy schedule--and being solely dependent on a bunch of 15-year-olds to make sure it goes OK."  Ha!

On a semi-related note, Kolby has been trying to get me to read FOREVER.  Long before we were married.  But I always had some excuse not to.  I used to read a lot in upper elementary school and loved it, but I got out of the habit and I'm embarrassed to say that I can only remember reading one book for fun in the last 15 years or so, and that was when I read Redeeming Love during finals my sophomore year in college.  Well, I finally caved and gave reading another shot this year.  Turns out, reading is really fun.  Kolby was right all along (there, honey, I said it!).  I've read at least ten books so far this year.  Now I'm not talking classic or edifying books, but you have to start somewhere, right?  I've read everything from My Sister's Keeper to Tina Fey's memoir to The Help to John Grisham novels.  I'm totally hooked on reading.  It's much more enjoyable than idly watching TV.  Who knew?  If anyone has any "must reads" let me know and I'll add them to my Christmas list!

In other news, we're slowly getting ready for Christmas around here.  We went to a local tree lot to pick out our Christmas tree this week.  The past couple of years we've chopped down a cedar from some family farmland nearby, but transporting it back home given that we both drive small sedans has been a bit of a problem in the past (remember this?).  So this year we coughed up the $25 and bought the cheapest tree on the lot, a snazzy little 5' scotch pine.  A friend told us they're cheap because they shed a lot, but that's just even more reason why it'll be right at home here with Maya  :)

Here are a few cell phone pics from our tree excursion.  We went on a date to our favorite pizza place, picked out and loaded our tree in the back seat, and then decorated it while watching the remake of Miracle on 34th Street.  It was a perfect night!

10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving was Awesome

1. This handsome devil:

He's always at the top of my list of things to be thankful for.

2. The smoker:

This is my dad's new hobby, and it's the best hobby a dad can have.  All-day Wednesday he smoked brisket, pork, chicken and a turkey.  There were only seven of us, and that food wasn't even for the Thanksgiving meal!  But oh man, it was sooooo good!

3. This little guy:

Need I say more?

4. The food:

5. The Cowboy's game / family nap time:

6. The games:

  7. Family movie time (Where the Wild Things Are):

8. Maya got to come:

9. Lots of new weapons for target shooting contests:

10. The gathering ended with us all going to Cowboy's stadium to watch Baylor whoop up on Texas Tech:

Welcome, Kyndall!!

Welcome to the family, baby Kyndall!

Kolby's brother and sister-in-law welcomed their precious daughter last Sunday.  She was born happy and healthy, and everyone is doing great!  The picture above is when she was about an hour old.  She looked so beautiful for being so brand new!  

Welcome, Kyndall!  We can't wait to see you again in a few weeks!

Full House

This week we hosted our 4th annual Pumpkin Carving Extravaganza.  I don't really know how I can describe this year's festivities other than to tell you that we had 25 people here and it was crazy.  TWENTY FIVE people.  Let's let that sink in for a second.  But, what we lacked in space we made up for in love and hospitality  :)

I absolutely love hosting, and I love having a full house.  I definitely get that from my mom.  And boy did we have a full house.  What started as a gathering of our Life Group spread to some other families as well, which is what happens when you go to a small church.  As always, though, the more the merrier.

The families with kids arrived an hour before the others so they could hang out and decorate/carve pumpkins before bedtime.  My hope was to take a lot of cute pictures to really capture the event.  But rush hour traffic had other plans and I arrived home at the exact moment that four families with a collective nine children ages seven and under descended upon our house.  So instead of being nice and relaxed and taking pictures (probably a long shot to begin with!), I was trying to get stuff organized and stay one step ahead of the chaos.

Below are the pictures I did manage to take. 

I think everyone had a great time, and the kids for sure had a blast.  These kids really care for each other and it's the sweetest thing to witness.  Of course they are little kids, so an understandable amount of craziness accompanies them.  At one point Kolby walked into our living room and all the young ones were running/jumping back and forth from our couch to coffee table to chairs (he just walked right back out).  Thank goodness for the beautiful weather which allowed us to spread out onto the back deck.  Can you imagine if we were all trapped inside?  Have mercy.

 

After the kids group headed home, the remaining adults got serious with the pumpkin carving contest.

Kolby's was by far my favorite.  He somehow has an impressive knack for pumpkin carving.

 It's Derek Holland.  I hope at least some of you are familiar enough with who that is to really appreciate the resemblance and cleverness displayed here!

As always, we made homemade caramel apples, roasted pumpkin seeds, and drank spiced cider.

It was a great night, and certainly one to remember.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I get a little sentimental at times like this when we cram our house full of fun and laughter.  This is our first house, and someday we'll probably have a newer, bigger house and it just won't be the same.  Kolby and I were both having some house envy earlier in the week, and this was just what we needed to remind us of just how proud we are of our place.