Christmas in Angleton

We celebrated Christmas with the Tiltons the first week of December.  We went out to G.G.'s nursing home and took over the activity room to have our gift opening extravaganza.  Noah got lots of cool stuff that he was super excited about (as you can see from his expressions) but I think the favorite by far was the set of Toy Story figures he got from G.G.  He also got the movie Toy Story 3 which was a big hit too.  Can you tell he really likes Toy Story these days (this was his first movie theater movie a little while back.  Excellent choice at the dollar theater!). 

I'm so glad we all got to gather as a family and have everyone there to spend the weekend together!

Sea World

Later Thanksgiving weekend we went to Sea World with Aunt Dayna and cousins Jared and Lydia.  It was great because we'd been wanting to go but were hesitant to spend the extra money (we'd looked into it back in September when we spent the weekend in San Antonio).  Then we were blessed when a member of Point of Grace offerred Mike some free passes that she wasn't going to be able to use.  Thank you!! 

Noah rode his first roller coaster--it was a small one but still pretty fast at times.  He LOVED it!  Little dare devil.  We saw several shows including Shamu and the Sesame Street holiday show.  All in all a good time. 

Noah's first roller coaster

 Waiting for Shamu to start

 Snow after the Sesame Street Christmas show

Thanksgiving

We went to Angleton for Thanksgiving this year.  It was low key and good just being with my family, though it had a little different feel this year.  This is the first year that my sister spent Thanksgiving with her husband's family.  Plus we were in Angleton instead of at Aunt Georgies (our usual tradition) and this year my Grandmother was still doing rehab in the nursing home so she wasn't able to be with it.  So it was us, my parents, and my brother.  A little smaller than the 20-30 people Thanksgivings we've had before.  But sometimes that's just what's needed too.

We did get to spend some good time visiting with G.G. at her new home.  Noah shared breakfast with her one morning.  And we went to Grandma's park (that's what he calls the park/playground that my mom takes him to).  As you can see Noah had a blast.

We headed back to Austin after lunch on Thanksgiving day to watch another pitiful excuse of a Longhorn football game.  Thanks to Mike's family for watching Noah while we went to the game.  What a way to finish the season.  Ugh.  At least there's always next season!

We are very thankful for all that we have...we are blessed with a wonderful family and many great friends.  We give thanks to God for all he has given us!



Naptime Cuteness

A New Generation of Longhorns

Extra ticket to the UT Football game: $15

Parking: $8
Popcorn and Water: $9.50
Taking Noah to his first UT game and experiencing gameday and campus with our sweet boy: PRICELESS!

The one advantage to Texas having an absolutely horrible football season: cheap tickets!  We were able to get an extra ticket (Mike and I have season tickets) to the Florida Atlantic game for Noah from Ticket City for $15 (including fees). You read that correctly. Fifteen dollars. I'm not sure I ever thought we'd see ticket prices drop that low. The funny thing is that they have a disclaimer that states "I understand TicketCity is a service that resells tickets at more than face value and all sales are final".

It was SO fun to take him to the game with us and introduce him to all our Texas traditions.  It's so cool how young kids enjoy the simplest things--Noah was just as excited about riding the elevator (in the parking garage) and the many, many escalators to get to the top of the stadium where our seats were than he was about everything else.  He loved the big drum (Big Bertha) and watching "the guys" (the football players) run onto the field.  Oh, and the smoke when the players run out of the tunnel was also a big favorite.  As was the kettle corn popcorn.

After the game we checked out the fountains and looked at the Tower.  He was pretty impressed by the size of the Tower too.  We still need to work on our Hook 'Em but we've got plenty of time to practice that. 

Such a great opportunity and I'm so glad we made the effort to go!  I can't wait till he's older and he'll really appreciate all the stories Mike and I tried to tell him as we were walking around campus of the time that Mommy and Daddy spent there.