Cousin Christmas

Cousin Christmas is a highlight of our Holiday season.

We began our celebration making peg people for a nativity scene.
This is L's angel for our nativity scene.
We love our cousins!!! Here are the two oldest.

D got some Texas Rangers apparel and was so very excited.

L had been wanting an angel dress up outfit and got one from her grandparents.

D and L and one of their cousins watch the gift opening.

E opens her dress up clothes

E is dressed as an eskimo cutie and standing by her grandma.

D shows off his gifts. Below he's dressed in his SWAT outfit with his nurf gun.

What a great cousin Christmas!!!

Green belts!

D took time off from karate because the schedule conflicted with soccer. However, as soon as he returned it was time for a belt test. He and his Papi worked super hard and were approved to test.

They are waiting to test...
P takes his partner down in a self defense move.

Sparing...D is second from the left in the back and P is on the right in the back.

Both passed the test and were presented as green belts!

I'm so proud! They worked super, super hard!

My four year old!!!

E celebrated her fourth birthday!

Hard to believe this little one is four!
To celebrate her birthday, we took the kids to ride on the carousel.
Then ate dinner at Chipotle's.

Then we headed home to finish the celebration with cinnamon rolls and presents.

(E and mommy had made the cinnamon rolls earlier in the day.)

E was very proud of her cinnamon rolls.

As usual, E's siblings each picked out a gift for her.

Then came the big present from mommy and Papi...

A skateboard!!! E had been begging for a skateboard for her birthday so when we found a girly princess one, I finally was able to convince her daddy to let me buy her one!

She got more instruction than she ever wanted.

The birthday girl and her gifts.

A few days later it was PARTY TIME!!!!

My dog lover chose, of course, a doggy party!!

Here she is with her dog cake.

We played "walk the dog" pushing the ball (our dog) with a broom (the leash)

Pinata bags had to be decorated.

Pin the party hat on the dog.

Drop the doggy bone in the bucket.

The Pinata!

Grandma had to finish the pinata because the doggy was a fighter. Dinner!

Cake

Presents

Goggles...not sure why but E had been asking for goggles for her birthday so her aunt found her some and she has been wearing them all around the house.

Grandma and Grandpa found a helmet to keep her safe on her skateboard.

The E got to show off her new skateboard at the party.

Half Marathon!!!

I ran my first ever half marathon...Dallas White Rock!!!

I actually only know half of these people but we all caravaned together to the race.
These are a few girls I trained with. Why the purple trash bags??? Did you know trash bags keep you amazingly warm??? And you can just throw them away when you are done with them. It was chilly...37 or so degrees.

Here are some more of us waiting in the corral to start the race. There were 22,000 participants in the race. Most of my friends ran the full marathon but I just started with the half.

Start!!! So cool...

I finished the race!!! It felt good. Unfortunately I missed my goal time by 1 min, 15 seconds.

Guess I'll have to do another one to get that goal met!!!

I think I'll wait a bit, though!