November and December Happenings

Arrgh! This is so frustrating...the pics came in backwards chronological order, and I'm having the worst time trying to move them around! So I give up...we'll go backwards! This one was last weekend during my attempt to get a decent picture of the kids for a Christmas card. I actually liked this one, but wanted them actually looking at the camera for the card, so I thought I'd post this one here on the blog. It's going to be such a fun Christmas! The kids so look forward to getting up in the mornings and finding "Bob", our Elf on the Shelf (for those of you who don't know about the Elf on the Shelf, you can visit www.elfontheshelf.com). This is also the first year that Ashley has has to share the daily ornament-hanging duties on the Christmas Countdown calendar, but luckily Tyler is pretty good about allowing her to hang them for him, as long as he gets some input on where it goes.

Here's Tyler hatching out of an egg at the Zoo! This one and the next one are from our visit to Zoo Lights...we went with MaMaw and Grandma and Grandpa Schulz over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Here's Ashley the morning of the big Cheer-Off Competition! What a crazy few weeks leading up to it...practice 6-7 days a week! But the girls did a fantastic job and I couldn't have been more proud of her. I know the hair and makeup is a little scary, but it looked REALLY good from the audience! :-)

This is just a cute pic...when we were at the cheer coach's house for brunch before Cheer-Off, they noticed that Tyler was carrying the fire hat he had just gotten at Firehouse Subs, and remembered that they had a firefighter costumer that was about his size. He was thrilled!

Other news to report...people keep expressing surprise when they find out that Mallory now works for Perkins Restaurant, so I guess maybe we never formally announced it...he started with them in September and just "graduated" from training last week. He is a manager at the location in Collierville, which is such a blessing...a nice short drive and great employees and customers! And the kids and I love to go eat there (Tuesdays and Saturdays, kids eat free! And there's a balloon man on Tuesdays, who Tyler professed his love for last week as the man was making him his requested penguin). Ashley moved straight from cheer into basketball...she's back on Coach Jen's team (one of my good friends)...she was with this group of girls two years ago and is glad to be back on their team again. She's probably the smallest girl on the team, but she's trying hard! Tyler is as silly and lovable as ever...he's three and a half now, which seems crazy. And I trained for and ran my first 5K on Halloween, which I've always wanted to do...I've despised running all my life, and I was so proud of myself when I ran every last step of that race!