Our Primary & The Parade of Lights

Last year when I saw the Parade of Lights, I was really impressed by the number of churches that had floats in the parade.  I thought it would be so neat to have our Primary children make a float for this event.  What a fun thing for our kids and what a great way for our church to be a part of our community!  Fortunately I wasn't released as Primary President and so when the parade came around this year, we decided to enter.  

It was an amazing whole Ward effort!  We really wanted to share with the community our belief in Jesus Christ and the Bible and so we decided to have a small Nativity scene and dress the children up as angels with some wise men and shepherds.  It turned out beautifully!  Everything we needed was donated or loaned to us.  The Young Men helped repaint the wooden stable and animals we were loaned.  The Young Women made wonderful signs.  The High Priests Group loaned us the flat bed and truck with generator.  The Relief Society set up donuts and hot chocolate for the night before the parade and the Elder's Quorum helped us put everything together the night before.  We did end up sewing a lot of angel costumes but even the fabric for those was donated by a table cloth cleaning company that a sweet member of the ward hooked us up with.   The whole thing was an amazing experience, considering we had never done anything like this before.

Our super cute primary kids and young women who sat with us to help out.  

The kids were amazing!  No catastrophes, only excited kiddos!  

Brydon and I got picked to be Mary and Joseph, so we were in the back with the stable.  

Sweet wise men and shepherds!  

Caleb is on the far left and that is me in the blue.  

Our super cute angels!  I sure do love all these kids!  

We have the best Primary ever!

The float was beautiful and the kids had so much fun.  As we drove along the parade route the kids sang with Christmas hymns (that we had hooked up to a sound system) and waved to everyone.  

Truly a moment that you felt so proud to be a member of 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  

The parade was featured on the local television station.  I was able to DVR the parade and then took a video of my TV.  So not the best video but it is fun to see us on TV!

(Thank you Ross Family for sharing your pictures with me!)

2012 Family Pictures

Obviously I love pictures and I love getting family pictures each year.  Our friend Markee takes amazing pictures and has started her own photography business Memories by Markee.  She was a lot of fun to work with and did a great job putting up with my quirky ideas.  Markee is super creative and we are so sad they are leaving Texas!

 

Here are a bunch of our favorites.

Enjoy!

 

They just don't get any cuter than that!!

Thank you Markee!  You did an amazing job!

We love them!

 

A La Ferra Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we were invited to visit our friends the Christensen's in La Ferra, Texas.  These are some dear friends we met in Philadelphia and Caleb plans on marrying their daughter someday, so they are extra special!  They happened to move to Texas not long after we did, and live down at the southern most tip right by the Gulf of Mexico and the Mexico border.  We were excited to see a new part of Texas and see the Gulf of Mexico while we there.  It was a great drive down and it was a wonderful Thanksgiving!



Happy Thanksgiving!

Caleb, Emery, and Reese are all ready for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everything turned out great!  Stephanie was a wonderful host.

The yummy turkey!  Brydon is becoming quite the turkey cooking pro.  The beautiful flower arrangement Stephanie made.  She is very talented!

 

Thanksgiving was great!  We even braved Walmart on Black Friday (now really Thursday) to purchase the big Christmas family gift.  I was in line for over 2 hours but I scored the big surprise!

 

South Padre Island

The day after Thanksgiving, we were able to visit South Padre island in the Gulf of Mexico.  Our first stop was at the Sea Turtle Inc.  A sea turtle rescue center.  It was a really neat place and our animal loving son, loved it!

We got to see baby sea turtles and sea turtles with missing fins that needed extra care.

There were a lot of tanks of sea turtles.

This sea turtle loves lettuce and is great at poising for pictures.

These two boys are pretty amazing at poising for pictures too!

These poor guys are in the Intensive Care Unit and are recent arrivals that need extra help

This is Allison.  She has lost 3 flippers and uses the prosthesis on the left to swim.

You can watch her and other sea turtles on the live cam at

www.seaturtleinc.org

Our Cute Crew!

The Gulf of Mexico

There is nothing this boy loves more than the beach!  It was so fun to get a day at the beach.

Our Crazy Beach Bum!

Someday this boy is truly going to grow gills. 

This Gulf is beautiful.  The water was warm and it was an amazing day.

Caleb got to try out the boogie board this time and loved it!  He was so sweet with Reese and learned to master it pretty well. 





Best Beach Buddies!

My Two Favorite People!

My Beautiful Amazing Friend! 

We are so lucky to have them as friends.

We loved our day at the Beach!

 I wish I had gotten pictures but we went to a really unique Mexican flea market.  La Ferria is about 75% Latino and you hear Spanish almost anywhere you go.  The flea market was a great place to get fruit, clothes, jewelry, food, and any other random items you can think of.  I just didn't get any cool pictures but we loved going. 
 

La Ferria Zoo

A visit to a new place would never be complete without a trip to the zoo.  It was a great little zoo.



Fabulous Kiddos!

These two best friends are too precious.  Caleb still plans on marrying this sweet girl someday and they are both quite committed.  So far he as great taste!

At the end of our visit we even did a quick stop by The Bass Pro Shop to see Santa.  One of the best Santa's we have seen in Texas.

 

It was a great Thanksgiving and so fun to spend it with great friends.  We are so lucky to have so many wonderful friends in lives. 

Thank you Christensen Family for a Happy Thanksgiving!