Surprise!!

5 Guys Hamburgers +  Great friends + Ice Cream cake = Who could ask for anything more?

Then we played our nightly round or 2 of Candy Land. 

It's crazy fun...just ask Rhett. 

home updates: part 1

the kitchen before:

I won't call this the 'after'...because it is not finished; so we'll call this "the present."

And now I need some advice...someday if I EVER finish taking off the wall paper and get around to retexuring the walls...it will need to be painted. 

Q: If this was your kitchen, what color would you paint the walls.

Q:  And...what would you envision for the backsplash??  

A little help please!

And here is our front room face lift!! 

I blinked.

And before I knew it Rhett was one.  Seriously 1 blink, maybe 10 or 12 at the most.  Why didn't someone tell me how fast baby #2 goes.  Rhett is lucky if he gets 10 minutes of undivided attention a day. I can only imagine what babyhood #3 and so on will have! This weekend we watched home videos of Cal on his first birthday.  When he started naming off the animal sounds of a cow, horse, elephant, I had a "bad mom" moment. Oh ya, animal sounds!  I forgot all about those!  We instantly got to work.  The past year has been filled with so many snuggles and hugs!  Rhett is EVERY ONE'S favorite! We are so glad he is ours!

We had a great time celebrating him in Arizona with lots of family and friends!

And Texas too...with our little family in the morning and Rhett's 2 other girlfriends that evening. 

6 years down...something like an Eternity to go!

We had such a blast celebrating our combined anniversary with Doug's twin brother Ben and Paige (their 1st!)  We headed up to Strawberry, AZ to a cabin where it had recently started snowing.  It was definitely an adventurous vacation (black ice, how do we get the smoke to actually go up the chimney?, Ben's fear of spiders, the VERY slow working heater in the cabin, making friends in high places at the Sports Chalet, callings those friends for help getting our car out of 2 feet of snow, the roads closed, thinking we were stuck with almost no food!, etc...)  But the no kids, movies, games (Ben was official Monopoly champion), cross country skiing, sledding, and great company, made it so much fun!  

It was almost 2 feet of snow by the next morning! Needless to say, we could not get our car out the next morning and enjoyed cross country skiing to breakfast. Such a memorable (and freezing) anniversary!

our jolly christmas!

We tried hard to remain in "Christmas Spirit" amongst the latest plumbing flooding at the Lewis household.  (Two floods in 1 week = New pipes/problem fixed/Lots of work!) 

With 4 different preschool programs and one Ward Christmas Program, I am all programed out for a long, long, time! But the kids were so darling and did fabulous!

Dotty, the horse, was definitely a highlight of Arizona for Cal. 

Christmas morning was a hit for all!

Our "Giant's" Christmas afternoon. 

A bigggggg thanks to the Grandma's and Grandpa's for all the spoiling and love they showed us!!

Enter new phase: toddler

The joy of making messes. 

Sigh. 

It has come all too soon.

 And on a side note, just when I think Callin is 3 going on 13, he pulls this little stunt and rips up half of the Holy Bible (in Portuguese none the less) and pushes himself back down to toddlerhood all over again. 

ps.  that would be my new tiled kitchen floor; goodbye white tile and daily mopping!

Give Thanks!

It is so wonderful to spend a month focused on all of our blessings.  We have so much to be thankful for.  Our highlights from Thanksgiving include:

that Aunt Deedee came to town...

that we got to go to Dallas and have so much fun...

that we got to spend time with family we love much...

 for beautiful and healthy children...

...and for a really, really great guy who adores all things social (kissing me, connecting with people, conversation, chatting on the phone, reading all my emails, girls night...)