Christmas at Home

Our first holiday in our own home (when more than one person came to visit) was awesome! We had Mom, Mike, Mamu, Andrea, Justin and Lana over for Christmas the Sunday before Christmas. We love having guests, and this first gathering in our new home was very special!

We didn't do the traditional Christmas menu - we opted for baked salmon, cream cheese mashed potatoes, steamed mixed veggies, broccoli with cheese, salad and cheddar bay biscuits (Red Lobster biscuits - yum!). After that, no one even touched my pies! Either they'd had had enough of my cooking or they were stuffed. I like to think it was the latter! ;)



Our Little Family


Mom, kids and Mamu


We Three Kids of Orient Are...


Bubba and Lana


We are very spoiled, but we are very thankful for all of the gifts we received from the family (including my Dad & Micki in Meridian!!). We received more than we need, so THANK YOU all for everything. I think my favorite gift is my "The Office" calendar. Everyone at work will get a kick out of it!! We also look forward to spending a lot of money (i.e. gift cards) at Lowe's! Yea for home stuff!!

And here's mom. Cleaning my house. Love it!!

Christmas in Meridian - Better Late Than Never!

We were so happy to be able to spend a day in Meridian with the Cannon gang this year. We visited with Dad for most of the Saturday before Christmas. I got to help Dad & Bubba put up some elk meat - I was the official ziplock bag zipper. Don't have any pictures of that, but it was fun!

We also celebrated Christmas at Papaw's house with him, Dad & Micki, Uncle Mark and Aunt Kim and most of the cousins. We missed Uncle Mike and Rhonda who are out in sunny California and Ashley, Byron and Baylee. The little one was sick. :(

Here's a pic of the grandkids with Papaw. We didn't break out the cameras until after Tyler had left, so he's also missing in this pic.



Ant & me


Bubba, Lana & Peggy Sue


Andrea & Olivia


Dad & me

Texas Winter Fun

This weekend we enjoyed some awesome shorts & tee-shirt weather!! We tried to spend every minute we could outside in the wonderful 70 degree temps doing whatever we could find. Ant tackled taking down the Christmas lights while I raked the back yard. Now, I didn't really want to rake the yard, but it was the only thing I could think of doing besides sitting on my behind in the sun! Zoe absolutely loved hanging out outside with me. We managed to rake the entire yard - about 8 or 9 bags full (this is the only time we've raked since moving in!). Oh, and by the way, lace bark elm tree leaves are a pain in the butt to rake. They're tiny and it's impossible to get them all! Nonetheless, being able to be outside during the warm weather is awesome! Being in an apartment, all we could do was sit on the balcony and gaze at the lovely parking lot. I'm so thankful those days are over!

We also taught Zoe a new game - frisbee!! She was scared of it at first, so I had her pick it up upside down until she got the hang of it. When she picked it up, it tilted in front of her face, so it was pretty funny watching her run around without being able to see where she was going. After she got the hang of how to pick it up, we started throwing it the correct way, and she caught on very easily! She's still scared to catch it, but she'll pick it up and bring it back. I hope it warms back up soon so we can play some more!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 to all!

We were blessed with a wonderful Christmas this year, and we have many pictures to prove it! The best part of the holidays was being able to see and spend time with our family!! I hope you were able to be with your loved ones and that you enjoyed all the good things Christmas brings.

Now on to our updates - I have the blogs written, but I still haven't uploaded and edited all of our photos! Stay tuned...

Our First Repair

We had our first, "oh, crap, it's broken" moment last night. Ant & I pulled in the driveway just a few minutes apart, and the garage door wouldn't work for either of us. When I pulled in, I thought he was in the garage pulling a prank on me by hitting the button right after I did beacause it would open a few inches and stop. :) Turns out the huge spring that pulls up the door had broken in half! To top it off, our home warranty that the sellers provided us didn't cover it! Oh, well. We knew we'd have to fix something eventually! I'd much rather have expensive garage door opener springs than no garage at all!! :)

Let There Be Light!

Since this is our first Christmas in a house, we had to do Christmas lights! We originally wanted the simple big bulbs, but we couldn't find them the one day we looked. So, Ant opted for the mini lights instead. He did a great job in getting them all up on the front of the house and around the doors and windows only to realize he didn't like them!

We made a few more stops around town and found the lights we originally wanted. He began to put them up, but then the cold, week-long rainy spell came along. He braved the cold windy weather this Saturday to get the lights finished, and they look great! Way to go Ant!


Not quite as good as Clark Griswold's lights, but it still looks pretty darn good. ;)

Zoe couldn't resist having her picture taken while I was outisde snapping pics.

Our New "Pet"

The first weekend we were in our house, we had a surprise visitor. We didn't get a picture of him, but a few weekends later, one of his friends came to visit! I named him Oscar. Anthony prefers to call him Hooter. Either way, he's not too fond of having his picture taken!



The first owl was very small - Dad & Justin think it was probably just a screech owl. Dad thinks this one is probably an immature barn owl, if that means anything to you! There's a large field across the street from our subdivision, so I bet they were just out looking for a snack!