November 2020

Another month that's light on pictures!  I think that's a theme of 2020.  :)  Regardless of the picture quantity, November was a really nice month.  We have all enjoyed the "slowing" that tends to happen as the year comes to an end.  

The boys took a camping trip to Cooper Lake at the beginning of the month and did lots of fishing.

This was Eli's biggest catch- a 6# drum!

We always love having Cooper with us.  On this day they were doing target practice with BB guns.  :)

As per tradition, the boys decorated "their tree" for Christmas.  

Watching "Prince Caspian" one evening that Cooper spent the night...

Shake Shack!  We have officially deemed it the "best chicken sandwich in Dallas."

This is a terrible picture, but the night before Thanksgiving I always cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal for just the three of us, and we watch "Elf."  This is one of my favorite nights of the whole year.

Thanksgiving was a bit slower this year, which we LOVED.  We had a fun breakfast and took a walk together.

Thanksgiving dinner with the whole family at my parents' house...  And my grandparents from Maine joined us this year, which made Thanksgiving extra special.  We SO ENJOYED the time we got to have with them during Thanksgiving week!!

Another Thanksgiving tradition- matching Christmas jammies for the kids!  :)

On the day after Thanksgiving, we went to breakfast with the Heinzes and then headed to Lowe's to pick out Christmas trees.  We got a good one!  :)

Happy Christmas season, with LOVE and JOY!!!

 

September and October, 2020

Pictures from the past couple months!  

In September we celebrated our anniversary by going to our favorite hotel for the weekend.  And we got to see a movie for the first time in months!  This is a terrible picture, but the only one we took that weekend.   :)

Eli stayed with Dad and Mom, where he and Cooper set up a tent in the living room.  :)

Eric and Eli have been doing LOTS of fishing this fall.

Occasionally the boys build a fire and cook the fish they catch.  :)

MUCH of this goes on- sorting fishing lures.  :)

Jacey is a lover of good food, and I always love sharing meals with her! 

More fishing...

These next few are from a camping trip we took to Cooper Lake.  We had a great weekend hiking, fishing, and just enjoying being outside together.

These next pictures are from our big family camping trip to Daingerfield.  We had the best time!!

And a couple randoms...

I attended a virtual food safety conference this month, and this is what my "office" looked like that week, complete with a cat sitting on a pile of paperwork.  :)

Again, more sorting of fishing lures...  I think it's cute when he takes out the tackle boxes and spends time organizing everything in there.  I love watching his interests.  

That's it from the past couple months!  We're very much looking forward to the coming holiday season.  Love to you!!

 

August 2020

 Happy almost fall!  This month we got to squeeze in a quick trip to Colorado, enjoyed the last weeks of summer, and WENT BACK TO SCHOOL for the first time in 5.5 months!  :)  

We are so impressed with the incredible amount of work the PCCS staff put into getting the school ready for in-person learning during this COVID season, and we are so thankful that Eli gets to be back this fall.  He has LOVED being with his friends again, though it will take us a little while to adjust to the busier school schedule!  :)

A staff member sent this to me during the day, since parents aren't allowed on the campus unless we are working...  My 7th grader!

Here he is before we left the house in the morning...

(These are so out of order- sorry!)  We have been watching "Alone" on Netflix, which inspired Eli to build this shelter in the woods behind our house.  :)

Cooper and Eli have been VERY into Rubik's Cubes this summer.  They can both solve them and are working on getting their times quicker and quicker.  It's fun to watch them.  They're solving the cubes and timing themselves here...

Eli helped Eric build a fence!

And here is Colorado...

This was my "spot..." Early in the mornings I'd walk to get a cup of coffee, and then walk to this little park and sit on this bench and read.  It was much-needed "soul care," for lack of a better term!  :)

We stayed in Manitou Springs, which is a super cute little town with tons of little shops and restaurants that we just walked to.  Ice cream is a vacation must!

We did a LOT of hiking!

These are in reverse order, for some reason, but here is Eli at the TOP of the Manitou Incline.  You can google it for more info, but the Incline is 2,744 steps up the side of the mountain that gains 2,000 feet of elevation in less than a mile.  It was incredibly steep and such a crazy workout, but we did it!  It was super memorable, and we're so thankful for the experience.  Eli actually beat Eric and I to the top by about 10 minutes!  When we got up there he said, "Took you long enough!"  :)  In the picture below you can see the little plaque by his left ankle that has the step number.  They're marked all the way up, so you get a boost of encouragement every 100 steps.  :)

We made it!

This is somewhere in the middle of the climb...  We loved the camaraderie of this hike...  everyone there was encouraging each other all the way up.   

This was at the bottom when we started at 6:30am.  It took us about an hour and a half to make it up. 

Before we started.  I like Eric's face.  :)

This was on another hike, when we got caught in a quick thunderstorm.  It was so fun and memorable!  

This is somewhere near the top of Pike's Peak (which we drove up, not climbed! :) ).

And the summit!  It was COLD and windy up there, and we were all super light-headed and dizzy from the altitude.  We took a good look around and then got out of there quick.  :)

Lunch by the river during another hike.  This hike was ROUGH- it was way longer and waaaaay steeper than we had anticipated.  We earned our lunches for sure!  :)

Eli and Eric got to play disc golf in some pretty places, too.  

The end!  :)  We send you all our love!