Deck the Halls!

Before Melissa went back to Austin today, we decorated the Christmas tree. It has always been our tradition to wait until after Joe's birthday on the 5th to put up any Christmas decorations. But now that we have kids out on their own (and Joe isn't even here), we try to do it when most of them are home.

Our tree has always been decorated with ornaments we got as the kids grew up along with the ones that they made. I've wanted a "grown up tree" for a long time, dreaming about fancy matching ornaments. But the last couple of years that has changed. I love pulling out all the old decorations and enjoying all the memories they bring. I think I'll always have this tree (unless of course my kids steal the ornaments when they have families of their own--although I am not sure that will be allowed).

Anyway, decorating the tree was an enjoyable way to end our holiday weekend. Bring on Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we enjoyed a very laid back Thanksgiving. Originally the plan was to have dinner with the McLemores. But a couple of days before Thanksgiving, Tyler got a job at the Pierces golf course. His schedule for this morning, meant the earliest he could eat would be around 3 pm. Ordinarily that wouldn't have been a problem, but this year the UT - A&M football game was being played on Thanksgiving day instead of the day after. Since it was in Austin this year, Melissa had tickets and she wanted to make sure she was on the road around 3. So it was just the 5 of us for dinner. It is still strange not to have Joe with us on days like these. But we enjoyed our day together, and watch UT beat up on A&M in the afternoon. So even though we didn't get to hang with the McLemores, we did have a very nice day!

We had a wonderful dinner! Don't worry, we ate turkey, not Big Bird!

Dinner was followed by the traditional Thanksgiving naps, and even Dakota joined in.

Melissa came home again on Friday and spent the rest of the weekend with us. Besides just wanting to spend more time with her loving family, she also came back to help her dad. Greg had had a very difficult time getting anyone to agree to speak in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. Melissa had just given a talk in her student ward which she told me had gone very well. She had even had a member of her Bishopric tell her it was the best talk he had ever heard in their ward and one of the Bishopric members' wives tell her it was the best talk on motherhood she had ever heard. So when Greg was starting to panic about who to get to talk, I told him to call Melissa because she had just given a talk and could probably give the same one to our ward. And lovingly she agreed! The talk was excellent, and once again she had several people compliment her on it. We are so blessed to have such wonderful children! And It was wonderful to be able to spend time with all the girls this weekend.

Pie Night

I love the holidays and I love pie. So of course we continue our tradition of combining the two with our annual Pie Night. This year we had a really good turn out of friends and pies, and it was a night enjoyed by all. Here are some of the people who joined us that night:

Mike & Alicia McLemore and Cindy Solgere

Marie Greenwood , Kelly & Zach Ferris, Liane Martin and Jared Stewart

Nancee, Dan, Logan & Ryan Pyper

Even the kids had fun

Kerri & Becca Richmond -- Kira Ferris wants more!

Spencer Greenwood -- Stephanie McLemore & Melissa

Erin & Bridget McLemore

Football Season Ends

Cy Creek's football season ended tonight as it began--with a loss against Klein Oak. Our team had an excellent season, going from worst to first in a year and finishing undefeated in district play. The only loss we had this year was in our pre-season game against Klein Oak, the team we had to face in the second round of the 5A high school football playoffs. We were hopeful that the team had improved enough over the season that this time Creek would come out one top. But it wasn't mean to be and we lost 49 - 21.

It was an amazing season. And a great finish to Erin's first marching season and Rachel's last.

College Application and Graduation Stress

We will have two major milestones next year when our two oldest girls graduate. All though these are exciting events, they are leading so some big life decisions that are causing our daughters a bit of stress. Oh the pains of growing up!

Rachel will graduate from Cy Creek High School on June 5. She has been trying to decide where she wants to go to college and working on college applications. Rachel wants to study social work, and is planning on applying to 5 colleges: Utah State, BYU, BYU Idaho, UT and Texas A&M. She has finished the application for Utah State, which was extremely easy since they don't require any essays and all she had to do was submit and online application and then have transcripts and test scores sent to Logan. USU has some good scholarships for out of state students that we are hoping she'll get so that she can actually consider going there. The schools that require essays are a lot more work, and she is working on completing them. The BYU early admission deadline is December 1, while the Texas schools is Jan 15. And since their essay topics are not similiar, she is working on them according to the deadlines. I think it this process is exciting for her, but also a little stressful. She has 5 AP classes this year and and is working hard to keep her grades up. Plus she has been sick quite a lot (which may have to do with the stress she is feeling). I really am not sure how she does it, but am proud at how she just keeps going.

Melissa will graduate for the University of Texas on May 23rd. She has really gone through some panic about trying to decide what to do with the rest of her life. But she has worked through it and come up with a plan she feels good about, and is currently working on her application to Harvard. Her grades are excellent and she seems to be doing well at holding everything together. But she must be feeling some stress over it all judging from a dream she had the other night. It was a classic school dream--one where just discovered that she had a math class she never went to and missed a test, so now she was going to have to retake it next semester in order to graduate. But because she failed it, she wasn't going to get into grad school. She woke up in a panic and told me that it took her a good 5 minutes after she woke up to convince herself she wasn't taking math this semester. I had to laugh! At least she wasn't naked in her dream! Those are the worst.