Thanksgiving 2010

Wow, I am at post number 200! I really need to get my blog turned into a book....or a few! Anyway, we don't have a lot going on, but I wanted to update our Thanksgiving festivities. We spent Wednesday and Thursday night over at my parents house. My brother Corey and his family were there, and of course my sister Natalie joined us. We had a nice dinner and it was nice to be there together. Stephani made some great pies and my mom always does great on dinner! As for me...I helped out where I could. I really wish my other brother and sister could have joined us, but we look forward to that at Christmas time. Corey and Steph wanted to go to Harry Potter number 450 so we gladly took a break and went with them. It was entertaining.
Friday I shopped a little with my mom, but I am not a big shopper so I didn't see much and we didn't go early enough to fight the real deals, we had a good time looking though. Saturday our family put up our Christmas decorations. It didn't take long because we don't have many, but the kids love to decorate the tree. We then each took a child on a date. I went with Ella this time and took her to the Disney movie Tangled. We both loved it. Ella is so emotional though, on the sad parts she would bury her face in my arm and cry and the happy parts she would smile and hold my hand and say...oh that is so sweet! Um...is that normal for a 4 year old! I hope I don't have a lot of girls, because I think we will have enough emotion in her little body. We went to lunch and had a good time. Cavin and Ragnar went to lunch and did "boy" things Cavin said. We had a relaxing weekend and were so grateful Ragnar had 4 days to enjoy with us.

The tree picture before our "date"


This is how the boys spent some time together this weekend!

New York !!!!

New York, New York! Ragnar had a contest at work recently where he won a trip to New York and he got to take a guest! So...thankfully he picked me!! Last weekend my mom and dad took our kids and we flew to New York with a couple of his coworkers who were on his team that won. Everything seemed to go wonderfully. The flight went great, the taxi to the airport was easy, the subway we figured out, and we just had a really nice time. Thank you to the Rockets for the trip, and to my parents and sister for watching my kids. Here is a little summary of our trip! There are a lot of pictures, but I had to cut down from 150, so I thought I did pretty good.

Here we are at the Ritz Carlton where we stayed. About to head out for our first night.

Our first Subway ride :)

I had to take a picture at Houston Street stop.

Right off the subway....our first view of Times Square....crazy amount of lights and people!

We went to see Wicked at the Gerswin theater and it was AMAZING.....it totally made the trip!

Emerald City at the theater, the characters were hilarious!

You know me, I had to take a picture of McDonalds in Times Square!

We went to Madison Square Garden with Ragnar's co-workers to see the Knicks vs. Rockets game.....of course on a trip with the Rockets employees they would get you tickets to a suite at the game.

The Rockets totally won! Hip Hip Ho-ray!

These are Ragnar's co-workers...Jesse, Cody, Eddie, and Ragnar

Here are their wives and one sister. Hailey, Me, Maggie, and Esmerelda

The Empire State building. Super Tall, and it turns blue at night.

It was such a beautiful time of year to go. This is in Central Park. The trees and weather was beautiful!

Chillin in the park!

Here is the famous Christmas tree at the Rockefeller Center. It has just gone up but is not lit yet!


We took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.

If you look close the Statue of Liberty is in the background.

Here it is!

Just a view in New York.

Ragnar wanted to see Trinity Church since it is in one of his favorite movies..National Treasure.

Here is another view. It was pretty. We saw a couple different scenes from movies, and one night they were filming a movie so we had to take a back street home.

Here was ground zero where the World Trade Center was. So sad, but they are building away!!

New York Stock Exchange....we walked down Wall Street.

Anyway, that is just an idea of the fun. We had a great time and were so glad we got a short weekend away with a little idea of what New York is all about. Fun trip, but I could NEVER live there!

Hockey Time!

Friday night Ragnar and I were trying to decide something fun to do to get us out of the house. Ragnar was still at work, and said how about a hockey game, I can get us tickets.....So....we thought why not. So Friday night we went to see the Houston Aeros play at the Toyota Center. The kids were really excited to go to their first hockey game.

Dad and Ella!



We sat on the third row, so it was really fun. We were right next to the Aeros bench so we got to watch them come and in out of the box.

Seriously we felt like we were on the ice! The kids loved watching the zamboni (sp?) guy clean the ice.

The equipment manager next to us even slide an official "puck" through the poles to us. Cavin was so excited to have a puck, he wanted to sleep with it. Um....dirty, so it slept on the floor by him. They had a fun time.

Halloween 2010!!!

This year Halloween obviously fell on a Sunday, so we kept it pretty low key. On Saturday night we went over to my parents house and joined them for a trunk or treat at the church. They had a chili cook off and then the kids trick or treated around the parking lot. I love it for my kids because at their age they get tired walking too far, so they get plenty of candy in just about a half hour and really enjoy it. We were grateful grandma and grandpa and Aunt Natalie invited us in on the festivities as Ragnar worked the Rockets game.

Cinderella and the "ghost" pirate (as Cavin called himself)

Pretty pretty princess!

Arrrgggggg!!!

Posing with Grandpa Speers

And as always Aunt Natalie too (or should I say Snow White!).

We had a nice evening. The kids loved sitting on lawn chairs at the back of the truck and playing with grandma and grandpas flashlights! I hope everyone had a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!