Em's First Band Concert

We had the privilege to go to Emily's first ever band concert. In Nacogdoches ISD, there are 6 elementary schools, 2 middle schools, and 1 high school. The band program starts in 6th grade. For the concert they had what they called a "beginner band" (all 6th graders from both campuses) perform together. They sounded great!!! Emily plays the French horn.

Alyssa's First Piano Recital

Alyssa had her first piano recital. She did great and we are proud of her. She takes lessons from a college student that plays the piano at our church. She is doing really good.

Tournament of Champions (TOC) Dallas

This sign was on a business after we returned home....(Hot Shots is Emily's U12 team and Lightning is a U14 girls team that also made it to the final four)

Emily's soccer team one their division here in Nacogdoches which earned the trip to Dallas to play in the state tournament. We played on Saturday in Cedar Hill and won our games to let us play on Sunday in Plano. We won our first game, but lost the second putting us in the FINAL FOUR of the whole tournament in our age division. We are very proud of our girls for this accomplishment.

December

December was a crazy month like always. I will post each special event separately.

November

Deer season!!! Greg is once again on a deer lease. This time it is much closer to home and he is has some really great guys on this lease that got him on it. We go to church with all of them and they don't care(even seem to love it) when the kids get to go out with Greg.

Alyssa was with Greg when he killed his first deer this season, a doe. She was so excited and could tell anyone the WHOLE story if you asked. From the moment Greg shot her, to field dressing it and even the whole cleaning process, she could tell you. We even call Greg's parents that night just to hear blow by blow again. This made Grant really upset and could not wait and begged Greg to go out often so he could be there when he shot the next one. Well, it finally happened. He was with Greg when they killed this buck. Alyssa thought it was cool that she was with Greg when he shot the "girl" deer and Grant was with him when he shot the "boy" deer.

As you can tell, we have had a major lesson in deer hunting and I think that Cole would go if he was old enough. He was so excited to see the dead deer. He watches the hunting shows with Greg and when he sees Greg's hunting clothes, he says "hunt deer daddy".

Emily got to go out to the lease once, but didn't get to shoot anything. I finally got to go out the last weekend of the season, but again, no luck!!

October

Here are the kids all dressed up for Halloween (a cheetah, batman, mouse, and a 50's girl in her poodle skirt). As you can tell, it was another warm one here in East Texas.

I'm going to try to play catch up before all the chaos really starts up again. Cole turned 2 on October 23. We don't have a baby anymore and it was hard on Mom for a few days. He continues to make us laugh and has been a joy in our lives.