Birthday Party Sleepover, Oh My!

Brenna and her friend Avery have been together since the start.  Well, at least 4.5 months from the start, because that's how long it took for Avery to come along behind Brenna.  The Jones have always been special friends for us long before the kids came along and Avery has always been a special friend for Brenna.  They were both born in Beaumont and shortly after we moved to Houston, the Jones were not far behind us.

This year Avery decided that she wanted to have a sleepover birthday party.  When Jamie first told me of the plans, I wasn't sure if Brenna would stick it out until the end.  When I told Brenna about the party, I thought she would be hesitant about the sleepover part, since this would be her first time away from home ever!  To my surprise, she was nearly busting at the seems to get the party started.  We even had a party countdown that started 10 days out!

On the day of the party, I drove through the pick-up line to get Brenna from school.  As she was getting into the car, the teacher on duty said "She's super-excited about the sleepover tonight!"  Brenna was sharing her excitement with whoever would listen!  We came home, took a short break, had a snack, and then it was off to Avery's house!

Counting the birthday girl, there was a total of seven 5-year old girls ready for some all night fun!  Jamie is a brave, brave woman to attempt this!  We dropped Brenna off with a quick hug and a kiss and she was off with the rest of them!  To my delight, Jamie is a picture fanatic like me and she told the story of the night in pictures.  There was dress-up and treasure hunts, cookies and cake, movies and popcorn!  All the things that little girls love to do!  Here's a few of Jamie's shots from the night!

I just love this picture, not because Brenna is front and center, but because she's standing there in this fu-fu outfit, which I'm sure she picked because it was pink.  There's one girl standing in the middle of the bed stripping, another shooting a bow-and-arrow in a tutu, and Avery's on the side digging out more stuff to play with.  I can just see the chaos of the moment!

McAlister Christmas 2012

In 11 years of living in Texas, this makes only the second time we haven't gone home to Mississippi for Christmas.  The first being the year Brenna was born and we thought it best not to subject baby Brenna (meaning ourselves) to the extensive travel that usually takes place with a newborn in tow.  Of course, being with our families during this very special time of year makes all the effort totally worth it, especially the enjoyment Brenna gets from seeing everyone!  Unfortunately, that doesn't make the travel any less painful.  Every year involves lots of luggage, plane flights, rental cars, and longs hours of driving back and forth across the state of Mississippi.  I work to keep Brenna occupied and content on the plane and in the car as the miles roll by and worry about luggage weight limits with every gift that's opened.

This year things were alittle different.  With Brenna being in kindergarten now, we're restricted to her school holidays.  This year our Texas school calendar got out later than our Mississippi family and Mississippi schools went back earlier than we did.   Because matching up the calendars proved to be a problem, we settled for the promise of coming home sometime early in the new year.

So, this Christmas has been very different from what we've known in the past.  We had a nice, quiet, and slow paced holiday filled with lots of Christmas fun.

First new thing, my Christmas tree!  I've spent years torturing myself (and Jacob) with my old, limb-by-limb, non-lit tree.  Last year after Christmas my Mom found a great 12-foot, pre-lit, slim-line, pop-up Chistmas tree on clearance for 75% off!!!!  I made my Dad haul it to me all the way from Mississippi!!!  It was totally worth it!  I loved the new tree!  It reached all the way to our second story!  In 10 years of decorating my own Christmas tree, this is my favorite by far!

Christmas is in the Giving

As the week of Christmas drew near, so did the plan for Christmas Candy!  It's become a holiday tradition over the last couple of years to show our friends and neighbors how much we appreciate them through the gift of food!  This year I stuck with my Mom's recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats.  This was one of my favorites when I was kids and since there seems to be so much chocolate circulating during the holidays I think its a nice change of pace.  Because of the time and amount needed, I decided to tackle the actually candy making alone this year while Brenna was still in school.  However, I did save the packing up for her, which made for a very merry after-school activity.

Kindergarten Christmas

School has been packed full of Christmas fun these last few weeks.  There's been fun Christmas assignments, lots of Christmas crafts, and exciting Christmas parties.  The first week of the month, Brenna came home with her Christmas Bell (colored rainbow, of course) that she made herself, along with her weekly poetry journal assignment that told the purpose of the Christmas Bell.

December first until Christmas

Is the longest time of year.

It seems as though Christmas

Never will get here.

How many days until Christmas?

It's kind of hard to count.

So this little bell will help you

To know the exact amount.

Remove one link each night

As the sandman casts his spell

And Christmas day will here

By the time you reach the bell.

She has faithfully cut one link each night in her count down to Christmas and she grows more and more excited with each link that comes off.  Also, we had Polar Express Day on Thursday, where the kids got to wear their PJs to school and enjoy a ride on the Frost Polar Express.  The kids all got tickets to board the train and then kicked back and enjoyed the movie with hot cocoa and marsh mellows.  

It Snowed in Houston!

Not really, but kinda!  Good enough for the kids to have some fun.  Our neighborhood hosted the 2nd Annual Long Meadow Farms Christmas Party the first week of December.  It was 82 degrees, but we still had snow!  There was a snow hill (man-made of course), rides, rock walls, crafts, and fun for the kids.

The kids loved the snow.  They played nearly two hours just pummeling each other and us over and over again.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Brenna usually sings in the bath tub.  Tonight she was singing the Christmas carol she learned at school today in Music Class.  This is how the conversation went.

Brenna -  ".... three french hens, two turtles doves, and a portridge in the pantry!"
Me -  "Brenna, its a partridge in a pear tree"
Brenna -  "No its not!"
Me - "Yes it is!"
Brenna - "Are you sure?"
Me - "Do you know what a partridge is?"
Brenna - "Yeah, its a picture!"
Me - "No, that's a portrait!  A partridge is a kind of bird."
Brenna - "Oh, that makes more sense, because we don't put birds in the pantry!"

Notice Anything Missing?

Christmas Portraits

I take alot of pictures.  But, like I've mentioned before, they're never portraits.  They're just snap shots of our life as we live it!  As I work more and more on photography and with my camera, I've come to realize that's all I really want.  I want picture memories of our life as we know it now.  I admire pictures from professional photographers and the engineering side of me enjoys working out the mechanics of how they took the picture, but that's as far as my enthusiasm goes.

With that in mind, as Christmas time approached I began to dread Christmas cards!  I knew I wanted a cute picture in a cute dress that captured just how spunky Brenna is right now.  Unfortunately, I also knew that Brenna would not be thrilled to set out on a mission to take posed portraits.  Brenna can't be still, ever!  So anything I did would have to be fast and candid and that didn't exactly jive with the beautiful, timeless portrait I had in my mind (which I probably wasn't technically competent enough to produce anyway!)  I had images of beautiful landscaped backgrounds and sunset lighting with styled hair and perfect smiles!  Ha!  What was I thinking!?!?  In the end, my extravagant photo opportunity turned into an impromptu walk down to the creek behind our house and just praying that something would turn out!

The actual picture taking was painful, since Brenna didn't want to cooperate and my patience was running thin.  We gave up after only 30 minutes!  I had way more outtakes than smiles, but we did walked away with a few that I loved!  Here's my spunky little girl!  Christmas cards are on they're way!  I hope you enjoy the outtakes too!

Thanksgiving Play and Turkey Parade

So this holiday season has been filled with lots of school related fun.  For Thanksgiving Brenna's kindergarten class got to create their very own unique turkey feathers, turkey float, and participate in The First Thanksgiving play.

We worked tirelessly on Brenna's "Rainbow" turkey feather and float.  She did a great job!  They both came out looking great!  After looking over all the feathers and floats, it was very evident which parents did their kids homework and which parents let the kids do their own homework.  I'm pretty sure a kindergartener can't understand the mechanics necessary a equip a turkey float with flashing Christmas lights and a remote control driver!

Proud of her creations! 

Kindergarten School Picture

Here's Brenna's Kindergarten school picture.  I'm not really sure why she didin't smile, but in her case no smile is better than some of her fake smiles!

2012 Soccer Season

We finally closed out the 2012 Soccer Season. I can't say I'm disappointed, with practice every week and games every weekend for 9 straight weeks, I was ready for the break.

Overall, our team stunk this season.  Although they don't keep score in our age bracket, if they did, we would have lost every game.  Brenna was the only kid on our team to score all season!  Brenna really likes soccer and she's gotten pretty good at it.  We plan to take a break from soccer until the spring, but we may fill the winter with one season of basket ball.  Here's some shots and video of our little soccer all-star from the season.

Trying out my new panoramic!  Friday afternoons on the soccer field. 

Crazy Socks Day

I'm behind on blogging!  Again!  I've been caught up in too much Holiday shopping lately!  But, on a positive note, I'm nearly done with Christmas shopping and its not even December yet!

This was from earlier this month.  The kids had Drug Free week at school and each day Had a theme.  Here's Brenna's crazy mis-matched socks!

Drive at Grand Parkway Baptist Church

Every week since August we've spent Wednesday nights at church building a soap box derby race car. Brenna has moved up from our church's preschool program and into the K-5th program.  No more Noah's Ark Rainbow Club.  But, big kids have big fun too!  For our fall semester we took part in Drive, a program focused on this verse.

"12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.  13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"  Philippians 3:12-14.

Each week we used race car terminology to teach the kids about the "race of life" and to press toward the mark for the prize "Christ Jesus".  After each lesson the kids got the opportunity to build their own race cars.  We started with wood blocks.  The kids got to pick their own race car pattern.  They had to cut the pattern out, tape it to their wood block, and trace it so that the blocks could be cut to match their pattern.

Halloween Haunts

Another Halloween has come and gone.  Each year it's more and more fun for Brenna.  This year she asked to be Strawberry Shortcake, one of her new favorite characters.  So I snatched up a costume the first week of October to avoid the rush.  I brought it home thinking she would be thrilled, only to discover she was very upset that the hat was too floppy!  "Strawberry's hat isn't floppy, it's tall!"  So after some engineering from mom, we came up with a nice muffin top hat that we could both be satisfied with.

Our month was packed with pumpkin patches, fall festivals, and general halloween happiness.  This year we did our usually trick-or-treating with our neighborhood friends.  We were short a few kids because the Helmcamp's skipped out on us in favor of going to Disney World for Halloween.  We wish we could have tagged along with them!  But our kids had a great time here in Texas!

Portrait Practice

I've been at this photography thing for a couple of years now.  I really enjoy it!  I've captured so many beautiful moments of Brenna's life that will last forever.  However, most of the photography I do is "life" photography, just snapping pictures of what looks like a good time.  Very seldom do I purposely venture out with the main objective of portrait photographs.  I've maybe taken Brenna out 3 time to try and capture posed, planned portraits and even that hasn't been in the recent past.  I will be attempting this again soon, for the sake of a Christmas card photo, fingers crossed.

So, its always good practice and a nice challenge when friends ask if I can take pics of their kids.  I have no intentions of ever taking this any further than a hobby, but its fun to play photographer sometimes.  Here's a few shots of some beautiful kiddos that I got to pretend with recently!

I've done both of Grace's brothers pics a couple of time, so it was time she got her chance behind the camera!