Horses

Over Thanksgiving break my brother was working horses every day and I finally got motivated to ride horses again. My parents bought "Honey" a pony awhile back and I wish I had a picture of her. She is a very sweet 5-year-old and I had a great time riding her (but boy was I SORE the next couple days!).

While I forgot to take a picture of her, I did take a picture of her friends - Barney & Wild Paint :)



On Saturday we visited Grandma & Grandpa Jones and met their miniature pony, Shorty. He was very cute - the boys loved him.





We forgot to wear our heavy coats, so we took him into the garage and brushed him.

First Christmas Decoration

I had a fun weekend with Dedra and baby Graham! It was great to have a baby in the house again - the boys enjoyed playing with him (and making videos on Dedra's phone :).

We shopped a little and crafted a little (and she ran a 1/2 marathon Sunday morning!) . . . . and with Dedra's help, I got the one thing made that I had hoped to. I have literally had these Christmas ornaments in the corner of our dining room since last January so I was anxious to get the wreath made.

Our first Christmas decoration has been hung so now I'm ready to put up the rest this weekend!

11-11-11 Photo Challenge

Take a photo tomorrow - 11-11-11 at 11:11 am photo challenge!

Golf Outing

I went golfing! Okay, I didn't golf, but I really enjoyed driving the cart on the trail up to the 3-hole "youth" golf course and watching the boys golf. They did a great job and it was a beautiful day (Friday before Halloween when the boys were out of school). The trees were beautiful. And it cost us a whopping $2 each for them to golf that afternoon. Bonus!









Pretty trees.



And here's a close-up of the "shiner" Brett gave Brady the day before (threw a stick at him in the pasture) - hope this never happens again! Everyone thought he was wearing Halloween makeup that night at BJF's Halloween carnival (which he thought was cool).

Rock stars

It's "Say no to drugs" week at BJF and today was "Rock Star" day. The boys were in full character without me saying anything but photo time. Pretty funny.

Decked out :)

Ed made some great updates to our deck, so I thought I'd share the progress.

I'm not taking the time to dig through the files for a "before" shot, but as some of you may remember, when we moved in (and up until a few weeks ago) our deck had a seat around the long side (where Ed is standing in the photo below). It was fine, but now that we've removed it the deck seems so much bigger.

My favorite part is the side with the stairs opening up to the brick patio (that we put in when Brady was a baby). It ties the patio to the deck so much better. The "before" shot here was a side with half railing and a much smaller stairs.



And this weekend (luckily before tonight's rain) we stained it. Thought I'd take a quick pic before the dog's trampled it!

Strikers - Fall 2011

The Strikers stayed together for the Fall 2011 season! And no, they weren't undefeated (like their first year), but they had a great season. The Shawnee Soccer league combined with another and they now play as part of the Metro United league, which is a little different.

The coach is a high school basketball coach and his son, Ben (between Brady and the coach) is also on Brady's winter basketball team so we'll be seeing them shortly. We love that we are kind of to the stage with Brady that he is hanging with the same teams for all of his sports- so he probably has about 40 different team mates that he plays with. I think that is great!





Last year they played 4-on-4 with no goalie, this year they played 4-on-4 with goalie. A whole new game. Brady started out playing goalie for 1/2 of the game and then I think they needed him on the field more, so he ended up doing goal/corner kicks. He took great pride in being called "Thunder foot" but he has a lot of work to get better.

He spent a great deal of his time this fall playing baseball . . . . but he's said he likes soccer just as much (if not better) so we've told a team that he can play on their indoor winter team. I swore this winter would just be basketball, but guess not! I think it will be very interesting to see how the winter league goes. He seems to really like soccer. I'm just along for the ride. . . . .

OMG - the hair!