Gettin' in the Christmas Spirit

Typical Saturday Morning

Here is a video with a few minutes of a typical Saturday morning in the DeRouen household. FYI - video is over 5 minutes (I wanted to give you the full effect).

Busta Move

Due to popular demand, here is a video montage of Dax's dance moves. We have no idea where he gets his, umm, rhythm.

Momma

Since Dax was the only 17 month old (in the world, I'm sure) who did NOT say "momma", Duane and I worked with him for a couple days. He now has it down. That little embarassed half-smile when he says it and the way he sticks out his bottom lip, are all just too cute. It melts my heart every single time.

Thanksgiving (and more donkeys)

We went to visit Annette and the boys for Thanksgiving. We got there Wednesday morning and ended up staying until the following Tuesday morning. Lots of family time. And many, many trips to see the donkeys. Dax now calls them, "dah-gahs". We got out a bag of carrots the first day and they were Dax's best friends for the rest of the week.

On Thanksgiving day, we got together with Aunt Fay and her family. Since this was the first Thanksgiving without Uncle Joe, everyone decided it would be best to change things up a bit, so we met at Kyle and Joani's house. They just remodeled their kitchen, too. (And, by "just", I mean, "they installed the stove hood the day before.") It was a really nice family time. Who'd have thought that at the end on November we could sit outside and be perfectly comfortable?! Kyle was even wearing shorts! Dax thought his 2nd cousins Thomas and Luke were a lot of fun. The boys were great with Dax, too. So patient - even when Dax tried to join in their big boy games.

Another day, we went to The Woodlands mall to let Dax run around on their playscape. And, we walked right by Santa, with not a single kid in line! So, we got Dax's picture taken with him. Then, Aunt Kay took Dax for a ride on the merry-go-round. He loved it!

I think the most fun of the week, though, was watching Dax bust out his dancing moves. We'll post a video soon.

We hope everyone had a pleasant holiday - we sure enjoyed counting all of God's many blessings.

Feeding the donkeys

Ready to dig in to the Thanksgiving spread

hanging with Luke


having some laughs with Thomas

not completely sure about Santa

enjoying the merry-go-round

Evening with Payton

After the garage sale and the relaxing, Travis, Hollie and Payton came over for a visit. Hollie took some family photos for us while Travis and Payton tried to get Dax to look at the camera. We got a lot of pictures that we absolutely love. You'll be seeing one of them on our Christmas card this year. If we can ever decide which one!

After the photo shoot, we all ventured over to the Domain to see Macy's light their tree and to hear Jordan Sparks sing (she won American Idol last year). After an hour of the crowds, and less-than-impressed kiddos, we decided to bail and beat the traffic. We ended the evening with the kiddos sound asleep and the adults relaxing over dinner and conversation (and some football). All in all, a great day!

Here are some of the pics Hollie took:

Umm, Payton, that "hug" looks more like a "headlock"

Garage Sale & PJs

On Saturday our neighborhood had a garage sale. After a slow start, we actually ended up doing quite well. It is very cathartic to clean out "stuff." Dax greeted everybody and wasn't at all embarrassed that he was still in his footed pjs at 10:00am. Badger and Trinity even hung out in the front yard and watched all the activity. We have two main memories from the sale:

The first is the guy who bought Duane's old wheels/rims but couldn't fit them in his car, so he removed a tv (that he'd bought from one of our neighbors) and left it on the side of the road. When Duane told him he couldn't leave it, the guy just explained, "but it was free". Like that made it perfectly ok to dump it. He agreed to come back to get it "in 10 minutes". Riiiight. A couple hours later, I was, luckily, able to get another shopper to take it.

The second memory was Duane and the basketball game. A neighbor had one of those basketball shoot games like you see at Dave & Busters. It was huge. I told them I hoped they sold it before Duane saw it, or else he'd want to buy it. Well, sure enough, when Duane saw it, he wanted it. He knew better than to buy it, but he had to at least take a few shots. We'll say that holding Dax had him off balance, because when Duane took his first shot, it hit the rim, flew toward the crowd of shoppers, bounced OVER the head of someone bent over a table (thank God!), crashed into a table holding dozens of breakable trinkets, and, miraculously, didn't break a one and landed harmlessly in the grass. He was so embarrassed! I only wish I could have seen his face as it happened!

After all the excitement from the garage sale, we decided to let Dax stay in his pjs for most of the rest of the day. Here he is hanging out, playing IN his toy box.