Dylan's birthday party!!!

This little guy, just turned 5! Check out some more photos of his awesome party here!

The priesthood

There is just something so wonderful about having the priesthood in your home. I am so incredibly grateful for the wonderful husband I have and for the fact that he is a worthy and strong priesthood holder that can help guide our family.

Tonight we were able to join the rest of the Williams family to bless my newest neice Adelyn. It is always so amazing to see these men all dressed in their suits surrounding these tiny infants to bless them. How incredibly lucky we are to be able to not only see this, (on a fairly regular basis in our family, and ward as well), but that we're able to be surrounded by amazing men who hold the priesthood.

I have been the recipient of priesthood blessings countless times, and my children are able to grow up surrounded by men who love them, who also hold the priesthood. How very grateful I am for that! One of the biggest reasons Kevin wanted a son, was that he wanted to have the opportunity to share the priesthood with his own child. I know it's a long way off, but that will truly be an amazing day!

The {N} Family

Check out some more photos of this super fun, and busy family here!

Extended Family...#6

Today I am ever so grateful for our amazing family both near and far. We're blessed to be able to have Kevin's whole family live close enough to have most of them be in our stake. Meaning that our children get to grow up around all their cousins, and grandma & grandpa can be there and help us out in a pinch. Not only that but my own sister, (weird that she's considered extended family now), lives just a quick drive up the road as well. Especially cause she's an awesome help when I need one, for example she came and stayed with our girls over night when my water broke out of the blue with little JJ. Not only that but her little cutie daughter is always good for a laugh, seriously, she has THE cutest laugh ever!

When we feel like a little mini break, we can always head up to college station to see my brother and his wife. Then there's always the super fun long vacations to cali to visit my parents and all the fun stuff there is to do out there. Halli is always asking to go to california, some day I hope we head out there again...soon!:)

I"m so grateful for the love and support of our families and for the love that they show our kids. I don't think a child can ever have too many people there to love them and let them know what true unconditional love is. How thankful I am that we're able to have so much of that in our lives!

Thankful #5

There really are so many things I'm so thankful for...so there are a bunch of things floating around in my head right now. But at this moment, I'm so thankful for our home. I feel so blessed to have a comfortable, warm home for us and our children. It's pretty big for us, sometimes too big seeing as how I'm really not the best housekeeper. That along with the fact that the amazing playroom is WAY upstairs, thus causing our little girls to always bring their toys downstairs by me, tends to make for a fairly messy family room most days.

But I do love it. I love our big yard, I love the extra things we've been able to do to this home. The added storage under the stairs, the playroom, and the finished bedrooms for the girls. Soon Jaden will have a finished room too, but I've been lazy getting started on that one. I've got big plans for this home too, who knows how many will actually happen, but I like to daydream.

But more than all that, this home is where our kids are going to have some of the best memories of their childhood. This home is going to be central to their lives. I moved a bunch growing up, and I loved to move, I liked the change. So I have quite a few homes that make up my memories. I like it, cause I can always remember how old I was when something happened based on the house we were in at that time. But our kids are going to probably be in the same house for the majority of their childhoods, and I am grateful that it's this home.

Halloween Happenings

We had a super fun Halloween this year. I love watching kids around Lexie's age, when the finally "get" what Halloween is about. She was a champion trick-or-treater and remembered to say thank you most of the time too!

We had an eclectic bunch this year, with a witch, Dorothy, a kitty cat, and a little super baby. Bonus was I only had to buy one of the costumes, we had all the rest. We started Halloween early by heading out on wednesday evening to a fall festival at Peytons preschool. I just took a picture at home, and left the camera. Kevin didn't join us, and I wasn't sure how it would go with all four by myself, so I knew I wouldn't get to take pictures anyway. Luckily, the kids did awesome, and I love having Halli around to help hold Lexie's hand and keep her with us. We did a trunk-or-treat, and all the girls got to go one one mini roller coaster ride.

Skip to saturday night, and our ward trunk-or treat. We got the kids all dolled up, and headed out for chili, and candy, yum yum!

We had some cute kids, I love seeing everyone in their Halloween costumes. I don't know how many people told us that we're gonna have to keep an eye on Halli as she gets older. I guess when you put make-up on a girl, and doll her hair up, it's an instant flash forward to the future...scary!

 This little red headed clown is Lauren, one of the young women in our ward, and she is amazing! She played with Lexie and Peyton the whole time, and even took them trunk-or-treating. Between her, and Kevin taking Jaden while he handed out candy, I was a free woman and felt like I didn't have anything to do. Thanks Lauren!

After trunk-or-treating, we all gathered on some grass by the church, and started digging into our candy. Well, into the kids candy. :)  

Our little inseparable group. Halli and Blake ran around the whole time, I barely knew where they were. But they were together and having a blast! Then Peyton and Braden took off cause they needed to go faster than the mom's were going...so fun to watch these kids play together, I love it!

 I just had to add this one of little Izzy, she was a little fairy, and looked adorable!

A little out of order, but on tuesday night, we sat down and carved our pumpkins. The plan was to do it for FHE on monday, but I was a little sick and quarantined to my room, so we did it on tuesday instead. Lexie didn't join us, cause she was having a rough night and actually went to bed before 7.

After getting over the disgust of the pumpkin seeds, the girls dug in and started to clean them out.

Kevin got to the game a little late and somehow missed out on cleaning the pumpkin and went straight to the carving. I don't know how he does that, but someday, I'm gonna do it and make him do the cleaning.:)

We went for a little non traditional carvings this year, lots of fun, but lots of work!

Out of order again, but on thursday, Peyton had a Halloween party at school. They even did a costume parade first thing. Unfortunately with all the being sick around our house, I didn't know they were doing a costume parade in the morning, (she was dressed up though, I knew that part), so I didn't have my camera to capture all these cute kiddos, dang it.

But I did get to join them for the party, by then all the kids had changed out of their costumes. We had pizza, apple slices, cheese, and of course cupcakes! Yummy, messy cupcakes.

Almost done, I promise. Oh Halloween evening, we had Britt and Brett over for dinner and we had a spooky meal with mummy meatloaf, ghost mashed potatoes, and homemade Halloween croutons for our salad. The girls loved it, and ate really well, yay!

All-in-all, it was a great holiday, and we had a blast spending time with our family. Now we have tons of sugar cookies left over, and WAY, WAY, WAY too  much candy. That combo with my weak will-power is NOT a good thing! 

Thankful through Thanksgiving

I'm a little late with this, but then again, when am I not late? I want to take this month to document a little bit every day about what I'm thankful for. I have been incredibly blessed, so now y'all (yep, I"m turnin texan!), get a sneak peek into my wonderfully blest life!:)

I'm an all or nothin kinda girl, as in, I don't make my bed every day, but when I do, it has to be perfect, type of thing. Or an even better example is my overwhelmingly strong sweet tooth and the fact that I can NEVER have just one piece of candy...I so wish I could though, so I either eat all the candy, or none! So, since I'm all or nothing, I'm gonna make this an extra long post and catch-up on the last four days that I've missed. So settle in, this may not be a short post.

Looking back on my week and what I probably would have written, I'm going to start #1 with how thankful I am for my awesome swagger wagon (aka minivan). I am able to transport my kids to school, preschool, soccer, parties, grocery shopping and whatever else I have on my plate in any given day. I can open the doors at the touch of a button, which is awesome! The doors don't swing open, so I don't have to worry about the car next to us getting dinged, and there's a dvd player, which is such a huge lifesaver on most days. But on monday I was especially thankful for a comfy car as I drove to every hobby lobby in the houston area (literally, I went to seven on monday alone!).  It also has great storage space for all the stuff I was able to get at said hobby lobby's.

#2 would have to be how thankful I am for friends, old and new. Those who are there for me now, and help me manage my life by just being there and influencing me and my children for the better, as well as those who made up my past and helped me become the person I am now. It is absolutely amazing how much influence the people who surround us have on our lives, for better or worse. I hope my children can learn this early and make a point of surrounding themselves with good, decent people.

Tuesday I ran into an old friend I ran track with at the U, I hadn't seen her in 8 years, and ran into her randomly in the toy aisle at walmart. I was only on the team with her for two years, but man, I LOVED those years! I especially loved the girls I was able to spend day in and day out with as we practiced, and competed together.Then, at the same time my Amazing friend Allie saved me by picking Peyton up from preschool when I wasn't able to make it back on time. Friends are amazing and essential at all ages, truly!

#3 would have to be how incredibly thankful I am for the most amazing ward! Our ward family has made our lives in Houston so wonderful! One of the reasons why when we moved 3 years ago, we chose to stay in the same neighborhood was because of this amazing ward. It seems that when you're LDS, and most of your friends and interactions come from those in your ward, having a great ward family is essential. Some day we will move out of this neighborhood, but it's gonna be hard, cause I don't think we'll want to ever leave our ward.

Also, on the third of November we had our craft day for Relief Society, this is why I visited every hobby lobby in houston, it was so much fun, and I hope everyone was able to enjoy doing their crafts and get a head start on christmas. But the help I had from the women in the ward was amazing, and I have some of the best examples from the women in this ward alone.

Last but not least (for today anyway) as I catch up on my november thankfulness is #4. I am beyond thankful for my husband's job. I'm not always excited that he works in a family business, but there are some great upsides to it! His job supports our family, gives us security, health insurance (which has been invaluable this year!), and some flexiblity. Today as I went to the dentist..again, he was able to stay home for the morning and watch the kids so I didn't have to find a sitter or worry about Jaden (I'm a little weird about sitters when I have a baby). Because of his flexibility, he's been able to do real estate as well, and he's able to be there when I need him to be. There can be downsides to a family business, like the family doesn't get together a whole lot, probably cause the boys see each other every day and don't always realize how long it's been since we got together, but by far, the blessings we've received from his job far outweight the downside.

so, bear with me throughout the rest of this month as I post how very blessed I have been. I need to remember my blessings more often and express my gratitude for all I have been given. Hopefully I can remember to do this every day, we'll see!