A Picture That Makes Me Smile

Havi walking to school in the rain...

Little Monkey

The end of the gymnastics semester came to a close right before Christmas and our monkey did very well and was very proud to show off her evaluation and her skills at the end of class.

She's like a little monkey!

Recently we'd gone for a walk to her school one weekend and I was shocked to see she could do this...

She may be little... but she's strong!

It snowed!

OK, so not exactly, but they did dump a giant pile of snow in the middle of the square at the Hill Country Galleria! So we went to play...







After a while the older kids got a little too rambunctious with snowballs so we went to warm up with hot chocolate at Starbucks.

Nutcracker

As we continued our countdown to Christmas Taylor and her Mum and Grandma invited us to go see the Nutcracker performed by Ballet Austin with them.

Taylor and Havi got dressed up in their prettiest party dresses and we went out for lunch before driving downtown to the theatre.

Up until this year Austin has had a trail of lights through Zilker Park. Sadly this year it wasn't to be, but they'd displayed the Nutcracker characters around the outside of the theater for cute photo opportunities.

Havi loved seeing a really ballet performance and was quite engrossed in the story. It was a fun trip thanks to Pam, Taylor and Sue.

Countdown to Christmas...

Immediately after Thanksgiving everything seems to get into gear for Christmas, which means a whole 30 days to countdown Santa's arrival which is torture for a five year old!

Thankfully we had lots to do and lots planned to make the countdown less painful!

On December 3rd the school held a Holiday Breakfast. We met Katie and her parents Eve and Rich at the school and dined on pancakes and fruit before making Christmas crafts, singing along to Christmas songs and then most importantly meeting Santa!

Havi's wish list matched what she'd already written in her letter to Santa.

1. A trampoline

2. Littlest Pet Shop toys

3. A Spongebob Squarepants toy

4. A Spiderman toy

Has she been a good girl? I think so... does Santa agree?

After the breakfast we all went over to the Lowes Build Workshop for the girls to build the first car of three for their Christmas train.

Thanksgiving and a birthday!

We had another quiet, low key Thanksgiving this year after our road trip. Peter worked in the morning, then we all went out for dinner and a movie in the afternoon to The Alamo. Last year we saw Tangled, this year we saw The Muppets - very cute. Havi enjoyed it, but didn't 'get it' in the way Peter and I did after growing up watching The Muppets.

The pre-show at The Alamo is always unique and not at all like the boring pre-shows you get at the big screen megaplexes. This particular pre-show introduced Havi to Fraggle Rock! We found out later that Netflix has a billion and one episodes on streaming... so Havi was very happy about that.

The Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend was Havi's friend Morgan's birthday party. It was held at a local kids hair salon where the girls got to dress up, have their nails, hair and make-up done then walk the cat walk for a fashion show.







Very cute!

Road Trip!

Havi has been on plenty of trips abroad and a couple of trips to Florida - but she's never been on a true road trip. So, we went on one! Just a short trip for starters, about 500 miles to Morgan City and New Orleans, Louisiana. As Havi had the full week of Thanksgiving off school we decided to head out on the Friday and return the following Wednesday.

On the way out we stopped the night in Houston and stayed with Bea. It was lovely to catch up with her, although too brief of a stay.



The next morning after breakfast we started on the second, longer leg of the trip. We were both so impressed (although not surprised as she's used to the US to UK flight) at how Havi entertained herself along the way. Drawing, singing, reading and playing on her DS. We didn't even need to whip out the laptop with a movie. Finally though she did fall asleep and the constant Havi-chatter stopped for a while.

We arrived at Laura and Brian's house in Morgan City and stayed the first night there. The next day Laura and I went to see Breaking Dawn while Brian, Peter and Havi went off to explore some swamps, then Laura and Brian became our tour guides and took us off to New Orleans.



This was also Havi's first time staying in a hotel. When we go to England we of course stay with family, and our trip to Disney we stayed in a vacation house. Havi loved the coffee, milk and juice delivered to our room each morning...



... and the roof top pool (with perfect swim weather in November) was a big hit too.



While in New Orleans we ate PLENTY of beignets at Cafe Du Monde and Cafe Beignet...



... we caught a tram out to the New Orleans Zoo...







... and visited Storyland at City Park.



After a couple of nights in New Orleans we went back to Morgan City for one more day before heading home.

Very pretty GIANT lakes...

... and plenty of space for sword fights with Laura!

It was a whirlwind trip, lots of fun had by all, Havi found two new friends in Laura and Brian and I got to see Breaking Dawn with a fellow fan! Havi caught some Mardi Gras beads (thrown from a carriage full of drunken bachelorette partiers), bought a Mardi Gras feather mask and we all made a homeless man mad. Good times!

We took PLENTY of pictures, a few of which are posted HERE.

Halloween!

Halloween started early with dress up day at gymnastics... a bunch of fairies, princesses and super heroes attempting to do gymnastics in their costumes is a fun thing to watch.

Taylor and Havi being goofballs!


Playing games instead of their usual beam, bar and tumbling practice.

On the Saturday before Halloween we went to a costume party and Havi recycled last years butterfly costume. However when we got to the party she disappeared upstairs with Maddie and they had a girlie night watching Enchanted and eating popcorn :-)

For Halloween itself we went to our next door neighbourhood and trick or treated with some of Havi's classmates. The kids had so much fun and had to empty their treat bags a few times to stop them overflowing. Havi was excited to dress as Mulan in a costume sent over from a friend of Auntie Dan's in England.

SCORE!

School Report and Parent/Teacher Conference

Last week Havi brought home her first ever elementary school report... to say we're proud is an understatement. We're beyond proud. Havi is doing so well at school and I/we feel the need to brag a little. She's such a smart little girl and I had hoped that that was being transferred over into school as much as we were seeing at home... it is.

One of the things that stood out on her report was this sentence; Performing at the expected level on district reading screening. To which her teacher had crossed out 'at' and replaced it with 'above'. The rest of the report was marked "Satisfactory Effort" for each section - which in Kindergarten you can't really get better than.

Of course margaritas were in order to celebrate!

We let Havi choose were she wanted to celebrate and Texican Cafe was the clear winner.

The following week we had her Parent/Teacher Conference which caused even more pride to radiate off us. We learned that our sweet, smart girl is excelling in school, she behaves well in class and is nice and courteous to her classmates and teachers and has fun. Her teacher went on to explain her reading level is a 4I, apparently where she should be at the end of Kindergarten, and she's started on sight words for first grade.

So for the second time in one week Havi choose were we should celebrate... Texican Cafe won again, this time followed by frozen yogurt :-)

So very proud of our little miss.

Fall Festival and a Birthday Party

Havi's school had it's Fall Festival this past weekend. A HUGE event that makes up for most of the fundraising for the school each year - since becoming a parent of and elementary school child, I've found that every school seems to have a Fall Festival each year.

I'm not convinced Havi really knew what to expect so she was a chatterbox the whole 0.8 mile walk to school. Non-stop.

Half way there we saw the signs and that made the anticipation even greater!

The bounce houses, games, barrel train ride and art projects were a hit. The sweets as prizes at each game (no winning required) were an even bigger hit.

Enjoying a snowcone! Climbing the obstacle course.

Beanbag Toss and Duck Catching!!

Racing Katie on the obstacle course.

On the way home we found the longest ever ant trail and stopped to investigate for a while. Did you know ants never sleep? Havi did... thanks to Wild Kratts :-)

The next day Havi went to her friend Jadyn's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. This time neither Havi or myself knew what to expect. Havi has heard the Chuck E. Cheese ads on PBSKids but we've never been because it's not really our thing... I'm pretty sure her eyes popped out her head when we walked in the door.

For those not in the know, Chuck E. Cheese is a 'restaurant'/amusement arcade catering towards kids. They serve pizza and you can buy coins for the games, that then spit out tickets.... the tickets are collected then spent on prizes. It's an odd place for a birthday party as the guest inevitably end up in totally different places and only see each other when it's time to eat and cut the cake.

Havi had fun playing the games and pocketed 73 tickets... which were exchanged for a plastic stingray to scare Daddy with, a dollar sign ring and a squishy fish!

Most importantly the birthday girl had fun and I realized that the count down to six years old is on for Havi!