A girl after my own heart

Growing up I always wanted to be a dancer. Any kind of dancer. I loved ballet, hip hop, tap, you name it, I wanted to do it. I wasn't allowed to take any classes though. My parents saw my natural talent in tennis and kept me on the straight and narrow with that. But that's ok because I probably wouldn't have gone to college without it:)

When I was little (ok, more like 12 but whatever:) I created my own 'dances' and had my parents video tape my performances. And my poor half-sister, Susannah, would get pulled into the act. She is blind and in a wheel chair and I had her play the piano while I danced away.

However, as soon as tennis season was over when I was a college senior you know what I did? I signed up for ballet classes. That's right. Got the dance outfit, styled my hair in a bun and loved every minute of it until I pulled a leg muscle by trying to show off how limber I was. It was a short dance career.

But oh, God has given me a girl after my own heart!! Caitlin loves to dance. I mean this girl loves to dance! Our routine almost every night after dinner consists of Caitlin putting on her dance outfits and dancing for us. How I delight in this little girl. It is so fun and I love watching her take joy in dancing.

You can watch Caitlin dance here....

Christmas cont'd....

I am just now getting around to posting pictures of the rest of our Christmas!

About a week before Christmas Dajia and Treveon came over for dinner. We had baked spaghetti, garlic bread and salad. I guess they are not used to family meals at the table because they asked if we do that every night. I could tell Dajia was enjoying it but Treveon took about two bites and was off playing.
We had a present for each of them...Dajia loved her new purse that contained fun goodies and I think Treveon liked his football but he said, "Is that it?":) (He told us that for Christmas he asked for an XBOX, a DS, a Wii and whatever other video game contraption I'm leaving out.) So I guess it's safe to say he did not like his present.

On Christmas Eve we went to Brother Bill's in the morning in West Dallas to help out with their Christmas party. (Brother Bill's is a faith based non-profit organization that assists those in need in WD) This is a picture of the people who had been waiting for an hour in line in the freezing cold for it to start.

Our job was to be a host. As a host we would be paired up with another family and took them to each station where they got to take a picture with Santa, pick out a few gifts, recieve a free turkey and gift card and listen to carols. Our family had a 6 and 3 year old boy that lived with their grandma and uncle. In the picture below is the 6 year old, Ryan, with Caleb and Christopher. I spoke with his grandma and asked her what they were doing for Christmas and she told me their family was coming over....which included about a hundred people; in which, she made 32 dozen, yes, 32 dozen tamales the day before!! Wow, that's a lot of tamales!!!

We finished off our Christmas celebration with Leslie and Betsy who stayed with us through Christmas. In the center of the table is our Jesus cake which is a pavlova; a dessert, that Betsy is able to eat since it doesn't contain any flour. It isn't the 'typical' birthday cake but....

do you think that bothered us?? We destroyed that sucker...and with no help from the kids, mind you.

So as we say goodbye to 2010 I'll leave you with a sweet picture of the kiddos after we got home from Christmas Eve service...


Happy New Year everybody!!!!