Christmas 2010

Another wonderful holiday, come and gone so quickly! This year we were so lucky to have most of the Hall family come and have a Texas Christmas. Matt's parents (Bruce & Katie), along with two brothers (Doug & Peter), a sister-in-law (Tamara-Doug's wife) and 2 little cousins (Doug & Tamara's boys, Ben and Will) all flew out from LA to Austin!! It was a wonderful weekend filled with food, games, barf, presents, 3 crazy 1 year olds, Texas BBQ, laser tag, unicorns, skyping missionaries, train rides, brotherly love, movies, laughs, and plain old fun!

You'll have to go to facebook for more details and more pics, but here are a few of my favorites from the weekend.

Because you asked...

My mom gives me a hard time when I don't update the blog regularly.

"But Mom", I say "We haven't done anything exciting around here to document this week."

"Just post something" she pleads.

Makes me wish we did live a little closer...

So here you have our evening. Dinner at Chili's, a walk around the outlet mall.

The kids love the toys, even when I don't have any quarters to make them move.
Who needs Disneyland, right?
We like to hang out at the Disney Store to get our Disney fix.

Lexi insisted Bambi needed a tiara, (not to be confused with a crown.)

The Barracuda, and a Christmas Parade

If you know Matt Hall, you know he loves the Barracuda. His girls are growing up to love it too :) Matt will have Lexi out in the garage taking it apart in no time. Nothing like a beautiful Saturday in December to take the convertible out.

PS--For Bruce--the car is officially registered in Texas. It passed safety and has Texas plates and stickers.

A few weeks ago we met up with just about everyone in Georgetown and Round Rock to attend the Christmas Stroll. It started out with a great parade.


Waiting for the parade to start with our 4 kiddos! We could have 4 kids 4 & under right??


Apparently Georgetown is known for it's Blue Santa--who wants a blue Santa??
The Grinch! Lexi remembered him from the Grinch play we saw last year.

In Texas, they ship in snow as a novelty item, and the kids play in it it their t-shirts :)

Watching the grass grow

I'll just start by saying this is a lame post, but comes at great request. Our finished fence, ta-da! Matt finished it up a couple of weeks ago, I just haven't gotten around to taking any pictures of it. But there it is in all its glory. Great job Matt and thank you for all your hard work!

We were a few feet short on our sod, so we decided to lay a little seed and hope for the best. What do you know, it's already growing. Hopefully by next spring it'll have filled in.

That's all I've got today, but I'm foreseeing some Christmas fun to post about in the coming weeks.

Best Friends

Since Matt and I have been married, we've never lived closer than 300 miles from the nearest family, currently we are about 1400 miles away! Thankfully we have had wonderful friends in each place we've lived. There were few picture of Lexi's toddler-hood outings that didn't include the Wilde's, who we have missed terribly!

Since moving to Austin we've met the Barlow's and there are few days that go by without spending some time with them.

Lexi, Gwen, and Harry enjoying the trampoline:



Lexi and Gwen even attend the same preschool. Last week they had a Thanksgiving feast, which the siblings got invited to. Below is the back of Brooklynn's head, hanging out eating popcorn with the big kids.
And the rest of Lexi's class, plus Harry at the end.

And in other news, Santa is coming to town, and we aren't wasting any time getting into the festivities. Yesterday we checked out the giant tree at the Domain.


Lexi's pretty sure she wants to see presents that big under her tree too.

And Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from us!

Things I'm excited about

We moved into our house about a year and a half ago. Even before the papers were signed there was a list growing of things we needed to do or change. At the top of the list was the backyard. When we moved in it was pretty much a wilderness of weeds, but the end is in sight for a functioning, beautiful yard!

Check out our awesome sod and how great the trampoline looks in the ground. The fence is on the to-do list for this weekend, and bam-just like that it'll be done, whew!


I've been wanting to do a picture wall for a while, and since I got these great pictures taken, I finally made it happen. Thanks to Manda and Rikki for some of those frames, lucky I knew they both have worked at Kohl's so I knew right where to go to get some more :)
These aren't new, but I thought I'd take a picture of the opposite wall. These are my wedding flowers, and flowers Matt gave me the day we got engaged. He made the arrangements all by himself. Pretty crafty guy huh?


Looking forward to Thanksgiving in 2 weeks and Christmas in 6, wahoo bring on the holidays!

The Hall Family

Last week my awesome friend Dana took some pictures of our family to help me out with our annual Christmas card. Here are just a couple of the fun pictures she took. Can't thank you enough Dana!

Week o'Halloween

Halloween was lots of fun this year. We hit three Halloween parties and 2 pumpkin patches. Lexi wore her 'Spider Princess' costume for 5 days straight. Brooklynn didn't even mind the fish head by the end of the week. For our ward party Lexi and I visited our awesome face painting friend Renee for some extra fun touches. And Matt debuted a new costume this year, the ostrich wrangler. Enjoy the pics!

Lexi picking out a pumpkin.
Me and my little fish.
The local library has a party each year that we enjoy.
At the Round Rock Fall Festival. Waiting in line for a hay ride. It was a good time doing some other carnival games.
I love this picture of Brooklynn.
Lexi's preschool class went back to the pumpkin patch, and Brooklynn got to come along.
Miss Wendy and the rest of the class.
Our family at the Ward party.

San Antonio

Grammi was here for the weekend, horray! We love visitors! Over the weekend we headed down to San Antonio to check out the sites.
Alexis has been recently obsessed with unicorns. While driving to SA, we saw a truck hauling this one, boy was that exciting!

While Grammi took the girls swimming, Matt and I were able to go to the San Antonio temple. It was a beautiful sight and wonderful time to attend with my husband.
The Alamo at night.
Grammi and Lexi on the riverwalk.
The top of our hotel had a pool and a gorgeous view!

Grammi and Lexi riding the riverboat.
Waiting for the boat.

It was a great outing and wonderful weekend. Thank you for coming Katie, we already miss you!