At Grandma Graves

This is the beautiful sunrise we saw on the way to Grandma Graves' house

We bundled up to go outside. It was freezing! Literally!

Kayla doing a little craft

Erica painting an ornament. That's why we went outside earlier

The road on the way to MI. The white you see is ice.

This is the THULE that we used to have, but froze, then broke.

Well, as you can see we had a wonderful time at Grandma Graves'! It was a lot of fun, but the temperature all day was 0 degrees, and the wind chill was around -25 degrees. It was freezing! You couldn't breathe outside almost, and everything was so icy! We had fun staying inside, though. :) We played a bunch of card games, Erica and I painted some wooden ornaments, and Kayla made a thing that I don't know how to pronounce or spell, but looks cool. She had fun making it. We all had fun there, and Grandma had really good food!! It was yummy! Grandma and PawPaw also have two little sweet dogs named Annie and Guy. They are so cute and sweet! And for the THULE. We were driving along and then Mom heard a thump on the roof of the van. Dad pulls over and we see that the THULE had broken off and so it had opened. So we had to pile everything into the van. It was really crowded! But that's all for now.

Cookie Decorating Party

All decorating sugar cookies

Alissa & Erica made scary cookies :)

Kayla, Kalley & Karley

Jayme & Kayla cutting out more shapes

Playing "apples to apples" afterwards

Well, tonight was the cookie decorating party. It was lots of fun for the mom as well as the girls. lol We had 11 friends come over. There were lots of creative & fun cookies to see, the different tips give more freedom for how a cookie can look - before you eat it! It is always interesting to see the creative side of other people. My fav was a purple & gold LSU cookie!! Thanks everyone for coming over & having fun with us. Happy New Year!
Shelly

Our early Christmas

KK loved the shirt and socks! She changed into them right after she opened them!

These presents are from the Hastings! Not the hat. I love them!!

This picture was taken before she had the bow in her hair! :)

KK is taller then Mom. Kayla is thrilled!

This was taken before we opened any presents. Mom really likes it.

We gave Dad the Longhorn hat.

I got new books and a really cool duffle bag.

Kayla got her puppy

And Erica got her phone

Here is part of the entries I needed to do. The others are of when we went to Grandma Graves' house, and the other is of Michigan and Christmas and skiing. But here's the scoop. We opened all of our presents before we left for Indiana and MI, so that we wouldn't have to haul all of it up. I'm really glad we did, because I think I used every single present on the trip. I think all of us did. It was really fun. Merry late Christmas! But, it was actually early for us. We all had a lot of fun, and then we left for Indiana later that night. It was hard to go to sleep for a while!

SNOW!!!

I'm pretty sure Cleo posed for the camera. Above: my beautiful dog. She loved the snow!

Cleo was frisky all morning

Kayla in the snow

Mom got this good one of Erica on her way out to take pictures

Cookie, the other goat. Yes, they're home.

Out in the back part of our pasture

A pretty pic of our neighbor's yard

Our house covered in snow!

Well, here it is. The long awaited blog on snow. We literally took 400 pictures. I had a hard time deciding which pictures to put on here. I almost put another one of Philly on here, but I didn't. I might later, though. :) It snowed last Wednesday night. A week ago today, it was freezing outside and was about to snow. Everybody loved the snow. The only ones who didn't was the chickens. They wouldn't touch it. Erica woke me up around 2:30 and told me to look outside, and it was snowing, but it hadn't much. Kayla woke me up around 6 and brought me outside. It was done snowing, but we got 4 1/2 inches! It was awesome! So we played outside in it for about an hour, and then we all got too cold and went inside. We got some pics, but they're too dark. All these were taken when we went back outside later. Cleo liked it a lot, as you can see. The funny thing she kept doing was pawing the ground to look for grass. But she posed all morning for the camera! I'm surprised I only did 2 pics of her. Cleo really enjoyed herself in all the snow. Philly and Gracie had an absolute ball in all the snow! Philly loved the cold. Grace found Brutus and chased him all over the place. It was funny. So they loved it. The goats could care less whether it snowed or not... all they wanted was food. They were jumping up on the trees to eat the leaves. The turkeys didn't really like it, but they are social birds, so they followed us around anyway. The cows didn't really care about the snow either. They were all wet, but they didn't mind. And the chickens. Kayla wanted Erica to get a pic of Blondie (our mini chicken) in the snow. So KK carries her out and drops her into the snow. Well, Blondie didn't really like it, so she flew all the way back to the coop without ever touching the ground. We let all of the chickens out of the coop, and they rush out, look at the snow, and they all rushed back in! It was hilarious! :) We made snow angels, and Erica made a little lopsided snow man. We threw snowballs around, and Erica couldn't really aim, but it got better. (She told me to tell you that!) It was funny. And here's a sidenote: all the pictures that you see where taken by Erica. Every single one. (Well, except for the one of her.) Aren't they great?!
Here's something that doesn't have to do with snow: we're going to Michigan for Christmas! We're going to leave on Saturday night (Friday night?) and get back the next Monday. I think that means we'll be gone for 9 days. I'm really excited about going! We're going to ski, and have a white Christmas! Yea! :) Hey, guess what? My best friend Maryanna Emily has a new baby sister! She is so cute!! And her name is Christia Elise. I wanted to tell everyone. Oh, and Sam Bradford got the Heisman. But the Gators are still going to win the BCS! hehe.

In San Antonio with the Mosleys!

The one above is of Bekah and a fountain. The one beneath is of Bekah, me, and a fountain

This star is made of coke cans!!

This is the Tower of the Americas (I think!). Sorry it's not rotated for you!

This is some of the Mosley clan. From r to l... David, Joseph, John, and Bekah.

Here's my entry for my trip to San Antonio. I was there (or on my way to or fro) from Saturday (Dec 6) to Tuesday (Dec 9). It was WAY fun!!! We went because Mr. Mosley had some business there, so the family (or part of it) went and Bekah sweetly invited me! I'm so glad she did!! We had a lot of fun. On the way there, we stopped at the Katy Mills mall, and that was cool. And we had fun in the car, too. We got there later that day, and we went swimming. It was a lot of fun!! And it wasn't cold, either. It was very nice. Then the next day, we went to the Alamo (where the group pic is taken, without Mr. and Mrs. Mosley) and we saw, walked and rode the Riverwalk. Well, we took a boatride on the river. And we walked later that night in town, and it was all lit up, and very pretty! We swam that night, too. :) Then, on Monday, Mr. Mosley had meetings, so we stayed at the hotel (which is way nice!), watched TV, and then we walked around in the mall after lunch for a while. That was fun, too! And we swam that night, too. Yep. It was windy Monday night, but still a lot of fun. On Tuesday, we packed, watched some more TV, and then left around noon. We drove home, and that was fun, but we slept most of the way. So there is my trip with the Mosleys. They are SO much fun!!! Thank you guys, for taking me! And I'm very glad they did! Tomorrow, Friday, we're going to see the Nutcracker (or rather, the beginning of it) and then hopefully I can show you pics of snow tomorrow afternoon! Oh, and remember me mentioning that Florida was going to beat Alabama? They did! 31 to 20. It was pretty awesome, so I've heard. I was in San Anton. So now Florida is going to the BCS Championship against Oklahoma! Go Gators! hehe.

The Christmas tree and the puppy

Us girls and the tree. KK isn't fond of pics. Can you tell?

Mom and the puppy

Grace being sweet with the puppy

This is a pic of Dad eating our traditional fudge. We have it every year when we decorate our tree. It's the best!

Erica, her humor, and the tree

Well, there's the new thing I tried. I put the info of the pic above instead of beneath it. I'll see how that works out. You can't put anything on the first pic, but..... the real reason y'all are reading this is to see what we're doing. The most important thing is.... it SNOWED last night!!! But I will talk about that in a different blog entry. Another important thing is that I went to San Antonio with one of my best friends and some of her family. But those will be in separate entries. If you want to read them, look us up tomorrow. This one is about us decorating the tree, and Kayla's puppy. We had a lot of fun decorating the tree. We also had technical difficulties. The lights wouldn't work on the tree. Then, after 30 minutes, we get it working, just in time for it to crash. So Dad does his cool stuff and fixes it all, so then we decorated it, and then Mom (like most moms) wanted some pictures of us by the tree. And we always have fudge. It's so yummy!! I love it. Dad started the tradition a long time ago. We need to have fudge whenever we decorate the tree. So there you have it. And for the puppy. She didn't whine the first night, but she's whined all day today!! We put her out, and she howls and howls for a while. Then Philly comes in to make her be quiet, and the puppy is satisfied for a while. Then she's loud again. But she's a cutie pie. And Gracie and Philly are doing great with her. And that's about it.

New Puppy!

Well, our new puppy arrived late last night & she is adorable! She is a 6-week old Australian Shepherd. She never cried at all during the night - I guess having older dogs can be real help when you have a new puppy that needs to be cuddled all the time. :) We will have pics later - just wanted everyone to know that it has gotten crazier at the Hag Ranch; but we are loving it. No name yet. Merry Christmas Kaya! Love, Mom & Dad

December and Family Pictures

Dad being silly

Mom and Dad

Erica

Me

Kayla

Us 3

The 3 Stooges :) (whatever that means!)

So, this isn't going to be long. I just wanted to show you what we did on Sunday. We took family, and single, pictures in the afternoon. It was freezing! I didn't include this one, but Dad has a pic of me saying, "It's cold!" You can see me saying it. And between pictures, I had a jacket that I put on. The one with Dad being goofy is him showing us what we looked like. He said that we kept looking away, so he was doing that, and Erica got him on camera. The one of Mom and Dad and Dad is wearing his cowboy hat, Mom is thinking about putting that one on the mantel, in place of one about 3 years old. And the single ones of us girls, Mom wanted some school pictures. So there you have it. Updated pictures. And one of those might be our Christmas pictures, so if you get it, and you've already seen these pictures, try to act surprised! :) Erica is at the lymphodema doctor in Houston right now, so please pray for her. And I think that's all the new news. Oh, and since there isn't anything else to do (well, actually there is!) I decided to tell you what the Alydar in our name at the top of our page means. I hope most of you know what the Triple Crown is. It's a very famous horse race for 3 year old horses and it's only been won 11 times. But there was a horse named Secretariat that won in 1973. Each race he won, a horse named Alydar came in second to him. And they both beat the rest of the field by a lot. It was pretty cool. There was a huge rivalry between the 2 their whole lives. And Alydar won more races against Secretariat then Secretariat won against him. But Dad thought it was cool that he came in second place every time to Secretariat. So he decided to name our ranch Alydar Stables. That's what Kayla's "A.S." means on all of her letters if you've ever seen that. Well, that's all for now. Oh, and I'm going to try something new in my next entry if I remember. We'll see. Ok, ok, I know I keep adding stuff, but I keep remembering cool stuff. Another cool thing that happened last week (I think it was last Tuesday, a week ago from today) is Mom and Erica got new phones. Mom got a Centro, and Erica got and Env. They're both pretty cool. And we can actually get texts and calls now! It's magical. We don't have to wait 3 hours for a text or only talk to someone for a minute on the phone. It's pretty awesome. I should get a new one, too, if I can ever decide which one to get! :) I can never decide on things like this. But Mom and Erica's phones are pretty cool. They are Christmas presents. At least Erica and mine are. That's all. Really.