Christmas At Home

Steve, Ryan, Carmen & Brock O'Neal ~ Christmas 2011

Momma and her boys

Daddy and his boys

It only took about five pictures before Brock and Ryan started acting goofy.  But I got a good picture out of it!!

Getting cookies and milk ready for Santa...

...and carrots and reindeer food for the reindeer.

A few of their gifts.

Thor!!

Santa even brought Max some goodies in his stocking.

Our table set for our Christmas dinner...

...in our pajamas!

Santa's Wonderland

A friend gave us tickets to Santa's Wonderland.  It is a place that has over 2 million Christmas lights...and is pretty pricey.  In fact, without the free tickets, we would've never gone.  They had a petting zoo that the kids liked more than anything!  It had camels, llamas, deer, calves, goats, donkeys, kangaroos, badgers & bunnies.  They loved feeding the animals!!

It also had bull riding!!  Both of the boys begged and begged to bull ride.  It was so fun to watch them up there!

On the hayride to see the lights...with hot chocolate, of course!

Amen!!

New Year's Eve

We continued our tradition of Steve and I toasting at midnight for New Year's and Brock and Ryan toasting  at noon.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Christmas in Oklahoma

The O'Neal Family ~ Christmas 2011 

One place the boys love to go in OK is the Science Museum in OK City.  It is an awesome place and the kids learn so much...just by having fun.

Ryan & Otto (the mascot of the Science Museum).

This was something new from the last time we went.  Brock and Daddy took different toys and actually made a movie with them.  Then they were able to play it back and watch the movie they just made.  Very cool!!

They had several puzzles that were pretty tricky to solve.  Papa worked hard on this one!

They also had a drawing station.  Gramma and Ryan were both at home!

Ryan in the tractor.

Astronaut Ryan

Astronaut Brock

They had a gymnastics area, too.  Leave it to Ryan to do flips on them!  (And Uncle Allen to encourage him to do it!)

Brock, Logan and Ryan enjoyed playing outside and created...

...Paradise Falls.  They were so proud of what they made.

Gramma and Papa have some great climbing trees in their backyard.

Dec. 2011

We used to have a vine growing in some trees in the backyard that the boys used to swing on like Tarzan...until one fateful day when they both got on the Tarzan vine and it broke.  Ryan and Brock have wanted something new to swing on for quite a while.  Steve bought a rope and tied it VERY high in a tree for them.  He scared me half to death...you can see the ladder at the bottom of the tree.  To get in the tree, he had to stand on the very top of the ladder and pull himself up into the tree, then climb even higher to get to the limb.  I was praying the entire time!!!

Steve was changing after work one day and all of a sudden, Ryan walked into the living room with Steve's Marine dress Blues on.  He was so cute!!!

When Brock saw that Ryan was wearing Daddy's Marine uniform, he wanted to, too!  So, Brock put on his dress Alphas.  How cute is he?!?

We salute our service men and women!! 

My nephew, Garrett, had a couple basketball games in the DFW area one weekend.  So, our family drove up to watch him play.  We also got to see Paul, Jackie and Jake.  Garrett did a great job and we had a lot of fun watching him play.  Brock and Ryan loved seeing their cousins again, too!

At one of Garrett's games, the senior's at the school got to paint their parking space.  I thought this was a cute picture!

Ryan's class at school bakes something almost every Friday.  His teacher took this picture of him making snickerdoodle cookies.

They even got a surprise visit from Santa!

Ryan and Brock love all the Christmas shows on TV.  I love how well they get along...most of the time.  They have a great friendship that is so sweet to see.  One of my prayers is that their friendship will continue to grow and that they will be best of friends as adults.

Nov. 2011

Ryan's class took had a field trip to a pumpkin patch and I got to go along!  They had a field with tiny pumpkins and they got to pick a pumpkin to take home.  Ryan was very proud of his speckled pumpkin!

This slide was a lot of fun, too.  It was fairly high and quick!

The Tues. before Thanksgiving, the boy's school had Grandparent's Day.  Grandparents (or other special family members) could come eat lunch and watch their grandkids put on a program.  Brock's class did a cute program about the Pilgrims and the Indians.

Each student wrote a paragraph about their grandparents.  This is what Brock wrote:

All of the Kindergarten kids were together and sang different Thanksgiving songs.  It was so cute!  They had turkey hats (like Ryan's), Pilgrim hats or head bands with their Indian name on it.  Too cute!!!

Here is just one of the songs the Kindergarteners sang:

Thanksgiving at the Midland Brockman's

Most of the Brockman's were able to come to Midland for Thanksgiving this year.  We had a great time together, as we always do!  We sure missed those that couldn't come (Don, Kelley, Jody, Nickie & Ashley).  We pushed on and had a good time, though! 

Greg, Kenzie & Jack

Jake, Ben & Ryan

Walter

Lee & Steve

Jack & Kenzie

Jackie & Carmen

Steve jumped just right on the trampoline to send Ryan flying.

Diane & Jack

Ryan, Maggie, Michelle & Jake

Maggie, Kenzie, Ryan & Jake

There were many highlights of our time together, but Greg and Walter doing Wii Just Dance was just about the best!