Thanksgiving Feast

Today was a momentous day. I fixed my first Thanksgiving meal all by myself. It was lots of fun and not near as hard as I thought it would be. It is 4 o'clock now and we are stuffed. The dishes are done. We played football outside with the kids and now we have settled in front of the Cowboys game with coffee and pumpkin pie. How blessed we are by God. As the kids would say, "God is good all the time, all the time God is good."


My first turkey, not bad eh?



Chris' first turkey carving!


The feast. One of Chris' friends from work joined us.


Guess who won the wishbone?

Where Do I Begin?

August 24th was the last time I blogged. Ugh. Where do I even begin? Do I tell you about our house or our church or our parents visiting or Halloween or all the new things the kids are doing? I will try to give a short recap on it all and let the pictures do the rest. Deal?
First the house. We are finally moved in. There is still so much to be done. But each week we are making progress and it is fun to see the progression. My next post will be some before and after pics. We are loving fall in Alabama. It is soooo beautiful. The trees are gorgeous. It is already quit nippy here.
We are still enjoying our church. Already we feel like we know so many people and it has been fairly easy to get plugged in. The kids really love it too. Andrew and Katie are thriving there which is great since it normally takes the two of them a while to warm up to people.
In early October Chris' folks came to visit. It was a fun visit. It was great to see a familiar face and to show someone our house. They gave us much needed encouragement regarding the house. The kids loved seeing NeNe and Poppa.
Two weeks ago my parents, grandfather, sister and niece came to visit. We had a great time. Katie went right to grandma. It was such a blessing to host my Papa in my home. We loved seeing my brand new niece who is the best baby ever. We kept my dad busy mowing all 5.5 acres! It was a lovely visit.
The kids are just growing like weeds. Parker lost his two front teeth, which is too cute. Luke is loving kindergarten. He is picking up reading really quickly. Andrew is at that age where he is really communicating everything. I love hearing his thoughts on things. He is such a determined little guy and he is still keeping me on my toes. Katie is so fun these days. She is all girl. Anytime you tell her she's pretty she reaches up to her head to see if she is wearing a bow. All of a sudden she is beginning to say new words daily. But she will only talk in a whisper. Right now she says "Ouweeee" anytime she is hurt or frustrated. It is so cute. I will have to get it on camera.
Here are the pics:

Updates

It has been a busy few weeks. School has started and summer is flying by. As you can see we have been staying busy on the weekends, trying to get out of the apartment. We went to the Quarter Midget races on Saturday www.HQMA.org and the kids had a blast! They had a tennis ball toss and the kids won a checkerboard game. The kids hadn't been this close to races before and Chris is convinced Parker will get to do some victory laps with the checkered flag.

We close on our house here this Friday. We are so excited we can hardly stand it. We had been praying for a good rate on our mortgage. We had to lock by last Friday. It just didn't seem like we were going to get the rate we wanted but at the very last minute things took a very unexpected turn and the broker had to change lenders and we were able to lock on a great rate. Praise the Lord for His providence in this. He has been so faithful to us in so many ways.

We have also found a church just 5 minutes from our house. We hadn't even considered visiting this church originally because it had seemed too small and we just thought it might be stale. That Sunday we were trying to visit another church but by accident we showed up at the wrong time. It just happened that this church near our home was starting at just that time so we decided to go ahead and go. I guess God know all the while where we would end up that Sunday. I think this church is going to be a good fit. Parker and Luke know several of the kids from school already. The people are so friendly and welcoming. We've already signed up for Awana and there's even a spot for Chris to work with T&T (3rd and 4th grade) boys again!

We miss you all dearly. My heart has yearned a lot this week for our sweet family and friends back home.

By the way, my sister just had a baby girl. Lainey Dawn. She is 9 lbs 2 0z. Here are the first pics.

Christian Rock has changed!

Last year I had to go to Parkers school to pick him up early, he was in the gym for P.E. As I went in I couldn't help but notice the loud booming bee-boppy music they were playing. Luckily, it was only the beat with no words accompanying it. But it was the beat of a very familiar "wordly" song. As Parker and I were walking out he told me he loved that "cool" music they play at school. It kind of made my heart sink. Ever since then I have been looking for a Christian substitute. Something with a beat that made him feel big and cool but something that wasn't filled with yuk. Of course my last impression of Christian Rock was not a good one. Does anyone remember the song Space Cowboy? Ugh. That would send my children running straight to the arms of secular music for sure. Luckily Huntsville has a Christian Rock station called Way FM. It's actually pretty cool. Well, I don't know if it would be hip for a 15 year old, but for a 31 year old and a seven year old we are digging it. So if you happen to be driving through Alabama and you see a white sequoia with way too many children in it swaying to the beat of some fun Christian music it might just be us. Here are a few of Parker's favorites.

A BIG Day

Well today was a very infamous day in the Clifton household. It was the first day of school here in Alabama, which means we now have a kindergartener and a second grader. Luke's first day of kindergarten was extra special because he turned five years old today. We also closed on our house in Texas! Hooray! We thank God for his timing in that.

To all my cousins

We just got pictures of all the Richey cousins playing together at grandma and grandpa's so we thought we would send them a message.

Katie's first pig tails!

Outdoor Fun

Each night we try and get out of the apartment so the kids can blow off some steam. One of our favorite evening adventures is going to the park. Below are some pictures of our favorite place, Dublin Park. It is up on a rolling hill covered with beautiful oak trees. The kids love it. On weekends we try and go explore some place new in Alabama. This weekend we went to Monte Sano State Park. It is just on the other side of Huntsville. We went hiking in the woods, enjoyed a picnic lunch and played at yet another park. We plan on taking a camping trip soon here.

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Willow Park on Steroids!

After days and days of driving around every neighborhood I think we finally found our new home. We are planning on putting a contract on this house tomorrow. The current owner is moving to Atlanta, Georgia, her husband died last year. This house reminds us so much of our house on Willow Park. It's on 5.5 acres. It was probably built in the late 60's early 70's. It needs lots of updating but it has been well maintained. We are both in love with it. The view out the front and back is gorgeous. The pictures of the inside doesn't really do it justice. There is also a huge sunroom, 45x12 on the whole back of the house. It is 5 bedrooms/3 bath. There is a guest bedroom downstairs with it's own bathroom. Also there is a 600 sq ft shop and the 24 hp diesel John Deere comes with the house. There is also apple and pear trees, tons of blueberries, blackberries and grapes.

Front of house

View from front

View of shop and back

view from front

Move to Alabama

Well we finally made it to Alabama. It was a relief to find that all of our stuff also made it in one piece. Our apartment is on the second floor right at the entrance of the apartments. It turns out the apartment is a little ghetto. Not exactly what we expected. We are trying to have a sense of humor about it though. For instance, our dryer now reeks of cigarette smoke, which means our clothes reek of cigarette smoke. We are not exactly sure why this is, but we know it has something to do with our neighbors downstairs that smoke a lot. Anyways, the kids think the apartment is the coolest place they have ever lived.



This weekend we took a trip out to the mountains, yes, Alabama has mountains. Who knew? We went to a state park called Cathedral Caverns. It was a lot of fun. I will post some pictures of it. That is if I can figure out how to post pictures.

Texas Goodbye Slideshow!!!

It was hard saying goodbye to our family and friends. We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people that we love so dearly. Thanks to everyone for sending us off with so many memories and prayers to take a long with us on this adventure to Alabama. We will be back before you know it.

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